But this I confess unto thee
What was truth he was not ashamed of, but ready to own, and bear
his testimony for, whatever was the consequence of it:
that after the way which they call heresy;
referring to the charge of his being a ringleader of the sect of
the Nazarenes, ( Acts 24:5 ) and meaning
by the way the Christian religion, or the doctrines of
Christianity, which the Jews called heresy; and as early as this
were the Christians, by them, called heretics: so we read
F18 of (Mynymh tkrb) , "a prayer against the heretics", which
Samuel (the little) composed before, or in the presence of R.
Gamaliel the elder, he approving of it; which R. Gamaliel was
Paul's master; and some have thought, that Samuel the little, the
composer of this prayer, was Saul himself; so that he knew very
well that the Christian doctrine was called heresy, and the
Christians heretics, for he had called them so himself in the
time of his unregeneracy; but now he was not ashamed to profess
that way, and walk in it, and according to it worship God, as
follows:
so worship I the God of my fathers;
even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, suggesting, that by embracing
Christianity, he had not denied, and gone off from the worship of
the one, only, living, and true God, the God of Israel; and that
there was an entire agreement between the saints of the Old
Testament, and the Christians of the New, in the object of
worship; the Vulgate Latin version reads, "so serve I the Father,
and my God"; that is, God the Father, who is the Father of
Christ, and the God and Father of believers in him:
believing all things which are written in the law and the
prophets;
which the Sadducees did not; and strictly adhering to these, and
not to the traditions of the elders, as did the Scribes and
Pharisees; so that since he believed whatever was contained in
the sacred writings, he could not be charged justly with heresy;
and as he believed, so he taught nothing but what was agreeably
to the Scriptures of the Old Testament.