The appointment of these would be regarded as a matter of course, and would not seem to call for any special notice in such a narrative as the Acts of the Apostles.
From the Acts of the Apostles we gather something as to the methods adopted by St Peter and St Paul, and these we may believe were more or less general.
The Reformation was thus essentially a stage in the disengaging of the modern state from that medieval, international ecclesiastical state which had its beginning in the ecclesia of the Acts of the Apostles.
A moderately liberal theologian, he became best known as a New Testament critic and exegete, being the author of the Commentary on the Synoptics (1889; 3rd ed., 1901), the Johannine books (1890; 2nd ed., 1893), and the Acts of the Apostles (1901), in the series Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament.
The triumph of this " universalistic " element in the teaching of Christ is vividly portrayed in the Acts of the apostles.
