Acts 24:14

After the way which they call heresy. — Better, which they call a sect. The Greek noun is the same as in Acts 24:5, and ought, therefore, to be translated by the same English word. As it is, the reader does not see that the “way” had been called a heresy. In using the term “the way,” St. Paul adopts that which the disciples used of themselves (see Note on Acts 9:2), and enters an implied protest against the use of any less respectful and more invidious epithet.

So worship I the God of my fathers. — Better, perhaps, so serve I, the word being different from that in Acts 24:11, and often translated by “serve” elsewhere (Acts 7:7; Hebrews 8:5). The “service” includes worship, but is wider in its range of meaning.

Believing all things which are written... — This was a denial of the second charge, of being a ring leader of a sect. His faith in all the authoritative standards of Judaism was as firm and full as that of any Pharisee. The question whether that belief did or did not lead to the conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, was one of interpretation, with which Felix, at all events, had nothing to do, and which St. Paul, when making a formal apologia before a Roman ruler, declines to answer.