the same testimony, and adduces examples within his own knowledge.

Obedience to the government was deemed a duty in all cases, except those which involved the worship of the old deities. Tertullian, in answer to a charge of disloyalty, says: "The Christian is the enemy of no man; assuredly not of the emperor. The Sovereign he knows to be ordained of God. Of necessity, therefore, he loves, honours, and reveres him; and prays for his safety, with that of the whole Roman empire, that it may endure; and endure it will, as long as the world."

THE EARLIEST SECTS.

THE JUDAIZING CHRISTIANS.-Having thus given a summary glance at the prominent characters of the early Fathers, I will endeavour to describe, as concisely as possible, the sects who were especially troublesome to them. First, I will speak of those which most strongly retained the stamp of their Jewish origin. How difficult it was for the disciples of Moses to free themselves from their deeplyrooted national exclusiveness has been repeatedly stated. Among the Twelve Apostles, Peter seems to have made the greatest advance in this respect; probably owing to his more frequent companionship with Paul, and his acquaintance with the devout Roman centurion. Though appointed by a Council at Jerusalem to be the "apostle of the circumcision," he declared: "Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." The whole drift of Paul's preaching went to prove that the Mosaic dispensation was local and transitory, while the principles inculcated by Christ were universal and permanent; that the old ritual consisted of types, to shadow forth the new doctrines, which were the substance. His superior education, combined with the earnestness and directness of his character, and the consequent certainty of his convic tions, rendered him a very powerful and efficient preacher.

He was not only eminently successful in gaining Gentile proselytes, but converts from the Hellenistic Jews were everywhere more or less modified by the expansion of his ideas; though in all the churches established by him there was a Peter party and a Paul party.

The case was different with Christianized Jews in Palestine. The first fifteen bishops at Jerusalem were all observers of the Mosaic law. People in the old country were generally less educated, and less enterprising than the Jews scattered abroad in foreign cities. They had very little communication with other countries, and, of course, the spirit of conservatism remained strong among them. They were in the same state as those who said to Paul: "Thou seest, brother, how many Jews there are that believe, and they are all zealous for the Law." In their view, Christianity was in fact merely a perfected kind of Judaism. Obscurity rests on the history of the church at Jerusalem. From statements of the Christian Fathers, we learn that they left the Holy City before it was attacked and destroyed by Titus; that they retired to Pella, a country east of the Sea of Galilee; that after the war was over, many of them returned, and remained there till the insurrection under Bar-Cochebas, who professed to be the Messiah. The city was then taken by Adrian, who established a Roman Colony there, and expelled the Jews. The Palestine Christians, being all strict observers of the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, were regarded merely as a sect of Jews, and consequently shared in the banishment. In their exile, they formed acquaintance with Gentile converts; their prejudices gradually relaxed; a portion of them discontinued the practice of circumcision, and other Jewish ceremonials, in which they had persevered for more than a century; and, finally, in the year one hundred and thirtyeight, they elected a Gentile bishop. By these concessions, and by asserting that they believed in a spiritual Messiah, whose kingdom was not of this world, they disarmed the political jealousy of Rome, and were allowed to return to Jerusalem, where they established a Christian church, into

which Gentile converts were received on an equality with converted Jews.

But a considerable portion of the exiles adhered to their old views, and refused to follow the foreign bishop. They spread into the villages round Damascus, and considering themselves as the true depositories of the genuine apostolic doctrine, they refused to hold religious communication with uncircumcised believers in Christ. Jews rejected them as apostates, and Christians regarded them as heretics. For one hundred years it was a subject of controversy whether a man could be saved if he accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah, without conforming to the Law of Moses. Through manifold and perilous struggles, Paul gained the victory. The Petrine controversy gradually subsided, and at last it became a question whether a Christian convert could be saved if he did conform to the Law. Justin Martyr says that, as early as his time, the more rigid Gentile Christians would hold no intercourse with such, and maintained that they could not be saved. Others thought they might escape damnation, provided they practised Mosaic rites without pretending to assert their necessity, or general use.

Jews called all Christians Nazarenes, on account of their originating in Nazareth; and Christians seem to have applied the same term to one sect of those who retained their attachment to old Hebrew forms. But they were accustomed to designate all the Christian followers of Moses by the general term of Ebionites. These had a Gospel, written in modern Hebrew, [Aramæan] which they believed contained an authentic account of the sayings and doings of Jesus, as related by the Twelve Apostles, and recorded by Matthew. It did not contain the two first chapters, but began with the baptism of Jesus. The copy used by the Nazarene sect had two chapters preceding the baptism; but quotations which remain indicate that they differed somewhat from those that have come down to us. The Nazarenes considered the Mosaic law binding upon themselves, but were willing to dispense with its observance in the case of Gentile converts. They denounced the Scribes VOL. II.-32

and Pharisees, who by their traditions had hindered the people from believing in Jesus. But they said the whole. world would finally be converted to Christ, and all that the prophets had promised concerning the Messiah's kingdom. would be fulfilled in him. They called him "The First Born of the Holy Spirit;" but their Gospel represented the Holy Spirit as his Mother; probably from the Cabalistic idea that the Divine Wisdom was feminine. Philo embodied the same idea in the Universal Mother, whom he named Sophia. Another class of Ebionites supposed that a superior Angel, one who presided over all the other Angels, descended upon Christ at baptism, filled him with Divine power, and remained with him during his life. Others supposed that the Heavenly Man, called Adam Kadman, or the First Adam, who appeared as the progenitor of the human race, had re-appeared in Christ, as the Messiah, to deliver God's last revelation to mankind. Epiphanius, one of the later Christian Fathers, of Jewish parentage, says: "The Ebionites believe that God created the Spirit of Adam before any of the Angels, and made him Lord of all; that this immortal Adam descended from above whenever he pleased; that he had dwelt in the body of the earthly Adam, and afterward in Abraham and David; that in the latter days he had appeared in the form of Jesus, who was the Messiah; that his body was crucified, and he had returned to heaven." He also says: "They do not believe that Christ was born of God the Father, but that he was created, like the archangels; being greater, however, than they, governing the Angels, and all things made by God."

These sects, and others, are confounded together under the general term of Ebionites, a word which Origen defines as meaning The Poor. Some suppose it was contemptuously bestowed upon them because the members of Christian communities generally belonged to the labouring class. Others suppose it originally designated one sect among Jewish Christians, who renounced property. Epiphanius speaks of an Ebionite sect, existing in his time, who ate

no meat, and offered no animals, because they considered sacrificial worship an innovation upon primitive Judaism, and derived from a foreign source. They had a book, called The Steps of Jacob, in which that patriarch is represented as discoursing against sacrifices, and the ritual of Temple worship. They considered renunciation of worldly goods essential to Christian perfection, without which no one could participate in the kingdom of the Messiah. They gloried in the name of Ebionites, and traced it back to the circumstance that their forefathers, who, they said, formed the first church at Jerusalem, renounced all rights of property, and held all things in common. They praised early marriages, as conducive to virtue, and were opposed to those who over-valued celibacy.

The strict Ebionites considered the Law of Moses binding upon all followers of Christ, whether Jews or Gentiles; therefore they would hold no communion with uncircumcised converts. They believed that the mission of Jesus was confined to Israelites, and those who became so by adopting their customs. They sustained this position by quoting the assertion of Christ, that he did not come to do away the Law, and that whosoever infringed the least of its commandments, could not share his kingdom. They regarded Paul as an apostate, and rejected his writings; saying they were not intended for them, and were written in a language they did not understand. Once a year, at the Passover, they celebrated the Lord's Supper, with unleavened bread and water; the use of wine being contrary to their strict ideas of temperance. They regarded Jesus as a man, the son of Joseph and Mary, whose birth differed in no respect from other mortals. They said he was distinguished by reverence for the Law of Moses, and eminently pious in the observance of it; and on that account he was chosen to be the Messiah. They supposed that he and others were ignorant of his important mission, till Elijah, who had re-appeared in the form of John the Baptist, revealed it to him when he entered the Jordan. At the moment of baptism, he was filled with divine