St Paul and the Three

II.

ST PAUL AND THE THREE.

Three f I ^HREE and three only of the personal disciples and imme

alone *⁸ diate followers of our Lord hold any prominent place in

bes^es fa_e Apostolic records—James, Peter, and John; the first the

promi- Lord's brother, the two latter the foremost members of the

Twelve. Apart from an incidental reference to the death of

James the son of Zebedee, which is dismissed in a single

sentence, the rest of the Twelve are mentioned by name for the

last time on the day of the Lord's Ascension. Thenceforward

they disappear wholly from the canonical writings.

And this silence also extends to the traditions of succeeding

ages. We read indeed of St Thomas in India, of St Andrew in

Scythia; but such scanty notices, even if we accept them as

trustworthy, show only the more plainly how little the Church

could tell of her earliest teachers. Doubtless they laboured

zealously and effectively in the spread of the Gospel; but, so

far as we know, they have left no impress of their individual

mind and character on the Church at large. Occupying the

foreground, and indeed covering the whole canvas of early

ecclesiastical history, appear four figure's alone, St Paul and the

three Apostles of the Circumcision.

The four Once and, it would appear, not more than once, these four

getLr at great teachers met together face to face. It was the one great

^a P*** crisis in the history of the Church, on the issue of which was crisis. »'

staked her future progress and triumph. Was she to open her

doors wide and receive all comers, to declare her legitimate

boundaries coextensive with the limits of the human race? Or

was she to remain for ever narrow and sectarian, a national

institution at best, but most probably a suspected minority even

in her own nation?

Not less important, so far as we can see, was the question at

issue, when Paul and Barnabas arrived at Jerusalem to confer

with the Apostles of the Circumcision on the subject of the

Mosaic ritual which then distracted the youthful Church. It

must therefore be an intensely interesting study to watch the

attitude of the four great leaders of the Church at this crisis,

merely as a historical lesson. But the importance of the subject

does not rest here. Questions of much wider interest are Questions

suggested suggested by the accounts of this conference: What degree of by this

coincidence or antagonism between Jewish and Gentile converts ^m
may be discerned in the Church? What were the relations
existing between St Paul and the Apostles of the Circumcision?
How far do the later sects of Ebionites on the one hand and
Marcionites on the other, as they appear in direct antagonism
in the second century, represent opposing principles cherished
side by side within the bosom of the Church and sheltering
themselves under the names, or (as some have ventured to say)
sanctioned by the authority, of the leading Apostles? What in
fact is the secret history—if there be any secret history—of the
origin of Catholic Christianity?

On this battle-field the most important of recent theological Importcontroversies has been waged: and it is felt by both sides that the the Epistle to the Galatians is the true key to the position. In Ep^e" the first place, it is one of the very few documents of the Apostolic ages, whose genuineness has not been seriously challenged by the opponents of revelation. Moreover, as the immediate utterance of one who himself took the chief part in the incidents recorded, it cannot be discredited as having passed through a coloured medium or gathered accretions by lapse of time. And lastly, the very form in which the informa

tion is conveyed—by partial and broken allusions rather than

by direct and continuous statement—raises it beyond the reach

of suspicion, even where suspicion is most active. Here at

least both combatants can take their stand on common ground.

Nor need the defenders of the Christian faith hesitate to

accept the challenge of their opponents and try the question on

this issue. If it be only interpreted aright, the Epistle to the

Galatians ought to present us with a true, if only a partial,

solution of the problem.

Apology Thus the attempt to decipher the relations between Jewish

essay. ^aQd Gentile Christianity in the first ages of the Church is

directly suggested by this epistle; and indeed any commentary

would be incomplete which refused to entertain the problem.

This must be my excuse for entering upon a subject, about

which so much has been written and which involves so many

subsidiary questions. It will be impossible within my limits to

discuss all these questions in detail. The objections, for instance,

which have been urged against the genuineness of a large

number of the canonical and other early Christian writings, can

only be met indirectly. Reasonable men will hardly be attracted

towards a theory which can only be built on an area prepared

by this wide clearance of received documents. At all events

there is, I think, no unfairness in stating the case thus; that,

though they are supported by arguments drawn from other

sources, the general starting-point of such objections is the

theory itself. If then a fair and reasonable account can be

given both of the origin and progress of the Church generally,

and of the mutual relations of its more prominent teachers,

based on these documents assumed as authentic, a general

answer will be supplied to all objections of this class.

Proposed I purpose therefore to sketch in outline the progressive

the reia°- history of the relations between the Jewish and Gentile

tionsof converts in the early ages of the Church, as gathered from

and the Apostolic writings, aided by such scanty information as can

Christ- be got together from other sources. This will be a fit and

^wn8' indeed a necessary introduction to the subject with which the Epistle to the Galatians is more directly concerned, the positions occupied by St Paul and the three Apostles of the Circumcision respectively.

This history falls into three periods which mark three Three distinct stages in its progress: (1) The Extension of the Church <iivi_siong to the Gentiles; (2) The Recognition of Gentile Liberty; (3) £'|j» The Emancipation of the Jewish Churches¹.

1. The Extension of the Church to the Gentiles.

It appears from the Apostolic history that the believers in The early the earliest days conformed strictly to Jewish customs in their jerusareligious life, retaining the fixed hours of prayer, attending the" temple worship and sacrifices, observing the sacred festivals. The Church was still confined to one nation and had not yet broken loose from the national rites and usages. But these swathing bands, which were perhaps needed to support its infancy, would only cripple its later growth, and must be thrown off, if it was ever to attain to a healthy maturity. This emancipation then was the great problem which the Apostles had to work out. The Master Himself had left no express instructions. Our Lord's He had charged them, it is true, to preach the Gospel to all ^g'

nations, but how this injunction was to be carried out, by what changes a national Church must expand into an universal Church, they had not been told. He had indeed asserted the sovereignty of the spirit over the letter; He had enunciated the great principle—as wide in its application as the law itself

¹ Important works treating of the re- truth he has abandoned many of his

lr.tion between the Jewish and Gentile former positions, and placed himself in

Christians are Lechler's Apostolisches more direct antagonism to the Tiibin

und Nachapastolisches Zeitalter (2te gen sohool in which he was educated.

anfl. 1857), andRitschl's-Enistefcurcg der The historical speculations of that

Altkatholischen Kirche (2te aufl. 1857). school are developed in Baur's Paulus

I am indebted to both these works, but and Christenthum und die Christliche

to the latter especially, which is very Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte,

able and suggestive. Ritschl should be and in Schwegler's Nachapostoluches

read in his second edition, in which Zeitalter. with a noble sacrifice of consistency to

Jews of the Dispersion.

—that'Man was not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for man'; He had pointed to the fulfilment of the law in the Gospel. So far He had discredited the law, but He had not deposed or abolished it. It was left to the Apostles themselves under the guidance of the Spirit, moulded by circumstances and moulding them in turn, to work out this great change.

And soon enough the pressure of events began to be felt. The dispersion was the link which connected the Hebrews of Palestine with the outer world. Led captive by the power of Greek philosophy at Athens and Tarsus and Alexandria, attracted by the fascinations of Oriental mysticism in Asia, swept along with the busy whirl of social life in the city and court of the Caesars, these outlying members of the chosen race had inhaled a freer spirit and contracted wider interests than their fellow-countrymen at home. By a series of insensible gradations—proselytes of the covenant—proselytes of the gate¹ —superstitious devotees who observed the rites without accepting the faith of the Mosaic dispensation—curious lookers-on who interested themselves in the Jewish ritual as they would in the worship of Isis or of Astarte—the most stubborn zealot of the law was linked to the idolatrous heathen whom he abhorred and who despised him in turn. Thus the train was unconsciously laid, when the spark fell from heaven and fired it.

The very baptism of the Christian Church opened the path for its extension to the Gentile world. On the first day of Pentecost were gathered together Hellenist Jews from all the principal centres of the dispersion. With them were assembled also numbers of incorporated Israelites, proselytes of the covenant. The former of these by contact with Gentile thought and life, the latter by the force of early habits and associations¹, would accept and interpret the new revelation in a less rigorous spirit than the Hebrew zealot of Jerusalem. Each successive festival must have been followed by similar though less striking results. The stream of Hellenists and proselytes, constantly ebbing and flowing, must have swept away fragments at least of the new truth, purging it of some local encumbrances which would gather about it in the mother country, and carrying it thus purged to far distant shores.

First day of Pentecost.

¹ The distinction between proselytes of the covenant or of righteousness and proselytes of the gate is found in the Gemara: the former were circumcised, and observed the whole law; the latter acknowledged the God of Israel and conformed to Jewish worship in some respects, but stood without the covenant, not having been incorporated by

the initiatory rite. The former alone, it would appear, are called itpwij\vnH in the New Testament; the latter, who hardly form a distinct class, are oi aef3i/ievoi Tbv Otiv, oi eiVe/3eis etc. Ill speaking therefore of 'proselytes of the gate' I am using a convenient anachronism.

Meanwhile at Jerusalem some years passed away before the barrier of Judaism was assailed. The Apostles still observed the Mosaic ritual; they still confined their preaching to Jews by birth, or Jews by adoption, the proselytes of the covenant. At length a breach was made, and the assailants as might be expected were Hellenists. The first step towards the creation Appointof an organised ministry was also the first step towards the Hellenist emancipation of the Church. The Jews of Judaea,'Hebrews of ^offioersthe Hebrews,' had ever regarded their Hellenist brethren with suspicion and distrust; and this estrangement reproduced itself in the Christian Church. The interests of the Hellenist widows had been neglected in the daily distribution of alms. Hence 'arose a murmuring of the Hellenists against the Hebrews' (Acts vi. 1), which was met by the appointment of seven persons specially charged with providing for the wants of these neglected poor. If the selection was made, as St Luke's language seems to imply, not by the Hellenists themselves but by the Church at large (vi. 2), the concession when granted was carried out in a Liberal spirit. All the names of the seven are Greek, pointing to a Hellenist rather than a Hebrew extraction, and one is especially described as a proselyte, being doubtless chosen to represent a hitherto small but growing section of the community.

By this appointment the Hellenist members obtained a Effects

of this measure. ¹ 'Trust not a proselyte,' said one (Shimoni) on Ruth i. 11,12, § 601. See

of the rabbis,'till twenty-four genera- also the passages given by Danz in tions; for he holds his leaven.' Yalkut Menschen Test. Illustr. p. 651.

status in the Church; and the effects of this measure soon became visible. Two out of the seven stand prominently forward as the champions of emancipation, Stephen the preacher and martyr of liberty, and Philip the practical worker¹.

Stephen is the acknowledged forerunner of the Apostle of the Gentiles. He was the first to 'look steadfastly to the end of that which is abolished,' to sound the death-knell of the Mosaic ordinances and the temple worship, and to claim for the Gospel unfettered liberty and universal rights. 'This man,' said his accusers,' ceaseth not to speak words against the holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us' (vi. 13, 14). The charge was only false as misrepresenting the spirit which animated his teaching. The accused attempts no denial, but pleads justification. To seal this testimony the first blood of the noble army of martyrs is shed.

Stephen's testimony.

¹ In Nicolas, the only one of the remaining five whose name reappears in history, liberty is degraded into licence. I see no valid reason for doubting the very early tradition that the Nicolaitans (Apoc. ii. 6,15) derived their name from him. If there was a traitor among the Twelve, there might well be a heresiaroh among the Seven. Nor is it likely that an account so discreditable to one who in the New Testament is named only in connexion with his appointment to an honourable office would have been circulated unless there were some foundation in fact. At the same time the Nicolaitans may have exaggerated and perverted the teaching of Nicolas. Irenicus (i. 26, 3) and Hippolytus (Haer. vii. 36) believe him to have been the founder of the sect; while Clement of Alexandria (Strom, ii. p. 411, iii. p. 522, Potter) attributes to him an ambiguous saying that 'the flesh must be abused (Seiv rapaxpyjai)ai Tj aapKt),' of which these Nicolaitans perverted the mean

ing; and in attempting to clear his reputation relates a highly improbable story, which, if true, would be far from creditable. In another passage of Hippolytus, a fragment preserved in Syriac (Lagarde's Anec. Syr. p. 87, Cowper's Syr. MticeU. p. 55) and taken from the 'Discourse on the Resurrection' addressed to Mammifa, this writer again represents Nicolas as the founder of the sect, speaking of him as 'stirred by a strange spirit' and teaching that the resurrection is past (2 Tim. ii. 18), but not attributing to him any directly immoral doctrines. A common interpretation, which makes Nicolaua a Greek rendering of Balaam, is not very happy; for N«6Xoos does not altogether correspond with any possible derivation of Balaam, least of all with DJJ y?2 'the destroyer of the people.' generally adopted by those who so explain NiK6Xoos. See below, p. 64, with the notes.

The indirect consequences of his martyrdom extend far Indirect beyond the immediate effect of his dying words. A persecution quences. • arose about Stephen.' The disciples of the mother Church 'were scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria' (viii. 1). Some of the refugees even 'travelled as far as Phenice and Cyprus and Antioch' (xi. 19). This dispersion was, as we shall see, the parent of the first Gentile congregation. The Church of the Gentiles, it may be truly said, was baptized in the blood of Stephen.

The doctrine, which Stephen preached and for which he Philip died, was carried into practice by Philip. The sacred narrative mentions two incidents in his career, each marking an onward stride in the free development of the Church. It is therefore not without significance that years afterwards we find him styled 'the Evangelist' (xxi. 8), as if he had earned this honourable title by some signal service rendered to the Gospel.

1. The Samaritan occupied the border land between the (l) The Jew and the Gentile. Theologically, as geographically, he was the tans^" connecting link between the one and the other. Half Hebrew by race, half Israelite in his acceptance of a portion of the sacred canon, he held an anomalous position, shunning and shunned by the Jew, yet clinging to the same promises and looking forward to the same hopes. With a bold venture of faith Philip offers the Gospel to this mongrel people. His overtures are welcomed with joy, and 'Samaria receives the word of God.' The sacred historian relates moreover, that his labours were sanctioned by the presence of the chief Apostles Peter and John, and confirmed by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit (viii. 14—17). 'He who eats the bread of a Samaritan,' said the Jewish doctor, 'is as one who eats swine's flesh¹.' 'No Samaritan shall ever be made a proselyte. They have no share in the resurrection of the dead².' In opening her treasures to

¹ Mi-shnah Shebiith viii. 10. EzraandZerubbabelthesonof Shealtiel

³ Pirke Rabbi Elieser 38. The pas- and Jehoshua the son of Jehozadak?

sage so well illustrates the statement in (They went) and they gathered together

the text, that I give it in full: 'What did all the congregation into the temple of this hated race, the Church had surmounted the first barrier of

prejudice behind which the exclusiveness of the nation had

entrenched itself. To be a Samaritan was to have a devil, in

the eyes of a rigid Jew (John viii. 48, comp. iv. 9).

(2) The 2. Nor was it long before Philip broke through a second

Ethiopian era

eunuch, and more formidable line of defence. The blood of the

patriarchs, though diluted, still flowed in the veins of the

Samaritans. His next convert had no such claim to respect.

A descendant of the accursed race of Ham¹, shut out from

the congregation by his physical defect (Deut. xxiii. 1), the

Ethiopian chamberlain laboured under a twofold disability.

This double line is assailed by the Hellenist preacher and taken

by storm. The desire of the Ethiopian to know and to do God's

will is held by Philip to be a sufficient claim. He acts boldly

and without hesitation. He accosts him, instructs him, baptizes

him then and there.

Conver- The venture of the subordinate minister however still

Cornelius, wanted the sanction of the leaders of the Church. At length

this sanction was given in a signal way. The Apostles of the

Circumcision, even St Peter himself, had failed hitherto to

comprehend the wide purpose of God. With their fellowcountrymen they still 'held it unlawful for a Jew to keep company with or to come near an alien' (Acts x. 28). The time when the Gospel should be preached to the Gentiles seemed not yet to have arrived: the manner in which it should be preached was still hidden from them. At length a divine vision scatters the dark scruples of Peter, teaching him to call no man 'common or unclean.' He goes himself and seeks out the devout Roman centurion Cornelius, whose household he instructs in the faith. The Gentile Church, thus founded on the same 'rock' with the Jewish, receives also the same divine confirmation. As Peter began to speak, 'the Holy Ghost fell on them, as it did' on the Jewish disciples on the first day of Pentecost (xi. 15). As if the approval of God could not be too prompt or too manifest, the usual sequence is reversed and the outpouring of the Spirit precedes the rite of baptism (x. 44—48).

the Lord, and they brought 300 priests our Ood, (that is) neither in this world

and 300 children and 300 trumpets and nor in the future. And that they

300 scrolls of the law in their hands, should have neither portion nor inhe

and they blew, and the Levites sang ritance in Jerusalem, as it is said (Neh.

and played, and they banned the Cuth- ii. 20), But ye had no portion nor right

amns (Samaritans) by the mystery of nor memorial in Jerusalem. And they

the ineffable name and by the writing communicated the anathema to Israel

which is written on the tables and by which is in Babylon. And they put

the anathema of the upper (heavenly) upon them anathema upon anathema,

court of justice and by the anathema of And king Cyrus also decreed upon them

the nether (earthly) court of justice, an everlasting anathema, as it is said

that no one of Israel should eat the (Ezra vi. 12), And the Ood that has

bread of a Cuthsan for ever. Hence caused His name to dwell there etc.'

they (the elders) said: Whosoever eats Several passages bearing on this subject

the bread of a Cuthiean is as if he ate are collected in the article 'Samaritan

swine's flesh; andnoCuthaeanshallever Pentateuoh,' by Mr E. Deutsch, in

be made a proselyte: and they have no Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. share in the resurrection of the dead; 1 Amos ix. 7, 'Are ye not as the

for it is said (Ezra iv. 3), Ye have nothing children of the Ethiopians unto me,

to do with us to build an house unto O children of Israel?'

The case of Cornelius does not, I think, differ essentially Signifi

C&I1C6 of

from the case of the Ethiopian eunuch. There is no ground this event. for assuming that the latter was a proselyte of the covenant. His mutilation excluded him from the congregation by a Mosaic ordinance, and it is an arbitrary conjecture that the definite enactment of the law was overruled by the spiritual promise of the prophet (Is. lvi. 3—5). This liberal interpretation at all events accords little with the narrow and formal spirit of the age. Both converts alike had the inward qualification of 'fearing God and working righteousness' (x. 35); both alike were disabled by external circumstances, and the disabilities of the Ethiopian eunuch were even greater than those of the Roman centurion. If so, the significance of the conversion of the latter consists in this, that now in the case of the Gentile, as before in the case of the Samaritan, the principle asserted by the Hellenist Philip is confirmed by the Apostles of the Circumcision in the person of their chief and sealed by the outpouring of the Spirit.

Meanwhile others were asserting the universality of the Preaching Church elsewhere, if not with the same sanction of authority, at tUesTt all events with a larger measure of success. With the dying Antioch.

words of Stephen, the martyr of Christian liberty, still ringing

in their ears, the persecuted brethren had fled from Jerusalem

and carried the tidings of the Gospel to distant lands. At first

they 'preached the word to none but to the Jews only' (xi. 19).

At length others bolder than the rest,'when they were come to

Antioch, spake unto the Gentiles¹, preaching the Lord Jesus.'

Probably this was an advance even on the conversion of the

Ethiopian eunuch and of Cornelius. These two converts at all

events recognised the God of the old covenant. Now for the

first time, it would seem, the Gospel was offered to heathen

idolaters. Here, as before, the innovators were not Hebrews

but Hellenists, 'men of Cyprus and Cyrene' (xi. 20). Their

success was signal: crowds flocked to hear them; and at

The name Antioch first the brethren were called by a new name—a term

Christ- . .

ians. of ridicule and contempt then, now the pride and glory of the

civilized world. Hitherto the believers had been known as 'Galileans' or 'Nazarenes'; now they were called 'Christians.' The transition from a Jewish to a heathen term marks the point of time when the Church of the Gentiles first threatens to supersede the Church of the Circumcision. The first Thus the first stage in the emancipation of the Church was

gamed. gained. The principle was broadly asserted that the Gospel received all comers, asking no questions, allowing no impediments, insisting on no preliminary conditions, if only it were found that the petitioner 'feared God and worked righteousness.'

2. The Recognition of Gentile Liberty.

It is plain that the principle, which had thus been asserted, involved consequences very much wider than were hitherto clearly foreseen and acknowledged. But between asserting a principle and carrying it out to its legitimate results a long interval must necessarily elapse, for many misgivings have to be dissipated and many impediments to be overcome.

¹ xi. 20. I cannot doubt thaf'EWi^as requires it; but external authority preis correct, as the preceding 'lovSalovs ponderates in favour of 'EXjrurras.

So it was with the growth of Gentile Christendom. The Questions

Gentiles were no longer refused admission into the Church tied.

unless first incorporated with Israel by the initiatory rite. But

many questions remained still unsettled. What was their

exact position, when thus received? What submission, if any,

must they yield to the Mosaic law? Should they be treated as

in all respects on an equality with the true Israelite? Was it

right for the Jewish Christian so far to lay aside the traditions

of his race, as to associate freely with his Gentile brother?

These must necessarily in time become practical questions, and

press for a solution.

At this point in the history of the Church a new character Saul of

Tarsus appears on the scene. The mantle of Stephen has fallen on

the persecutor of Stephen. Saul has been called to bear the name of Christ to the Gentiles. Descended of pure Hebrew ancestry and schooled in the law by the most famous of living teachers, born and residing in a great university town second to none in its reputation for Greek wisdom and learning, inheriting the privileges and the bearing of a Roman citizen, he seemed to combine in himself all those varied qualifications which would best fit him for this work. These wide experiences, which had lain dormant before, were quickened into thought and life by the lightning flash on the way to Damascus; and stubborn zeal was melted and fused into large-hearted and comprehensive charity. From his conversion to the present time we read only of his preaching in the synagogues at Damascus (ix. 20, 22) and to the Hellenists at Jerusalem (ix. 29). But now the moment was ripe, when he must enter upon that wider sphere of action for which he had been specially designed. The Gentile Church, founded on the 'rock,' must be handed over to the 'wise master-builder' to enlarge and complete. So at the bidding of the Apostles, Barnabas seeks out Saul in his retirement at Tarsus and brings him to Antioch. Doubtless he seemed to all to be the fittest goes to instrument for carrying out the work so auspiciously begun.

Meanwhile events at Jerusalem were clearing the way for Circum

stances his great work. The star of Jewish Christendom was already the on the wane, while the independence of the Gentiles was

mother gradually asserting itself. Two circumstances especially were

instrumental in reversing the positions hitherto held by these

two branches of the Church.

(1) With- i, it has been seen that the martyrdom of Stephen theApo- marked an epoch in the emancipation of the Church. The

martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee is scarcely less important in its influence on her progressive career. The former persecution had sown the disciples broad-cast over heathen lands; the latter seems to have been the signal for the withdrawal of the Apostles themselves from Jerusalem. The twelve years, which according to an old tradition our Lord had assigned as the limit of their fixed residence there, had drawn to a close¹. So, consigning the direction of the mother Church to James the Lord's brother and the presbytery, they depart thence to enter upon a wider field of action. Their withdrawal must have deprived the Church of Jerusalem of half her prestige and more than half her influence. Henceforth she remained indeed the mother Church of the nation, but she was no longer the mother Church of the world.

(2) Famine 2. About the same time another incident also contributed Gentile ^{y to} l^essen ^^er influence. A severe famine devastated Palestine alms. _and reduced the Christian population to extreme want. Collections were made at Antioch, and relief was sent to the brethren in Judaea. By this exercise of liberality the Gentile Churches were made to feel their own importance: while the recipients, thus practically confessing their dependence, were deposed from the level of proud isolation which many of them would gladly have maintained. This famine seems to have ranged over many years, or at all events its attacks were several times repeated. Again and again the alms of the Gentile Christians were conveyed by the hands of the Gentile Apostles, and the Churches of Judaea laid themselves under fresh obligations to the heathen converts.

¹ See Qalatians, p. 127, n. 1.

Events being thus ripe, Saul still residing at Antioch is set New stage apart by the Spirit for the Apostleship of the Gentiles to which Go_gpei. he had been called years before.

The Gospel thus enters upon a new career of triumph. The primacy of the Church passes from Peter to Paul—from the Apostle of the Circumcision to the Apostle of the Gentiles. The centre of evangelical work is transferred from Jerusalem to Antioch. Paul and Barnabas set forth on their first missionary tour.

Though they give precedence everywhere to the Jews, their St Paul's mission is emphatically to the Gentiles. In Cyprus, the first _sionary country visited, its character is signally manifested in the J^ourney, conversion of the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus. And soon it becomes evident that the younger Church must supplant the elder. At Antioch in Pisidia matters are brought to a crisis: the Jews reject the offer of the Gospel: the Gentiles entreat to hear the message. Thereupon the doom is pronounced: 'It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo we turn to the Gentiles' (xiii. 46). The incidents at Pisidian Antioch foreshadow the destiny which awaits the Gospel throughout the world. Everywhere the Apostles deliver their message to the Jews first, and everywhere the offer rejected by them is welcomed by the heathen. The mission of Paul and Barnabas is successful, but its success is confined almost wholly to the Gentiles. They return to Antioch.

Hitherto no attempt had been made to define the mutual The quesrelations of Jewish and Gentile converts. All such questions, it oumcision would seem, had been tacitly passed over, neither side perhaps ^raisedbeing desirous of provoking discussion. But the inevitable crisis at length arrives. Certain converts, who had imported into the Church of Christ the rigid and exclusive spirit of Pharisaism, stir up the slumbering feud at Antioch, starting the question in its most trenchant form. They desire to impose circumcision on the Gentiles, not only as a condition

of equality, but as necessary to salvation (xv. 1). The imposition of this burden is resisted by Paul and Barnabas, who go on a mission to Jerusalem to confer with the Apostles and elders. ^Acf°^unt8 I have given elsewhere what seems to me the probable ference. account of the part taken by the leading Apostles in these controversies¹, and shall have to return to the subject later. Our difficulty in reading this page of history arises not so much from the absence of light as from the perplexity of cross lights. The narratives of St Luke and St Paul only then cease to conflict, when we take into account the different positions of the writers and the different objects they had in view.

Twofold At present we are concerned only with the results of this

results. ^r'

conference. These are twofold: First, the settlement of the

points of dispute between the Jewish and Gentile converts: Secondly, the recognition of the authority and commission of Paul and Barnabas by the Apostles of the Circumcision. It will be necessary, as briefly as possible, to point out the significance of these two conclusions and to examine how far they were recognised and acted upon subsequently. The decree i. The arrangement of the disputed points was effected

acompro- . .

mise. by a mutual compromise. On the one hand it was decided

once and for ever that the rite of circumcision should not be

imposed on the Gentiles. On the other, concessions were

demanded of them in turn; they were asked to 'abstain from

meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled,

and from fornication.'

Emanci- The first of these decisions was a question of principle. If

clause. the initiatory rite of the old dispensation were imposed on all

members of the Christian Church, this would be in effect to

deny that the Gospel was a new covenant; in other words to

deny its essential character*. It was thus the vital point on

which the whole controversy turned. And the liberal decision

¹ See Oalatians, p. 126 sq, and the notes on Gal. ii. 1—10.
³ See Ritsohl, p. 127.

of the council was not only the charter of Gentile freedom but the assertion of the supremacy of the Gospel.

On the other hand it is not so easy to understand the Restrictbearing of the restrictions imposed on the Gentile converts. _ci_auses. Their significance in fact seems to be relative rather than absolute. There were certain practices into which, though most abhorrent to the feelings of their Jewish brethren, the Gentile Christians from early habit and constant association would easily be betrayed. These were of different kinds: some were grave moral offences, others only violations of timehonoured observances, inwrought in the conscience of the Israelite. After the large concession of principle made to the Gentiles in the matter of circumcision, it was not unreasonable that they should be required in turn to abstain from practices which gave so much offence to the Jews. Hence the prohibitions in question. It is strange indeed that offences so heterogeneous should be thrown together and brought under one prohibition; but this is perhaps sufficiently explained by supposing the decree framed to meet some definite complaint of the Jewish brethren. If, in the course of the hot dispute which preceded the speeches of the leading Apostles, attention had been specially called by the Pharisaic party to these detested practices, St James would not unnaturally take up the subject and propose to satisfy them by a direct condemnation of the offences in question¹.

It would betray great ignorance of human nature to suppose The decree that a decision thus authoritatively pronounced must have _eaity"' silenced all opposition. If therefore we should find its pro-^80mevisions constantly disregarded hereafter, it is no argument against the genuineness of the decree itself. The bigoted

¹ This seems to me much simpler kindred (Levit. xviii. 18), as it is inter

than explaining the clauses as enforc- preted by Ritschl p. 129 sq, who ably

ing the conditions under which prose- maintains this view. These difficulties

lytes of the gate were received by the of interpretation are to my mind a

Jews. In this latter case ropvela will very strong evidence of the genuine

perhaps refer to unlawful marriage, ness of the decree, e.g. within the prohibited degrees of

Circumcision still insisted

The restrictive clauses not uniformly enforced.

St James.

Antioch and the neighbouring churches.

minority was little likely to make an absolute surrender of its most stubborn prejudices to any external influence. Many even of those, who at the time were persuaded by the leading Apostles into acquiescence, would find their misgivings return, when they saw that the effect of the decree was to wrest the sceptre from their grasp and place it in the hands of the Gentile Church.

Even the question of circumcision, on which an absolute decision had been pronounced, was revived again and again. Long after, the Judaizing antagonists of St Paul in Galatia attempted to force this rite on his Gentile converts. Perhaps however they rather evaded than defied the decree. They may for instance have no longer insisted upon it as a condition of salvation, but urged it as a title to preference. But however this may be, there is nothing startling in the fact itself.

But while the emancipating clause of the decree, though express and definite, was thus parried or resisted, the restrictive clauses were with much greater reason interpreted with latitude. The miscellaneous character of these prohibitions showed that, taken as a whole, they had no binding force independently of the circumstances which dictated them. They were a temporary expedient framed to meet a temporary emergency. Their object was the avoidance of offence in mixed communities of Jew and Gentile converts. Beyond this recognised aim and the general understanding implied therein the limits of their application were not defined. Hence there was room for much latitude in individual cases. St James, as the head of the mother Church where the difficulties which it was framed to meet were most felt, naturally refers to the decree seven years after as still regulating the intercourse between Jewish and Gentile converts (xxi. 25). At Antioch too and in the neighbouring Churches of Syria and Cilicia, to which alone the Apostolic letter was addressed and on which alone therefore the enactments were directly binding (xv. 23), it was doubtless long observed. The close communication between these churches and Jerusalem would at once justify and secure its strict observance. We read also of its being delivered to the brotherhoods of Lycaonia and Pisidia, already founded when the council was held, and near enough to Palestine to feel the pressure of Jewish feelings (xvi. 4). But as the circle widens, its influence becomes feebler. In strictly Gentile churches it seems never to have been enforced. St Paul, writing to the Corin- St Paul thians, discusses two of the four practices which it prohibits rinthians. without any reference to its enactments. Fornication he condemns absolutely as defiling the body which is the temple of God (1 Cor. v. 1—13, vi. 18—20). Of eating meats sacrificed to idols he speaks as a thing indifferent in itself, only to be avoided in so far as it implies participation in idol worship or is offensive to the consciences of others. His rule therefore is this: 'Do not sit down to a banquet celebrated in an idol's temple. You may say that in itself an idol is nothing, that neither the abstaining from meat nor the partaking of meat commends us to God. All this I grant is true: but such knowledge is dangerous. You are running the risk of falling into idolatry yourself, you are certainly by your example leading others astray; you are in fact committing an overt act of treason to God, you are a partaker of the tables of devils. On the other hand do not officiously inquire when you make a purchase at the shambles or when you dine in a private house: but if in such cases you are plainly told that the meat has been offered in sacrifice, then abstain at all hazards. Lay down this rule, to give no offence either to Jews or Gentiles or to the churches of God' (1 Cor. viii. 1—13, x. 14—22). This wise counsel, if it disregards the letter, preserves the spirit of the decree, which was framed for the avoidance of offence. But St Paul's language shows that the decree itself was not held binding, perhaps was unknown at Corinth: otherwise the discussion would have been foreclosed. Once again we come st John across the same topics in the apocalyptic message to the Asiatic Churches of Pergamos and Thyatira. The same irregularities churches. prevailed here as at Corinth: there was the temptation on the one hand to impure living, on the other to acts of conformity

with heathen worship which compromised their allegiance to the one true God. Our Lord in St John's vision denounces them through the symbolism of the Old Testament history. In the Church of Pergamos were certain Nicolaitans 'holding the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication' (ii. 14). At Thyatira the evil had struck its roots deeper. The angel of that Church is rebuked because he 'suffers his wife Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess, and she teacheth and seduceth God's servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols.' I see no reason for assuming a reference here to the Apostolic decree. The two offences singled out are those to which Gentile churches would be most liable, and which at the same time are illustrated by the Old Testament parallels. If St Paul denounces them independently of the decree, St John may have done so likewise¹. In the matter of sacrificial meats indeed the condemnation of the latter is more absolute and uncompromising. But this is owing partly to the epigrammatic terseness and symbolic reference of the passage, partly, also, we may suppose, to the more definite form which the evil itself had assumed*. In both cases the practice was justified by a vaunted knowledge which held itself superior to any such restrictions*. But at Corinth this temper was still immature and under restraint: while in

¹ Yet the expression oi /SdXXu t<p (ffKirSa\ov) before the children of Is

inai dXXo /Sripos (ii. 24) looks like a rael,' the whole purport of St Paul's

reference to the decree. warning is 'to give no offence' (ixii

* The coincidence of the two Apostles aKaySa\lftiv, viii 13, ds-p&nioroi ytyea

extends also to their language. (1) If 0ai, x. 32). With all these ooinci

St John denounces the offence as a fol- deuces of matter and language, it is

lowing of Balaam, St Paul uses the a strange phenomenon that any critic

same Old Testament illustration, 1 Cor. should maintain, asBaur, Zeller, and

x. 7,8,'Neither be ye idolaters, as were Sohwegler have done, that the denun

some of them; as it is written, The ciations in the Apocalypse are directed

people sat down to eat and drink, and against St Paul himself,

rose up to play: neither let us commit * Comp. Apoc. ii. 24 fooi oi'« (xovair

fornication, as some of them com- rijv Sibaxriv rainjv, oirivis oiV tyvia

mitted, and fell in one day three and aav ra (iatUa Tov Zarava, $>i V

twenty thousand.' (2) If St John yovfir. The false teachers boasted a

speaks of 'casting a stumblingblock knowledge of the deep things of God; they possessed only a knowledge of the 'I would not that ye should have fel

the Asiatic churches it had outgrown shame and broken out

into the wildest excesses¹.

Thus then the decree was neither permanently nor uni- Object of ...... -r, , . , . , the enact

versally binding. But there was also another point which ments not

admitted much latitude of interpretation. What was under- ^{e ne}' stood to be the design of these enactments? They were articles of peace indeed, but of what nature was this peace to be? Was it to effect an entire union between the Jewish and Gentile churches, a complete identity of interest; or only to secure a strict neutrality, a condition of mutual toleration? Were the Gentiles to be welcomed as brothers and admitted at once to all the privileges of sons of Israel: or was the Church hereafter to be composed of two separate nationalities, as it were, equal and independent; or lastly, were the heathen converts to be recognised indeed, but only as holding a subordinate position like proselytes under the old covenant? The first interpretation is alone consistent with the spirit of the Gospel: but either of the others might honestly be maintained without any direct violation of the letter of the decree. The Church of Antioch, influenced doubtless by St Paul, took the

deep things of Satan. St John's mean- lowship with devils.'

ing is illustrated by a passage in Hip- > The subject of elSa\i8vra does not

polytus (Haer. v. 6, p. 94) relating to disappear with the Apostolic age: it

the Ophites, who offer other striking turns up again for instance in the

resemblances to the heretics of the middle of the second century, in Agrip

Apostolic age; ireK&\arav iavrobs yvio- pa Castor (Euseb. ff. E. iv. 7) writing

<rrnroi5s, ^kio-kovttj /xawm TaP&bti yiyii- against Basilides, and in Justin (Dial.

oKiiv. see also Iren. ii. 28. 9. St 35, p. 253 D) who mentions the Basili

Paul's rebuke is very different in form, deans among other Gnostic sects as

but the same in effect. He begins 'participating in lawless and godless

each time in a strain of noble irony. rites': coinp. Orac. Sib. ii. 96. Both

'We all have knowledge'; 'I speak as these writers condemn the practice, the

to wise men': he appears to concede, latter with great severity. When the

to defer, to svmpathize, even to en- persecution began, and the Christians

courage: and then he turns round up- were required to deny their faith by

on the laxity of this vaunted wisdom participating in the sacrifices, it be

and condemns and crushes it: 'I will came a matter of extreme importance

eat no flesh while the world standeth, to avoid any act of conformity, how

lest I make my brother to offend'; ever slight.

larger and truer view; Jewish and Gentile converts lived freely together as members of one brotherhood. A portion at least of the Church of Jerusalem, 'certain who came from James,¹ adopted a narrower interpretation and still clung to the old distinctions, regarding their Gentile brethren as unclean and refusing to eat with them. This was not the Truth of the Gospel, it was not the Spirit of Christ; but neither was it a direct breach of compact. St Paul's 2. Scarcely less important than the settlement of the

recog- disputed points was the other result of these conferences, the ^nised" recognition of St Paul's office and mission by the Apostles of the Circumcision. This recognition is recorded in similar language in the narrative of the Acts and in the Epistle to the Galatians. In the Apostolic circular inserted in the former Paul and Barnabas are commended as ' men who have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ' (xv. 26). In the conferences, as related in the latter, the three Apostles, James, Peter, and John, seeing that 'the Gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto him,' and 'perceiving the grace that was given unto him, gave to him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that they should go unto the heathen' (ii. 7—10). Continued This ample recognition would doubtless carry weight with a to St Paul, large number of Jewish converts: but no sanction of authority could overcome in others the deep repugnance felt to one who, himself a ' Hebrew of the Hebrews,' had systematically opposed the law of Moses and triumphed in his opposition. Henceforth St Paul's career was one life-long conflict with Judaizing antagonists. Setting aside the Epistles to the Thessalonians, which were written too early to be affected by this struggle, all his letters addressed to churches, with but one exception¹, refer more or less directly to such opposition. It assumed different forms in different places: in Galatia it was purely

¹ This exception, the Epistle to the Asiatic churches, in which special reEphesians, may be explained by its ferences would be out of plaoe. character as a circular letter to the

Pharisaic; in Phrygia and Asia it was strongly tinged with speculative mysticism; but everywhere and under all circumstances zeal for the law was its ruling passion. The systematic hatred of St Paul is an important fact, which we are too apt to overlook, but without which the whole history of the Apostolic ages will be misread and misunderstood.

3. The Emancipation of the Jewish Churches.

We have seen hitherto no signs of waning affection for the Zeal for

the law. law in the Jewish converts to Christianity as a body. On the

contrary the danger which threatened it from a quarter so unexpected seems to have fanned their zeal to a red heat. Even in the churches of St Paul's own founding his name and authority were not powerful enough to check the encroachments of the Judaizing party. Only here and there, in mixed communities, the softening influences of daily intercourse must have been felt, and the true spirit of the Gospel insensibly diffused, inculcating the truth that' in Christ was neither Jew nor Greek.'

But the mother Church of Jerusalem, being composed Seasons entirely of Jewish converts, lacked these valuable lessons of_servance daily experience. Moreover the law had claims on a Hebrew J^_otng_r of Palestine wholly independent of his religious obligations. Church. To him it was a national institution, as well as a divine covenant. Under the Gospel he might consider his relations to it in this latter character altered, but as embodying the decrees and usages of his country it still demanded his allegiance. To be a good Christian he was not required to be a bad citizen. On these grounds the more enlightened members of the mother church would justify their continued adhesion to the law. Nor is there any reason to suppose that St Paul himself took a different view of their obligations. The Apostles of the Circumcision meanwhile, if conscious themselves that the law was fulfilled in the Gospel they strove nevertheless by strict conformity to conciliate the zealots both within and without the

Church, were only acting upon St Paul's own maxim, who 'became to the Jews a Jew that he might gain the Jews.' Meanwhile they felt that a catastrophe was impending, that a deliverance was at hand. Though they were left in uncertainty as to the time and manner of this divine event, the mysterious warnings of the Lord had placed the fact itself beyond a doubt. They might well therefore leave all perplexing questions to the solution of time, devoting themselves meanwhile to the practical work which lay at their doors. Fall o! Je- And soon the catastrophe came which solved the difficult

vn.cn.1prn

problem. The storm which had long been gathering burst over A.d. 70. the devoted city. Jerusalem was razed to the ground, and the Temple-worship ceased, never again to be revived. The Christians foreseeing the calamity had fled before the tempest; and at Pella, a city of the Decapolis, in the midst of a population chiefly Gentile the Church of the Circumcision was reconstituted. They were warned to flee, said the story, by an oracle¹: but no special message from heaven was needed at this juncture; the signs of the times, in themselves full of warning, interpreted by the light of the Master's prophecies plainly foretold the approaching doom. Before the crisis came, they had been deprived of the counsel and guidance of the leading Apostles. Peter had fallen a martyr at Rome; John had retired to Asia Minor; James the Lord's brother was slain not long before the great catastrophe; and some thought that the horrors of the Flavian war were the just vengeance of an offended God for the murder of so holy a man⁸. He was succeeded by his cousin Symeon, the son of Clopas and nephew of Joseph.

The Under these circumstances the Church was reformed at

Church .

at Pella. Pella. Its history in the ages following is a hopeless blank *; and it would be vain to attempt to fill in the picture from conjecture. We cannot doubt however that the consequences of the fall of Jerusalem, direct or indirect, were very great. In two points especially its effects would be powerfully felt, in the Effects change of opinion produced within the Church itself and in the change. altered relations between the converted and unconverted Jews.

¹ Euseb. H. E. iii. 5 Kot4 riva Xpv- there, ravra Si evufliflriKer 'IovSoUoic

alibv Tois airiBi SoKl/ma Si dro*aXi)- *ot tKOi/CTjo-iv 'Ia*ii/jov Tov SiKaioi/ K.t.\.

^euj iKSoBivra K.tx * The Church of Pella however oon

³ Hegeaippus in Euseb. 11. E. ii. 23 tributed one author at least to the

ml eiiBin Oiearaoiavbs ro\iopKd airoii, ranks of early Christian literature in

and the pseudo-Josephus also quoted Ariston, the writer of an apologv in the form of a dialogue between Jason Westeott's Canon, p. 93, Donaldson's a Hebrew Christian and Papiscns an Christian Literature etc. n. p. 58. If Alexandrian Jew: see Routh I. p. 93. I am right in conjecturing that the One of his works however was written reference to the banishment of the after the Bar-cochba rebellion, to which Jews was taken from this dialogue, it alludes (Euseb. H. E. iv. 6); and Eusebius himself directly attributes it from the purport of the allusion we to Ariston. The name of the author may infer that it was this very dia- however is of little consequence, for the lojue. The expulsion of the Jews by work was clearly written by a Hebrew Hadrian was a powerful common-place Christian not later than the middle of in the treatises of the Apologists; see the second century. Whoever he may e.g. Justin Martyr Apol. i. 47. On have been, the writer was no Ebionite, the other hand it cannot have been for he explained Gen. i. 1, 'In.lilio fecit written long after, for it was quoted Deus caelum et terrain' (Hieron. Quaest. by Celsus (Orig. e. Celi. iv. 52, p. 544, Hebr. in Gen., in. p. 305, ed. Vail.); Delarue). The shade of doubt which and the fact is important, as this is the rests on the authorship of this dia- earliest known expression of Hebrew logue is very slight. Undue weight Christian doctrine after the canonical seems to be attributed to the fact of writings, except perhaps the Testaits being quoted anonymously; e.g. in meats of the Twelve Patriarchs.

(1) The loss of their great leader at this critical moment (i) The was compensated to the Church of the Circumcision by the jj^power. stern teaching of facts. In the obliteration of the Temple services they were brought at length to see that all other sacrifices were transitory shadows, faint emblems of the one Paschal Lamb, slain once and for ever for the sins of the world.

In the impossibility of observing the Mosaic ordinances except in part, they must have been led to question the efficacy of the whole. And besides all this, those who had hitherto maintained their allegiance to the law purely as a national institution were by the overthrow of the nation set free henceforth from any such obligation. We need not suppose that these inferences were drawn at once or drawn by all alike; but slowly and surely the fall of the city must have produced this effect.

(2) At the same time it wholly changed their relations (2) Jews

and

Christiana with their unconverted countrymen. Hitherto they had main

in until gonism

tained such close intercourse that in the eyes of the Roman

the Christians were as one of the many Jewish sects. Henceforth they stood in a position of direct antagonism. The sayings ascribed to the Jewish rabbis of this period are charged with the bitterest reproaches of the Christians, who are denounced as more dangerous than the heathen, and anathemas -against the hated sect were introduced into their daily prayers¹. The probable cause of this change is not far to seek. While the catastrophe was still impending, the Christians seem to have stood forward and denounced the national sins which had brought down the chastisement of God on their country. In the traditional notices at least this feature may be discerned. Nor could they fail to connect together as cause and effect the stubborn rejection of Messiah and the coming doom which He Himself had foretold. And when at length the blow fell, by withdrawing from the city and refusing to share the fate of their countrymen they declared by an overt act that henceforth they were strangers, that now at length their hopes and interests were separate. Difficulties These altered relations both to the Mosaic law and to the sensions. Jewish people must have worked as leaven in the minds of the Christians of the Circumcision. Questions were asked now, which from their nature could not have been asked before. Difficulties hitherto unfelt seemed to start up on all sides. The relations of the Church to the synagogue, of the Gospel to the law, must now be settled in some way or other. Thus diversities of opinion, which had hitherto been lulled in a broken and fitful slumber, suddenly woke up into dangerous activity. The Apostles, who at an earlier date had moderated extreme tendencies and to whom all would have looked instinctively for counsel and instruction, had passed away from the scene. One personal follower of the Lord however still remained, Symeon Symeon the aged bishop, who had succeeded James¹. At ciopas. length he too was removed. After a long tenure of office he A.d. 106. was martyred at a very advanced age in the ninth year of Trajan. His death, according to Hegesippus, was the signal for a shameless outbreak of multitudinous heresies which had hitherto worked underground, the Church having as yet preserved her virgin purity undefiled². Though this early historian has interwoven many fabulous details in his account, there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the broad statement, confirmed as it is from another source³, that this epoch was the birth-time of many forms of dissent in the Church of the Circumcision.

¹ See especially Graetz GeschiclUe by this writer, whose account is the

der Jiulin Iv. p. 112 sq. The antago- more striking as given from a Jewish

nism between the Jews and Christians point of view, at this period is strongly insisted upon

How far these dissensions and diversities of opinion had ripened meanwhile into open schism, to what extent the majority still conformed to the Mosaic ordinances (as for instance in the practice of circumcision and the observance of the sabbath), we have no data to determine. But the work begun by the fall of Jerusalem was only at length completed by the advent of another crisis. By this second catastrophe the Church and the law were finally divorced; and the malcontents who had hitherto remained within the pale of the Church became declared separatists.

A revolution of the Jews broke out in all the principal Rebellion centres of the dispersion. The flame thus kindled in the ₀₀₀hba. dependencies spread later to the mother country. In Palestine TM ¹³²~ a leader started up, professing himself to be the long promised Messiah, and in reference to the prophecy of Balaam styling himself 'Bar-cochba,' 'the son of the Star.' We have the testimony of one who wrote while these scenes of bloodshed were still fresh in men's memories, that the Christians were the

¹ Hegesippus in Euseb. R. E. iv. 22. ipa ittxp^{1 t}&v rbre xp^""^av rapBivm Ka

This writer also mentions grandsons Bapb. *ai &Si&<pBopos (neivev Tj «KXija{a,

of Jude the Lord's brother as ruling iv iS-f/\ip Rtv iniirei </>u\evivtiav tlatri

over the Churches and surviving till rire Tuv, el Kai rives irijpxov, rapa<pBei

the time of Trajan; H. E. iii. 32. pti v irixeipoivruv K.t.\.: comp. iv. 22.

* Euseb. H. E. iii. 32 in\iyei us 3 See below, p. 82, note 3.

vElia Capitolina.

chief sufferers from this rebel chieftain¹. Even without such testimony this might have been safely inferred. Their very existence was a protest against his claims: they must be denounced and extirpated, if his pretensions were to be made good. The cause of Bar-cochba was taken up as the cause of the whole Jewish nation, and thus the antagonism between Judaism and Christianity was brought to a head. After a desperate struggle the rebellion was trampled out and the severest vengeance taken on the insurgents. The practice of circumcision and the observance of the sabbath—indeed all the distinguishing marks of Judaism—were visited with the severest penaltiea On the other hand the Christians, as the avowed enemies of the rebel chief, seem to have been favourably received. On the ruins of Jerusalem Hadrian had built his new city jElia Capitolina. Though no Jew was admitted within sight of its walls, the Christians were allowed to settle there freely*. Now for the first time a Gentile bishop was appointed, and the Church of Jerusalem ceased to be the Church of the Circumcision⁸.

The account of Eusebius seems to imply that long before this disastrous outbreak of the Jews the main part of the Christians had left their retirement in Pella and returned to their original home. At all events he traces the succession of bishops of Jerusalem in an unbroken line from James the Lord's brother until the foundation of the new city^*. If so, we must imagine the Church once more scattered by this second catastrophe, and once more reformed when the terror was passed. But the Church of Mlia, Capitolina was very differently constituted from the Church of Pella or the Church of Jerusalem; a large proportion of its members at least were Gentiles¹. Of the Christians of the Circumcision not a few doubtless accepted the conqueror's terms, content to live henceforth as Gentiles, and settled down in the new city of Hadrian. But Judaizing there were others who clung to the law of their forefathers with a stubborn grasp which no force of circumstances could loosen: and henceforward we read of two distinct sects of Judaizing Christians, observing the law with equal rigour but observing it on different grounds*.

The church reconstituted.

¹ Justin Apol. i. 31, p. 72 B, iy rif

viv yeyerrmivip' \ovoai'K<fi ro\i/Up Sapxu-
X^/S« b tris 'lovtSaluv aroardo-eus &p-
XTW"p XpurnwoAi nivom ris ri/uapiai
5iicds, el /iri dpvoivro 'lrfffovy rbv X/Harbv
Kal ^\aa<priuocty₎ int\evev arayea6ai.

² Justin Apol. i. 47, p. 84 n, Dial.
110, p. 337 i>; Ariston of Pella in
Euseb. H. E. iv. 6; Celsus in Orig. c.
Celi. viii. 69.

³ Sulpicius Severus (H. S. ii. 31) speaking of Hadrian's decree says,

'Quod quidem Christianae fidei proficiebat, quia tum pene omnes Christum Dcum sub legis observatione credebant; nimirum id Domino ordinante dispositum, ut legis servitUs a libertate fidei atque ecclesiae tolleretur.'

⁴ H. E. iii. 32, 35, iv. 5. Eusebius seems to narrate all the incidents affecting the Church of the Circumcision during this period, as taking place not at Fella but at Jerusalem.

¹ Euseb. H. E. iv. 6 rrji ainbBi Ik*Xijffias i% IBrur airiKparnfielayp.

⁹ As early as the middle of the second century Justin Martyr distinguishes two classes of Judaizers; those who retaining the Mosaic law themselves did not wish to impose it on their Gentile brethren, and those who insisted upon conformity in all Christians alike as a condition of communion and a means of salvation (Dial. c. Tryph. § 47; see Sohliemann Clement. p. 553 sq). In the nexfchapter Jnstin alludes with disapprobation to some Jewish converts who held that our Lord was a mere man; and it seems not unreasonable to connect this opinion with the second of the two classes before mentioned. We thus obtain a tolerably clear view of their distinctive tenets. But the first direct and definite account of both sects is given by the fathers of the fourth century, especially Epiphanius and Jerome, who distinguish them by the respective names of' Nazarenes' and' Ebionites.' Irenoeus (i. 26. 2), Tertullian (<U Praescr. 33), and Hippolytus (Haer. vii. 34, p. 257), contemplate only the second, whom they call Ebionites. The Nazarenes in fact, being for the most part orthodox in their creed

and holding communion with Catholic Christians, would not generally be included in the category of heretics: and moreover, being few in number and living in an obscure region, they would easily escape notice. Origen (c. CeU. v. 61) mentions two classes of Christians who observe the Mosaic law, the one holding with the Catholics that Jesus was born of a Virgin, the other that He was conceived like other men; and both these he calls Ebionites. In another passage he says that both classes of Ebionites ('E/Siuraioi ifupdrepoi) reject St Paul's Epistles (v. 65). If these two classes correspond to the 'Nazarenes' and 'Ebionites' of Jerome, Origen's information would seem to be incorrect. On the other hand it is very possible that he entirely overlooks the Nazarenes and alludes to some differences of opinion among the Ebionites properly so called; but in this case it is not easy to identify his two classes with the Pharisaic and Essene Ebionites of whom I shall have to speak later. Eusebius, who also describes two classes of Ebionites (H. E. iii. 27), seems to have taken his account wholly from Irenseus and Origen. If, as appears probable, both names 'Nazarenes' and 'Ebionites' were originally applied to the

Naza- i. The Nazarenes appear at the close of the fourth

renes. ...

century as a small and insignificant sect dwelling beyond the

Jordan in Pella and the neighbouring places¹. Indications of

their existence however occur in Justin two centuries and a

half earlier; and both their locality and their name carry us

back to the primitive ages of Jewish Christianity. Can we

doubt that they were the remnant of the fugitive Church, which

refused to return from their exile with the majority to the now

Gentile city, some because they were too indolent or too satisfied

to move, others because the abandonment of the law seemed too

heavy a price to pay for Koman forbearance?

Theii The account of their tenets is at all events favourable to

tenets.

this inference*. They held themselves bound to the Mosaic

ordinances, rejecting however all Pharisaic interpretations and additions. Nevertheless they did not consider the Gentile Christians under the same obligations or refuse to hold communion with them; and in the like spirit, in this distinguished from all other Judaizing sectarians, they fully recognised the work and mission of St Paul⁸. It is stated moreover that they mourned over the unbelief of their fellow-countrymen, praying for and looking forward to the time when they too should be brought to confess Christ. Their doctrine of the person of Christ has been variously represented; but this seems at all events clear that, if it fell short of the Catholic standard, it rose above the level of other Judaic sects. The fierce and indiscriminate verdict of Epiphanius indeed pronounces these Nazarenes 'Jews and nothing else": but his contemporary Jerome, himself no lenient judge of heresy, whose opinion was founded on personal intercourse, regards them more favourably. In his eyes they seem to be separated, from the creeds and usages of Catholic Christendom chiefly by their retention of the Mosaic law.

whole body of Jewish Christians indis- Hieron. de Vir. III. § 3. criminately, the confusion of Origen - See the account in Sohliemann,

and others is easily explained. In re- p. 445 sq, with the authorities there

cent times, since Gieseler published his given and compare Ritschl p. 152 sq. treatise Ueber die Nazariler und Ebioni- ⁸ Hieron. in Ii. ix. 1 (iv. p. 130),

ten (Staudlin u. Tzschirner Archiv flir 'Nazaraei...huno locum ita explanare

Kirchengeich. iv. p. 279 sq, 1819), the conantur: Adveniente Christo et prae

distinction has been generally recog- dicatione illius coruscante prima terra

nised. A succinct and good account of Zabulon et terra Nephthali soribarum

these sects of Judaizers will be found in et Pharisaeorum est erroribus liberata

Schliemann Clement, p. 449 sq, where et gravissimum traditionum Judaica

the authorities are given; but the dis- rum jugum excussit de cervicibus sui/-.

covery of the work of Hippolytus has Postea autem per evangelium apostoli

since thrown fresh light on the Essene Pauli, qui novissimus apostolorum

Ebionites. The portion of Ritachi's omnium fuit, ingravata est, id est,

work (p. 152 sq) relating to these sects multiplicata- praedioatio; et in termi

should be consulted. nos gentium et viam universi maris

¹ Epiphan. Haer. xxix. 7; oomp. Christi evangelium splenduit.'

Thus they were distinguished from other Judaizing sects Their relaby a loftier conception of the person of Christ and by a frank Twelve, recognition of the liberty of the Gentile Churches and the commission of the Gentile Apostle. These distinguishing features may be traced to the lingering influence of the teaching of the Apostles of the Circumcision. To the example of these same Apostles also they might have appealed in defending their rigid observance of the Mosaic law. But herein, while copying the letter, they did not copy the spirit of their model; for they took no account of altered circumstances.

Of this type of belief, if not of this very Nazarene sect, an Testaearly document still extant furnishes an example. The book the Twelve called the 'Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs" was certainly ^^

¹ Haer. xxx. 9. xti. Patr. (Roterod. 1857), and defend

^J It is printed in Grabe's Spicil. SS. ed against Kayser. The whole tone

Parr. I. p. 145 sq (ed. 2, 1700), and in and colouring of the book however

Fabricius Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. I. seem to show very plainly that the

p. 519 sq (ed. 2, 1722), and has re- writer was a Jewish Christian, and the

cently been edited with an introduo- opposite view would probably never

tory essay by Sinker (Cambridge, 1869). have been entertained but for the pre

Eitschl in his first edition had assigned conceived theory that a believer of the

this work to a writer of the Pauline Circumcision could not have written

school. His opinion was controverted so liberally of the Gentile Christians

by Kayser in the Strassburg. Beitr. z. 'and so honourably of St Paul. Some

den Theol. Wisseusch. in. p. 107 (1851), writers again who have maintained

and with characteristic honesty he the Judaic authorship (Kayser for in

withdrew it in his second edition, at- stance, whose treatise I only know at

tributing the work to a Nazarene au- second hand) have got over this as

thor (p. 172 sq). Meanwhile Ritschl's sumed difficulty by rejecting certain

first view had been adopted in a mo- passages as interpolations. On the

nograph by Yorstman Disquis. de Test. other hand Ewald pronounces it' mere

written after the capture of Jerusalem by Titus and probably before the rebellion of Bar-cochba, but may be later¹. With some alien features, perhaps stamped upon it by the individual writer, it exhibits generally the characteristics of this Nazarene sect. In this respect at least it offers a remarkable parallel, that to a strong Israelite feeling it unites the fullest recognition of the Gentile Churches. Our Lord is represented as the renovator of the law²: the imagery and illustrations are all Hebrew: certain virtues are strongly commended and certain vices strongly denounced by a Hebrew standard: many incidents in the lives of the patriarchs are derived from some unknown legendary Hebrew source⁸. Nay more; the sympathies of the writer are not only Judaic but Levitical. The Messiah is represented as a descendant not of Judah only but of Levi also; thus he is high priest as well as king⁴; but his priestly office is higher than his kingly, as Levi is greater than Judah¹: the dying patriarchs one after another enjoin obedience to Levi: to the Testament of Levi are consigned the most important prophecies of all: the character of Levi is justified and partially cleansed of the stain which in the Old Testament narrative attaches to it*. Yet notwithstanding all this, the admission of the Gentiles into the privileges of the covenant is a constant united theme of thanksgiving with the writer, who mourns over the liberal falling away of the Jews but looks forward to their final restitu- Pⁿⁿ⁰¹P ^estion. And into the mouth of the dying Benjamin he puts a prophecy foretelling an illustrious descendant who is to 'arise in after days, beloved of the Lord, listening to His voice, enlightening all the Gentiles with new knowledge'; who is to be 'in the synagogues of the Gentiles until the completion of the ages, and among their rulers as a musical strain in the mouth of all'; who shall 'be written in the holy books, he and his work and his word, and shall be the elect of God for ever³.'

Hebrew
sympa-
thies

folly to assert that Benj, c. 11 (the
prophecy about St Paul) was a later
addition to the work' (Gesch. d. Volks
1st. Vil p. 329), and certainly such
arbitrary assumptions would render
criticism hopeless.

Whether Ritschl is right or not in
supposing that the author was actually
a Nazarene, it is difficult aud not very
important to decide. The really im-
portant feature in the work is the com-
plexion of the opinions. I do not think
however that the mere fact of its having
been written in Greek proves the au-
thor to have been a Hellenist (Ewald
ib. p. 333).

¹ The following dates have been assigned to it by recent critics; A.d. 100-135 (Dorner), 100-120 (Wieseler), 133-163 (Kayser), 100-153 (Nitzsch, Liicke), 117-193 (Gieseler), 100-200 (Hase), about 150 (Eeuss), 90-110 (Ewald). These dates except the last are taken from Vorstman p. 19 sq, who himself places it soon after the fall of Jerusalem (a.d. 70). The frequent references to this event fix the earliest possible date, while the absence of any

allusion to the rebellion of Bar-cochba seems to show that it was written before that time. It is directly named by Origen (Hom, in Jos. xv. 6), and probably was known to Tertullian (c. Marc. v. 1, Scorpiace 13), and (as I believe) even earlier to Irenrcus (Fragm. 17, p. 836 sq Stieren).

² Levi 10, avaKo.ivoroiodiTa. rbv yinov iv Svvinei i\j/Urtov. 'The law of God, the law of the Lord,' are constant phrases with this writer; Levi 13, 19, Judas 18, 26, Issach. 5, Zabul. 10, Dan 6, Gad 3, Aser 2, 6, 7, Joseph 11, Benj. 10: see also Nepht. 8. His language in this respect is formed on the model of the Epistle of St James, as Ewald remarks (p. 329). Thus the Law of God with him 'is one with the revealed will of God, and he never therefore understands it in the narrow sense of a Jew or even of an Ebionite.'

⁸ See Ewald Gesch. i. p. 490.

⁴ Simeon 5, 7, Issach. 5, Dan 5, Nepht. 6, 8, Gad 8, Joseph 19, besides the passages referred to in the next note.

2. But besides these Nazarenes, there were other Judaizing Ebionites. sects, narrow and uncompromising, to whose principles or prejudices language such as I have just quoted would be most abhorrent.

The Ebionites were a much larger and more important body Their than the Nazarenes. They were not confined to the neighbour-^tenetshood of Pella or even to Palestine and the surrounding countries, but were found in Rome and probably also in all the great centres of the dispersion*. Not content with observing

¹ Reuben 6 rpoi Tbv Aevtiyylaare... the work presents several coincidences

airbs yap «i!Xo-yijaei Tsv 'Iapa1j\ Kal rbv of language with St Paul (see Vorst

'IoiSav, Judas 21 Kal vw riKva fiav iya- man p. 115 sq), and at least one quo

irfpati Tot Atvt.. .ipiol yap (suke Kvpios tation, Levi 6 t<p8aae Si ij Spyij Kvplov

rfjv fiaai\elav KaKiivi p ryjv Upateiav Kal ii? avroM e/s t€"\os, from 1 Thess. ii. 16.

inreral-e ttp flaaC\elav xjj Iepuaivjj- ipuol On the whole however the language in

i'ouw ra trl Tij% yijs K&Ktlvip To. iv the moral and didactic portions takes

eipiwoit, ib. 25 Atvt rpuros, oiirepos its colour from the Epistle of St James,

£yii, Nepht. 5 Aeut i/tpdrtiet rbv rj\iov and in the prophetic and apocalyptic

Kal 'JoiSai ipBdaai irlaat Ttjk aeXi}yijy. from the Revelation of St John.

¹ Levi 6, 7. * Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 18.

* Benj. 11. Besides this prophecy

the Mosaic ordinances themselves, they maintained that the

law was binding on all Christians alike, and regarded Gentile

believers as impure because they refused to conform. As a

necessary consequence they rejected the authority and the

writings of St Paul, branding him as an apostate and pursuing

his memory with bitter reproaches. In their theology also

they were far removed from the Catholic Church, holding our

Lord to be a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary, who was

justified, as any of themselves might be justified, by his rigorous

performance of the law¹.

Kelation If the Nazarenes might have claimed some affinity to the

Judaizers Apostles of the Circumcision, the Ebionites were the direct

of the spiritual descendants of those false brethren, the Judaizers of Apostoho *

age. the Apostolic age, who first disturbed the peace of the Antio

chene Church and then dogged St Paul's footsteps from city to

city, everywhere thwarting his efforts and undermining his

authority. If Ebionism was not primitive Christianity, neither

was it a creation of the second century. As an organization,

a distinct sect, it first made itself known, we may suppose, in

the reign of Trajan: but as a sentiment, it had been harboured

within the Church from the very earliest days. Moderated by

the personal influence of the Apostles, soothed by the general

practice of their church, not yet forced into declaring themselves

by the turn of events, though scarcely tolerant of others these

Judaizers were tolerated for a time themselves. The beginning

of the second century was a winnowing season in the Church of

the Circumcision.

Another The form of Ebionism⁸, which is most prominent in early writers and which I have hitherto had in view, is purely Pharisaic; but we meet also with another type, agreeing with the former up to a certain point but introducing at the same time a new element, half ascetic, half mystical.

type of

Ebionism,

¹ For the opinions of these Ebion- by all Ebionites alike: (1) The recog

ites see the references in Schliemann nition of Jesus as Messiah; (2) The

p. 481 eq, and add Hippol. Haer. vii. denial of His divinity; (3) The uni

3 tI yap Koi trepis Th reroii}«i 7-A Iv versal obligation of the law; (4) The

vbnip rpoirrerayfih>a, riv av iKtiym b reject ion and hatred of St Paul. Their

Xpurrbf SuvaoBai ti Kal iavrois bnolus differences consisted in (1) Their view

roiriaavtai Xpiarobs yeviaBaf Kot yap of what constituted the law, and (2)

Ko.1 avtov inolui dvBpuroy tb>ai raaiv Their conception of the Person of

\iyovaai. Christ; e.g. whether He was born of

⁹ The following opinions were shared a Virgin or in the course of nature;

This foreign element was probably due to Essene influences, derived The doctrines of the Christian school bear so close a resemblance Essencs? to the characteristic features of the Jewish sect as to place their parentage almost beyond a doubt¹: and moreover the headquarters of these heretics—the countries bordering on the Dead Sea—coincide roughly with the head-quarters of their prototype. This view however does not exclude the working of other influences more directly Gnostic or Oriental: and as this type of Ebionism seems to have passed through different phases at different times, and indeed to have comprehended several species at the same time, such modifications ought probably to be attributed to forces external to Judaism. Having regard then to its probable origin as well as to its typical character, we can hardly do wrong in adopting the name Essene or Gnostic Ebionism to distinguish it from the common type, Pharisaic Ebionism or Ebionism proper.

If Pharisaic Ebionism was a disease inherent in the Church of the Circumcision from the first, Essene Ebionism seems to Its later have been a later infection caught by external contact. In the ^ongU1' Palestinian Church at all events we see no symptoms of it during the Apostolic age. It is a probable conjecture, that after the destruction of Jerusalem the fugitive Christians, living in their retirement in the neighbourhood of the Essene settlements, received large accessions to their numbers from this sect, which thus inoculated the Church with its peculiar views*. It is at least worthy of notice, that in a religious work

what supernatural endowments He nius are strongly Essene.

bad and at what time they were be- ^l See especially the careful investi

stowed on Him, whether at His birth gation of Ritsobl p. 204 sq.

or at His baptism, etc. - Ritschl (p. 223), who adopts this

The Ebionites of earlier writers, as view, suggests that this sect, which had

Irenaeus and Hippolytus, belong to the stood aloof from the temple-worship

Pharisaic type; while those of Epipha- and abhorred sacrifices, would be led to

but

greater literary activity,

and zeal-
iHis prose-
lytism.

emanating from this school of Ebionites the 'true Gospel' is reported to have been first propagated 'after the destruction of the holy place V

This younger form of Judaic Christianity seems soon to have eclipsed the elder. In the account of Ebionism given by Epiphanius the Pharisaic characteristics are almost entirely absorbed in the Essene. This prominence is probably due in some measure to their greater literary capacity, a remarkable feature doubtless derived from the speculative tendencies and studious habits of the Jewish sect * to which they traced their parentage. Besides the Clementine writings which we possess whole, and the book of Elchasai of which a few fragmentary notices are preserved, a vast number of works which, though no longer extant, have yet moulded the traditions of the earlyChurch, emanated from these Christian Essenes. Hence doubtless are derived the ascetic portraits of James the Lord's brother in Hegesippus and of Matthew the Apostle in Clement of Alexandria *, to which the account of St Peter in the extant Clementines presents a close parallel *.

And with greater literary activity they seem also to have united greater missionary zeal. To this spirit of proselytism we owe much important information relating to the tenets of the sect.

One of their missionaries early in the third century brought to Rome a sacred book bearing the name of Elchasai or Elxai, whence also the sect were called Elchasaites. This book fell into the hands of Hippolytus the writer on heresies⁵, from whom our knowledge of it is chiefly derived. It professed to have been obtained from the Seres, a Parthian tribe, and to contain a revelation which had been first made in the third year of Trajan (a.d. 100). These Seres hold the same place in the fictions of Essene Ebionism, as the Hyperboreans in Greek legend: they are a mythical race, perfectly pure and therefore perfectly happy, long-lived and free from pain, scrupulous in the performance of all ceremonial rites and thus exempt from the penalties attaching to their neglect¹. Elchasai, an Aramaic word signifying the 'hidden power²,' seems to be the name of the divine messenger who communicated the revelation, and probably the title of the book itself: Hippolytus understands it of the person who received the revelation, the founder of the sect. 'Elchasai,' adds this father, 'delivered it to a certain person called Sobiai.' Here again he was led astray by his ignorance of Aramaic: Sobiai is not the name of an individual but signifies 'the sworn members *,' to whom alone the revelation was to be communicated and who, perhaps, like their Essene prototypes1, took an oath to divulge it only to the brotherhood. I need not follow this strange but instructive notice farther. Whether this was the sacred book of the whole sect or of a part only, whether the name Elchasaism is coextensive with Essene Ebionism or not, it is Its pre- unimportant for my purpose to enquire. The pretended era date. of this revelation is of more consequence. Whether the book

Book of

Elchasai.

welcome Christ as the true prophet,
when they saw the fulfilment of His
predictions against the temple. In
Clem. Hom. iii. 15 great stress is laid
on the fulfilment of these prophecies:
oomp. also Clem. Recogn. i. 37 (especi-
ally in the Syriac).

¹ CUm. Hom. ii. 17 J«ta KaBal/xaiv
Tod iylov rorov rfayyAiox iXifiii Kp6<j>a
SuuteiufiBTJyai tit iravip8iaai v Tuv iao-
ntvuv alpiaew. comp. Clem. Recogn.

i. 37, 64, iii. 61 (in the Syriac, as below, p. 86, note 5). See also Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 2.

* Joseph. B. J. ii. 8. 6.

* Paedag. ii. 1 (p. 174 Potter), where St Matthew is said to have lived on seeds, berries, and herbs, abstaining from animal food. See Ritschl p. 224.

* Clem. Hom. xii. 6, comp. viii. 15, xv. 7.

° Haer. ix. 13. See a valuable paper on the Elchasaites by Hitachi in Niedner's Zeitschrift iv. p. 573 aq (1853), the substance of which is given also in the second edition of his Altkatholische Kirche. Hilgenfeld has edited the fragments of the book of Elxai in his Novum Testamentum extra Cmumem Receptum, fasc. in. p. 153 sq (186G). The use made of it by Epiphanius is investigated by Lipsius, QueUenkritik det Epiphan. p. 143 sq.

¹ Clem. Recogn. viii. 48, ix. 19. Even in classical writers the Seres or Chinese are invested with something of an ideal character: e.g. Plin. vi. 24, Strabo xv. p. 701, Mela iii. 7. But in the passage which most strikingly illustrates this fact (Geogr. Graec. Min. n. p. 514, ed. Mflller), the name disappears when the text is correctly read ('se regentes,' and not 'Serae gentes').

^J 'D3 7*n. Epiphanius correctly ex

plains it Sfoapus KtKa\i/n/Uvri, Haer. xix. 2. See Ritschl 1. c. p. 581, and Altkath. Kirche p. 245. Other explanations of the word, given in Hilgenfeld 1. c. p. 156, in M. Nicolas Evangilei Apocryphes p. 108 (1866), and by Geiger Zeitsch. der Deutsch. Morgenl. GeselUeh. xvm. p. 824 (1864), do not recommend themselves. The name is differently written in Greek, HXx«roi, EWo-eu and HXfai. The first, whioh is most correct, is found in Hippolytus, who had seen the book.

* From J?2E>. Accordingly Hippolytus (ix. 17) relates that the Elchasaite missionary Alcibiades made a mystery of his teaching, forbidding it to be divulged except to the faithful; see Ritschl 1. c. p. 589. Ewald however (Gesch. vn. p. 159) derives Sobiai from i.e. /3arturral. See also

Chwolson die Ssabier etc. I. p. 111. 6

itself was really as early as the reign of Trajan or whether the date was part of the dramatic fiction, it is impossible to decide*. Even in the latter case, it will still show that according to their own tradition this epoch marked some striking development in the opinions or history of the sect; and the date given corresponds, it will be remembered, very nearly with the epoch mentioned by Hegesippus as the birthtime of a numerous brood of heresies*.

Without attempting to discriminate the different forms of

doctrine which this Essene Ebionism comprised in itself—to

point out for instance the distinctive features of the book of

Essene Elchasai, of the Homilies, and of the Recognitions respectively

distin- —it "will be sufficient to observe the broad line of demarcation

guished _wJri_ch separates the Essene from the Pharisaic type'. Laying

risaic, almost equal stress with the others on the observance of the

law as an essential part of Christianity, the Essene Ebionites

undertook to settle by arbitrary criticism what the law was

¹ Joseph. B. J. ii. 8. 7. nions which had thus been progressing

³ Hilgenfeld (p. xxi) maintains the stealthily now showed a bold front;

early date very positively against but whether the actual organization

Ritachi. Lipsius (1. c.) will not pro- of the sect or sects took place now or

nounce an opinion. at a still later date (after the rebellion

* See above, p. 71 sq. In the pas- of Bar-cochba), it is impossible to

sage there quoted Hegesippus speaks of say.

these heresies 'as living underground, * The chief authorities for the Es

burrowing (<pu\evbrrav)' until the reign sene Ebionites are Epiphanius (Haer.

of Trajan. This agrees with the state- xix, xxx); Hippolytus (Haer. ix. 13—

ment in the Homilies (ii. 17) already 17) and Origen (Euseb. H. E. vi. 38),

referred to (p. 80, note 1) that the whose accounts refer especially to the

true Gospel (i.e. Essene Ebionism) was book of Elchasai; and the Clementine

first 'secretly propagated' after the writings,

destruction of the temple. The opi- ° See Colossians p. 372.

By this capricious process they eliminated from the Old Testament all elements distasteful to them—the doctrine of sacrifices especially, which was abhorrent to Essene principles —cutting down the law to their own standard and rejecting the prophets wholly. As a compensation, they introduced certain ritual observances of their own, on which they laid great stress; more especially lustral washings and abstinence from wine and from animal food. In their Christology also they differed widely from the Pharisaic Ebionites, maintaining that the Word or Wisdom of God had been incarnate more than once, and that thus there had been more Christs than one, of whom Adam was the first and Jesus the last. Christianity in fact was regarded by them merely as the restoration of the primeval religion: in other words, of pure Mosaism before it had been corrupted by foreign accretions. Thus equally with the Pharisaic Ebionites they denied the Gospel the character of a new covenant; and, as a natural consequence, equally with them they rejected the authority and reviled the name of St Paul^l.

If the Pharisaic Ebionites are the direct lineal descendants and allied of the 'false brethren' who seduced St Paul's Galatian converts colossiau from their allegiance, the Essene Ebionites bear a striking^heretl0Sfamily likeness to those other Judaizers against whom he raises his voice as endangering the safety of the Church at Colossae *.

Of the hostility of these Christian Essenes to St Paul, as of their other typical features, a striking example is extant in the fictitious writings attributed to the Roman bishop Clement. These are preserved in two forms: the Homilies, extant in the ClemenGreek, apparently an uniform work, which perhaps may be writings, assigned to the middle or latter half of the second century; and the Recognitions, a composite production probably later than the Homilies, founded, it would appear, partly on them or some earlier work which was the common basis of both and partly on other documents, and known to us through the Latin

¹ See Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 16, 25, the Clementine writings quoted in the Orig. ap. Euseb. 1. e. rbv iri<rro\oy Tt- text. \tov &Btrei; besides the passages in '-' See Colosiians p. 73 sq.

translation of Rufinus, who avowedly altered his original with great freedom¹. Attack on l_n the Homilies Simon Magus is the impersonation of the Homi- manifold heresy, and as such is refuted and condemned by St Peter. Among other false teachers, who are covertly denounced in his person, we cannot fail to recognise the lineaments of St Paul*. Thus St Peter charges his hearers,' Shun any apostle, or teacher, or prophet, who does not first compare his preaching with James called the brother of my Lord and entrusted with the care of the Church of the Hebrews in Jerusalem, and has not come to you with witnesses⁸; lest the wickedness, which contended with the Lord forty days and prevailed not, should afterwards fall upon the earth as lightning from heaven and send forth a preacher against you, just as he suborned Simon against us, preaching in the name of our Lord and sowing error under the pretence of truth; wherefore He that sent us said, Many shall come to me in sheep's clothing, but within they are ravening wolves (xi. 35).' The allusions here to St Paul's rejection of 'commendatory letters' (2 Cor. iii. 1) and to the scene on the way to Damascus (Acts ix. 3) are clear. In another passage St Peter, after explaining that Christ must be preceded by Antichrist, the true prophet by the false, and applying this law to the preaching of Simon and himself, adds: 'If he had been known (el iyivaxrieero) he would not have been believed, but now being not known (asyvoovfievos) he is wrongly believed.. .being death, he has been desired as if he were a saviour...and being a deceiver he is heard as if he spake the truth (ii . 17, 18).' The writer seems to be playing with St Paul's own words,'as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold we live (2 Cor. vi. 8, 9).' In a third passage there is a very distinct allusion to the Apostle's account of the conflict at Antioch in the Galatian Epistle: 'If then,' says St Peter to Simon, 'our Jesus was made known to thee also and conversed with thee being seen in a vision, He was angry with thee as an adversary, and therefore He spake with thee by visions and dreams, or even by outward revelations. Can any one be made wise unto doctrine by visions? If thou sayest he can, then why did the Teacher abide and converse with us a whole year when we were awake? And how shall we ever believe thee in this, that He was seen of thee? Nay, how could He have been seen of thee, when thy thoughts are contrary to His teaching? If having been seen and instructed of Him for a single hour thou wast made an Apostle, then preach His words, expound His teaching, love His Apostles, do not fight against me His companion. For thou hast withstood and opposed me (evavrioi avBkaTrjKa<$ poi), the firm rock, the foundation of the Church. If thou hadst not been an adversary, thou wouldest not have calumniated and reviled my preaching, that I might not be believed when I

¹ The only complete editions of the Homilies are those of Dressel, dementis Rvmani quae feruntur Homiliae Viginti (1853), and of Lagarde, Clementina (1865); the end of the 19th and the whole of the 20th homily having been published for the first time by Dressel. The Recognitions, which have been printed several times, may be read most conveniently in Gersdorfs edition (Lips. 1838). A Syriac Version lately published by Lagarde (Clementi* Romani Recognitiones Syriace, Lips, et Lond. 1861) is made up partly of the Recognitions (i, ii, hi, iv), and partly of the Homilies (z, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, the xth book being imperfect). The older of the two extant Ii ss of this version was actually written A.d. 411, the year after the death of Rufinua; but the errors of transcription, which it exhibits, show that it was taken from an earlier Ma We are thus carried back to a very remote date. The first part, containing the early books of the Becognitions, is extremely valuable, for it enables us to measure the liberties which Rufinus took with his original. An important instance of his arbitrary treatment will

be given below, p. 86, note 5. Two abridgments of the Homilies are extant. These have been edited by Dressel, ClementinorumEpitomaeduae (Lips. 1859), one of them for the first time. Of those monographs which I have read on the relations between the different Clementine writings, the treatise of Uhlhorn, Die ffomilien und Recognitionen etc. (Gottingen, 1854), seems to me on the whole the most satisfactory. It is dangerous to express an opinion where able critics are so divided; and the remarks in the text are not hazarded without some hesitation. Baur, Schliemann, Schwegler, and Uhlhorn, give the priority to the Homilies, Hilgenfeld and Ritschl to the Recognitions, Lehmann partly to the one and partly to the other, while Reuss and others decline to pronounce a decided opinion.

³ See on this subject Schliemann Clement, pp. 96 sq, 534 sq: comp. Stanley's Corinthians, p. 366 sq.

³ Kal neri, napripuv rpoaeXq\vBtrta.. It is needless to insert fi.ii with Schliemann and Schwegler: the negative is carried on from the former clause nj; rp/nepov dvtifidWovta.

in the Letter of Peter,

told what I had heard myself in person from the Lord, as though forsooth I were condemned (Karayv<oa-Bevros) and thou wert highly regarded¹. Nay, if thou callest me condemned (/iateyvcoa-fievov), thou accusest God who revealed Christ to me and assailest Him that called me blessed in my revelation* (xvii. 19).' In this same bitter spirit the writer would rob him of all his missionary triumphs and transfer them to his supposed rival: the Apostleship of the Gentiles, according to the Homilies, belongs not to St Paul but to St Peter: Barnabas is no more the companion nor Clement the disciple of St Paul but of St Peter^*.

Again, in the letter of Peter to James prefixed to the Homilies, emanating from the same school though perhaps not part of the work itself, and if so, furnishing another example of this bitterness of feeling, St Peter is made to denounce those Gentile converts who repudiate his lawful preaching, welcoming a certain lawless and foolish doctrine of the enemy (jov iftBpou av6pcoirov <li'ofiov rum Kal <p\vapw8r} BiSainiaXiav), complaining also that 'certain persons attempted by crafty interpretations to wrest his words to the abolishing of the law, pretending that this was his opinion, but that he did not openly preach it,' with more to the same effect (§ 2).

In the Recognitions, probably a later patch-work*, the harsher features of the Essene-Ebionite doctrine, as it appears in the Homilies, are softened down, and these bitter though indirect attacks on St Paul omitted; whether by the original redactor or by his translator Rufinus, it is not easy to say*.

in the Recognitions,

¹ The existing text has Kal inov eiSoKinovvtos, for which some have proposed to read Kal ^ eiSoKipovvtos. It is better perhaps to substitute aov or ovSa/wu for <>o0, though neither is a neat emendation. Some change however is absolutely needed.

* Toc irl iroKo\^u naxaplaavtOS fu. The allusion is to Matt. xvi. 17, /iaxdpios et K.r.X.

* See also other references to St

Paul noted elsewhere, Galatiaiu, p. 61.

⁴ Not much earlier than the middle of the third century; for a portion of the treatise de Fate, written probably by a disciple of Bardesanes, is worked up in the later books; unless indeed this is itself borrowed from the Recognitions.

⁸ In one instance at least the change is due to Rufinus himself. His translation of Clem. Recogn. iii. 61 contains a distinct recognition of St Paul's

Thus in the portions corresponding to and probably taken from
the Homilies no traces of this hostility remain. But in one
passage adapted from another work, probably the 'Ascents of
James¹,' it can still be discerned, the allusion having either
escaped notice or been spared because it was too covert to give
offence. It is there related that a certain enemy (homo quidam
inimicus) raised a tumult against the Apostles and with his
own hands assaulted James and threw him down from the steps
of the temple, ceasing then to maltreat him, only because he
believed him to be dead; and that after this the Apostles
received secret information from Gamaliel, that this enemy
(inimicus ille homo) had been sent by Caiaphas on a mission to
Damascus to persecute and slay the disciples, and more especi-
ally to take Peter, who was supposed to have fled thither
(i . 70, 71)*. The original work, from which this portion of the
Recognitions seems to have been borrowed, was much more and in the
violent and unscrupulous in its attacks on St Paul; for in the James'⁸ °
'Ascents of James' Epiphanius read the story, that he was of
Gentile parentage, but coming to Jerusalem and wishing to
marry the high-priest's daughter he became a proselyte and
was circumcised: then, being disappointed of his hope, he
turned round and furiously attacked the Mosaic ordinances
(Haer. xxx. 16).

Apostleship, 'Nonum (par) omnium ings, disappears,
geutium et illius qui mittetur seminare ¹ Uhlhorn, p. 366. Epiphanius men-
verbum inter gentes.' (On these av$v- tions this book, avapaBnol 'I<uiii/Sov, as
yiai of the false and the true see above, being in circulation among the Ebion-
p. 85.) But the corresponding pas- ites (xxx. 16). It was so called doubt-
sage in the Syriac version (p. 115,1. 20, less as describing the ascents of James
Lagarde) is wholly different, and trans- up the temple-stairs, whence he ha-
lated back into Greek will run thus: ri rangued the people. The name and the
Si hv&ttj (av£vyla) Tov aripnaros Tw description of its contents in Epi-
fi£<wluv Kox Toc eiayyt\lov rod refiro- phanius alike favour the view that it
nivov els trutrpo<frfy>, 6to.v l*pifudg rb was the original of this portion of the
iyiov Kal els rijv ipr/jiuaaiv airrov 8-fyrovai Recognitions. But if so, the redactor
To f}Si\vyna : see Dan. ix. 27, and com- of the Recognitions must have taken
pare Clem. Hom. ii. 17 (quoted above, the same liberties with it as he has
p. 80, note 1). Thus the commenda- done with the Homilies,
tion of St Paul, which is wholly alien ⁹ This passage is substantially the
to the spirit of these Clementine writ- same in the Syriao.

In the earlier part of the third century these Gnostic Ebionites seem to have made some futile efforts to propagate their views. An emissary of the sect, one Alcibiades of Apamea in Syria, appeared in Rome with the pretended revelation of Elchasai, and (thinking himself the better juggler of the two, says Hippolytus) half succeeded in cajoling the pope Callistus, but was exposed and defeated by the zealous bishop of Portus who tells the story (Haer. ix. 13—17). Not many years after another emissary, if it was not this same Alcibiades, appeai-s to have visited Caesarea, where he was. confronted and denounced by Origen¹.

This display of activity might lead to an exaggerated estimate of the influence of these Judaizing sects. It is not probable that they left any wide or lasting impression west of Syria. In Palestine itself they would appear to have been confined to certain localities lying for the most part about the Jordan and the Dead Sea. After the reconstitution of the mother Church at Mlia. Capitolina the Christianity of Palestine seems to have been for the most part neither Ebionite nor Nazarene. It is a significant fact, implying more than appears at first sight, that in the Paschal controversy which raged in the middle and later half of the second century the bishops of Caesarea and Jerusalem, of Tyre and Ptolemais, ranged themselves, not with the Churches of Asia Minor which regulated their Easter festival by the Jewish passover without regard to the day of the week, but with those of Rome and Alexandria and Gaul which observed another rule; thus avoiding even the semblance of Judaism5. But we have more direct testimony to the main features of Palestinian doctrine about the middle of the second century in the known opinions of two writers who lived at the time—Justin as representative of the Samaritan, and Hegesippus of the Hebrew Christianity of their day. The former of these declares himself distinctly against the two characteristic tenets of Ebionism. Against their humanitarian Justin, views he expressly argues, maintaining the divinity of Christ¹. On the universal obligation of the law he declares, not only that those who maintain this opinion are wrong, but that he himself will hold no communion with them, for he doubts whether they can be saved*. If, as an apologist for the Gospel against Gentile and Jew, he is precluded by the nature of his writings from quoting St Paul⁸, whose name would be received by the one with indifference and by the other with hatred, he still shows by his manner of citing and applying the Old Testament that he is not unfamiliar with this Apostle's writings⁴. The testimony of Hegesippus is still more im- Hegesipportant, for his extant fragments prove him to have been a' thorough Hebrew in all his thoughts and feelings. This writer made a journey to Rome, calling on the way at Corinth among other places; he expresses himself entirely satisfied with the teaching of the Churches which he thus visited; 'Under each successive bishop,' he says,'and in each city it is so as the law and the prophets and the Lord preach⁶.' Was the doctrine of

Churches of Palestine not Ebionite.

Paschal controversy.

¹ Euseb. II. E. vi. 38. This extract is taken from Origen's Homily on the R2nd Psalm, which appears to have been delivered in Cresarea about A.d.

See Redepenning Origerue n. ⁸ Euseb. II. E. v. 23, 24. See below,

247. p. 72,

p. 101, note 2.

¹ Dial. oo. 48, 127. Hegesippus would seem to be referring

² Dial. cc. 47, 48. to some earlier work or earlier portion

* See Westcott's argument (Canon of this work, which he now supple

p. 117 sq) drawn from the usage of ments. Possibly however the oonjec

other apologists, Tertullian for in- tural reading Jurrpi/SV irocqaiiaiv, 'I

stance, who does not quote even the continued to reside,' maybe correct:

Gospels in his Apology. but the translation of Rnfinus, 'per

⁴ See Gahitians, p. 60, and the notes mansi inibi (i.e. Romae) donee Aniceto on Gal. iii. 28, iv. 27. Soter et Soteri successit Eleutherus,'

⁵ In Euseb. 11. E. iv. 22. The ex- is of little or no weight on this side; tract ends, yevbiuvos Si iv 'Piinji SiaSo- for he constantly uses his fluency in jrty ironjadn-rp> nixpu 'akk^toi; oj 8«t- Latin to gloze over his imperfect *ewos $r 'EXn)0epos^- Kal rapb. 'Arudirov knowledge of Greek, and the evasion imWxrrai Zunjp, luB' ov 'E\t66epos • iv of a real difficulty is with him the rule h&irrQ Si SiaSoxv "td iv iKifftji R6x« rather than the exception. If we reovrui t%a lis 6 vdfws Kr/pvrtfi nfoi ol tain SiaSoxfy, the words of Hegesippus rpwfTftax Kox i Krpios. If the text be would still seem to imply that he left correct, SiaSoxhv iroirio-dnriv must mean Rome during the episcopate of Anioe'I drew up a list or an account of the tus. Eusebius indeed (H. E. iv. 11) successive bishops' (see Pearson in infers, apparently from this passage, Rauth i. p. 268 sq); and in this case that he remained there till Eleutherus became bishop; and Jerome (de Vir. Zephyrinus 198 or 199, Gallistoa 217,

the whole Christian world at this time (A.D. 150) Ebionite, or was the doctrine of Hegesippus Catholic? There is no other alternative. We happen to possess information which leaves not an no doubt as to the true answer. Eusebius speaks of Hegesippus as 'having recorded the unerring tradition of the apostolic preaching' (H. E. iv. 8); and classes him with Dionysius of Corinth, Melito, Irenaeus, and others, as one of those in whose writings 'the orthodoxy of sound faith derived from the apostolic tradition had been handed down¹.' In this Eusebius could not have been mistaken, for he himself states that Hegesippus 'left the fullest record of his own opinions in five books of memoirs' which were in his hands (H. E. iv. 22). It is surely a bold effort of recent criticism in the face of these plain facts to set down Hegesippus as an Ebionite and to infer thence that a great part of Christendom was Ebionite also. True, this writer gives a traditional account of St James which represents him as a severe and rigorous ascetic*; but between this stern view of life and Ebionite doctrine the interval may be wide enough; and on this showing how many fathers of the Church, Jerome and Basil for instance in the fourth century, Bernard and Dominic and Francis of Assisi in later ages, must plead guilty of Ebionism. True, he used the Hebrew Gospel; but what authority he attributed to it, or whether it was otherwise than orthodox, does not appear. True also, he appeals in a passage already quoted to the authority of 'the law and the prophets and the Lord¹'; but this is a natural equivalent for 'the Old and New Testament, ' and corresponding expressions would not appear out of place even in our own age. True lastly, he condemns the use made of the text, 'Eye hath not seen nor ear heard' etc.^', as contradicting our Lord's words,

III. 22), as usual, repeats Eusebius. Urbanus 222; Chron. dor Rom. Bisch.

This inference, though intelligible, p. 263. Bat there is considerable

seems hardly correct; but it shows variation in the authorities, the ac

almost conclusively that Eusebius did cession of Anicetus being placed by

not read iia7-pi/Sijy. The early Syriao somo as early as A.i>. 150; see the

translator of Eusebius (see above, p. lists in Clinton's Fasti Romani n. p.

33, note 2) certainly read SiaSoxfy. ⁵³^ ⁶<1

The dates of the accession of the sue- 1 H. E. iv. 21 uy Kal eh ii/uii Tt)%

cessive bishops as determined by Lip- dr/xrroXiiriJj rapaSbeiui ij 7-7)5 uyious

sius are, Pius 141 (at the latest), vlirrius tyyptupos Karij\6ev ipBoSo(la.

Anicetus 154—156, Soter 166 or 167, * Euseb. H. E. ii. 23. See the ac

Eleutherus 174 or 175, Victor 189, count of St James below.

Matrdpioi oi i<p6a ol vnur K.t.\. It is not surprising that this writer, who lived when Gnosticism had passed out of memory, should be puzzled to 'know what had come to Hegesippus ': but modern critics ought not to have gone astray. Hegesippus can hardly be objecting to the passage itself, which is probably a quotation from Is. lxiv. 4. His objection therefore must be to some application of it. But whose application? Even had there been no direct evidence, it might have been gathered from the argument which follows that he referred to the esoteric teaching of the Gnostics; but the lately discovered treatise of Hippolytus establishes the fact that it was a favourite text of these heretios, being introduced into the form of initiation: see v. 24, 26, 27 (of Justin the Gnostic), vi. 24 (of Valentinus). This is the opinion of Leohler p. 463, Ritschl p. 267, Westcott Canon pp. 208, 284, Bunsen Hippolytus I. p. 132 (2nd ed.), and Hilgenfeld Apost. Voter p. 102, but otherwise Zeitschr.f. Wiss. Theol. 1876, p. 203 sq. Yet Baur (Chrutenthum p. 77, Paulus p. 221), and Schwegler (i. p. HiW), forcing an unnatural meaning on the words, contend that Hegesippus is directly denying St Paul's claim to a revelation and asserting that this privilege belongs only to those who have seen and heard Christ in the flesh. It is worth noticing that the same quotation, 'eye hath not seen etc.,' is found in the Epistle of Clement (c. 34) [where see note]; and this epistle was referred to by Hegesippus, as the notice of Eusebius seems to imply (H. E. iv. 22),

'Blessed are your eyes for ye see, etc.'; but he is here protesting against its perverted application by the Gnostics, who employed it of the initiated few, and whom elsewhere he severely denounces; and it is a mere accident that the words are quoted also by St Paul (1 Cor. ii. 9). Many of the facts mentioned point him out as a Hebrew, but not one brands him as an Ebionite. The decisive evidence on the other side is fatal to this inference. If Hegesippus may be taken as a type of the Hebrew Church in his day, then the doctrine of that Church was Catholic. Ebionism And if the Palestinian Churches of the second century held lent in "Catholic doctrine, we shall see little or no reason to fix the Churches ^c^^iarg^e of Ebionism on other communities farther removed from the focus of Judaic influences. Here and there indeed Judaism seems to have made a desperate struggle, but only to sustain a signal defeat. At Antioch this conflict began earlier and probably continued longer than elsewhere; yet the names of her bishops Ignatius, Theophilus, and Serapion vouch for the doctrine and practice of the Antiochene Church in the second century. In Asia Minor the influence first of St Paul and then of St John must have been fatal to the ascendancy of Ebionism. A disproportionate share indeed of the faint light which glimmers over the Church of the second century is concentrated on this region: and the notices, though occasional and fragmentary, are sufficient to establish this general fact. The same is true with regard to Greece: similar influences were at work and with similar results. The Churches of Gaul took their colour from Asia Minor, which furnished their greatest teachers: Irenaeus bears witness to the Catholicity of their faith. In Alexandria, when at length the curtain rises, Christianity is seen enthroned between Greek philosophy and Gnostic speculation, while Judaism is far in the background. The infancy of the African Church is wrapt in hopeless darkness: but when she too emerges from her obscurity, she comes

with approval. This very mention of evidence that Hegesippus recognised Clement's epistle is in itself a secondary the authority of St Paul.

forward in no uncertain attitude, with no deep scars as of a recent conflict, offering neither a mutilated canon nor a dwarfed theology. The African Bible, as it appears in the old Latin version, contains all the books which were received without dispute for two centuries after. The African theology, as represented by Tertullian, in no way falls short of the standard of Catholic doctrine maintained in other parts of Christendom.

But the Church of the metropolis demands special attention. The At Rome, if anywhere, we should expect to see very distinct Rome, traces of these successive phenomena, which are supposed to have extended throughout or almost throughout the Christian Church—first, the supremacy of Ebionism—then the conflict of the Judaic with the Pauline Gospel—lastly, towards the close of the second century, the triumph of a modified Paulinism and the consequent birth of Catholic Christianity¹. Yet, even if this were the history of Catholicity at Rome, it would still be an unfounded assumption to extend the phenomenon to other parts of Christendom. Rome had not yet learnt to dictate to the Church at large. At this early period she appears for the most part unstable and pliant, the easy prey of designing or enthusiastic adventurers in theology, not the originator of a policy and a creed of her own. The prerogative of Christian doctrine and practice rests hitherto with the Churches of Antioch and Asia Minor.

But the evidence lends no countenance to the idea that the tendencies of the Roman Church during this period were towards Ebionism. Her early history indeed is wrapt in Heretics obscurity. If the veil were raised, the spectacle would probably there^⁸* not be very edifying, but there is no reason to imagine that Judaism was her characteristic taint. As late heathen Rome

¹ The episcopate ol Victor (about for his approval of this Church extends

A.d. 190—200) is fixed by the Tubin- to the episcopate of Eleutherus, the

gen critics (see Schwegler n. p. 206 sq) immediate predecessor of Victor; see

as the epoch of the antijudaic revolu- above, p. 89, note 5. They suppose

tion in the Roman Church. This date however that the current had been

follows necessarily from their assump- setting in this direction some time

tion that Hegesippus was an Ebionite; before.

Secession of Judaizers.

St Peter in Rome.

had been the sink of all Pagan superstitions, so early Christian Rome was the meeting-point of all heretical creeds and philosophies. If the presence of Simon Magus in the metropolis be not a historical fact, it is still a carrying out of the typical character with which he is invested in early tradition, as the father of heresy. Most of the great heresiarchs—among others Valentinus, Marcion, Praxeas, Theodotus, Sabellius—taught in Rome. Ebionism alone would not be idle, where all other heresies were active. But the great battle with this form of error seems to have been fought out at an early date, in the lifetime of the Apostles themselves and in the age immediately following.

The last notice of the Roman Church in the Apostolic writings seems to point to two separate communities, a Judaizing Church and a Pauline Church. The arrival of the Gentile Apostle in the metropolis, it would appear, was the signal for the separation of the Judaizers, who had hitherto associated with their Gentile brethren coldly and distrustfully. The presence of St Paul must have vastly strengthened the numbers and influence of the more liberal and Catholic party; while the Judaizers provoked by rivalry redoubled their efforts, that in making converts to the Gospel they might also gain proselytes to the law*. Thus 'in every way Christ was preached.'

If St Peter ever visited Rome, it must have been at a later date than these notices. Of this .visit, far from improbable in itself, there is fair if not conclusive evidence; and once admitted, we may reasonably assume that important consequences flowed from it. Where all is obscurity, conjecture on one side is fairly answered by conjecture on the other. We may venture therefore to suggest this, as a not unlikely result of the presence of both Apostles in Rome. As they had done before in the world at large, so they would agree to do now in

¹ The inferences in the text are the circumcision) are my fellow-workdrawn from Phil. i. 15—18, compared ers etc.' with Col. iv. 11 'These only (i.e. of

the metropolis: they would exchange the right hand of fellowship, devoting themselves the one more especially to the Jewish, the other to the Gentile converts. Christian Rome was large A twofold enough to admit two communities or two sections in one community, until the time was ripe for their more complete amalgamation. Thus either as separate bodies with separate governments, or as a confederation of distinct interests represented each by their own officers in a common presbytery, we may suppose that the Jewish and Gentile brotherhoods at Rome were organized by the combined action of the two Apostles. This fact possibly underlies the tradition that St Peter and St Paul were joint founders of the Roman Church: and it may explain the discrepancies in the lists of the early bishops, which perhaps point to a double succession. At all events, the presence of the two Apostles must have tended to tone down antipathies and to draw parties closer together. The Judaizers seeing that the Apostle of the Circumcision, whose name they had venerated at a distance but whose principles they had hitherto imperfectly understood, was associating on terms of equality with the 'hated one,' the subverter of the law, would be led to follow his example slowly and suspiciously: and advances on the one side would be met eagerly by advances on the other. Hence at the close of the first century we see no united more traces of a twofold Church. The work of the Apostles, clement, now withdrawn from the scene, has passed into the hands of no unworthy disciple. The liberal and catholic spirit of Clement eminently fitted him for the task of conciliation; and he appears as the first bishop or presiding elder of the one Roman Church. This amalgamation however could not be effected without some opposition; the extreme Judaizers must necessarily have been embittered and alienated: and, if a little later we discern traces of Ebionite sectarianism in Rome, this is not only no surprise, but the most natural consequence of a severe but short-lived struggle.

The Epistle to the Corinthians written by Clement in the Clement's name of the Roman Church cannot well be placed after the ^p18

A.». 95? close of the first century and may possibly date some years earlier. It is not unreasonable to regard this as a typical document, reflecting the comprehensive principles and large sympathies which had been impressed upon the united Church of Rome, in great measure perhaps by the influence of the distinguished writer. There is no early Christian writing which combines more fully than this the distinctive features of all the Apostolic Epistles, now asserting the supremacy of faith with St Paul, now urging the necessity of works with St James, at one time echoing the language of St Peter, at another repeating the very words of the Epistle to the Hebrews¹. Not without some show of truth, the authority of Clement was claimed in after generations for writings of very different tendencies. Belonging to no party, he seemed to belong to all. Testi- Not many years after this Epistle was written, Ignatius

Ignatius. ^{now on} his way to martyrdom addresses a letter to the Roman A.d. no? brethren. It contains no indications of any division in the Church of the metropolis or of the prevalence of Ebionite views among his readers. On the contrary, he lavishes epithets of praise on them in the opening salutation; and throughout the letter there is not the faintest shadow of blame. His only fear is that they may be too kind to him and deprive him of the honour of martyrdom by their intercessions. To the Ephesians, and even to Polycarp, he offers words of advice and warning; but to the Romans he utters only the language of joyful satisfaction*.

But in a Church thus formed we might expect to meet with

¹ See Westcott History of the Canon and spirit with every commandment

p. 24 sq. of Christ, filled with the grace of God

³ This is the case, even though we inseparably, and strained clear of

should accept only the parts preserved every foreign colour (aroSiv\uri*bMi

in the Syriac as genuine; but the drA rarris aX\orplov xpii/uitos).' At

Greek (Vossian) Epistles are still more the same time the writer appears in

explicit. They distinctly acquit the other passages as a stubborn opponent

Romans of any participation in heresy; of Judaism, Magn. 8, 10, Philad. 6. speaking of them as 'united in flesh

other and narrower types of doctrine than the Epistle of Clement exhibits. Traditional principles and habits of thought would still linger on, modified indeed but not wholly transformed by the predominance of a Catholicity which comprehended all elements in due proportion. One such type is represented by an extant work which emanated from the Roman Church during the first half of the second century¹.

In its general tone the Shepherd of Hermas confessedly Shepherd differs from the Epistle of Clement; but on the other hand the notEbkmwriter was certainly no Ebionite, as he has been sometimes 1' represented. If he dwells almost exclusively on works, he yet states that the 'elect of God will be saved through faith⁸': if O.a.d. 145. he rarely quotes the New Testament, his references to the Old Testament are still fainter and scantier: if he speaks seldom of our Lord and never mentions Him by name, he yet asserts that the Son of God was present with His Father in counsel at the founding of creation*, and holds that the world is 'sustained by Him*.' Such expressions no Ebionite could have used. Of all the New Testament writings the Shepherd most resembles in tone the Epistle of St James, whose language it sometimes reflects: but the teaching of St James appears here in an exaggerated and perverted form. The author lays great stress on works, and so far he copies his model: but his interpretation of works is often formal and ritualistic, and in one passage he even states the doctrine of supererogation⁸. Whether the tone of this writing is to be ascribed to the traditional

¹ On the date of the Shepherd see Kriaeus airov • Sia Tovto Kox raXaiis ia

Galatiane, p. 99, note 3. Tiv. 'H Si 7ti/xi; Sia rl Kaurti, fani, K6pit;

¹ Vis. iii. 8: eomp. Mand. viii. "On, <prjalv, ii! iaxaruy rSm rinepuv rijs

* Sim. ix. 12. The whole passage ovvre\elai <paixpbs iyivero, Sii. Tovto

is striking: Updrov, <t"l/ii, R&vtuv, K6- Kiuctj iyiviro i] rvi, tva oi tUX\ovres

pie, Tovtb Hoi S-ij\uaov • i) rirpa Kal ij aiti^ea6oi Si avrrjs tIs rty jiaai\elav elo-

Ri!xi; rii laray; 'H rirpa, tylalv, a&nj (\Bwri Too 6eo0.

Kal ij r6\ij b Ms Tod 8«oO iarl. Ilfij, * Sim. ix. 14 T6 Svona rod vlov rov

tprifii, Kvpii, i) rirpa rd\aia Ifftiv, T) Si 8io0 nAya iarl Kal &xiipv⁰y Kul Toy

Tic'\ti Komhi; 'akovt, <prial, Kox aivie, Kbahov u\ov /Saordffi. On the whole

aairert. o \iiy vlbs Toc Qeov naa-qi riji subject see Dorner Lehre etc. 1. p. 186

Krlaeai airov rpoyeviarepis iariv, uare sq, Westoott Canon p. 202 sq.

aiiifiovhov airov yevia6ai rip rarpl Tiji * Sim. v. 3: comp. Mand. iv. 4.

feelings of Judaism yet lingering in the Church, or to the influence of a Judaic section still tolerated, or to the constitution of the author's own mind, it is impossible to say. The view of Christian ethics here presented deviates considerably, it is true, from St Paul's teaching; but the deviation is the same in kind and not greater in degree than marks a vast number of mediaeval writings, and may in fact be said to characterize more or less distinctly the whole mediaeval Church. Thus it affords no ground for the charge of Ebionism. Hermas speaks of law indeed, as St James speaks of it; yet by law he means not the Mosaic ordinances but the rule introduced by Christ. On the other hand his very silence is eloquent. There is not a word in favour of Judaic observances properly so called, not a word of denunciation direct or indirect against either the doctrine or the person of St Paul or his disciples. In this respect the Shepherd presents a marked contrast to the truly Ebionite work, which must be taken next in order.

The Clementine writings have been assigned with great confidence by most recent critics of ability to a Roman authorship¹. Of the truth of this view I am very far from convinced. The great argument—indeed almost the only argument—in its favour is the fact that the plot of the romance turns upon the wanderings of this illustrious bishop of Rome, who is at once the narrator and the hero of the story. But the fame of Clement reached far beyond the limits of his own jurisdiction. To him, we are specially told by a contemporary writer, was assigned the task of corresponding with foreign churches*. His rank and position, his acknowledged wisdom and piety, would point him out as the best typical representative of the Gentile converts: and an Ebionite writer, designing by a religious fiction to impress his views on Gentile Christendom, would naturally single out Clement for his hero, and by his example enforce the duty of obedience to the Church of the Circumcision, as the prerogative Church and the true standard of orthodoxy. At all events it is to be noticed that, beyond the use made of Clement's name, these writings do not betray any familiarity with or make any reference to the Roman Church in particular¹. On the contrary, the scenes are all laid in the East; and the supreme arbiter, the ultimate referee in all that relates to Christian doctrine and practice, is not Peter, the Clementine Apostle of the Gentiles, the reputed founder of the Roman Church, but James the Lord's brother, the bishop of bishops, the ruler of the mother Church of the Circumcision.

Roman origin of the Clementines questioned.

¹ So for instance Baur, Schliemann, Ritschl, Hilgenfeld: and this view is adopted by Dean Milman Latin Chriitianity I. p. 31, who speaks of it as 'the unanimous opinion of those who in later days have critically examined the

Clementina.' Uhlhorn is almost alone among recent critics in raising his voice against this general verdict: p. 370 sq. ² Hermas Vis. ii. 4 rinifia o'v K \ 7laii els ris {{<■> r6X«i' iKetnp yip inrirparrox.

If the Roman origin of these works is more than doubtful, the time of writing also is open to much question. The dates assigned to the Homilies by the ablest critics range over the •whole of the second century, and some place them even later. If the Roman authorship be abandoned, many reasons for a very early date will fall to the ground also. Whenever they Their imwere written, the Homilies are among the most interesting and J^,TM? important of early Christian writings; but they have no right ^atedto the place assigned them in the system of a modern critical school, as the missing link between the Judaism of the Christian era and the Catholicism of the close of the second century, as representing in fact the phase of Christianity taught at Rome and generally throughout the Church during the early ages. The very complexion of the writer's opinions is such, that they can hardly have been maintained by any large and important community, at least in the West. Had they presented a purer They canform of Judaism, founded on the Old Testament Scriptures, a ^nt"^TM

doctrine ¹ The Epistle of Clement to James, If the Homilies had really been writprefixed to the work, is an exception; ten by a lloman Christian, the slight for it gives an elaborate account of the and incidental mention of St Peter's sowriter's appointment by St Peter as journinRome(i.l6,comp.Recogn.i.74) his successor. The pnrpose of this let- would have thrown considerable doubt ter, which is to glorify the see of Rome, on the fact. But if they emanated from shows that it was no part of and proba- the East, from Syria for instance, no bly is later than the Homilies them- explanation of this silence is needed, selves.

of the

Roman
Church.

Notioe in Hippolytus.

No Ebionite leanings in the Roman Church.

more plausible case might have been made out. But the theology of the Clementines does not lie in a direct line between the Old Testament and Catholic Christianity: it deviates equally from the one and the other. In its rejection of half the Mosaic law and much more than half of the Old Testament, and in its doctrine of successive avatars of the Christ, it must have been as repugnant to the religious sentiments of a Jew trained in the school of Hillel, as it could possibly be to a disciple of St Paul in the first century or to a Catholic Christian in the third. Moreover the tone of the writer is not at all the tone of one who addresses a sympathetic audience. His attacks on St Paul are covert and indirect; he makes St Peter complain that he has been misrepresented and libelled. Altogether there is an air of deprecation and apology in the Homilies. If they were really written by a Roman Christian, they cannot represent the main body of the Church, but must have emanated from one of the many heresies with which the metropolis swarmed in the second century, when all promulgators of new doctrine gathered there, as the largest and therefore the most favourable market for their spiritual wares.

There is another reason also for thinking that this Gnostic Ebionism cannot have obtained any wide or lasting influence in the Church of Rome. During the episcopate of Callistus (A.D. 219—223) a heretical teacher appears in the metropolis, promulgating Elchasaite doctrines substantially, though not identically, the same with the creed of the Clementines, and at first seems likely to attain some measure of success, but is denounced and foiled by Hippolytus. It is clear that this learned writer on heresies regarded the Elchasaite doctrine as a novelty, against which therefore it was the more necessary to warn the faithful Christian. If the Ebionism of the Clementines had ever prevailed at Rome, it had passed into oblivion when Hippolytus wrote.

The few notices of the Roman Church in the second century point to other than Ebionite leanings. In their ecclesiastical ordinances the Romans seem anxious to separate themselves as widely as possible from Jewish practices. Thus they extended the Friday's fast over the Saturday, showing thereby a marked disregard of the sabbatical festival¹. Thus again they observed Easter on a different day from the Jewish passover; and so zealous were they in favour of their own traditional usage in this respect, that in the Paschal controversy their bishop Victor Evidence resorted to the extreme measure of renouncing communion with ₀hai conthose churches which differed from it⁸. This controversy affords ^troversva valuable testimony to the Catholicity of Christianity at Rome in another way. It is clear that the churches ranged on different sides on this question of ritual are nevertheless substantially agreed on all important points of doctrine and practice. This fact appears when Anicetus of Rome permits Polycarp of Smyrna, who had visited the metropolis in order to settle some disputed points and had failed in arranging the Paschal question, to celebrate the eucharist in his stead. It is distinctly stated by Irenaeus when he remonstrates with Victor for disturbing the peace of the Church by insisting on non-essentials*. In its creed the Roman Church was one with the Gallic and Asiatic Churches; and that this creed was not Ebionite, the names of Polycarp and Irenaeus are guarantees. Nor is it only in the Paschal controversy that the Catholicity of the Romans may be inferred from their intercourse with other Christian communities.

¹ Tertull. de Jejun. 14; see Neander index of Judaic or antijudaic leanings:

i'h. Hut. i. p. 410 (Bonn). bat when once attention was called to

⁹ On the Paschal controversy see its existence, and it became a matter of

Euseb. H. E. v. 23—25. Polycrates on controversy, the observance of the

behalf of the Asiatic Churches claimed Christian anniversary on the same day

the sanction of St John; and there with the Jewish festival would afford a

seems no reason to doubt the validity handle for the charge of Judaism; and

of this claim. On the other hand a where it was a matter of policy or of

different rule had been observed in the principle to stand clear of any sym

Koman Church at least as far back as pathy with Jewish customs (as for in

the episcopate of Xystus (about 120— stance in Palestine after the collision

129) and perhaps earlier. It seems of the Jews with the Bomans), the

probable then that the Easter festival Koman usage would be adopted in

had been established independently by preference to the Asiatic

the Romans and those who followed * In Euseb. H. E. v. 24 i) Suupuvla

the Roman practice. Thus in the first rip mjirrtlai Ttjc ifU>voiav tijt rterem

instance the difference of usage was no avrUmjatr, and the whole extract.

Other communications with foreign churches.

The remains of ecclesiastical literature, though sparse and fragmentary, are yet sufficient to reveal a wide network of intercommunication between the churches of the second century; and herein Rome naturally holds a central position. The visit of Hegesippus to the metropolis has been mentioned already. Not very long after we find Dionysius bishop of Corinth, whose 'orthodoxy' is praised by Eusebius, among other letters addressed to foreign churches, writing also to the Romans in terms of cordial sympathy and respect¹. On the Catholicity of the African Church I have already remarked: and the African Church was a daughter of the Roman, from whom therefore it may be assumed she derived her doctrine^*.

The gleams of light which break in upon the internal history of the Roman Church at the close of the second and beginning of the third century exhibit her assailed by rival heresies, compromised by the weakness and worldliness of her rulers, altogether distracted and unsteady, but in no way Ebionite. One bishop, whose name is not given, first dallies with the fanatical spiritualism of Montanus; then suddenly turning round, surrenders himself to the patripassian speculations of Praxeas*. Later than this two successive bishops, Zephyrinus and Callistus, are stated, by no friendly critic indeed but yet a contemporary writer, the one from stupidity and avarice, the other from craft and ambition, to have listened favourably to the heresies of Noetus and Sabellius^*. It was at this point in her history that the Church of Rome was surprised by the novel doctrines of the Elchasaite teacher, whom I have already mentioned more than once. But no one would maintain that at this late date Ebionism predominated either at Rome or in Christendom generally.

Internal condition of the Roman Church.

i In Euseb. H. E. iv. 23.

* Tertull. dc Praeicr. 36. Cyprian Eput. 48 (ed. Fell) writing to Cornelius speaks of Borne as 'Eoolesiae catholioae radicem et matricem,' in reference to the African Churches.

* Tertull. adv. Prax. 1. Tertullian,
now a Montanist, writes of Praxeas
who had persuaded this nameless bishop

of Rome to revoke his concessions to
Montanism, 'Ita duo negotia diaboh
Praxeas Romae procurnvit, prophetiam
expulit et haeresim intulit, paracletum
fugavit et patrem cruoifixit.' For spe-
culations as to the name of this bishop
see Wordsworth's Hippolytn s pp. 131,
132.
⁴ Hippol. Haer. ix. 7 sq.

Ebionites indeed there were at this time and very much later. Even at the close of the fourth century, they seem to have mustered in considerable numbers in the east of Palestine, and were scattered through the great cities of the empire. But Ebionism their existence was not prolonged much later. About the ^{ies ou}' middle of the fifth century they had almost disappeared¹. They would gradually be absorbed either into the Catholic Church or into the Jewish synagogue: into the latter probably, for their attachment to the law seems all along to have been stronger than their attachment to Christ.

Thus then a comprehensive survey of the Church in the second century seems to reveal a substantial unity of doctrine and a general recognition of Jewish and Gentile Apostles alike throughout the greater part of Christendom. At the same time it could hardly happen, that the influence of both should be equally felt or the authority of both estimated alike in all branches of the Church. St Paul and the Twelve had by mutual consent occupied distinct spheres of labour; and this distribution of provinces must necessarily have produced some effect on the subsequent history of the Church^'. The communities founded by St Paul would collect and preserve the letters of their founder with special care; while the brotherhoods evangelized by the Apostles of the Circumcision would attribute a superior, if not an exclusive, value to the writings of these 'pillars' of the Church. It would therefore be no great surprise if we should find that in individual writers of the second century and in different parts of the early Church, the Epistles of St Paul on the one hand, the Apocalypse of St John or the letter of St James on the other, were seldom or never appealed to as authorities^*. The equable circulation of all the apostolic writings was necessarily the work of time.

¹ Theodoret, Haer. Fab. ii. 11, men- ^s Gal. ii. 9; see Westeott's History

tions the Ebionites and the Elchasaites of the Canon p. 78 sq.

among those of whom ovW ftxix* Sil- * Many false inferences however,

nare \etyiwov. affecting the history of the Canonical

Use of the rpHE foregoing account of the conflict of the Church with

account. Judaism has been necessarily imperfect, and in some points

conjectural; but it will prepare the way for a more correct estimate of the relations between St Paul and the leading Apostles of the Circumcision. We shall be in a position to view these relations no longer as an isolated chapter in history, but in connexion with events before and after: and we shall be furnished also with means of estimating the value of later traditional accounts of these first preachers of the Gospel.

St Paol. St Paul himself is so clearly reflected in his owd writings,

that a distorted image of his life and doctrine would seem to be due only to defective vision. Yet our first impressions require to be corrected or rather supplemented by an after consideration. Seeing him chiefly as the champion of Gentile liberty, the constant antagonist of Jew and Judaizer, we are apt to forget that his character has another side also. By birth and education he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews: and the traditions and feelings of his race held him in honourable captivity to the very last.

His por- Of this fact the narrative of the Acts affords many striking

_Aots examples. It exhibits him associating with the Apostles of the

Circumcision on terms of mutual respect and love, celebrating the festivals and observing the rites of his countrymen, everywhere giving the precedence to the Jew over the Gentile.

Its truth But the character of the witness has been called in question.

_ea, This narrative, it is said, is neither contemporary nor trust

worthy. It was written long after the events recorded, with the definite purpose of uniting the two parties in the Church. Thus the incidents are forged or wrested to subserve the purpose of the writer. It was part of his plan to represent St Peter and St Paul as living on friendly terms, in order to reconcile the Petrine and Pauline factions.

writings, have been drawn from the canonical authority, and though they

silence of Eusebius, which has been allude incidentally to St Paul's labours

entirely misapprehended: see Con- (pp. 35, 61, 62), there is yet no refer

temporary Review, January, 1875, p. enoe to the epistles of this Apostle,

169 sq, Colossian s p. 52 sq. where the omission cannot have been

The phenomenon exhibited in the accidental (p. 32), and the most im

Aw'iait Syriac Documents (edited by portant churches founded by him,

Cureton, 1864) is remarkable. Though as Ephesua, Thessalonioa, Corinth,

they refer more than once to the Acts etc., are stated to have received 'the

of the Apostles (pp. 15, 27, 35) as the Apostles' Hand of Priesthood from

work of St Luke and as possessing John the Evangelist' (p. 34).

The Acts of the Apostles in the multiplicity and variety of its details probably affords greater means of testing its general character for truth than any other ancient narrative in existence; and in my opinion it satisfies the tests fully. But this is not the place for such an investigation. Neither shall I start from the assumption that it has any historical value. Taking common ground with those whose views I am considering, I shall draw my proofs from St Paul's Epistles alone in the first instance, nor from all of these, but from such only as are allowed even by the extreme critics of the Tubingen school to be genuine, the but estaEpistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians¹. It so his own happens that they are the most important for my purpose. If^{wn ings}' they contain the severest denunciations of the Judaizers, if they display the most uncompromising antagonism to Judaism, they also exhibit more strongly than any others St Paul's sympathies with his fellow-countrymen.

These then are the facts for which we have St Paul's direct

personal testimony in the epistles allowed by all to be genuine.

(1) The position of the Jews. He assigns to them the prerogative (l) Posi,-,., ... . ... /.,/-., t\oa of the

over the Gentiles; a prior right to the privileges of the Gospel, jews.

involving a prior reward if they are accepted and, according to

an universal rule in things spiritual, a prior retribution if they

are spurned (Rom. i. 16, ii. 9, 10). In the same spirit he

declares that the advantage is on the side of the Jew, and that

this advantage is 'much every way' (Rom. iii. 1, 2). (2) His (2) His

for them.

¹ These four epistles alone were master.' He accepts as genuine 1 Thes

accepted as genuine by Baur and salonians, Philippians, and Philemon:

Schwegler. Hilgenfeld, who may now thus substituting, as he expresses

be regarded as the chief of the Tii- it, the sacred number Seven for the

bingen school, has in this, as in many heathen Tetractys of his master: see

other points, deserted the extreme po- Zeitsch.filr wissemoh. Theol. v. p. 226

sition of Baur whom he calls the 'great (1862).

affection for his countrymen. His earnestness and depth of feeling are nowhere more striking than when he is speaking of the Jews: 'Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved: for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge' (Rom. x. 1, 2). Thus in spite of their present stubborn apostasy he will not allow that they have been cast away (xi. 1), but looks forward to the time when 'all Israel shall be saved' (xi 26). So strong indeed is his language in one passage, that commentators regarding the letter rather than the spirit of the Apostle's prayer, have striven to explain it away by feeble apologies and unnatural interpretations: 'I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart: for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ (avddefia elvai Ovto? 67a> airb Tov Xpio-rov) for my brethren, my kinsmen

(3) His according to the flesh' (Rom. ix. 1—3). (3) His practical care care for for his countrymen. The collection of alms for the poor brethren

of Judaea occupies much of his attention and suggests messages to various churches (Rom. xv. 25, 26; 1 Cor. xvi. 1—6; 2 Cor. viii, ix; Gal. ii. 10). It is clear not only that he is very solicitous himself on behalf of the Christians of the Circumcision, but that he is anxious also to inspire his Gentile converts with

(4) His the same interest. (4) His conformity to Jewish habits and usages. ity to their St Paul lays down this rule, to 'become all things to all men usages. that) he may by all means save some' (1 Cor. ix. 22). This is

the key to all seeming inconsistencies in different representations of his conduct. In his epistles we see him chiefly as a Gentile among Gentiles; but this powerful moral weapon has another edge. Applying this maxim, he himself tells us emphatically that' unto the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might gain the Jews; unto them that are under the law as under the law, that he might gain them that are under the law' (1 Cor. ix. 20). The charges of his Judaizing opponents are a witness that he did carry out his maxim in this direction, as in the other. With a semblance of truth they taunt him with inconsistency, urging that in his own practice he had virtually admitted their principles, that in fact he had himself preached circumcision¹. (5) His reverence (5) His use for the Old Testament Scriptures. This is a strongly marked Testafeature in the four epistles which I am considering. They teem ^mentwith quotations, while there are comparatively few in his remaining letters. For metaphor, allegory, example, argument, confirmation, he draws upon this inexhaustible store. However widely he may have differed from his rabbinical teachers in other respects, he at least did not yield to them in reverence for 'the law and the prophets and the psalms.'

These facts being borne in mind (and they are indisputable) the portrait of St Paul in the Acts ought not to present any difficulties. It records no one fact of the Apostle, it attributes no sentiment to him, which is not either covered by some comprehensive maxim or supported by some practical instance in his acknowledged letters. On the other hand the tone of the Difference history confessedly differs somewhat from the tone of the tween the epistles. Nor could it possibly have been otherwise. "Written g⁰^⁸,? in the heat of the conflict, written to confute unscrupulous antagonists and to guard against dangerous errors, St Paul's language could not give a complete picture of his relations with the Apostles and the Church of the Circumcision. Arguments directed against men, who disparaged his authority by undue exaltation of the Twelve, offered the least favourable opportunity of expressing his sympathy with the Twelve. Denunciations of Judaizing teachers, who would force their national rites on the Gentile Churches, were no fit vehicle for acknowledging his respect for and conformity with those rites. The fairness of this line of argument will be seen by comparing the differences observable in his own epistles. His tone may be said to be graduated according to the temper and character of his hearers. The opposition of the Galatian letter to the Mosaic ritual is stern and uncompromising. It was written to correct a virulent form of Judaism. On the other hand the remonstrances in the Epistle to the Romans are much more moderate, guarded by ¹ See Galatians p. 28 sq, and notes on Gal. i. 10, ii. 3, v. 2,11.

constant explanations and counterpoised by expressions of deep sympathy. Here he was writing to a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles, where there had been no direct opposition to his authority, no violent outbreak of Judaism. If then we picture him in his intercourse with his own countrymen at Jerusalem, where the claims of his nation were paramount and where the cause of Gentile liberty could not be compromised, it seems most natural that he should have spoken and acted as he is represented in the Acts. Luther denouncing the pope for idolatry and Luther rebuking Carlstadt for iconoclasm writes like two different persons. He bids the timid and gentle Melanchthon 'sin and sin boldly': he would have cut his right hand off sooner than pen such words to the antinomian rioters of Munster. It is not that the man or his principles were changed: but the same words addressed to persons of opposite tempers would have conveyed a directly opposite meaning. St Paul's St Paul's language then, when in this epistle he describes

with the his relations with the Three, must be interpreted with this described c*¹¹ti^o11*^tnat it necessarily exhibits those relations in a partial in this aspect. The purport of this language, as I understand it, is explained in the notes: and I shall content myself here with gathering up the results.

(1) There is a general recognition of the position and authority of the elder Apostles, both in the earlier visit to Jerusalem when he seeks Peter apparently for the purpose of obtaining instruction in the facts of the Gospel, staying with him a fortnight, and in the later visit which is undertaken for the purpose, if I may use the phrase, of comparing notes with the other Apostles and obtaining their sanction for the freedom of the Gentile Churches. (2) On the other hand there is an uncompromising resistance to the extravagant and exclusive claims set up on their behalf by the Judaizers. (3) In contrast to these claims, St Paul's language leaves the impression (though the inference cannot be regarded as certain), that they had not offered a prompt resistance to the Judaizers in the first instance, hoping perhaps to conciliate them, and that the brunt

of the contest had been borne by himself and Barnabas. (4) At the same time they are distinctly separated from the policy and principles of the Judaizers, who are termed false brethren, spies in the Christian camp. (5) The Apostles of the Circumcision find no fault with St Paul's Gospel, and have nothing to add to it. (6) Their recognition of his office is most complete. The language is decisive in two respects: it represents this recognition first as thoroughly mutual, and secondly as admitting a perfect equality and independent position. (7) At the same time a separate sphere of labour is assigned to each: the one are to preach to the heathen, the other to the Circumcision. There is no implication, as some have represented, that the Gospel preached to the Gentile would differ from the Gospel preached to the Jew. Such an idea is alien to the whole spirit of the passage. Lastly, (8) Notwithstanding their distinct spheres of work, St Paul is requested by the Apostles of the Circumcision to collect the alms of the Gentiles for the poor brethren of Judaea, and to this request he responds cordially.

With the exception of the incident at Antioch, which will References be considered presently, the Epistle to the Galatians contains other epinothing more bearing directly on the relations between St ^sPaul and the Apostles of the Circumcision. Other special references are found in the Epistles to the Corinthians, but none elsewhere. These notices, slight though they are, accord with the view presented by the Galatian letter. St Paul indeed says more than once that he is 'not a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles' (to>i> virepXlav airoaroXtav, 2 Cor. xi. 5, xii . 11), and there is in the original a slight touch of irony which disappears in the translation: but the irony loses its point unless the exclusive preference of the elder Apostles is regarded as an exaggeration of substantial claims. Elsewhere St Paul speaks of Cephas and the Lord's brethren as exercising an apostolic privilege which belonged also to himself and Barnabas (1 Cor. ix. 5), of Cephas and James as witnesses of the Lord's resurrection like himself (1 Cor. xv. 5, 7). In the last passage he calls himself (with evident reference to the elder Apostles who are

mentioned immediately before) ' the least of the Apostles, who is not worthy to be called an Apostle.' In rebuking the dissensions at Corinth, he treats the name of Cephas with a delicate courtesy and respect which has almost escaped notice. When he comes to argue the question, he at once drops the name of St Peter; 'While one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? What then is Apollos, and what is Paul?' Apollos was so closely connected with him (1 Cor. xvi. 12), that he could use his name without fear of misapprehension. But in speaking of Cephas he had to observe more caution: certain persons persisted in regarding St Peter as the head of a rival party, and therefore he is careful to avoid any seeming depreciation of his brother Apostle. No an- In all this there is nothing inconsistent with the character

between St of St Paul as drawn in the Acts, nothing certainly which th^other represents him as he was represented by extreme partisans in Apostles, ancient times, by Ebionites on the one hand and Marcionites on the other, and as he has been represented of late by a certain school of critics, in a position of antagonism to the chief Apostles of the Circumcision. I shall next examine the scriptural notices and traditional representations of these three. St Pbtbb 1. The author of the Clementine Homilies makes St Peter Ebionites'^ ^tne mouth-piece of his own Ebionite views. In the prefatory letter of Peter to James which, though possibly the work of another author, represents the same sentiments, the Apostle complains that he has been misrepresented as holding that the law was abolished but fearing to preach this doctrine openly. 'Far be it,' he adds,' for to act so is to oppose the law of God which was spoken by Moses and to which our Lord bare witness that it should abide for ever. For thus He said, Heaven and earth shall pass away: one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law. And this He said that all things might be fulfilled. Yet these persons professing to give my sentiments (tov ifiov vovv iirarfyeWofievoi) I know not how, attempt to interpret the words that they have heard from me more cleverly (QpovifMorepov) than myself who spoke them, telling

their pupils that this is my meaning (<f>p6vrj-fia), though it

never once entered into my mind (o eyai oiSe ive6vfiq0rjv).

But if they dare to tell such falsehoods of me while I am still

alive, how much more will those who come after me venture to

do it when I am gone (§ 2).' It has been held by some modern

critics that the words thus put into the Apostle's mouth are

quite in character; that St Peter did maintain the perpetuity

of the law; and that therefore the traditional account which

has pervaded Catholic Christendom from the writing of the

Acts to the present day gives an essentially false view of the

Apostle.

I think the words quoted will strike most readers as betraying

a consciousness on the part of the writer that he is treading on

hollow and dangerous ground. But without insisting on this, it

is important to observe that the sanction of this venerated &^nd also • • by oppo

name was claimed by other sectarians of opposite opinions, site sects.

Basilides (about A.D. 180), the famous Gnostic teacher, announced

that he had been instructed by one Glaucias an 'interpreter' of

St Peter¹. An early apocryphal writing moreover, which

should probably be assigned to the beginning of the second

century and which expressed strong antijudaic views8, was

¹ Clem.Alex.Sfro7ra.vii.p.898,Potter. The identity of this work with the

² On this work, the K^pvyna JIt- Praedicatio Pauli quoted in the trea

rpov, see Sohwegler Nachap. Zeit. u. tise De Baptismo Haereticorum printed

p. 30 sq. Its opposition to Judaism among Cyprian's works (App. p. 30,

appears in an extant fragment preserved Fell) seems to me very doubtful, though

in Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. p. 760, pi$l maintained by several able critics.

Kari 'lovSattvs aipeaBc.uate Kal u/ieis The passage there quoted is strangely

oatus Ko.1 ii*afus pavBdvoirts a rapaSL- misinterpreted by Baur (Chriatenthum

tonev vpxv <pv\&aaea6e, Kaivus rbv Qtov p. 53). I give his words, lest I should

oii Toc XpurroC aefUnevoc evpo/iev ybp have misunderstood him: 'Auch die

iy reus yoaiptus Ktl8us i HUpios \iyei' kirchliche Sage, welche die Apostel

'Uoi> oia.tWtp.ai vnlv *iuHjr SiaBjKriv wieder zusammenbrachte, lasst erst

K.t.\. The fragments of this work am Enrte nach einer langen Zeit

are collected by Grabe, Spicil. L p. 62 der Trennung die gegenseitige Aner

sq. It was made use of by Heracleon kennung zu Stande kommen. Post

the Valentinian, and is quoted more tanta tempora, hiess es in der Pr»

than once, apparently as genuine, by dicatio Pauli in der Stelle, welche sich

Clement of Alexandria. in der Cyprian's Werken angehangten

entitled the 'Preaching of Peter.' I do not see why these assertions have not as great a claim to a hearing as the opposite statement of the Ebionite writer. They are probably earlier; and in one case at least we have more tangible evidence than the irresponsible venture of an anonymous romance writer. The probable inference however from such conflicting statements would be, that St Peter's true position was somewhere between the two extremes.

But we are not to look for trustworthy information from such sources as these. If we wish to learn the Apostle's real attitude in the conflict between Jewish and Gentile converts, St Paul's the one fragmentary notice in the Epistle to the Galatians will the occur- reveal more than all the distorted and interested accounts of AnUoch later ages: 'But when Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to the face, for he was condemned (his conduct condemned itself). For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles, but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those of the circumcision: and the rest of the Jews also dissembled with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation (o-vvaTnjx^r j ainwv Tjj viroKpLa-ei). But when I saw that they walked not straight according to the truth of the Gospel, I said unto Cephas before all, If thou, being born a Jew ('IovSaw? virap^osv), livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not after the manner of the Jews, how compellest thou the Gentiles to live like the Jews? etc.' (ii. 11—14).

Schrift de rebaptismate erhalten hat (Cypr. Opp. ed. Baluz. s. 365 f.),Petrum et Paulum poat oonlationem evangelii in Jerusalem et mutuam cogitationem [?] etaltercationem et rerum agendarum dispositionem postremo in urbe, quasi tunc primum, invioem sibi esse cognitos.' Baur thus treats the comment of the writer as if it were part of the quotation. In this treatise the writer denounces the Praedicatio 1'auli as maintaining' adulterinum, imo in ternecinum baptisma'; in order to invalidate its authority, he proceeds to show its thoroughlyunhistoricalcharacter; and

among other instances he alleges the fact that it makes St Peter and St Paul meet in Rome as if for the first time, forgetting all about the congress at Jerusalem, the collision at Antioch, and so forth. Schwegler takes the correct view of the passage, II. p. 32.

Other early apocryphal works attributed to the chief Apostle of the Circumcision are the Qospel, the Acts, and the Apocalypse of Peter; bat our information respecting these is too scanty to throw much light on the present question: on the Gospel of Peter see above, p. 27.

Now the point of St Paul's rebuke is plainly this: that in sanctioning the Jewish feeling which regarded eating with the Gentiles as an unclean thing, St Peter was untrue to his principles, was acting hypocritically and from fear. In the argument which follows he assumes that it was the normal practice of Peter to live as a Gentile (iBvui&s £775 and not iBviK(0i t&<!), in other words, to mix freely with the Gentiles, to eat with them, and therefore to disregard the distinction of things clean and unclean: and he argues on the glaring inconsistency and unfairness that Cephas should claim this liberty himself though not born to it, and yet by hypocritical compliance with the Jews should practically force the ritual law on the Gentiles and deprive them of a freedom which was their natural right¹.

How St Peter came to hold these liberal principles, so It accords entirely opposed to the narrow traditions of his age and country, incident is explained by an incident narrated in the Acts. He was I_n^latf^d_t^m at one time as rigid and as scrupulous as the most bigoted of his countrymen: 'nothing common or unclean had at any time entered into his mouth' (x. 14, xi. 8). Suddenly a light bursts in upon the darkness of his religious convictions. He is taught by a vision 'not to call any man common or unclean' (x. 28). His sudden change scandalizes the Jewish

¹ I do not see how this conclusion and severing it from the context; bnt can be resisted. According to the Tii- even then he is obliged to acquit the bingen view of St Peter's position, his other Jewish Christians at Antioch of hypocrisy or dissimulation must have Ebionism. Hilgenfeld (Galater p. 61 consisted not in withdrawing from, but sq) discards Schwegler's interpretation in holding intercourse with the Gen- and explains iriKpiai t of the self-contiles; but this is not the view of St Paul traduction, the unconscious inoonsiston any natural interpretation of his ency of Jewish Christian or Ebionite words; and certainly the Ebionite wri- principles: but inconsistency is not (lister already quoted (p. 110) did not so simulation or hypocrisy, and this interunderstand his meaning. Schwegler (1. pretation, like the former, loses sight of p. 129) explains awvreKpWriaav iu'TM the context which denounces St Peter 'were hypocritical enough to side with for abandoning a certain line of conhim,' thus forcing the expression itself duct from timidity.

brethren: but he explains and for the moment at least convinces (xi. 18). and with And if his normal principles are explained by the narrative

racter as of the Acts, his exceptional departure from them is illustrated th^Gos- ^Dv ^is character as it appears in the Gospels. The occasional I*^1s- timidity and weakness of St Peter will be judged most harshly

by those who have never themselves felt the agony of a great moral crisis, when not their own ease and comfort only, which is a small thing, but the spiritual welfare of others seems to clamour for a surrender of their principles. His true nobleness— his fiery zeal and overflowing love and abandoned self-devotion —will be appreciated most fully by spirits which can claim some kindred however remote with his spirit.

Thus the fragmentary notices in the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles of St Paul, combine to form a harmonious portrait of a character, not consistent indeed, but—to use Aristotle's significant phrase—consistently inconsistent (ofiaXw dvcofiaXov); The First and this is a much safer criterion of truth. But there is yet St Peter another source of information to be considered—his own letters. If the deficiency of external evidence forbids the use of the Second Epistle in controversy, the First labours under no such disabilities; for very few of the apostolical writings are better attested.

To this epistle indeed it has been objected that it bears too

shows the manifest traces of Pauline influence to be the genuine writing

of St Paul of St Peter. The objection however seems to overlook two

important considerations. First. If we consider the prominent

part borne by St Paul as the chief preacher of Christianity in

countries Hellenic by race or by adoption; if we remember

further that his writings were probably the first which clothed

the truths of the Gospel and the aspirations of the Church in

the language of Greece; we shall hardly hesitate to allow that

he ' had a great influence in moulding this language for Christian

purposes, and that those who afterwards trod in his footsteps

could hardly depart much from the idiom thus moulded¹.'

¹ Schleiermacher, Einl. ins N. T. p. 402 sq. Secondly. It is begging the whole question to assume that St Peter derived nothing from the influence of the Apostle of the Gentiles. The one was essentially a character to impress, the other to be impressed. His superior in intellectual culture, in breadth of sympathy, and in knowledge of men, his equal in love and zeal for Christ, St Paul must have made his influence felt on the frank and enthusiastic temperament of the elder Apostle. The weighty spiritual maxims thrown out during the dispute at Antioch for instance would sink deep into his heart¹; and taking into account the many occasions when either by his writings or by personal intercourse St Paul's influence would be communicated, we can hardly doubt that the whole effect was great.

But after all the epistle bears the stamp of an individual but bears mind quite independent of this foreign element. The sub- vidual stratum of the thoughts is the writer's own. Its individuality ^stamP indeed appears more in the contemplation of the life and sufferings of Christ, in the view taken of the relations between the believer and the world around, in the realisation of the promises made to the chosen people of old, in the pervading sense of a regenerate life and the reiterated hope of a glorious advent, than in any special development of doctrine: but it would be difficult to give any reason why, prior to experience, we should have expected it to be otherwise.

Altogether the epistle is anything but Ebionite. Not only of a mind is the 'law' never once named, but there is no allusion to but not formal ordinances of any kind. The writer indeed is essentially ^Ebl0mtean Israelite, but he is an Israelite after a Christian type. When he speaks of the truths of the Gospel, he speaks of them through the forms of the older dispensation: he alludes again and again to the ransom of Christ's death, but the image present to his

¹ See 1 Pet. ii. 24 T&s d/ux/n-faj v/iui/ doctrinal teaching (though there are

abrm &rfp>eyKev iv T<f a&ium airov M occasionally strong resemblances of

ri (i\ov, fro reus &naprtais &royevonevoi, language). With it oompare Gal. ii. 20

tjj 01KW.01TVVQ ffjo-u/iw. This is the Xpurrip jwe<rraipunai.' f<3 Si oiKiri iyii,

most striking instance-which the epistle fjj Si iv f/iol Xpurris *.r.X. exhibits of coincidence with St Paul's

mind is the paschal lamb without spot or blemish; he addresses himself to Gentile converts, but he transfers to them the cherished titles of the covenant race; they are the true 'dispersion' (i. 1); the)' are 'a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people' (ii. 9). The believer in Christ is the Israelite; the unbeliever the Gentile (ii. 12). Its rela- Corresponding to the position of St Peter as he appears in

Paul and the Apostolic history, this epistle in its language and tone St James. _oCCUpi_{es a} place midway between the writings of St James and St Paul. With St James it dwells earnestly on the old: with St Paul it expands to the comprehension of the new. In its denunciation of luxurious wealth, in its commendation of the simple and homely virtues, in its fond reference to past examples in Jewish history for imitation or warning, it recalls the tone of the head of the Hebrew Church: in its conception of the grace of God, of the ransom of Christ's death, of the wide purpose of the Gospel, it approaches to the language of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Mark and With St Paul too the writer links himself by the mention

G'l

of two names, both Christians of the Circumcision, and both companions of the Gentile Apostle; Mark who, having accompanied him on his first missionary tour, after some years of alienation is found by his side once more (CoL iv. 10), and Silvanus who shared with him the labours and perils of planting the Gospel in Europe. Silvanus is the bearer or the amanuensis of St Peter's letter; Mark joins in the salutations (v. 12, 13). St Peter Thus the Churches of the next generation, which were

Paul asso- likely to be well informed, delighted to unite the names of the ciated in t_wo le^^g Apostles as the greatest teachers of the Gospel, dition. the brightest examples of Christian life. At Rome probably, at Antioch certainly, both these Apostles were personally known. We have the witness of the one Church in Clement; of the Rome, other in Ignatius. The former classes them together as the two 'noble ensamples of his own generation,' 'the greatest and most righteous pillars' of the Church, who ' for hatred and envy Antioch. were persecuted even unto death' (§ 5). The latter will not venture to command the Christians of Rome, 'as Peter and Paul did; they were Apostles, he a convict; they were free, he a slave to that very hour¹.' Clement wrote before the close of the first century, Ignatius at the beginning of the second It seems probable that both these fathers had conversed with one or other of the two Apostles. Besides Antioch and Rome, the names of St Peter and St Paul appear together also in connexion with the Church of Corinth (1 Cor. iii. 22). This Corinth, church again has not withheld her voice, though here the later date of her testimony detracts somewhat from its value², Dionysius bishop of Corinth, writing to the Romans during the episcopate of Soter (c. 166—174), claims kindred with them on the ground that both churches alike had profited by the joint instruction of St Peter and St Paul^*.

But though the essential unity of these two Apostles is thus Misreprerecognised by different branches of the Catholic Church, a ₀f _extreme disposition to sever them seems early to have manifested itself P^artlesin some quarters. Even during their own lifetime the religious agitators at Corinth would have placed them in spite of themselves at the head of rival parties. And when death had removed all fear of contradiction, extreme partisans boldly claimed the sanction of the one or the other for their own views. The precursors of the Ebionites misrepresented the Israelite sympathies of St Peter, as if he had himself striven to put a yoke upon the neck of the Gentiles which neither their

¹ Rom. 4. The words o&x <'>» IM- *«l 7fy> &M-<pu Ko2 els rtp> rinertpa.v Kirpos Kai IlaOXos 8iat<£affo/xiu vnlv gain pivBov <pon-l)aavres 17/ias ofwtus iSiSa(av, force, as addressed to the Romans, opxilus Si Kal efc ri 'Ira\lav 6n&at if we suppose both Apostles to have Sis4£avtts inaprvpriaav Karb rbv avriv preached in Rome. Kiupbv. All the Mss and the Syriac

² The language of Clement however version here have ipvreiaavres; bat implicitly contains the testimony of this ^omjff-acrej is read by Georgius Synchurch at an earlier date: for he assumes cellus, and Rufinus has 'adventautes'; the acquiescence of the Corinthians the sense too seems to require it. In when be mentions both Apostles as of any case it is hardly a safe inference equal authority (§§ 5, 47). that Dionysius erroneously supposed

* In Euseb. 11. E. ii. 25 -rtp> dri the Churches of Rome and Corinth to TUrpov Kox Ka6\ov ipvreUi v yevtiBiiaav have been founded by both Apostles 'Vu/iatun> re Kal KopivBiuv avvexepiaare. jointly.

fathers nor they were able to bear. The precursors of Marcionism exaggerated the antagonism of St Paul to the Mosaic ritual, as if he had indeed held the law to be sin and the commandConcilia- ment neither holy nor just nor good. It seems to have been a of1ithe"¹¹ subsidiary aim of St Luke's narrative, which must have been Acts. written not many years after the martyrdom of both Apostles, to show that this growing tendency was false, and that in their life, as in their death, they were not divided. A rough parallelism between the career of the two reveals itself in the narrative when carefully examined. Recent criticism has laid much stress on this ' conciliatory' purpose of the Acts, as if it were fatal to the credit of the narrative. But denying the inference we may concede the fact, and the very concession draws its sting. Such a purpose is at least as likely to have been entertained by a writer, if the two Apostles were essentially united, as if they were not. The truth or falsehood of the account must be determined on other grounds. St John 2. While St Peter was claimed as their leader by the

e<j _Dy Judaizers, no such liberty seems to have been taken with the Ebionites. _{name o}f S_T John¹. Long settled in an important Gentile city, surrounded by a numerous school of disciples, still living at the dawn of the second century, he must have secured for his teaching such notoriety as protected it from gross misrepresentation. His posi- His last act recorded in St Luke's narrative is a visit to the

apostolio newly founded Churches of Samaria, in company with St Peter history. (v— j^ jj_e ^_{ins s}fc_amp_S y^fa his approval the first movement of the Church in its liberal progress. From the silence of both St Paul and St Luke it may be inferred that he took no very prominent part in the disputes about the Mosaic law. Only at the close of the conferences we find him together with St Peter and St James recognising the authority and work of St Paul, and thus giving another guarantee of his desire to advance the liberties of the Church. This is the only passage where he is mentioned in St Paul's Epistles. Yet it seems probable that though he did not actually participate in the public discussions, his unseen influence was exerted to promote the result. As in the earliest days of the Church, so now we may imagine him ever at St Peter's side, his faithful colleague and wise counsellor, not forward and demonstrative, but most powerful in private, pouring into the receptive heart of the elder Apostle the lessons of his own inward experience, drawn from close personal intercourse and constant spiritual communion with his Lord.

¹ In the portion of the first book of in their writings. In another passage

the Recognitions, which seems to have Epiphanius attributes to the sons of Ze

been taken from the 'Ascents of James,' bedee the same ascetic practices which

the sons of Zebedee are introduced with distinguished James the Lord's brother

the rest of the Twelve confuting here- (Haer. 1 xxviii. 13); and this account

sies, but the sentiments attributed to he perhaps derived from some Essene

them are in no way Ebionite (i. 57). Ebionite source. But I do not know

It is this work perhaps to which Epi- that they ever claimed St John in the

phanius refers (xxx. 23), for Ms notice same way as they claimed St Peter and

does not imply anything more than a St James. casual introduction of St John's name

At length the hidden fires of his nature burst out into flame. His life in When St Peter and St Paul have ended their labours, the more his writactive career of St John is just beginning. If it had been their ^mgstask to organize and extend the Church, to remove her barriers and to advance her liberties, it is his special province to build up and complete her theology. The most probable chronology makes his withdrawal from Palestine to Asia Minor coincide very nearly with the martyrdom of these two Apostles, who have guided the Church through her first storms and led her to her earliest victories. This epoch divides his life into two distinct periods: hitherto he has lived as a Jew among Jews; henceforth he will be as a Gentile among Gentiles. The writings of St John in the Canon probably mark the close of each period. The Apocalypse winds up his career in the Church of the Circumcision; the Gospel and the Epistles are the crowning result of a long residence in the heart of Gentile Christendom.

Both the one and the other contrast strongly with the leading features of Ebionite doctrine; and this fact alone would deter the Judaizers from claiming the sanction of a name so revered. The Apo- of all the writings of the New Testament the Apocalypse

calypse °

Hebrew in is most thoroughly Jewish in its language and imagery. The

T#"Q ITT)ft*

gery, whole book is saturated with illustrations from the Old Testament. It speaks not the language of Paul, but of Isaiah and Ezekiel and Daniel. Its tone may be well described by an expression borrowed from the book itself; 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' (xix. 10). The doctrine of Balaam, the whoredoms of Jezebel, the song of Moses, the lion of Judah, the key of David, the great river Euphrates, the great city Babylon, Sodom and Egypt, Gog and Magog, these and similar expressions are but the more striking instances of an imagery with which the Apocalypse teems. Nor are the symbols derived solely from the canonical Scriptures; in the picture of the New Jerusalem the inspired Apostle has borrowed many touches from the creations of rabbinical fancy. Up to this point the Apocalypse is completely Jewish and might have

but not been Ebionite. But the same framing serves only to bring out

in doc- more strongly the contrast between the pictures themselves.

"""'' The two distinctive features of Ebionism, its mean estimate of the person of Christ and its extravagant exaltation of the Mosaic law, are opposed alike to the spirit and language of St

The John. It might have been expected that the beloved disciple,

who had leaned on his Master's bosom, would have dwelt with fond preference on the humanity of our Lord: yet in none of the New Testament writings, not even in the Epistles of St Paul, do we find a more express recognition of His divine power and majesty. He is 'the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning (the source) of the creation of God' (iii. 14). 'Blessing, honour, glory, and power' are ascribed not'to Him that sitteth on the throne' only, but 'to the Lamb for ever and ever'(v. 13). His name is 'the Word of God' (xix. 13). Therefore He claims the titles and attributes of Deity. He declares Himself' the Alpha and Omega, the first and last, the beginning and the end' (xxii. 13; comp. i. 8). He is 'the Lord of lords and the King of kings' (xvii . 14, xix. 16). And so too the Ebionite reverence for the law as still binding has no place in the Apocalypse. The word does not occur from beginning to The law. end, nor is there a single allusion to its ceremonial as an abiding ordinance. The Paschal Lamb indeed is ever present to St John's thought; but with him it signifies not the sacrifice offered in every Jewish home year by year, but the Christ who once ' was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation' (v. 9). All this is very remarkable, since there is every reason to believe that up to this time St John had in practice observed the Jewish law¹. To him however it was only a national custom

¹ Certain traditions of St John's residence at Ephesus, illustrating his relation to the Mosaic law, deserve notice here. They are given by Polycrates who was himself bishop of Ephesus (Euseb. H. E. v. 24). Writing to pope Victor, probably in the last decade of the second century, he mentions that he 'numbers (tx<^M) sixty-five years in the Lord' (whether he refers to the date of his birth or of his conversion, is uncertain, but the former seems more probable), and that he has had seven relations bishops, whose tradition he follows. We are thus carried back to a very early date. The two statements with which we are concerned are these. (1) St John celebrated the Paschal day on the 14th of the month, coinciding with the Jewish passover. It seems to me, as I have said already (see p. 101), that there is no good ground for questioning this tradition. The institution of such an annual celebration by this Apostle derives light from the many references to the Paschal Lamb in the Apocalypse; and in the first instance it would seem most natural to celebrate it on the exact anniversary of the Passover. It is more questionable whether the Roman and other Churches, whose usage has passed into the law of Chris

tendom, had really the apostolic sanction which they vaguely asserted for celebrating it always on the Friday. This usage, if not quite so obvious as the other, was not unnatural and probably was found much more convenient. (2) Polycrates says incidentally of St John that he was 'a priest wearing the mitre and a martyr and teacher (8s iyeviiBri Upiin T6 Ittio\ov rf<popexun Kal H&prvi Kal SiSdffKa\os).' The reference in the lrira\ov is doubtless to the metal plate on the high-priest's mitre, cf. Exod. xxviii. 36 rtraKov yj>vaovv Ka6apiv, comp. Protevang. c. 5 To rird\ov Tow lepius; but the meaning of Polycrates is far from clear. He has perhaps mistaken metaphor for matter of fact (see Stanley Apostolical Age p. 285); in like manner as the name Theophorus assumed by Ignatius gave rise to the later story that he was the child whom our Lord took in His arms and blessed. I think it probable however that the words as they stand in Polycrates are intended for a metaphor, since the short fragment which contains them has several figurative expressions almost, if not quite, as violent; e.g. nty&\a oroix«a KtKoinijrai (where <Troix«a means 'luminaries,' being used of the heavenly bodies); MtXfrwa tbv eivovxoy (proba

and not an universal obligation, only one of the many garbs in which religious worship might clothe itself, and not the essence of religious life. In itself circumcision is nothing, as uncircumcision also is nothing; and therefore he passes it over as if it were not. The distinction between Jew and Gentile has ceased; the middle wall of partition is broken down in Christ. If preserving the Jewish imagery which pervades the book, he records the sealing of twelve thousand from each tribe of Israel, his range of vision expands at once, and he sees before the throne 'a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues' (vii. 9). If he denounces the errors of heathen speculation, taking up their own watchword 'knowledge (yvwo-t?)' and retorting upon them that they know only ' the depths of Satan' (ii. 24)¹, on the other hand he condemns in similar language the bigotry of Jewish prejudice, denouncing the blasphemy of those 'who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan' (ii. 9; comp. iii. 9).

bly a metaphor, as Rufinus translates
it,' propter regnum dei eunuchum'; see
Matt. six. 12and comp. Athenag. Suppl.
33, 34, Clem. Alex. Paed. iii. 4, p. 269,
Strom, iii. 1. p. 509 sq); rbv /uxpiv /wv
avBpurov (' my insignificance'; comp.
Rom. vi. 6 i ra\aibs rm&v duBpuros,
2 Cor. iv. 16 o j-|« iinuv oMponros, 1 Pet.
iii. 4 b Kpinrrbs rijt KapStas w/Bponros).
The whole passage is a very rude speci-
men of the florid 'Asiatio' style, which
even in its higher forms Cicero con-
demns as suited only to the ears of a
people wanting in polish and good taste
('minime politaeminimequeelegantes,'
Orator, 25) and which is described by
another writer as Ko/xtiustjs Kalippvaypui-
rlas Kal Kevov yavpid/iaros KoX <pi\orinias
ivoiiid\ov ni<rr6s, Plut. Vit. Anton. 2;
see Bernhardy Griech. Litt. i. p. 465.
On the other hand it is possible—I think
not probable—that St John did wear
this decoration as an emblem of his
Christian privileges; noronght this view

to cause any offence, as inconsistent
with the spirituality of his character.
If in Christ the use of external symbols
is nothing, the avoidance of them is no-
thing also. But whether the statement
of Polycrates be metaphor or matter of
fact, its significance, as in the case of
the Paschal celebration, is to be learnt
from the Apostle's own language in the
Apocalypse, where not only is great
stress laid on the priesthood of the be-
lievers generally (i. 6, v. 10, xx. 6), bat
even the special privileges of the high-
priest are bestowed on the victorious
Christian (Rev. ii. 17, as explained by
Zilllig, Trench, and others: see Stanley
1. c. p. 285; comp. Justin Dial. 116
&pXiepatiKbv rb dXifSvbv T^roi ianibr
Tov 6eo0, and see below, p. 218). The
expression is a striking example of the
lingering power not of Ebionite tenets
but of Hebrew imagery.
¹ See above, p. 64, note 3.

A lapse of more than thirty years spent in the midst of a The Gos

Gentile population will explain the contrasts of language and Epiistles

imagery between the Apocalypse and the later writings of St ^co"^trasted

John, due allowance being made for the difference of subject¹, pared with

theApocaThe language and colouring of the Gospel and Epistles are no lypse.

longer Hebrew; but so far as a Hebrew mind was capable of the transformation, Greek or rather Greco-Asiatic. The teaching of these latter writings it will be unnecessary to examine; for all, I believe, will allow their general agreement with the theology of St Paul; and it were a bold criticism which should discover in them any Ebionite tendencies. Only it seems to be often overlooked that the leading doctrinal ideas which they contain are anticipated in the Apocalypse. The passages which I have quoted from the latter relating to the divinity of Christ are a case in point: not only do they ascribe to our Lord the same majesty and power; but the very title 'the Word,' with which both the Gospel and the first Epistle open, is found here, though it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. On the other hand, if the Apocalypse seems to assign a certain prerogative to the Jews, this is expressed equally in the sayings of the Gospel that Christ 'came to his own' (i. 11), and that 'Salvation is of the Jews' (iv. 22), as it is involved also in St Paul's maxim 'to the Jew first and then to the Gentile.' It is indeed rather a historical fact than a theological dogma. The difference between the earlier and the later writings of St John is not in the fundamental conception of the Gospel, but in the subject and treatment and language. The Apocalypse is not Ebionite, unless the Gospel and Epistles are Ebionite also.

3. St James occupies a position very different from St St James ^{r r}' holds a

local office.

¹ Owing to the difference of style, the Apocalypse. Writers of the Tumany critics have seen only the alterna- bingen school reject the Gospel and tive of denying the apostolic authorship Epistles but accept the Apocalypse, either of the Apocalypse or of the Gos- This book alone, if its apostolical aupel and Epistles. The considerations thorship is conceded, seems to me to urged in the text seem sufficient to furnish an ample refutation of thenmeet the difficulties, which are greatly peculiar views, increased if a late date is assigned to

Peter or St John. If his importance to the brotherhood of Jerusalem was greater than theirs, it was far less to the world at large. In a foregoing essay I have attempted to show that he was not one of the Twelve. This result seems to me to have much more than a critical interest. Only when we have learnt to regard his office as purely local, shall we appreciate the traditional notices of his life or estimate truly his position in the conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Reasons A disbeliever in the Lord's mission to the very close of His

appoint- earthly life, he was convinced, it would seem, by the appearance "^nt of the risen Jesus¹. This interposition marked him out for some special work. Among a people who set a high value on advantages of race and blood, the Lord's brother would be more likely to win his way than a teacher who would claim no such connexion. In a state of religious feeling where scrupulous attention to outward forms was held to be a condition of favour with God, one who was a strict observer of the law, if not a rigid ascetic, might hope to obtain a hearing which would be denied to men of less austere lives and wider experiences. These considerations would lead to his selection as the ruler of the mother Church. The persecution of Herod which obliged the Twelve to seek safety in flight would naturally be the signal for the appointment of a resident head. At all events it is at this crisis that James appears for the first time with his presbytery in a position though not identical with, yet so far resembling, the 'bishop' of later times, that we may without much violence to language give him this title (Acts xii. 17, xxi. 18). His allegi- As the local representative then of the Church of the l_aw. ' Circumcision we must consider him. To one holding this position the law must have worn a very different aspect from that which it wore to St Peter or St John or St Paul. While they were required to become 'all things to all men,' he was required only to be 'a Jew to the Jews.' No troublesome questions of conflicting duties, such as entangled St Peter at ¹ See above, p. 17.

Antioch, need perplex him. Under the law he must live and die. His surname of the Just¹ is a witness to his rigid observance of the Mosaic ritual. A remarkable notice in the Acts shows how he identified himself in all external usages with those 'many thousands of Jews which believed and were all zealous of the law' (xxi. 20). And a later tradition, somewhat distorted indeed but perhaps in this one point substantially true, related how by his rigid life and strict integrity he had won the respect of the whole Jewish people'.

A strict observer of the law he doubtless was; but whether The acto this he added a rigorous asceticism, may fairly be questioned. HegesipThe account to which I have just referred, the tradition^pns preserved in Hegesippus, represents him as observing many formalities not enjoined in the Mosaic ritual. 'He was holy,' says the writer,'from his mother's womb. He drank no wine nor strong drink, neither did he eat flesh. No razor ever touched his head; he did not anoint himself with oil; he did not use the bath. He alone was allowed to enter into the holy place (ei? ra ayta). For he wore no wool, but only fine linen. And he would enter into the temple (vaov) alone, and be found there kneeling on his knees and asking forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel's knees, because he was ever upon them worshipping God and asking forgiveness for the people.' There is much in this account not trustwhich cannot be true: the assigning to him a privilege which ^w° was confined to the high-priest alone, while it is entangled with the rest of the narrative, is plainly false, and can only have been started when a new generation had grown up which knew nothing of the temple services³. Moreover the account of his

¹ In the account of Hegesippus, re- rigid lives: compare also Acts i. 23,

ferred to in the following note, 6 Sikouk xviii. 7, Col. iv. 11 (with the note).

'Justus' is used almost as a proper ³ Hegesippus in Euseb. H. E. ii.

name. Two later bishops of Jerusalem 23.

in the early part of the second century ³ It is perhaps to be explained like also bear the name 'Justus' (Euseb. the similar account of St John: see H. E. iv. 5), either in memory of their above, p. 121, note 1. Compare Stanpredecessor or in token of their own ley Apostolical Age p. 324. Epiphanius

testimony and death, which follows, not only contradicts the brief contemporary notice of Josephus¹, but is in itself so melodramatic and so full of high improbabilities, that it must throw discredit on the whole context^*.

(Haer. lxxviii. 14) makes the same statement of St James which Polycrates does of St John, rijaKov erl T?)s «0a

¹ Josephus (Antiq. xx. 9. 1) relates that in the interregnum between the death of Festus and the arrival of Albinus, the high-priest Ananus the younger, who belonged to the sect of the Sadduoees (notorious for their severity in judicial matters), considering this a favourable opportunity niaSifei avviSpiov Kpirur, Kal rapayayuv els airrb rbv d.Se\<pbv 'Iriaov Toc \eyonivov Xpurrov, 'I<Uu/Sos ovofia aura, Kot ncas Iripovs, us rapavonriadmioy Katr/yoplav roir/ffiufcos rapiSuxe \evaBrjaoniyw$. This notice is wholly irreconcilable with the account of Hegesippus. Yet it is probable in itself (which the account of Hegesippus is not), and is such as Josephus might be expected to write if he alluded to the matter at all. His stolid silence about Christianity elsewhere cannot be owing to ignorance, for a sect which had been singled out years before he wrote as a mark for imperial vengeance at Rome must have been only too well known in Judsea. On the other hand, if the passage had been a Christian interpolation, the notice of James would have been more laudatory, as is actually the case in the spurious passage of Josephus read by Origen and Eusebius (II. E. ii. 23, see above, p. 68, note 2), but not found in existing copies. On these grounds I do not hesitate to prefer the account in Josephus to that of Hegesippus. This is the opinion of Neander (Planting I. p. 367, Eng. Trans.), of Ewald(Geschichte vi.p. 547), and of some few writers besides (so recently Qerlach Rdmiiche Statthalter

etc. p. 81, 1865): but the majority take the opposite view.

² The account is briefly this. Certain of the seven sects being brought by the preaching of James to confess Christ, the whole Jewish people are alarmed. To counteract the spread of the new doctrine, the scribes and Pharisees request James, as a man of acknowledged probity, to 'persuade the multitude not to go astray concerning Jesus.' Inorder that he may do this to more effect, on the day of the Passover they place him on the pinnacle (irrepiyu>y) of the temple. Instead of denouncing Jesus however, he preaches Him. Finding thenmistake, the scribes and Pharisees throw him down from the height; and as he is not killed by the fall, they stone him. Finally he is despatched by a fuller's club, praying meanwhile for his murderers. The improbability of the narrative will appear in this outline, but it is much increased by the details. The points of resemblance with the portion of the Recognitions conjectured to be taken from the 'Ascents of James' (see above, p. 87) are striking, and recent writers have called attention to these as showing that the narrative of Hegesippus was derived from a similar source (Uhlhorn Clement, p. 367, Ritschl p. 226 sq). May we not go a step farther and hazard the conjecture that the story of the martyrdom, to which Hegesippus is indebted, was the grand jinak of these 'Ascents,' of which the earlier portions are preserved in the Recognitions? The Recognitions record how James with the Twelve refuted the Jewish sects: the account of Hegesippus makes the conversion of certain of these sects the starting-point of the persecution which

We are not therefore justified in laying much stress on this He was tradition. It is interesting as a phenomenon, but not trust- _an ascetic, worthy as a history. Still it is possible that James may have been a Nazarite, may have been a strict ascetic. Such a representation perhaps some will view with impatience, as unworthy an Apostle of Christ. But this is unreasonable. Christian devotion does not assume the same outward garb in all persons, and at all times; not the same in James as in Paul; not the same in mediaeval as in protestant Christianity. In James, the Lord's brother, if this account be true, we have the prototype of those later saints, whose rigid life and formal devotion elicits, it may be, only the contempt of the world, but of whom nevertheless the world was not and is not worthy.

But to retrace our steps from this slippery path of tradition to St James firmer ground. The difference of position between St James _part from and the other Apostles appears plainly in the narrative of the tjjeTwelve so-called Apostolic council in the Acts. It is Peter who Acts, proposes the emancipation of the Gentile converts from the law; James who suggests the restrictive clauses of the decree. It is

led to his martyrdom. In the Becog- from an Ebionite source, he has done

nitions James is represented ascending no more than Clement of Alexandria

the stairs which led up to the temple did after him (see above, p. 80), than

and addressing the people from these: Epiphanius, the scourge of heretics,

in Hegesippus he is placed on the pin- does repeatedly. The religious romance

nacle of the temple whence he delivers sterns to have been a favourite style of

his testimony. In the Recognitions he composition with the EsseneEbionites:

is thrown down the flight of steps and and in the lack of authentic informa

left as dead by his persecutors, but is tion relating to the Apostles, Catholic

taken up alive by the brethren; in writers eagerly and unsuspiciously ga

Hegesippus he is hurled from the still thered incidents from writings of which

loftier station, and this time his death they repudiated the doctrines. It is

is made sure. Thus the narrative of worthyof notice that though the Essena

Hegesippus seems to preserve the con- are named among the sects in Hege

summation of his testimony and his sippus, they are not mentioned in the

sufferings, as treated in this romance, Recognitions; and that, while the Re

the last of a series of 'Ascents,' the cognitions lay much stress on baptisms

first of these being embodied in the and washings (a cardinal doctrine of

Recognitions. Essene Ebionism), this feature entirely

If Hegesippus, himself no Ebionite, disappears in the account of James

has borrowed these incidents (whether given by Hegesippus. directly or indirectly, we cannot say)

and in the Catholic

Epistles.

The

Peter who echoes St Paul's sentiment that Jew and Gentile alike can hope to be saved only 'by the grace of the Lord Jesus'; James who speaks of Moses having them that preach him and being read in the synagogue every sabbath day. I cannot but regard this appropriateness of sentiment as a subsidiary proof of the authenticity of these speeches recorded by St Luke.

And the same distinction extends also to their own writings. St Peter and St John, with a larger sphere of action and wider obligations, necessarily took up a neutral position with regard to the law, now carefully observing it at Jerusalem, now relaxing their observance among the Gentile converts. To St James on the other hand, mixing only with those to whom the Mosaic ordinances were the rule of life, the word and the thing have a higher importance. The neutrality of the former is reflected in the silence which pervades their writings, where 'law' is not once mentioned¹. The respect of the latter appears in his differential use of the term, which he employs almost as a synonyme for ' Gospel*.'

But while so using the term 'law,' he nowhere implies that the Mosaic ritual is identical with or even a necessary part of Christianity. On the contrary he distinguishes the new dispensation as the perfect law, the law of liberty (i. 25, ii. 12), thus tacitly implying imperfection and bondage in the old. He assumes indeed that his readers pay allegiance to the Mosaic law (ii. 9, 10, iv. 11), and he accepts this condition without commenting upon it. But the mere ritual has no value in his eyes. When he refers to the Mosaic law, he refers to its moral, not to its ceremonial ordinances (ii. 8—11). The external service of the religionist who puts no moral restraint on himself, who will not exert himself for others, is pronounced deceitful and vain. The external service, the outward garb, the very ritual, of Christianity is a life of purity and love and self-devotion¹. What its true essence, its inmost spirit, may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.

Gospel a higher law.

¹ As regards St John this is true only of the Epistles and the Apocalypse: in the Gospel the law is necessarily mentioned by way of narrative. In 1 Joh. iii. 4 it is said significantly

ij afiaprla iarlv ij avoida.. In St Peter neither Ybi<u>s nor &vo/da occurs.

^s The words eiayyi\iov, eiayyi\lfcaBai, do not occur in St James.

Thus, though with St Paul the new dispensation is the St James negation of law, with St James the perfection of law, the ideas p_aui. underlying these contradictory forms of expression need not be essentially different. And this leads to the consideration of the language held by both Apostles on the subject of faith and works.

The real significance of St James's language, its true relation Faith and to the doctrine of St Paul, is determined by the view taken of the persons to whom the epistle is addressed. If it is intended to counteract any modification or perversion of St Paul's teaching, then there is, though not a plain contradiction, yet at all events a considerable divergency in the mode of dealing with the question by the two Apostles. I say the mode of dealing with the question, for antinomian inferences from his teaching are rebuked with even greater severity by St Paul himself than they are by St James*. If on the other hand the epistle is directed against an arrogant and barren orthodoxy, a Pharisaic self-satisfaction, to which the Churches of the Circumcision would be most exposed, then the case is considerably altered. The language of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians at once suggests the former as the true account. But further consideration leads us to question our first rapid inference. Justification and faith seem to have been common terms, Abraham's faith a common example, in the Jewish schools". This fact, if allowed, counteracts the prima facie evidence on the other side, and leaves us free to judge from the tenour of the epistle itself. Now, since in this very passage St James mentions as the object of their vaunted faith, not the funda

¹ James i. 26, 27. Coleridge directs New Testament and elsewhere, as the

attention to the meaning of 0pijo-*eia, 'oultus exterior,' see Trenoh Synon.

and the consequent bearing of the text, § xlviii.

in a well-known passage in Aids to * e.g. Rom. vi. 15—23, 1 Cor. vi.

Reflection, Introd. Aphor. 23. For the 9—20, Gal. v. 13 sq. signification of BpijaKela both in the ³ See Galatians, p. 164. ¹ Rom. x. 9. who however considers that St James

mental fact of the Gospel 'Thou believest that God raised Christ from the dead¹,' but the fundamental axiom of the law 'Thou believest that God is one²'; since moreover he elsewhere denounces the mere ritualist, telling him that his ritualism is nothing worth; since lastly the whole tone of the epistle recalls our Lord's denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees, and seems directed against a kindred spirit; it is reasonable to conclude that St James is denouncing not the moral aberrations of the professed disciple of St Paul (for with such he was not likely to be brought into close contact), but the self-complacent orthodoxy of the Pharisaic Christian, who, satisfied with the possession of a pure monotheism and vaunting his descent from Abraham, needed to be reminded not to neglect the still 'weightier matters' of a self-denying love. If this view be correct, the expressions of the two Apostles can hardly be compared, for they are speaking, as it were, a different language. But in either case we may acquiesce in the verdict of a recent able writer, more free than most men both from traditional and from reactionary prejudices, that in the teaching of the two Apostles 'there exists certainly a striking difference in the whole bent of mind, but no opposition of doctrine⁸.' Ebionite Thus the representation of St James in the canonical Scrip

smtations tures differs from its Ebionite counterpart as the true portrait

?^{f St} from the caricature. The James of the Clementines could not

James

explained, have acquiesced in the apostolic decree, nor could he have held out the right hand of fellowship to St Paul. On the other hand, the Ebionite picture was not drawn entirely from imagination. A scrupulous observer of the law, perhaps a rigid ascetic, partly from temper and habit, partly from the requirements of his position, he might, without any very direct or conscious falsification, appear to interested partisans of a later age to represent their own tenets, from which he differed less in the external forms of worship than in the vital principles of religion. Moreover during his lifetime he was compromised by those with whom his office associated him. In all revolutionary periods, whether of political or religious history, the leaders of the movement have found themselves unable to control the extravagances of their bigoted and short-sighted followers: and this great crisis of all was certainly not exempt from the common rule. St Paul is constantly checking and rebuking the excesses of those who professed to honour his name and to adopt his teaching: if we cannot state this of St James with equal confidence, it is because the sources of information are scantier.

- ii. 19. Comp. Clem. Hom. iii. 6 sq. is writing against perversions of St 3 Bleek (Einl. in das N. T. p. 550), Paul's teaching.

Of the Judaizers who are denounced in St Paul's Epistles His relathis much is certain; that they exalted the authority of the _tbe j_uj_a;. Apostles of the Circumcision: and that in some instances at ^zersleast, as members of the mother Church, they had direct relations with James the Lord's brother. But when we attempt to define these relations, we are lost in a maze of conjecture.

The Hebrew Christians whose arrival at Antioch caused the Antioch. rupture between the Jewish and Gentile converts are related to have 'come from James' (Gal. ii. 12). Did they bear any commission from him? If so, did it relate to independent matters, or to this very question of eating with the Gentiles? It seems most natural to interpret this notice by the parallel case of the Pharisaic brethren, who had before troubled this same Antiochene Church, 'going forth' from the Apostles and insisting on circumcision and the observance of the law, though they 'gave them no orders' (Acts xv. 24). But on the least favourable supposition it amounts to this, that St James, though he had sanctioned the emancipation of the Gentiles from the law, was hot prepared to welcome them as Israelites and admit them as such to full communion: that in fact he had not yet overcome scruples which even St Peter had only relinquished after many years and by a special revelation; in this, as in his recognition of Jesus as the Christ, moving more slowly than the Twelve.

Turning from Antioch to Galatia, we meet with Judaic Galatia. teachers who urged circumcision on the Gentile converts and,

as the best means of weakening the authority of St Paul, asserted for the Apostles of the Circumcision the exclusive right of dictating to the Church. How great an abuse was thus made of the names of the Three, I trust the foregoing account has shown: yet here again the observance of the law by the Apostles of the Circumcision, especially by St James, would furnish a plausible argument to men who were unscrupulous enough to turn the occasional concessions of St Paul himself to the same account. But we are led to ask, Did these false teachers belong to the mother Church? had they any relation with James? is it possible that they had ever been personal disciples of the Lord Himself? There are some faint indications that such was the case; and, remembering that there was a Judas among the Twelve, we cannot set aside this supposition as impossible. Corinth. In Corinth again we meet with false teachers of a similar

stamp; whose opinions are less marked indeed than those of St Paul's Galatian antagonists, but whose connexion with the mother Church is more clearly indicated. It is doubtless among those who said 'I am of Peter, and I of Christ,' amoDg the latter especially, that we are to seek the counterpart of the Galatian Judaizers¹. To the latter class St Paul alludes again in the Second Epistle: these must have been the men who ' trusted to The two themselves that they were, of Christ' (x. 7), who invaded fiart1fis1^{ng anot}her's sphere of labour and boasted of work which was ready to hand (x. 13—16), who were 'false apostles, crafty workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ' (xi. 13), who 'commended themselves* (x. 12, 18), who vaunted their pure Israelite descent (xi. 21—23). It is noteworthy that this party of extreme Judaizers call themselves by the name not of James, but of Christ. This may perhaps be taken as a token that his concessions to Gentile liberty had shaken their confidence in his fidelity to the law. The leaders of this extreme party would appear to have seen Christ in the flesh: hence their watchword 'I am of Christ'; hence also St Paul's counter-claim that 'he was of Christ' also, and his unwilling boast that he had himself had visions and revelations of the Lord in abundance (xii. 1 sq). On the other hand, of the party of Cephas no distinct features are preserved; but the passage itself implies that they differed from the extreme Judaizers, and we may therefore conjecture that they took up a middle position with regard to the law, similar to that which was occupied later by the Nazarenes. In claiming Cephas as the head of their party they had probably neither more nor less ground than their rivals who sheltered themselves under the names of Apollos and of Paul.

¹ Several writers representing dif- interpreted. (2) The remonstrance im

ferent schools have agreed in denying mediately following (/uiUpiarai i Xpi

the existence of a ' Christ party.' Fos- aros) shows that the name of Christ,

sibly the word 'party' may be too which ought to be common to all, had

strong to describe what was rather a been made the badge of a party. (3)

sentiment than an organization. But In 2 Cor. x. 7 the words et T« rhroiBty

if admissible at all, I cannot see how, iavr$ Xpurrov dvai and the description

allowing that there were three parties, which follows gain force and definite

the existence of the fourth can be ques- ness on this supposition. There is in

tioned. For (1) the four watchwords fact more evidence for the existence of

are co-ordinated, and there is no indi- a party of Christ than there is of a

cation that i'-yi Si Xpurrov is to be party of Peter, isolated from the others and differently

Is it to these extreme Judaizers that St Paul alludes when Letters of he mentions 'certain persons' as 'needing letters of recommen- dation. dation to the Corinthians and of recommendation from them' (2 Cor. iii. 1)? If so, by whom were these letters to Corinth given? By some half-Judaic, half-Christian brotherhood of the dispersion? By the mother Church of Jerusalem? By any of the primitive disciples? By James the Lord's brother himself? It is wisest to confess plainly that the facts are too scanty to supply an answer. We may well be content to rest on the broad and direct statements in the Acts and Epistles, which declare the relations between St James and St Paul. A habit of suspicious interpretation, which neglects plain facts and dwells on doubtful allusions, is as unhealthy in theological criticism as in social life, and not more conducive to truth.

Such incidental notices then, though they throw much light Inferences on the practical difficulties and entanglements of his position, notices, reveal nothing or next to nothing of the true principles of

St James. Only so long as we picture to ourselves an ideal standard of obedience, where the will of the ruler is the law of the subject, will such notices cause us perplexity. But, whether this be a healthy condition for any society or not, it is very far from representing the state of Christendom in the apostolic ages. If the Church had been a religious machine, if the Apostles had possessed absolute control over its working, if the manifold passions of men had been for once annihilated, if there had been no place for misgiving, prejudice, treachery, hatred, superstition, then the picture would have been very different. But then also the history of the first ages of the Gospel would have had no lessons for us. As it is, we may well take courage from the study. However great may be the theological differences and religious animosities of our own time, they are far surpassed in magnitude by the distractions of an age which, closing our eyes to facts, we are apt to invest with an ideal excellence. In the early Church was fulfilled, in its inward dissensions no less than in its outward sufferings, the Master's sad warning that He came 'not to send peace on earth, but a sword.'