converts, implies both that the community was numerous and that the name of Paul was held in high estimation by its leading members. It is evident that Christianity had advanced already beyond the Jewish population, and the question of necessary conformity to the Mosaic law was strongly agitated. It is therefore the main scope of this celebrated epistle to annul for ever this claim of the Mosaic law to a perpetual authority to show Christianity as a part of the providential design in the moral history of man, while Judaism was but a temporary institution, unequal to, as it was unintended for, the great end of revealing the immortality of mankind, altogether repealed by this more wide and universal system, which comprehends in its beneficent purposes the whole

human race.

world.

Closely allied with this main element of Judaism, which strug- Belief in gled so obstinately against the Christianity of St. Paul, was the the ap notion of the approaching end of the world, the final consumma- end of the proaching tion of all things in the second coming of the Messiah. It has been shown how essential and integral a part of the Jewish belief in the Messiah was this expectation of the final completion of his mission in the dissolution of the world, and the restoration of a paradisiacal state in which the descendants of Abraham were to receive their destined inheritance. To many of the Jewish believers the death and resurrection of Jesus were but (if the expression be warranted) the first acts of the great drama, which was hastening onward to ils immedialc close. They had bowed in mysterious wonder before the incongruity of the life and sufferings of Jesus, with the preconceived appearance of the "Great One," but expected their present disappointment to be almost instantly compensated by the appalling grandeur of the second coming of Christ. If, besides their descent from Abraham, and their reverence for the law of Moses, faith in Jesus as the Messiah was likewise necessary to secure their title to their peculiar inheritance, yet that faith was speedily to receive its reward; and the original Jewish conception of the Messiah, though put to this severe trial, though its completion was thus postponed, remained in full possession of the mind, and seemed to gather strength and depth of colouring from the constant state of high-wrought agitation in which it kept the whole moral being. This appears to have been the last Jewish illusion, from which the minds of the Apostles themselves were disenchanted; and there can be no doubt both that many of the early Christians almost hourly expected the final dissolution of the world, and that this opinion awed many timid believers into the profession of Christianity, and kept them in trembling subjection to its authority. The ambiguous predictions of Christ himself, in which the destruction of the Jewish Polity, and the ruin of the city and

and Chris

temple, were shadowed forth under images of more remote and universal import; the language of the Apostles, so liable to misinterpretation, that they were obliged publicly to correct the erroneous conclusions of their hearers (1), seemed to countenance an opinion so disparaging to the real glory of Christianity, which was only to attain its object, till after a slow contest of many centuries, perhaps of ages, with the evil of human nature. Wherever Christianity made its way into a mind deeply impregnated with Judaism, the moral character of the Messiah had still to maintain a strong contest with the temporal; and though experience yearly showed that the commencement of this visible kingdom was but more remote, at least the first generation of Christians passed away, before the majority had attained to more sober expectations; and at eyery period of more than ordinary religious excitement, a millennial, or at least a reign partaking of a temporal character, has been announced as on the eve of its commencement; the Christian mind has retrograded towards that state of Jewish error, which prevailed about the time of Christ's coming (2).

As Christianity advanced in all other quarters of the world, its Hostility proselytes were in far larger proportion of Gentile than of Jewish of Judaism descent. The synagogue and the church became more and more tianity. distinct, till they stood opposed in irreconcilable hostility. The Jews shrunk back into their stern seclusion, while the Christians were literally spreading in every quarter through the population of the empire. From this total suspension of intercourse, Judaism gradually died away within the Christian pale; time and experience corrected some of the more inveterate prejudices, new elements came into action. The Grecian philosophy, and at a later period influences still more adverse to that of Judaism, mingled with the prevailing Christianity. A kind of latent Judaism has, however, constantly lurked within the bosom of the Church. During the darker ages of Christianity, its sterner spirit harmonizing with the more barbarous state of the Christian mind, led to a frequent and injudicious appeal to the Old Testament practically the great principle of Judaism, that the law, as emanating from Divine Wisdom, must be of eternal obligation, was admitted by conflicting parties; the books of Moses and the Gospel were appealed to as of equal authority; while the great characteristic of the old religion,

(1) 2 Thessalonians, ii. 1, 2. 2 Peter, iii. 4. 8. (2) Compare the strange rabbinical notion of the fertility of the earth during the millennial reign of Christ, given by Irenæus as an actual prophecy of our Lord:-" Venient dies in quibus vineæ nascentur, singulæ decem millia palmitum habentes, et in unâ palmite decem millia brachiorum, et in uno vero brachio dena millia flagellorum, et in unoquoque flagello dena millia botrorum, et in unoquoque borto dena millia acinorum; et unumquodque acinum expressum,

dabit viginti quinque metretas vini; et cum ap prehendet aliquis sanctorum botrum, alius cla inabit,-Botrus ego melior sum, me sume, et per me Dominum benedic." These chapters of Ire. næus show the danger to which pure and spiritual Christianity was exposed from this gross and carnal Judaising spirit. Irenæus (ch. 35.) positively denies that any of these images can be taken in an allegorical sense. De Hæres, v. c. 33.

its exclusiveness, its restriction of the divine blessings within a narrow and visible pale, was too much in accordance both with pride and superstition, not to reassert its ancient dominion. The sacerdotal and the sectarian spirit had an equal tendency to draw a wider or a more narrow line of demarcation around that which, in Jewish language, they pronounced the "Israel" of God, and to substitute some other criterion of Christianity for that exquisite perfection of piety, that sublimity of virtue, in disposition, in thought, and in act, which was the one true test of Christian excellence.

rusalem,

In Palestine, as the external conflict with Judaism was longest and most violent, so the internal influence of the old religion was latest obliterated. But when this separation at length took place, it was even more complete and decided than in any other countries. In Jerusalem, the Christians were perhaps still called, and submitted to be called Nazarenes, while the appellation which had been assumed at Antioch was their common designation in all other parts of the world. The Christian community of Jerusalem, which had taken refuge at Pella bore with them their unabated reverence for the law. But insensibly the power of that reverence decayed; and on the foundation of the new colony of Elia, by the Emperor Hadrian, after the defeat of Barchocab, and the second total demolition of the city, the larger part having nominated a man of Gentile birth, Marcus, as their bishop, settled in the New Mark biCity, and thus proclaimed their final and total separation from their shop of Je. Jewish ancestors (1). For not only must they have disclaimed all Jewish connection, to be permitted to take up their residence in the new colony, the very approach to which was watched by Roman outposts, and prohibited to every Jew under the severest penalties, but even the old Jewish feelings must have been utterly extinct. For what Jew, even if he had passed under the image of a swine which was erected in mockery over the Bethlehem Gate, would not have shrunk in horror at beholding the Hill of Moriah polluted by a Pagan temple, the worship of heathen deities profaning by their reeking incense, and their idolatrous sacrifices, the site of the Holy of Holies? The Christian absorbed in deeper veneration for the soil which had been hallowed by his Redeemer's footsteps, and was associated with his mysterious death and resurrection, was indifferent to the daily infringement of the Mosaic law which God himself had annulled by the substitution of the Christian faith, or to the desecration of the site of that temple which God had visibly abandoned.

The rest of the Judeo-Christian community at Pella, and in its neighbourhood, sank into an obscure sect, distinguished by their

(1) Euseb. H. E. iv. 6. Hieronym, Epist. ad Hedybiam. Quæst. 8.

obstinate rejection of the writings of St. Paul, and by their own Gospel, most probably the original Hebrew of St. Matthew. But the language, as well as the tenets of the Jews, were either proscribed by the Christians, as they still farther receded from Judaism, or fell into disuse (1); and whatever writings they possessed, whether originals or copies in the vernacular dialect of Palestine, of the genuine Apostolic books, or compilations of their own, entirely perished, so that it is difficult, from the brief notices which are extant, to make out their real nature and character.

In Palestine, as elsewhere, the Jew and the Christian were no longer confounded with each other, but constituted two totally different and implacably hostile races. The Roman government began to discriminate between them, as clearly appears from the permission to the Christians to reside in the New City, on the site of Jerusalem, which was interdicted to the Jews. Mutual hatred was increased by mutual alienation; the Jew, who had lost the power of persecuting, lent himself as a willing instrument to the heathen persecutor against those, whom he still considered as apostates from his religion. The less enlightened Christian added to the contempt of all the Roman world for the Jew a principle of deeper hostility. The language of Tertullian is that of triumph, rather than of commiseration for the degraded state of the Jew (2); strong jealousy of the pomp and power assumed by the patriarch of Tiberias may be trace in the vivid description of Origen (3). No sufferings could too profoundly debase, no pride could become those who shared in the hereditary guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Relation

tween Ju

CHAPTER III.

CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM.

that

THE Conflict of Christianity with Judaism was a civil war; ship be with Paganism, the invasion and conquest of a foreign territory. daism and In the former case it was the declared design of the innovation, to mity. perfect the established constitution on its primary principles; to

Christia

expand the yet undeveloped system, according to the original views of the Divine Legislator; in the latter it contemplated the total subversion of the existing order of things, a reconstruction of the whole moral and religious being of mankind. With the Jew, the abolition of the Temple service, and the abrogation of the Mosaic

(1) Sulpicius Severus, H. E. Mosheim, de Reb. Christ. ante Constant. Le Clerc, Hist. Ecclesias

tica.

(2) Dispersi, palabundi, et cœli et soli sui extorres vagantur per orbem, sine nomine, sine

Deo rege, quibus nec advenarum jure terram patriam saltem vestigio salutare conceditur. Lib. cont. Judæos, 15.

(3) Origen. Epist. ad Africanum, Hist of Jews, iii. 136.

Law, were indispensable to the perfect establishment of Christianity. The first was left to be accomplished by the frantic turbulence of the people, and the remorseless vengeance of Rome. Yet, after all, the Temple service maintained its more profound and indelible influence only over the Jew of Palestine; its hold upon the vast numbers which were settled in all parts of the world, was that of remote, occasional, traditionary reverence. With the foreign Jew, the service of the synagogue was his religion; and the synagogue, without any violent change, was transformed into a Christian church. The same Almighty God, to whom it was primarily dedicated, maintained his place; and the sole difference was, that he was worshipped through the mediation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. With the Pagan, the whole of his religious observances fell under the unsparing proscription. Every one of the countless temples and shrines, and sacred groves, and hallowed fountains, were to be desecrated by the abhorrent feelings of those who looked back with shame and contempt upon their old idolatries. Every image, from the living work of Phidias or Praxiteles, to the rude and shapeless Hermes or Terminus, was to become an unmeaning mass of wood or stone. In every city, town, or even village, there was a contest to be maintained, not merely against the general system of Polytheism, but against the local and tutelary deity of the place. Every public spectacle, every procession, every civil or military duty, was a religious ceremonial. Though later, when Christianity was in the ascendant, it might expel the deities of Paganism from some of the splendid temples, and convert them to its own use; though insensibly many of the usages of the Heathen worship crept into the more gorgeous and imposing ceremonial of triumphant Christianity; though even many of the vulgar superstitions incorporated themselves with the sacred Christian associations, all Direct op this reaction was long subsequent to the permanent establishment position of the new religion. At first all was rigid and uncompromising tianity to hostility; doubis were entertained by the more scrupulous, whether Paganism, meat exposed to public sale in the market, but which might have formed part of a sacrifice, would not be dangerously polluting to the Christian. The Apostle, though anxious to correct this sensitive scrupulousness, touches on the point with the utmost caution and delicacy (1).

The private life of the Jew was already, in part at least, fettered by the minute and almost Brahminical observances, with which the later Rabbins established their despotic authority over the mind. Still some of these usages harmonised with the spirit of Christianity; others were less inveterately rooted in the feelings of the foreign Jew. The trembling apprehension of any thing approach

(1) I Corinth. x, 25-31.

of Chris