СНАР. Gradual ment of the views of the enlarge Apostles. and instead of resting on the borders of the Holy CHAP. Land, comprehending at length the whole world; barrier after barrier falling down before the superior wisdom which was infused into their minds; first the proselytes of the gate, the foreign conformists to Judaism, and ere long the Gentiles themselves admitted within the pale; until Christianity stood forth, demanded the homage, and promised its rewards to the faith of the whole human race; proclaimed itself in language which the world had as yet never heard, the one, true, universal religion. an universal As an universal religion, aspiring to the complete Christianity, moral conquest of the world, Christianity had to religion. encounter three antagonists, Judaism, Paganism, and Orientalism. It is our design successively to exhibit the conflict with these opposing forces, its final triumph not without detriment to its own native purity and its divine simplicity, from the interworking of the yet unsubdued elements of the former systems into the Christian mind; until each, at successive periods, and in different parts of the world, formed a modification of Christianity equally removed from its unmingled and unsullied original: the Judeo-Christianity of Palestine, of which the Ebionites appear to have been the last representatives; the Platonic Christianity of Alexandria, as, at least at this early period, the new religion could coalesce only with the sublimer and more philosophical principles of Paganism; and, lastly, the Gnostic Christianity of the East. With Judaism Christianity had to maintain a BOOK II. External conflict of Christianity with Judaism; and internal. double conflict: one external, with the Judaism of the Temple, the Synagogue, the Sanhedrin; a contest of authority on one side, and the irrepressible spirit of moral and religious liberty on the other; of fierce intolerance against the stubborn endurance of conscientious faith; of relentless persecution against the calm and death-despising, or often death-seeking, heroism of martyrdom: the other, more dangerous and destructive, the Judaism of the infant Church; the old prejudices and opinions, which even Christianity could not altogether extirpate or correct in the earlier Jewish proselytes; the perpetual tendency to contract again the expanding circle; the enslavement of Christianity to the provisions of the Mosaic law, and the spirit of the antiquated religion of Palestine. Until the first steps were taken to throw open the new religion to mankind at large; until Christianity, it may be said without disparagement, from a Jewish sect assumed the dignity of an independant religion, even the external animosity of Judaism had not reached its height. But the successive admission of the proselytes of the gate, and at length of the idolatrous Gentiles, into an equal participation in the privileges of the faith, showed that the breach was altogether irreparable. From that period the two systems stood in direct and irreconcilable opposition. To the eye of the Jew the Christian became, from a rebellious and heretical son, an irreclaimable apostate; and to the Christian the temporary designation of Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews, was merged in the more sublime title, the Redeemer of the world. The same measures rendered the internal conflict with the lingering Judaism within the Church more violent and desperate. Its dying struggles, as it were, to maintain its ground, rent, for some time, the infant community with civil divisions. But the predominant influx of Gentile converts gradually obtained the ascendancy; Judaism slowly died out in the great body of the Church, and the Judæo-Christian sects in the East languished, and at length expired in obscurity. CHAP. II. Divine Providence had armed the religion of Christ with new powers adapted to the change in its situation and design, both for resistance against the more violent animosity, which was exasperated by its growing success, and for aggression upon the ignorance, the vice, and the misery, which it was to enlighten, to purify, or to mitigate. Independent of the supernatural powers occasionally displayed by the Apostles, the accession of two men so highly gifted with natural abilities, as well as with all the peculiar powers conferred on the first Apostles of Christianity, the enrolment of Barnabas Paul and and Paul in the Apostolic body, showed that for the comprehensive system about to be developed instruments were wanting of a different character from the humble and uninstructed peasants of Galilee. However extraordinary the change wrought in the minds of the earlier Apostles by the spirit of Christianity; however some of them, especially Peter and John, may have extended their labours Barnabas. II. BOOK beyond the precincts of Palestine, yet Paul appears to have exercised by far the greatest influence, not merely in the conversion of the Gentiles, but in emancipating the Christianity of the Jewish converts from the inveterate influence of their old religion. Differences between Jew and Gentile partially abrogated by Peter. Yet the first step towards the more comprehensive system was made by Peter. Samaria, indeed, had already received the new religion to a great extent; an innovation upon Jewish prejudice, remarkable both in itself and its results. The most important circumstance in that transaction, the collision with Simon the magician, will be considered in a future chapter, that which describes the conflict of Christianity with Orientalism. The vision of Peter, which seemed by the Divine sanction to annul the distinction of meats, of itself threw down one of those barriers which separated the Jews from the rest of mankind. This sacred usage prohibited not merely all social intercourse, but all close or domestic communication with other races. But the figurative instruction which the Apostle inferred from this abrogation of all distinction between clean and unclean animals, was of still greater importance. The proselytes of the gate, that is, those heathens who, without submitting to circumcision, or acknowledging the claims of the whole law to their obedience, had embraced the main principles of Judaism, more particularly the unity of God, were at once admitted into the Cornelius. Christian community. Cornelius was, as it were, *Acts x. xi. to 21. II. the representative of his class; his admission by CHAP. the federal rite of baptism into the Christian community, the public sanction of the Almighty to this step by "the pouring out the gift of the Holy Ghost" upon the Gentiles, decided this part of the question.* Still the admission into Christianity *It is disputed, whether Cornelius was, in fact, a proselyte of the Gate. (See, on one side, Lord Barrington's Works, vol. i. p. 128., and Benson's History of Christianity; on the other, Kuinöel, in loco.) He is called evons and pobovμevos ròv Osor, the usual appellation of proselytes; he bestowed alms on the Jewish people; he observed the Jewish hours of prayer; he was evidently familiar with the Jewish belief in angels, and not unversed in the Jewish Scriptures. Yet, on the other hand, the objections are not without weight. The whole difficulty appears to arise from not considering how vaguely the term of "Proselyte of the Gate" must, from the nature of things, have been applied, and the different feelings entertained towards such converts by the different classes of the Jews. While the proselytes, properly so called,-those who were identified with the Jews by circumcision, were a distinct and definite class; the Proselytes of the Gate must have comprehended all who made the least advances towards Judaism, from those who regularly attended on the services of the synagogue, and conformed in all respects, except circumcision, with the ceremonial law, down, through the countless shades of opinion, to those who merely admitted the first principle of Judaism, the Unity of God; were occasional attendants in the synagogue; and had only, as it were, ascended the VOL. I. first steps on the threshold of conversion. The more rigid Jews looked with jealousy, even on the circumcised Proselytes; the terms of admission were made as difficult and repulsive as possible; on the imperfect, they looked with still greater suspicion, and were rather jealous of communicating their exclusive privileges, than eager to extend the influence of their opinions. But the more liberal must have acted on different principles: they must have encouraged the advances of incipient proselytes; the synagogues were open throughout the Roman Empire, and many who, like Horace, went to scoff," may "have remained to pray." As, then, the Christian Apostles always commenced their labours in the synagogue of their countrymen, among all who might assemble there from regular habit, or accidental curiosity, they would address Heathen minds in every gradation of Jewish belief, from the proselyte who only wanted circumcision, to the Gentile who had only just begun to discover the superior reasonableness of the Jewish Theism. Hence the step from the conversion of imperfect proselytes to that of real Gentiles, must have been imperceptible; or rather, even with the Gentile convert, that which was the first principle of Judaism, the belief in one God, was an indispensable preliminary to his admission of Christianity. E E |