particularly of such as had already in part adopted Judaism. Another set of opinions had also been gaining ground for some time in this part of the world, which has already been mentioned under the name of Gnosticism. Simon Magus had preached it with great success in his native country, Samaria, from whence it could easily be carried across the Jordan to the country where Pella was situated. This leader of the Gnostics made great use of the name of Christian in his new system of philosophy. He considered Christ as one among many emanations from God, who was sent into the world to free it from the tyranny of evil. He received whatever he had heard of the personal history of Jesus, and fully believed him to be the divine emanation called Christ. But he would not believe that Jesus had a real substantial body: he thought that a divine and heavenly being would never unite himself with what was earthly and material; and having heard of Christ soon after His ascension, before any written accounts of His birth and death were circulated, he formed the absurd and fanciful notion that the body of Jesus was a mere spirit, or phantom, which only appeared to perform the functions of a man, and that it was not really nailed to the Cross. It has been already observed that this impiety entirely destroyed the doctrine of the atonement. Such was the notion entertained by Simon Magus concerning Jesus Christ; and his followers, the Gnostics, were for some time called Docetæ, from a Greek word implying their belief that the body of Jesus was a phantom. The notion, in fact, continued for some centuries, and was perpetuated, after the declension of Gnosticism, by the Manichees. But before the end of the first century, another division of Gnostics invented a new doctrine, which was, perhaps, owing to the general circulation of the written Gospels. It was plainly stated in these books, and persons living in Judæa could not be ignorant of the fact that Jesus had, in every sense of the term, a human body. The names of His mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph, were generally known; and His growth from childhood to manhood, as well as other circumstances in His life, proved Him to be subject to the usual laws of human nature. All this could not be denied by the Gnostics; but still they would not bring themselves to believe that a being of heaven could so intimately unite itself with a being of earth as to be born of a human parent; and, to get rid of this difficulty, a new doctrine was devised, for which they seemed to find some support in the written Gospels. They had read the account of the baptism of Jesus, on which occasion the Holy Spirit descended visibly from heaven, and lighted upon Him. The Gnostics interpreted this to mean that Jesus, up to the time of his baptism, had been a mere human being, born in the ordinary way, of two human parents; but that, after that time, the man Jesus was united to Christ, who was an emanation from God; and that the two beings continued so united till the crucifixion of Jesus, when Christ left him and returned to heaven. It was their belief in the divinity of Christ which hindered them from believing that He was born of a human mother; and hence they divided Jesus and Christ into two distinct beings,-Jesus was a mere man, but Christ was an emanation from God. The name of the person who invented this doctrine has not been ascertained; but, before the end of the first century, it was held by two persons who became eminent as the heads of parties, the one a Greek, named Carpocrates, and the other named Cerinthus, who, if he was not a Jew, admitted much of the Jewish religion into his scheme of Gnosticism. Both these persons were openly and scandalously profligate in their moral conduct, which enables us to point out another division among the Gnostics; for, while some maintained that all actions were lawful to one who possessed the true knowledge of God, and accordingly indulged in every species of vice, others considered it the duty of a Gnostic to mortify the body, and to abstain even from the most innocent enjoyments. Carpocrates and Cerinthus belonged to the former of these divisions; and Cerinthus, not content with encouraging his followers in the grossest dissipation, held out to them a millennium of enjoyment at the end of the world, when Christ was again to appear upon earth, and his faithful followers were to revel in a thousand years of sensual indulgence! It is possible that Cerinthus did not rise into notice till towards the end of the century; but Gnosticism had undoubtedly made great progress in the world before the period at which we are now arrived; and though its early history is involved in some obscurity, it is plain that it borrowed largely from the religion of the Jews, as might be expected in a system which was begun by a native of Samaria. The Ebionites, whose origin led us into this discussion, were a branch of the Gnostics, and they are said to have appeared at first, like the Nazarenes, in the neighbourhood of Pella. Their name signifies, in Hebrew, poor; but it has been doubted whether they were not called from an individual whose name was Ebion. They were represented by the ancients as Jews, and some moderns have considered them to be Christians. But though their tenets partook both of Christianity and Judaism, they cannot properly be classed with either party. The first Ebionites may, by birth, have been Jews, and they may have fancied that they were embracing the doctrines of the Gospel; but they chose to disfigure both forms of religion, and they should properly be described as a branch of Jewish Gnostics. If they were originally Jews, they made a strange departure from the faith of their fathers, for they did not acknowledge the whole of the Pentateuch, and utterly rejected the writings of the prophets. Notwithstanding this heterodoxy, they sided with the most bigoted of the Jews, in adhering to all the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, although they professed to be believers in Jesus Christ. It was on this principle that they paid no respect to Paul as an apostle; and when his epistles came into general circulation, they were rejected by the Ebionites. Their connexion with the Gnostics is proved by their adopting the notion that Christ descended upon Jesus at his baptism; and their belief in Christ's divinity led them to maintain that Jesus was born, in the ordinary way, of two human parents. They would not admit any account which spoke of Christ, the Son of God, being conceived in the womb of the Virgin, or of his being united from the moment of his birth with a human being. They had a Gospel of their own, written in Hebrew, and made up in part from that of Matthew, from which they had expunged everything relating to the miraculous conception, and to the birth of Christ. is stated, however, that the later Ebionites became divided upon this point; and though all of them believed that Christ came down from Heaven, and united himself to Jesus, some of them maintained that Jesus was conceived miraculously by the Virgin, while others, as stated above, believed him in every sense to be an ordinary human being. It should be added in favour of the Ebionites, that though It their religious tenets were erroneous and extravagant, their moral practice was particularly strict, which perhaps forms the most prominent contrast between themselves and the Cerinthians. This account of the Ebionites has been introduced in this place, because they are said to have arisen in the neighbourhood of Pella, about the time of the Christians resorting thither from Jerusalem. It will be remembered that all these Christians were converted Jews, and all of them had once conformed to the Law of Moses. Those who continued to do so were known by the name of Nazarenes: but though they adhered to the ceremonies of the law, they were firm believers in Jesus Christ, and looked for salvation only through Him. Others of their body, while they kept the same strict observance of the law, adopted the Gnostic notions concerning Jesus Christ, and were known by the name of Ebionites. They were probably of the poorer sort, as was implied in their name; and it does not appear that they were numerous. But there was always a danger among the Jewish converts, lest their attachment to the Law should incline them to adopt the errors of the Ebionites and other Gnostics. There is, however, reason to believe that the church at Jerusalem continued pure. It had witnessed the most awful calamity which had ever befallen the Jewish nation; and its members could not forget, on returning once more to Jerusalem, that a remnant only had been saved, even they who believed in Jesus. CHAPTER VII. SEES OF JERUSALEM, ANTIOCH, ROME, AND ALEXANDRIA. AND DEATH OF JOHN.-EXILES RECALLED BY NERVA.- THE destruction of Jerusalem, though the details of it cannot be read even now without horror, was not likely at the time to produce any effect upon the external circumstances of the Gentile Church, which was now so widely spread throughout the world. The reigns of Vespasian and Titus present no instance of the Christians being molested on account of their religion; and we cannot doubt that the Gospel made great progress during that period. Very little is known of the history of any particular Church; but the four cities, which afterwards became most celebrated in the Christian world, and which took precedence over all other sees, have preserved the names of their bishops from the beginning. These cities were Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and Alexandria, which are here mentioned in the order of their foundation; or if Mark went to Alexandria before any apostle visited Rome, the authority of Peter and Paul gave a priority to the latter city over one which was founded merely by an evangelist. The apostolic sees, as they were called, soon came to be looked upon with particular respect; not as having any power or jurisdiction over the rest, but as being most likely to have preserved apostolic traditions, and to have kept their faith uncorrupted. There were many other churches besides the four lately mentioned, which were founded by apostles, some of which might claim precedence in order of time: but Jerusalem was, without dispute, the mother of all churches; and Rome, as the metropolis of the world, and Antioch and Alexandria, as capitals of provinces, naturally acquired an importance over inferior places. If we may judge from the length of time during which the bishops of these four cities held their sees in the first century, we have perhaps another proof, that Christianity was not then exposed to much opposition from the heathen. The appointment of Symeon to the bishopric of Jerusalem has been already mentioned; and he held that station to the beginning of the following century. It has also been stated, that Euodius is named as the first bishop of Antioch, though the date of his appointment is not ascertained. He was succeeded, and probably about the year 70, by Ignatius, whose interesting history will occupy us hereafter; but his continuing bishop of that see for upwards of thirty years, may be taken as a proof that the period which we are now considering was one of tranquillity to the Christians of Antioch. The same may be said of Alexandria, where the three first successors of Mark held the bishopric for almost half a century. |