at Antioch?  Does the subsequent history of Christianity leave any doubt that, from this time forth, the “little rift within the lute” caused by the new teaching, developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch, grew wider and wider, until the two types of doctrines irreconcilably diverged?  Did not the primitive Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and Elkasaitism of later ages, and finally die out in obscurity and condemnation, as damnable heresy; while the younger doctrine throve and pushed out its shoots into that endless variety of sects, of which the three strongest survivors are the Roman and Greek Churches and modern Protestantism?

Singular state of things!  If I were to profess the doctrine which was held by “James, the brother of the Lord,” and by every one of the “myriads” of his followers and co-religionists in Jerusalem up to twenty or thirty years after the Crucifixion (and one knows not how much later at Pella), I should be condemned, with unanimity, as an ebionising heretic by the Roman, Greek, and Protestant Churches!  And, probably, this hearty and unanimous condemnation of the creed, held by those who were in the closest personal relation with their Lord, is almost the only point upon which they would be cordially of one mind.  On the other hand, though I hardly dare imagine such a thing, I very much fear that the “pillars” of the primitive Hierosolymitan Church would have considered Dr. Wace an infidel.  No one can read the famous second chapter of Galatians and the book of Revelation without seeing how narrow was even Paul’s escape from a similar fate.  And, if ecclesiastical history is to be trusted, the thirty-nine articles, be they right or wrong, diverge from the primitive doctrine of the Nazarenes vastly more than even Pauline Christianity did.

But, further than this, I have great difficulty in assuring myself that even James, “the brother of the Lord,” and his “myriads” of Nazarenes, properly represented the doctrines of their Master.  For it is constantly asserted by our modern “pillars” that one of the chief features of the work of Jesus was the instauration of Religion by the abolition of what our sticklers for articles and liturgies, with, unconscious humour, call the narrow restrictions of the Law.  Yet, if James knew this, how could the bitter controversy with Paul have arisen; and why did not one or the other side quote any of the various sayings of Jesus, recorded in the Gospels, which directly bear on the question—­sometimes, apparently, in opposite directions?

So, if I am asked to call myself an “infidel,” I reply:  To what doctrine do you ask me to be faithful?  Is it that contained in the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds?  My firm belief is that the Nazarenes, say of the year 40, headed by James, would have stopped their ears and thought worthy of stoning the audacious man who propounded it to them.  Is it contained in the so-called Apostle’s Creed?  I am pretty sure that even that would have created a recalcitrant commotion at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, who had fled from the soldiers of Titus.  And yet, if the unadulterated tradition of the teachings of “the Nazarene” were to be found anywhere, it surely should have been amidst those not very aged disciples who may have heard them as they were delivered.