Whilst the Christian community was contending against the Gnostics, it was not without other controversies which were fitted to prejudice its claims in the sight of the heathen.  The destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by Titus had prevented the sticklers for the Mosaic law from practising many of their ancient ceremonies:  but there were parts of their ritual, such as circumcision, to which they still adhered, as these could be observed when the altar and the sanctuary no longer existed.  In the reign of Hadrian a division of sentiment relative to the continued obligation of the Levitical code led to a great change in the mother Church of Christendom.  About A.D. 132, an adventurer, named Barchochebas, pretending to be the Messiah and aiming at temporal dominion, appeared in Palestine; the Jews, in great numbers, flocked to his standard; and the rebel chief contrived for three years to maintain a bloody war against the strength of the Roman legions.  The Israelitish race, by their conduct at this juncture, grievously provoked the emperor; and when he had rebuilt Jerusalem, under the name of Aelia Capitolina, he threatened them with the severest penalties should they appear either in the city or the suburbs.  Some of the Jewish Christians of the place, anxious, no doubt, to escape the proscription, now resolved to give up altogether the observance of circumcision.  Others, however, objected to this course, and persisted in maintaining the permanent obligation of the Mosaic ritual.  The dissentients, called Nazarenes, formed themselves into a separate community, which obtained adherents elsewhere, and which subsisted for several centuries.  At first they differed from other Christians chiefly in their adherence to the initiatory ordinance of Judaism, but eventually they adopted erroneous principles in regard to the person of our Lord, and were in consequence ranked amongst heretics. [624:1]

In the history of the Church, the Nazarenes occupy a somewhat singular and unique position.  Their name was one of the earliest designations by which the followers of our Saviour were known, [624:2] and though by many they have been called the First Dissenters, they might have very fairly pleaded that they were the lineal descendants of the most ancient stock of Christians in the world.  The rite for which they contended had been practised in the Church of Jerusalem since its very establishment; the ministers by whom they had been taught had probably been instructed by the apostles themselves; and all the elders at the time connected with the holy city seem to have joined the secession.  It is alleged that a number of Christians of Gentile origin, uniting with those of their brethren of Jewish descent who now agreed to relinquish the Hebrew ceremonies, chose an individual, named Marcus, for their chief pastor, and that at this period the succession in the line of the circumcision “failed.” [624:3] This statement cannot signify that some dire calamity had at once swept