a strictly Jewish-Christian

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a strictly Jewish-ChristianHere, indeed, a strictly Jewish-Christian church continued to exist down to the 5th century. Among the E, however, there was by no means a unanimity of religious feeling, or uniformity of opinion. Two great divergent parties are clearly recognisable—the E. proper, and the Ebionitio Nazarenes. The former were little different from Jews : their conceptions of the Saviour were meagre and unspirituaL They believed that Jesus was simply a man distinguished above all Tory Burch Handbags others for legal piety—pre-eminently a Jew, and selected as the Messiah because of his superior Judaism. Of course they denied his supernatural birth yet not his resurrection; for ' they lived in expectation of his speedy return to restore this city of God (Jerusalem), and to re-establish the theocracy there in surpassing splendour.'—Neander. They were the genuine descendants of those Judaisers who plagued the church in the time of the Apostle Paul. The Ebionitic Nazarenes, Tory Burch Sale on the other hand (who at the close of the 4th c. seem to have dwelt chiefly about Beroea in Lower Syria, but at an earlier period may have been more widely diffused), were Jewish Christians, in the better sense of the term. They conceived it to be their own duty still to circumcise, keep the Sabbath, Ac., but they had no wish to impose the peculiarities of Judaism on the Gentile Christians. They did not believe that Christianity was merely a glorification of Judaism, but a new life come into the world, in which the Gentile might at once participate, without undergoing a Mosaic ordeal. Like the stricter E, they used a Gospel of Matthew; but it contained what the other did not— an account of the supernatural conception and birth of the Saviour. According to Neander, who hasvery thoroughly investigated this question, there were a great many Tory Burch Flats varieties of opinion among the E, springing out of the differences above spoken of, which it would be Tory Burch Outlet tedious to record. It is sufficient to say that Essenism (q. v.) modified Ebionism greatly, through the introduction of a Jewish mysticism, which recognised in Moses and Christ an inward identity of doctrine, and regarded them as revealers of the ' primal religion,' whose teaching, however, had been sadly corrupted.