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 away all the old presbytery of Jerusalem. It obviously
indicates that none of its members had joined the party whose principles
had obtained the ascendency. And yet, though the adherents of Marcus
might have been charged with innovation, they acted under the sanction
of apostolical authority. They very properly refused to continue any
longer in bondage to the beggarly elements of a ritual which had long
since been superseded. Though the seceders might have urged that they
were of apostolical descent, and that they were supported by ancient
custom, it must be admitted, after all, that they were but a company of
deluded and narrow-minded bigots. The evangelical pastors of the
primitive Church repudiated their zeal for ritualism, and gave the right
hand of fellowship to Marcus and his newly-organized community. The
history of the mother Church of Christendom in the early part of the
second century is thus fraught with lessons of the gravest wisdom. We
may see from it that the true successors of the apostles were not those
who occupied their seats, or who were able to trace from them a
ministerial lineage, but those who inherited their spirit, who taught
their doctrines, and who imitated their example.

Though, in this instance, the disciples at Jerusalem nobly emancipated
themselves from the yoke of circumcision, it appears, from a controversy
which created much confusion about sixty years afterwards, that the
whole Church was disposed, to some extent, to conform to another Judaic
ordinance. The embers of this dispute had been for some time
smouldering, before they attracted much notice; but, about the
termination of the second century, they broke out into a flame which
spread from Rome to Jerusalem. The name of Easter [625:1] was yet
unknown, and the Paschal feast appears, at least in some places, to have
been then only recently established; but at an early period there was a
sprinkling of Jewish Christians in almost every Church throughout the
Empire, and they had at length induced their fellow-disciples to mark
the seasons of the Passover and Pentecost [626:1] by certain special
observances. The Passover was regarded as the mo