s,
Benjamin, John, Matthew, Philip, Simeon, Justus, Levi, Ephraim, Joseph,
and Judas. The names are indicative of the nationality. It was the boast
of this Church that it was not corrupted with any heresy until the last
Jewish bishop, a boast which must be received with some limitation, for
very early we find traces of two distinct parties in Jerusalem--those
who received the account of the miraculous conception and those who did
not. The Ebionites, who were desirous of tracing our Saviour's lineage
up to David, did so according to the genealogy given in the Gospel of
St. Mathew, and therefore they would not accept what was said respecting
the miraculous conception, affirming that it was apocryphal, and in
obvious contradiction to the genealogy in which our Saviour's line was
traced up through Joseph, who, it would thus appear, was not his father.
They are to be considered as the national or patriotic party.

[Sidenote: Causes of the arrest of Jewish conversion.]

Two causes seem to have been concerned in arresting the spread of
conversion among the Jews: the first was their disappointment as
respects the temporal power of the Messiah; the second, the prominence
eventually given to the doctrine of the Trinity. Their jealousy of
anything that might touch the national doctrine of the unity of God
became almost a fanaticism. Judaic Christianity may be said to have
virtually ended with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; its
last trace, however, was the dispute respecting Easter, which was
terminated by the Council of Nicea. The conversion of the Jews had
ceased before the reign of Constantine.

[Sidenote: Gnostic Christianity.]

The second form, Gnostic Christianity, had reached its full development
within a century after the death of Christ; it maintained an active
influence through the first four centuries, and gave birth, during that
time, to many different subordinate sects. It consisted essentially in
ingrafting Christianity upon Magianism. It made the Saviour an emanated
intelligence, derived from the eternal, self-existing mind; this
intelligence, and not the Man-Jesus, was the Christ, who thus, being an
impassive phantom, afforded to Gnosticism no idea of an expiatory
sacrifice, none of an atonement. It was arrested by the reappearance of
pure Magianism in the Persian empire under Ardeschir Babhegan; not,
however, without communicating to orthodox Christianity an impression
far more profound than is com