w shrewd tongue,
This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates,
Till imminent was the outcry `Save our Christ!' {330}
Whereon I stated much of the Lord's life
Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work.
Such work done, as it will be, what comes next?
What do I hear say, or conceive men say,
`Was John at all, and did he say he saw? {335}
Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'

--
284. the myth of Aeschylus: embodied in his `Prometheus Bound'.

295. the proofs shift: see pp. 37 and 38. {In etext, shortly before
two excerpts from `A Death in the Desert', Chapter II, Section 1
of Introduction.} Objective proofs, in spiritual matters,
need reconstruction, again and again; and whatever may be
their character, they are inadequate, and must finally,
in the Christian life, be superseded by subjective proofs--
by man's winning his way to the kingdom of eternal truth within himself
--the kingdom of the "what Is".

307-310. See Matt. 26:56; Mark 14:50; John 18:3.

326-328. what the Roman's lowered spear was found {to be, namely},
a bar, {etc.,} now proved {to be, etc.}.

329. This Ebion, this Cerinthus: see `Gibbon's History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire', Chaps. 15, 21, 47. And see, especially,
the able articles, "Cerinthus" and "Ebionism and Ebionites",
in the `Dictionary of Christian Biography', etc., edited by
Dr. William Smith and Professor Wace. "`Ebion' as a name first personified
by Tertullian, was said to have been a pupil of Cerinthus,
and the Gospel of St. John to have been as much directed against the former
as the latter. St. Paul and St. Luke were asserted to have spoken
and written against Ebionites. The `Apostolical Constitutions' (vi. c. 6)
traced them back to Apostolic times; Theodoret (Haer. fab. II. c. 2)
assigned them to the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96). The existence of
an `Ebion' is, however, now surrendered." From Art. Ebionism
in `Dict. of Christian Biography'.

And see Prof. George P. Fisher's `Beginnings of Christianity', 1877.

"Cerinthus, a man who was educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians,
taught that the world was not made by the primary God,
but by a certain power far separated from him, and at a distance from
that Principality who is supreme over the universe, and ignorant of him
who is above all. He represented Jesus as having not been born
of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary a