eless and obsolete ceremonies,
without suffering Christianity to remain during so many years obscurely
confounded among the sects of the Jewish church. Arguments like these
appear to have been used in the defence of the expiring cause of the
Mosaic law; but the industry of our learned divines has abundantly
explained the ambiguous language of the Old Testament, and the ambiguous
conduct of the apostolic teachers. It was proper gradually to unfold
the system of the gospel, and to pronounce, with the utmost caution and
tenderness, a sentence of condemnation so repugnant to the inclination
and prejudices of the believing Jews.

[Footnote 15: These arguments were urged with great ingenuity by the
Jew Orobio, and refuted with equal ingenuity and candor by the Christian
Limborch. See the Amica Collatio, (it well deserves that name,) or
account of the dispute between them.]

[Footnote 16: Jesus... circumcisus erat; cibis utebatur Judaicis;
vestitu simili; purgatos scabie mittebat ad sacerdotes; Paschata et
alios dies festos religiose observabat: Si quos sanavit sabbatho,
ostendit non tantum ex lege, sed et exceptis sententiis, talia opera
sabbatho non interdicta. Grotius de Veritate Religionis Christianae,
l. v. c. 7. A little afterwards, (c. 12,) he expatiates on the
condescension of the apostles.]

The history of the church of Jerusalem affords a lively proof of the
necessity of those precautions, and of the deep impression which the
Jewish religion had made on the minds of its sectaries. The first
fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the
congregation over which they presided united the law of Moses with the
doctrine of Christ. [17] It was natural that the primitive tradition of a
church which was founded only forty days after the death of Christ, and
was governed almost as many years under the immediate inspection of
his apostle, should be received as the standard of orthodoxy. [18] The
distant churches very frequently appealed to the authority of their
venerable Parent, and relieved her distresses by a liberal contribution
of alms. But when numerous and opulent societies were established in the
great cities of the empire, in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth,
and Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had inspired to all the
Christian colonies insensibly diminished. The Jewish converts, or, as
they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations
of the church, soon found thems