him as an apostate. How unlikely is it that Justin should
own such reprobates as those were for fellow-Christians!

I dare avow my belief--or rather I dare not withhold my avowal--that
both Bull and Waterland are here hunting on the trail of an old blunder
or figment, concocted by the gross ignorance of the Gentile Christians
and their Fathers in all that respected Hebrew literature and the
Palestine Christians. I persist in the belief that, though a refuse of
the persecuted and from neglect degenerating Jew-Christians may have
sunk into the mean and carnal notions of their unconverted brethren
respecting the Messiah, no proper sect of Ebionites ever existed, but
those to whom St. Paul travelled with the contributions of the churches,
nor any such man as Ebion; unless indeed it was St. Barnabas, who in his
humility may have so named himself, while soliciting relief for the
distressed Palestine Christians;--"I am Barnabas the beggar." But I will
go further, and confess my belief that the (so-called) Ebionites of the
first and second centuries, who rejected the 'Christopaedia', and whose
Gospel commenced with the baptism by John, were orthodox Apostolic
Christians, who received Christ as the Lord, that is, as Jehovah
'manifested in the flesh'. As to their rejection of the other Gospels
and of Paul's writings, I might ask:--"Could they read them?" But the
whole notion seems to rest on an anachronical misconception of the
'Evangelia'. Every great mother Church, at first, had its own Gospel.

Ib. p. 288.

To say nothing here of the truer reading ("men of your nation"), there
is no consequence in the argument. The Ebionites were Christians in a
large sense, men of Christian profession, nominal Christians, as
Justin allowed the worst of heretics to be. And this is all he could
mean by allowing the Ebionites to be Christians.

I agree with Bull in holding [Greek: apo tou hymeterou genous] the most
probable reading in the passage cited from Justin, and am by no means
convinced that the celebrated passage in Josephus is an interpolation.
But I do not believe that such men, as are here described, ever
professed themselves Christians, or were, or could have been, baptized.

Ib. p. 292.

Le Clerc would appear to doubt, whether the persons pointed to in
Justin really denied Christ's divine nature or no. It is as plain as
possible that they did.

Le Clerc is no favourite of mine, and Waterland is a prime f