n 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.

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. 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. 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 themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes,
that from all the various religions of polytheism enlisted under the
banner of Christ: and the Gentiles, who, with the approbation of their
peculiar apostle, had rejected the intolerable weight of the Mosaic
ceremonies, at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the
same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own
practice. The ruin of the temple of the city, and of the public religion
of the Jews, was severely felt by the Nazarenes; as in their manners,
though not in their faith, they maintained so intimate a connection
with their impious countrymen, whose misfortunes were attributed by the
Pagans to the contempt, and more justly ascribed by the Christians to
the wrath, of the