Supreme Deity. The Nazarenes retired from the ruins
of Jerusalem * to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan, where that
ancient church languished above sixty years in solitude and obscurity.
They still enjoyed the comfort of making frequent and devout visits to
the Holy City, and the hope of being one day restored to those seats
which both nature and religion taught them to love as well as to revere.
But at length, under the reign of Hadrian, the desperate fanaticism
of the Jews filled up the measure of their calamities; and the Romans,
exasperated by their repeated rebellions, exercised the rights of
victory with unusual rigor. The emperor founded, under the name of AElia
Capitolina, a new city on Mount Sion, to which he gave the privileges
of a colony; and denouncing the severest penalties against any of the
Jewish people who should dare to approach its precincts, he fixed a
vigilant garrison of a Roman cohort to enforce the execution of his
orders. The Nazarenes had only one way left to escape the common
proscription, and the force of truth was on this occasion assisted by
the influence of temporal advantages. They elected Marcus for their
bishop, a prelate of the race of the Gentiles, and most probably
a native either of Italy or of some of the Latin provinces. At his
persuasion, the most considerable part of the congregation renounced
the Mosaic law, in the practice of which they had persevered above
a century. By this sacrifice of their habits and prejudices, they
purchased a free admission into the colony of Hadrian, and more firmly
cemented their union with the Catholic church.

When the name and honors of the church of Jerusalem had been restored to
Mount Sion, the crimes of heresy and schism were imputed to the obscure
remnant of the Nazarenes, which refused to accompany their Latin bishop.
They still preserved their former habitation of Pella, spread themselves
into the villages adjacent to Damascus, and formed an inconsiderable
church in the city of Beroea, or, as it is now called, of Aleppo,
in Syria. The name of Nazarenes was deemed too honorable for those
Christian Jews, and they soon received, from the supposed poverty of
their understanding, as well as of their condition, the contemptuous
epithet of Ebionites. In a few years after the return of the church of
Jerusalem, it became a matter of doubt and controversy, whether a man
who sincerely acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued