tical forms of Judaism and the observance of the Mosaic
law in its literal sense, as essential to Christianity, at least to the
Christianity of born Jews, or who, though rejecting these forms,
nevertheless assumed a prerogative of the Jewish people even in
Christianity (Clem., Homil. XI. 26: [Greek: ean ho allophulos ton nomon
praxei, Ioudaios estin, me praxas de Hellen]; "If the foreigner observe
the law he is a Jew, but if not he is a Greek.")[405] To this Jewish
Christianity is opposed, not Gentile Christianity, but the Christian
religion, in so far as it is conceived as universalistic and
anti-national in the strict sense of the term (Presupp. Sec. 3), that is,
the main body of Christendom in so far as it has freed itself from
Judaism as a nation.[406]

It is not strange that this Jewish Christianity was subject to all the
conditions which arose from the internal and external position of the
Judaism of the time; that is, different tendencies were necessarily
developed in it, according to the measure of the tendencies (or the
disintegrations) which asserted themselves in the Judaism of that time.
It lies also in the nature of the case that, with one exception, that of
Pharisaic Jewish Christianity, all other tendencies were accurately
parallelled in the systems which appeared in the great, that is,
anti-Jewish Christendom. They were distinguished from these, simply by a
social and political, that is, a national element. Moreover, they were
exposed to the same influences from without as the synagogue, and as the
larger Christendom, till the isolation to which Judaism as a nation,
after severe reverses condemned itself, became fatal to them also.
Consequently, there were besides Pharisaic Jewish Christians, ascetics
of all kinds who were joined by all those over whom Oriental religious
wisdom and Greek philosophy had won a commanding influence (see above,
p. 242 f.)

In the first century these Jewish Christians formed the majority in
Palestine, and perhaps also in some neighbouring provinces. But they
were also found here and there in the West.

Now the great question is, whether this Jewish Christianity as a whole,
or in certain of its tendencies, was a factor in the development of
Christianity to Catholicism. This question is to be answered in the
negative, and quite as much with regard to the history of dogma as with
regard to the political history of the Church. From the stand-point of
the universal history of C