arue III. p. 895) Clement may possibly
have had Jewish Christians before him. See Zahn, Forschungen, vol. III.
p. 37 f.]

[Footnote 410: Cases of this kind are everywhere, up to the fifth
century, so numerous that they need not be cited. We may only remind the
reader that the Nestorian Christology was described by its earliest and
its latest opponents as Ebionitic.]

[Footnote 411: Or were those western Christians Ebionitic who, in the
fourth century still clung to very realistic Chiliastic hopes, who, in
fact, regarded their Christianity as consisting in these?]

[Footnote 412: The hellenising of Christianity went hand in hand with a
more extensive use of the Old Testament; for, according to the
principles of Catholicism, every new article of the Church system must
be able to legitimise itself as springing from revelation. But, as a
rule, the attestation could only be gathered from the Old Testament,
since religion here appears in the fixed form of a secular community.
Now the needs of a secular community for outward regulations gradually
became so strong in the Church as to require palpable ceremonial rules.
But it cannot be denied, that from a certain point of time, first by
means of the fiction of Apostolic constitutions (see my edition of the
Didache, Prolegg. p. 239 ff.), and then without this fiction, not,
however, as a rule, without reservations, ceremonial regulations were
simply taken over from the Old Testament. But this transference (See Bk.
II.) takes place at a time when there can be absolutely no question of
an influence of Jewish Christianity. Moreover, it always proves itself
to be catholic by the fact that it did not in the least soften the
traditional anti-Judaism. On the contrary, it attained its full growth
in the age of Constantine. Finally, it should not be overlooked that at
all times in antiquity, certain provincial churches were exposed to
Jewish influences, especially in the East and in Arabia, that they were
therefore threatened with being Judaised, or with apostasy to Judaism,
and that even at the present day, certain Oriental Churches shew tokens
of having once been subject to Jewish influences (see Serapion in Euseb,
H. E. VI. 12. 1, Martyr. Pion., Epiph. de mens. et pond. 15. 18; my
Texte u. Unters. I. 3. p. 73 f., and Wellhausen, Skizzen und
Vorarbeiten, Part. 3. p. 197 ff.; actual disputations with Jews do not
seem to have been common, though see Tertull. adv. Jud. and Orig. c.
Cels.