ns to the strife among the
early Christians. For instance; in the "First Epistle of Clement to the
Corinthians,"[514:2] we read as follows:

"Wherefore are there strifes, and anger, and divisions, and
schisms, and wars, among us? . . . Why do we rend and tear in
pieces the members of Christ, and raise seditions against our
own body? and are come to such a height of madness, as to
forget that we are members one of another."

In his Epistle to the Trallians, Ignatius says:[514:3]

"I exhort you, or rather not I, but the love of Jesus Christ,
that ye use none but Christian nourishment; abstaining from
pasture which is of another kind. I mean _Heresy_. For they
that are heretics, confound together the doctrine of Jesus
Christ with their own poison; whilst they seem worthy of
belief. . . . Stop your ears, therefore, as often as any one
shall speak contrary to Jesus Christ, who was of the race of
David, of the Virgin Mary. Who was _truly_ born, and did eat
and drink; was _truly_ persecuted under Pontius Pilate; was
_truly_ crucified and dead; both those in heaven and on earth,
and under the earth, being spectators of it. . . . But if, as
some who are atheists, that is to say, infidels, pretend,
_that he only seemed to suffer_, why then am I bound? Why do I
desire to fight with beasts? Therefore do I die in vain."

We find St. Paul, the very first Apostle of the Gentiles, expressly
avowing that _he was made a minister of the gospel, which had already
been preached to every creature under heaven_,[514:4] and preaching _a
God manifest in the flesh_, who had been _believed on in the
world_,[514:5] therefore, _before the commencement of his ministry_; and
who could not have been the man of Nazareth, who had certainly not been
preached, _at that time_, nor generally believed on in the world, till
ages after that time.[514:6] We find also that:

1. This Paul owns himself a _deacon_, the lowest ecclesiastical grade
of the _Therapeutan_ church.

2. The Gospel of which these Epistles speak, had been extensively
preached and fully established before the time of Jesus, by the
Therapeuts or Essenes, who believed in the doctrine of the
Angel-Messiah, the AEon from heaven.[515:1]

Leo the Great, so-called (A. D. 440-461), writes thus:

"Let those who with impious murmurings find fault with the
Divine dispensations, and who comp