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a work which I suspect you have not looked into. I will however favour you with a sight of it, if you will gratify me with the perusal of the works of Zwicker, which, by your account, you have carefully read, though I have not yet been able to procure them. I am, &c.

LETTER III.

Of the Nazarenes and Ebionites. REV. SIR,

You still insist, p. 38, upon the high orthodoxy of

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those whom the christian fathers call Nazarenes. Epiphanius," you say, p. 38, "confesses that the Nazarenes held the catholic doctrine concerning the nature of our Lord;" whereas I have maintained that though, according to him and some other ancient writers, there was some difference between them and the Ebionites, they still agreed in asserting the proper humanity of Christ. The ywun which distinguished the Ebionites, you say, p. 41, was something that they had borrowed, not from the Nalwpaio, the christian Nazarenes, but the Nasareans, a sect of Jews only. "I still abide by my assertion," you say, p. 176, "that the name of Nazarenes was never heard of in the church, that is, among christians themselves, before the final destruction of Jerusalem by Adrian; when it became the specific name of the Judaizers, who at that time separated from the church at Jerusalem, and settled in the North of Galilee: the

name was taken from the country in which they

settled."

I am really astonished that you should have the assurance to assert all this, so directly contrary to every thing that appears on the face of ecclesiastical history, and which must have been borrowed from your imagination only, as I shall easily prove. I cannot raise Epiphanius himself from the dead to solve the question concerning his opinion, nor do I wish to disturb the good father's repose; but, though dead, he speaks sufficiently plain for my purpose in the following passage:

"Wherefore the blessed John coming, and finding men employed about the humanity of Christ, and the Ebionites being in an error about the earthly genealogy of Christ, deduced from Abraham, carried by Luke as high as Adam, and finding the Cerinthians and Merinthians maintaining that he was a mere man, born by natural generation of both the sexes, and also the Nazarenes, and many other heresies; as coming last, (for he was the fourth to write a gospel,) began as it were to call back the wanderers, and those who were employed about the humanity of Christ; and seeing some of them going into rough paths, leaving the strait and true path, cries, Whither are you going, whither are you walking, who tread a rough and dangerous path, leading to a precipice? It is not so. The God, the logos, which was begotten by the Father from all eternity, is not from Mary only. He is not from the time of Joseph, he is not from the time of Salathiel and Zerobabel, and David, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Noah, and Adam; but in the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God.

The was, and the was, and the was, do not admit of his having ever not been*."

Perhaps you will say that this testimony of Epiphanius is forged by me, as you

charge me with re

spect to the same writer, p. 13. I therefore beg that you would examine the passage yourself. You will find my reference to it sufficiently exact.

After reading this passage, can any person entertain a doubt but that, in the opinion of Epiphanius at least, (and weak as he was in some things, he stands uncontradicted in this by any authority whatever, and his account is confirmed by the most respectable ones in all antiquity,) the Nazarenes were not only a sect of Jewish christians in the time of the apostles, but, together with the Ebionites, a very formidable sect, and that this sect held the doctrine of the simple humanity of Christ? Did he not, as appears by this passage, consider the Nazarenes as standing in need of being taught the pre-existence and divinity of Christ, as well

* Διο και ὁ Ιωαννης ελθων ὁ μακαριος, και εύρων τους ανθρώπους ησχολημένους περι την κατω Χριστου παρουσίαν, και των Εβιωναίων πλανηθέντων δια την ενσαρχον Χριστου γενεαλογίαν, απο Αβρααμ καταγομένην, και Λουκα αναγομένην αχρι του Αδαμ· εὑρων δε τους Κηρίνθιανους και Μηρινθιανούς εκ παρατρίβης αυτον λεγοντας είναι ψιλον ανθρωπον, και τους Ναζωραιούς, και άλλας πολλας αἱρεσεις, ὡς κατοπιν ελθων, τεταρτος γας ούτος ευαγγελίζεται, αρχεται ανα καλείσθαι, ως ειπείν, τους πλανηθέντας, και ησχολημένους περί την κατω Χριστου παρουσιαν, και λεγειν αυτοις (ως κατοπιν βαίνων, και όρων τινας εις τραχειας όδους κεκλικοτας και αφέντας την ευθείαν και αληθινην, ὡς ειπείν) Ποι φερεσθε, ποι βαδίζετε, οἱ την τραχειαν ὁδον και σκανδαλώδη και εις χάσμα φερουσαν βαδίζοντες ; ανακαμε ψατε. Ουκ εστιν ούτως, ουκ εστιν απο Μαριας μονον ὁ Θεὸς λόγος, δ εκ πατρος ανωθεν γεγεννημενος, ουκ εστιν απο των χρονων Ιωσηφ του ταυτης ὁρμαστού, ουκ εστιν απο των χρονων Σαλαθιήλ, και 20ροβαίηλ, και Δαβίδ, και Αβρααμ, και Ιακωβ, και Νωε, και Αδαμ, αλλα εν αρχή ην ὁ λογος, καὶ ὁ λογος ην προς τον Θεον, και θεος ην ὁ λόγος. το δε ην, και ην, και ην, ουκ ὑποδέχεται του μη είναι ποτε. Hær. 69. sect. xxiii. Epiphanii Opera, vol. i. edit. Paris. 1622, p. 746, 747.

as the Ebionites, and the other sects that he here mentions or alludes to?

In another place this writer compares the Nazarenes to persons who, seeing a fire at a distance, and not understanding the cause or the use of it, run towards it and burn themselves; so "these Jews, he says, on hearing the name of Jesus only, and the miracles performed by the apostles, believe on him; and knowing that he was born at Nazareth, and brought up in the house of Joseph, and that on that account he was called a Nazarene, (the apostles styling him a man of Nazareth, approved by miracles and mighty deeds,) imposed that name upon themselves." How, Sir, does this agree with this writer's supposing that the Nazarenes, of whom he was treating, were well instructed in the doctrine of the divinity of Christ? Also, how does this agree with the late origin that you give to these Nazarenes?

You, Mr. Archdeacon, are pleased to deny the existence even of the Ebionites in the time of the apostles, contrary, I will venture to say, to the unanimous testimony of all antiquity.-Jerom, giving an account of the reasons that moved John to write his gospel, mentions the Ebionites not only as a sect, but a flourishing sect in the time of that apostle. See the following passage from his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers: "John, the apostle whom Jesus loved, the

* Ακουσαντες γαρ μόνον ονομα Ιησου, και θεασαμενοι τα θερ σημεία τα δια χειρων των αποστολων γινόμενα, και αυτοι εις 1ησουν πιστεύουσι. γνοντες δε αυτόν εκ Ναζαρετ εν γαστρι εγκυμονήθεντα, και εν οικῷ Ιωσηφ ανατραφεντα, και δια τουτο εν τω ευαγ γελίῳ Ιησουν τον Ναζωραίον καλείσθαι, ὡς καὶ οἱ αποστολοι φασιν Ιησούν τον Ναζωραίον άνδρα, αποδεδειγμένον εν τε σημείοις και τε φασι και τα έξης· τουτο το ονομα επιτιθεασιν αυτοίς, τὸ καλείσθαι Nagwpalous. Hær. 29. sect. v. Opera, vol. i. p. 121.

son of Zebedee, and brother of James, who was be headed by Herod after the death of Christ, wrote his gospel the last of all (at the entreaty of the bishops of Asia) against Cerinthus and other heretics, and especially the doctrine of the Ebionites, then gaining ground, who said that Christ had no being before he was born of Mary, whence he was compelled to declare his divine origin*."-This is only one out of many authorities that I could produce for this purpose, and it is not possible to produce any to the contrary.

"As a certain proof," you say, p. 27, "that the Ebionites and Nazarenes were two distinct sects, Mosheim observes that each had its own gospel." But in answer to this opinion of Mosheim's, I shall give you another, which I think of equal authority, viz. that of Mr. Jeremiah Jones, with whom I find I have had the happiness to bring you acquainted; and I can introduce him with the greater confidence of his being well received, as he was as orthodox as yourself. As he is a writer entirely new to you, I shall give his whole paragraph on the subject.

"It is plain there was a very great agreement between these two ancient sects; and though they went under different names, yet they seem only to have differed in this, that the Ebionites had made some addition to the old Nazarene system. For Origen expressly tells us, αι Εβιωναιοι χρηματιζουσι οἱ απο Ιουδαίων τον Ιησουν ὡς Χριστον παραδεξάμενοι. They

*Joannes, Apostolus quem Jesus amavit plurimum, filius Zebedæi, frater Jacobi Apostoli, quem Herodes post passionem domini decollavit, novissimus omnium scripsit evangelium, rogatus ab Asiæ episcopis, adversus Cerinthum, aliosque hæreticos, et maxime tunc Ebionitarum dogma consurgens, qui asserunt Christum ante Mariam non fuisse, unde et compulsus est divinam ejus naturam edicere. Opera, vol. i. p. 273.

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