II. BOOK part of his created universe with equal advantage. One mark by which the Jewish race was designated as the great religious caste of mankind, was thus for ever abolished. The synagogue had no reverential dignity, no old and sacred majesty to the mind of the convert, beyond his own equally humble and unimposing place of devotion. Hence even before the destruction of the Temple, this feeling depended upon the peculiar circumstances of the individual convert. Jewish attachment to the Law. Though even among the foreign Jews the respect for the Temple was maintained by traditionary reverence, though the impost for its maintenance was regularly levied and willingly paid by the race of Israel in every part of the Roman empire, and occasional visits to the capital at the periods of the great festivals, revived in many the old sacred impressions, still, according to the universal principles of human nature, the more remote the residence, and the less frequent the impression of the Temple services upon the senses, the weaker became this first conservative principle of Jewish feeling. But there remained another element of that exclusiveness, which was the primary principle of the existing Judaism; that exclusiveness, which limiting the Divine favour to a certain race, would scarcely believe that foreign branches could be engrafted into the parent stock, even though incorporated with it; and still obstinately resisted the notion that Gentiles, without becoming Jews, could share in the blessings of the promised Messiah; or, in their state of uncircumcision, or at least of in subordination to the Mosaic ordinances, become heirs of the kingdom of Heaven. II. What the Temple was to the inhabitant of Jerusalem, was the Law to the worshipper in the The Law. synagogue. As early, no doubt, as the present time, the book of the Law was the one great sacred object in every religious edifice of the Jews in all parts of the world. It was deposited in a kind of ark; it was placed in that part of the synagogue which represented the Holy of Holies; it was brought forth with solemn reverence by the "angel" of the assembly; it was heard as an "oracle of God" from the sanctuary. The whole rabbinical supremacy rested on their privilege as interpreters of the law; and tradition, though, in fact, it assumed a co-ordinate authority, yet veiled its pretensions under the humbler character of an exposition, a supplementary comment, on the heavenenacted code. If we reascend, in our history, towards the period in which Christianity first opened its pale to the Gentiles, we shall find that this was the prevailing power by which the internal Judaism maintained its conflict with purer and more liberal Christianity within its own sphere. Even at Antioch, the Christian community had been in danger from this principle of separation; the Jewish converts, jealous of all encroachment upon the law, had drawn off and insulated themselves from those of the Gentiles.* Peter withdrew within the nar *It is difficult to decide whether this dispute took place before or after the decree of the assembly VOL. I. in Jerusalem. Plank, in his Ges- G G BOOK II. rower and more exclusive party; Barnabas alone, the companion and supporter of Paul, did not incline to the same course. It required all the energy and resolution of Paul to resist the example and influence of the older Apostles. His public expostulation had the effect of allaying the discord at Antioch; and the temperate and conciliatory measures adopted in Jerusalem, to a certain degree reunited the conflicting parties. Still, in most places where Paul established a new community, immediately after his departure this same spirit of Judaism seems to have rallied, and attempted to re-establish the great exclusive principle, that Christianity was no more than Judaism, completed by the reception of Jesus as the Messiah. The universal religion of Christ was thus in perpetual danger of being contracted into a national and ritual worship. The eternal law of Moses was still to maintain its authority with all its cumbrous framework of observances; and the Gentile proselytes who were ready to submit to the faith of Christ, with its simple and exquisite morality, were likewise to submit to all the countless provisions, and, now in many respects, unmeaning and unintelligible regulations, of diet, dress, manners, and conduct. This conflict may be traced most clearly in the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly in those to the remote communities in Galatia and in Rome. The former, written probably during the residence whole this appears the most pro- Judaising spirit rather than in II. within the of the Apostle at Ephesus, was addressed to the CHAP. Christians of Galatia, a district in the northern part of Asia Minor, occupied by a mingled population. The descendants of the Gaulish invaders, from whom the region derived its name, retained to a late period vestiges of their original race, in the Celtic dialect, and probably great numbers of Jews had settled in these quarters. Paul had twice The visited the country, and his Epistle was written at the internal no long period after his second visit. But even in Judaism that short interval, Judaism had revived its preten- church sions. The adversaries of Paul had even gone so far as to disclaim him as an Apostle of Christianity; opposed and before he vindicates the essential independence of the new faith, and declares the Jewish law to have been only a temporary institution †, designed during a dark and barbarous period of human society, to keep alive the first principles of true religion, he has to assert his own divine appointment as a delegated teacher of Christianity.‡ The Epistle to the Romans § enters with more full and elaborate argument into the same momentous question. The History of the Roman community is most remarkable. It grew up in silence, founded by some unknown *We decline the controversy concerning the place and time at which the different epistles were written; we shall give only the result, not the process of our investigations. This to the Galatians we suppose to have been written during St. Paul's first visit to Ephesus. (Acts, xix.) teachers ||, probably of Galat. iii. 19. Galat. i. 1, 2. This epistle, there seems no doubt, was written from Corinth, during St. Paul's second residence in that city. The foundation of the church of Rome by either St. Peter or St. Paul is utterly irreconcilable by St. Paul. II. BOOK those who were present in Jerusalem, at the first publication of Christianity by the Apostles. During the reign of Claudius it had made so much progress, as to excite open tumults and dissensions among the Jewish population of Rome; these animosities rose to such a height, that the attention of the government was aroused, and both parties expelled from the city. With some of these exiles, Aquila and Priscilla, St. Paul, as we have seen, formed an intimate connection during his first visit to Corinth from them he received information of the extraordinary progress of the faith in Rome. The Jews seem quietly to have crept back to their old quarters, when the rigour with which the Imperial Edict was at first executed, had insensibly relaxed; and from these persons, on their return to the capital, and most likely from other Roman Christians, who may have taken refuge in Corinth*, or in other cities where Paul had founded Christian communities, the first, or at least the more perfect knowledge of the higher Christianity, taught by the Apostle of the Gentiles, would be conveyed to Rome. So complete indeed does with any reasonable view of the will recur on another occasion. As to St. Paul, the first chapter of this epistle is positive evidence, that the foundation of the church in Rome was long previous to his visit to the western metropolis of the world. *It would appear probable that the greater part of the Christian community took refuge, with Aquila and Priscilla, in Corinth and the neighbouring port of Cenchrea. |