Thus the first Apostles, and their adherents, were only Jews, persuaded that the Messiah was already come, and was going soon to commence his reign, which made them hated and persecuted as schismatics or heretics by their fellow-citizens. St. Jerome informs us, "that even down to his time, the Jews used to anathematize the Christians, under the name of Nazarenes, three times a day in their synagogues."
All this evidently proves, that the Nazarenes, of Ebionites, were the first Christians, taught by the most considerable of the Apostles, and that the first Christians were only reformed Jews; this is clearly the only idea we can form of Christianity, such as it was taught by Jesus Christ himself.
How then comes it that since Jesus, Christianity has been so separated from Judaism? a slight attention will prove to us that this is owing to St. Paul. Repulsed by the Jews, or perhaps desirous of playing a more important part, we see him separate himself from his brethren of Jerusalem, and undertake the conversion of the Gentiles, for whom the Jews entertained no sentiment but horror. Encouraged by his first successes and wishing to extend them, he dispensed the Pagans from the painful ceremony of circumcision; he declared that the law of Moses, was only a law of servitude, from which Jesus was come to free mankind; he pretended that all the old law was merely the emblem and figure of the new; he announced himself as the Apostle of the Gentiles, and leaving Peter and the other Nazarenes to preach the gospel of circumcision, he preached his own gospel, which he himself called the gospel of uncircumcision: in a word, he made a divorce with the Jewish laws, to which his apostolic brethren believed they ought to hold themselves attached, at least, in most respects.
The conduct of Paul, must naturally have displeased his seniors in the Apostleship, but fear appears to have deter mined them to cede, at least for a time, to our missionary who had already made a considerable party. Nevertheless the Acts of the Apostles and the writings of Paul, prove to us his quarrels with his brethren, who, according to appearances, never viewed with a friendly eye, his enterprizes and innovations. Moreover, Eusebius and St. Epiphanius inform us, that our Apostle was regarded as an apostate, an impostor, and an enemy by the Ebionites, that is to say, by the first faithful. But St. Paul's party having in the end prevailed, the Jewish law was entirely banished from Christianity, and the Ebionites, or Nazarenes, though of more ancient date and though formed by Christ and his first apostles were declared heretics.
It is proper to remark in this place that these Ebionites, or first Christians, believed that Jesus was but a man, as much on the side of his father as on that of his mother, that is to say, the son of Joseph and Mary; but that he was a wise, just, and excellent person, thus meriting the appellation of the son of God, because of his holy life and good qualities whence we see that the first Christians were as well as the first Apostles, true Socinians. But St. Paul to give, without doubt, more lustre to his ministry, and his adherents after him, willing to extol the holiness of their religion, made a God of Jesus, a dogma which it is no more permitted to doubt, especially since the partizans of Paul have become more numerous, and stronger than those of St. Peter and the other Nazarenes, or Jewish founders of primitive Christianity, which thus totally changed its face as to its capital dogmas.
Having thus become masters of the field of battle, Paul, his adherents, and the disciples formed in their school, saw themselves in possession of the power of regulating belief, of inventing new dogmas, of making gospels, and of arranging them in their own manner, of forging to themselves titles, and of excommunicating as heretics all those who showed themselves unteachable. It is thus that the author of the Acts of the Apostles, only speaks, as it were, of his master, of St. Paul, and glances very slightly over the Acts of the Apostles of the contrary party. The same author (St. Luke) is presumed to have composed his gospel from the notes furnished him by St. Paul, though he had neither known nor seen Jesus Christ.
Faustus, the Manichean, said on the subject of the gospels, "that they had been composed a long time after the Apostles, by some obscure individuals, who fearing that faith would not be given to histories of facts with which they must have been unacquainted, published under the name of the Apostles their own writings, so filled with mistakes and discordant relations and opinions, that we can find in them neither connection nor agreement with themselves."
A little further on he loudly accuses his adversaries, who had the credit of being orthodox, and says to them, "It is thus that predecessors have inserted in the writings of our Lord many things which, though they bear his name, do not # at all agree with his doctrine. That is not surprising since we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself nor by his Apostles, but that for the greater part they are founded on tales, on vague reports, and collected by I know not who, half Jews, but little agreed among themselves, who have nevertheless published them under the name of our Lord, and thus have attributed to him their own errors and deceptions."
Origeo informs us, that Celsus exclaimed against the licence that the Christians of his time, had taken of altering many times imprudently the originals of their gospels, in order to be able to deny or to retract those things, which embarrassed them.