Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/87

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 69 the congregation over which they presided, united the CHAP, law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ'. It was na- ^^- tural that the primitive tradition of a church which was founded only forty days after the death of Christ, and was governed ahnost as many years under the imme- diate inspection of his apostles, should be received as the standard of orthodoxy The distant churches very frequently appealed to the authority of their venerable parent, and relieved her distresses by a libe- ral contribution of alms. But when numerous and opulent societies were established in the great cities of the empire, in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had inspired to all the christian colonics insensibly diminished. The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of poly- theism enlisted under the banner of Christ: and the gentiles, who, with the approbation of their peculiar apostle, had rejected the intolerable weight of JNIosaic ceremonies, at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own practice. The ruin of the temple, of the city, and of the public religion of the jews, was severely felt by the Nazarenes; as in their manners, though not in their faith, they maintained so intimate a connection with their impious countrymen, whose misfortunes were attributed by the pagans to the contempt, and more justly ascribed by the christians to the wrath, of the Supreme Deity. The Nazarenes retired from the ruins of Jerusalem to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan, where that ancient church "■ Paeue omnes Christum Deum sub legis observatione credebant. Sulpi- cius Severus, ii. 31. See Eusebius, Hist. Ecclesiast. 1. iv. c. 5. ' Mosheim de Rebus Cliristianis ante Constaiitinum Magnum, p. 153. In this masterly performance, which I sliall often liave occasion to quote, he enters much more fully into the state of the primitive church, than he has an opportunity of doing in his General History.