Page:Early Christianity outside the Roman empire.djvu/17

Rh maintaining that this separation was not inevitable. The work of the Church was to overcome the world, not to furnish material for archaeologists. Still, if we could know more about the beliefs, the rites, the sacraments, of the community of 'Nazarenes' that S. Jerome mentions more than once with such tantalising brevity, it is my firm conviction that we should possess a key that would unlock many of the riddles which obstruct the Evangelic history and darken to us the recorded sayings of Christ.

But if between the Church of the second century and the Apostles there is a great gulf fixed, in what words are we to describe the difference between the Nicene and Post-Nicene Church and primitive Christianity? Here all will acknowledge the vastness of the change. At the same time, it may be said that the change was due to natural growth: the line that it took was, as a matter of fact, the historical development of Christianity. The Church of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus is undoubtedly continuous with that of Athanasius