profound mistake to imagine that the Judaeo-Christians (Nazarenes and
Ebionites) of later times were heretical outgrowths from a primitive
universalist "Christianity." On the contrary, the universalist
"Christianity" is an outgrowth from the primitive, purely Jewish,
Nazarenism; which, gradually eliminating all the ceremonial and dietary
parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside its parent, and all the
intermediate stages of its development, into the position of damnable
heresies.

Such being the case, we are in a position to form a safe judgment of the
limits within which the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have been
confined. Ecclesiastical authority would have us believe that the words
which are given at the end of the first Gospel, "Go ye, therefore, and
make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," are part of the last
commands of Jesus, issued at the moment of his parting with the eleven.
If so, Peter and John must have heard these words; they are too plain to
be misunderstood; and the occasion is too solemn for them ever to be
forgotten. Yet the "Acts" tells us that Peter needed a vision to enable
him so much as to baptize Cornelius; and Paul, in the Galatians, knows
nothing of words which would have completely borne him out as against
those who, though they heard, must be supposed to have either forgotten,
or ignored them. On the other hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to
have heard the "Sermon on the Mount," know nothing of the saying that
Jesus had not come to destroy the Law, but that every jot and tittle of
the Law must be fulfilled, which surely would have been pretty good
evidence for their view of the question.

We are sometimes told that the personal friends and daily companions of
Jesus remained zealous Jews and opposed Paul's innovations, because they
were hard of heart and dull of comprehension. This hypothesis is hardly
in accordance with the concomitant faith of those who adopt it, in the
miraculous insight and superhuman sagacity of their Master; nor do I see
any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox postulate; namely,
that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and John of the fourth.
If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no dullard; and as for
the fourth gospel--a theosophic romance of the first order--it could
have been written by none but a man of remarkable literary capacity, who
had deep