to observe the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation. The
humane temper of Justin Martyr inclined him to answer this question in
the affirmative; and though he expressed himself with the most guarded
diffidence, he ventured to determine in favor of such an imperfect
Christian, if he were content to practise the Mosaic ceremonies, without
pretending to assert their general use or necessity. But when Justin was
pressed to declare the sentiment of the church, he confessed that there
were very many among the orthodox Christians, who not only excluded
their Judaizing brethren from the hope of salvation, but who declined
any intercourse with them in the common offices of friendship,
hospitality, and social life. The more rigorous opinion prevailed, as it
was natural to expect, over the milder; and an eternal bar of separation
was fixed between the disciples of Moses and those of Christ. The
unfortunate Ebionites, rejected from one religion as apostates, and
from the other as heretics, found themselves compelled to assume a more
decided character; and although some traces of that obsolete sect may be
discovered as late as the fourth century, they insensibly melted away,
either into the church or the synagogue.

While the orthodox church preserved a just medium between excessive
veneration and improper contempt for the law of Moses, the various
heretics deviated into equal but opposite extremes of error and
extravagance. From the acknowledged truth of the Jewish religion, the
Ebionites had concluded that it could never be abolished. From its
supposed imperfections, the Gnostics as hastily inferred that it never
was instituted by the wisdom of the Deity. There are some objections
against the authority of Moses and the prophets, which too readily
present themselves to the sceptical mind; though they can only be
derived from our ignorance of remote antiquity, and from our incapacity
to form an adequate judgment of the divine economy. These objections
were eagerly embraced and as petulantly urged by the vain science of
the Gnostics. As those heretics were, for the most part, averse to
the pleasures of sense, they morosely arraigned the polygamy of the
patriarchs, the gallantries of David, and the seraglio of Solomon. The
conquest of the land of Canaan, and the extirpation of the unsuspecting
natives, they were at a loss how to reconcile with the common notions of
humanity and justice. * But when they recollected the sang