op of
Canterbury, in George Fox's day, to hear the latter called a
"ringleader of the sect of Anglicans." In fact, "Nazarene" was, as is
well known, the distinctive appellation applied to Jesus; his
immediate followers were known as Nazarenes; while the congregation of
the disciples, and, later, of converts at Jerusalem--the Jerusalem
Church--was emphatically the "sect of the Nazarenes," no more, in
itself, to be regarded as anything outside Judaism than the sect of
the Sadducees, or that of the Essenes.[78] In fact, the tenets of both
the Sadducees and the Essenes diverged much more widely from the
Pharisaic standard of orthodoxy than Nazarenism did.

Let us consider the condition of affairs now (A.D. 50-60) in relation
to that which obtained in Justin's time, a century later. It is plain
that the Nazarenes--presided over by James, "the brother of the Lord,"
and comprising within their body all the twelve apostles--belonged to
Justin's second category of "Jews who observe the Law, believe Jesus
to be the Christ, but who insist on the observance of the Law by
Gentile converts," up till the time at which the controversy reported
by Paul arose. They then, according to Paul, simply allowed him to
form his congregations of non-legal Gentile converts at Antioch and
elsewhere; and it would seem that it was to these converts, who would
come under Justin's fifth category, that the title of "Christian" was
first applied. If any of these Christians had acted upon the more than
half-permission given by Paul, and had eaten meats offered to idols,
they would have belonged to Justin's seventh category.

Hence, it appears that, if Justin's opinion, which was probably that
of the Church generally in the middle of the second century, was
correct, James and Peter and John and their followers could not be
saved; neither could Paul, if he carried into practice his views as to
the indifference of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put the
matter another way, the centre of gravity of orthodoxy, which is at
the extreme right of the series in the nineteenth century, was at the
extreme left just before the middle of the first century, when the
"sect of the Nazarenes" constituted the whole church founded by Jesus
and the apostles; while, in the time of Justin, it lay mid-way between
the two. It is therefore a profound mistake to imagine that the
Judaeo-Christians (Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later times were
heretical outgrowths from a prim