I. 45, 49, 55: II. 31. Clement also keeps in view Jewish
objections.) This Jewish Christianity, if we like to call it so, which
in some regions of the East was developed through an immediate influence
of Judaism on Catholicism, should not, however, be confounded with the
Jewish Christianity which is the most original form in which
Christianity realised itself. This was no longer able to influence the
Christianity which had shaken itself free from the Jewish nation (as to
futile attempts, see below), any more than the protecting covering
stripped from the new shoot, can ever again acquire significance for the
latter.]

[Footnote 413: What is called the ever-increasing legal feature of
Gentile Christianity and the Catholic Church is conditioned by its
origin, in so far as its theory is rooted in that of Judaism
spiritualised and influenced by Hellenism. As the Pauline conception of
the law never took effect and a criticism of the Old Testament religion
which is just law neither understood nor ventured upon in the larger
Christendom--the forms were not criticised, but the contents
spiritualised--so the theory that Christianity is promise and spiritual
law is to be regarded as the primitive one. Between the spiritual law
and the national law there stand indeed ceremonial laws, which, without
being spiritually interpreted, could yet be freed from the national
application. It cannot be denied that the Gentile Christian communities
and the incipient Catholic Church were very careful and reserved in
their adoption of such laws from the Old Testament, and that the later
Church no longer observed this caution. But still it is only a question
of degree for there are many examples of that adoption in the earliest
period of Christendom. The latter had no cause for hurry in utilizing
the Old Testament so long as there was no external or internal policy or
so long as it was still in embryo. The decisive factor lies here again
in enthusiasm and not in changing theories. The basis for these was
supplied from the beginning. But a community of individuals under
spiritual excitement builds on this foundation something different from
an association which wishes to organise and assert itself as such on
earth. (The history of Sunday is specially instructive here, see Zahn,
Gesch. des Sonntags, 1878, as well as the history of the discipline of
fasting, see Linsenmayr, Entwickelung der Kirchl Fastendisciplin, 1877,
and Die Abgabe des Zehnten.