When the broad proselyting views and untiring energy of Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, were brought to bear upon the little circle of mourning disciples, it was inevitable that a rupture should take place. No one in the slightest degree familiar with the spirit of Judaism at that day can have difficulty in understanding how those who still regarded themselves as Jews, who looked upon their martyr, not as the Son of God, but, in the words of Peter, as “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you,” and who held, as is urged in the Epistle of James, firmly to their Master’s injunction to preserve every jot and tittle of the Law, should regard with growing distrust and distaste the activity of the Pharisee Paul, who, like other Pharisees, was ready to encompass land and sea to gain one proselyte, and, more than this, was prepared to throw down the exclusive barriers of the Law in order to invite all mankind to share in the glad tidings of Salvation.[15] The division came in time, and as the Gentile church spread and flourished, it stigmatized as heretics those who adhered to the simple monotheistic reformed Judaism which Christ had taught. These became known as the Ebionim, or Poor Men, Essenes, and others, who followed Christ as a prophet inspired by God, who accepted all of the apostles save Paul, whom they regarded as a transgressor of the Law, holding their property in common, honoring virginity rather than marriage, but uttering no precept upon the subject, and observing the Written Law with rigid accuracy. They maintained a quiet existence for four centuries, making no progress, but exciting no antagonism save on the part of vituperative heresiologists, whose denunciations, however, contain no rational grounds for regarding them otherwise than as the successors of the original followers of Christ.[16]