These had not undergone the rite of circumcision, and therefore were not participators in the Covenant, but merely worshipped the God of Israel,(4) and were only compelled to observe the seven Noachian prescriptions. These Proselytes of the Gate, however, were little more than on sufferance. They were excluded from the Temple, and even the Acts of the Apostles represent it to be pollution for a Jew to have intercourse with them: it requires direct Divine intervention to induce Peter to go to Cornelius, and to excuse his doing so in the eyes of the primitive Church.(3) Nothing short of circumcision and full observance of the Mosaic law could secure the privileges of the Covenant with Israel to a stranger, and in illustration of this we may again point to the Acts, where certain who came from Judaea, members of the primitive church, teach the Christians of Antioch: "Except ye have been circumcised after the custom of Moses ye cannot be saved."(4) 1 We need not discuss the chronology of this class. 2 It is scarcely necessary to speak of the well-known case of Lzates, King of Adiabene, related by Josephus. The Jewish merchant Ananias, who teaches him to worship God according to the religion of the Jews, is willing, evidently from the special emergency of the case and the danger of forcing Izates fully to embrace Judaism in the face of his people, to let him remain a mere Jahveh worshipper, only partially conforming to the Law, and remaining uncircumcised'; but another Jew from Galilee, Eleazer, versed in Jewish learning, points out to him that, in neglecting circumcision, he breaks the principal point of the Law. Izates then has himself circumcised. Josephus, Antiq. xx. 2, Sec. 3 f. 3 Acts x. 2 ff, xi. 2 ft. Dr. Lightfoot says: "The Apostles of the circumcision, even St. Peter himself, had failed hitherto to comprehend the wide purpose of God. With their fellow-countrymen they still held it unlawful for a Jew to keep company with an alien' (Acts x. 28)." Galatians, p. 290. {139} This will be more fully shown as we proceed. The conversion of the Gentiles was not, therefore, in the least degree an idea foreign to Judaism, but, on the contrary, formed an intimate part of the Messianic expectation of the later prophets. The conditions of admission to the privileges and promises of the Covenant, however, were full acceptance of the Mosaic law, and submission to the initiatory rite.(1) That small and comparatively insignificant people, with an arrogance that would have been ridiculous if, in the influence which they have actually exerted over the world, it had not been almost sublime, not only supposed themselves the sole and privileged recipients of the oracles of God, as his chosen and peculiar people, but they contemplated nothing short of universal submission to the Mosaic code, and the supremacy of Israel over all the earth.