As the first church at Jerusalem increased in number, and new converts were added to it, there was a necessity that there should be some written history given of what was said and taught by Christ before his death; and as Matthew was in every way qualified, the task was imposed on him. Matthew wrote this book about A.D. 40, not much, if any, more than seven years after the death of Christ. Everything was fresh in his memory, and no doubt he was particular to give to the new converts a full and correct knowledge of all the doctrines taught by Christ, and especially to place before them his sermon on the mount, so full of divine morality, which was to form the soul of the new religion. From all we know with certainty, this Gospel of Matthew was the only account of Christ in use among the members of the first Christian church, and their only means of information, except what they learned direct from the other Apostles. Everything, then, was just as it fell from the lips of Christ, and had the odor of fresh-gathered flowers. How the Christians at Jerusalem clung to this Gospel of Matthew, their sufferings and persecutions through a period of more than two centuries will bear witness. These Christians, afterwards called by way of aversion Ebionites, were charged with the alteration of the Scriptures. This alteration, according to Epiphanius, consisted in the omission of the first two chapters of Matthew, which contain the account of the miraculous conception of Christ. The statements of Epiphanius are verified by the fact, that at the time these two chapters were added, by the men of the second century, we can trace through the pages of Ignatius, and other early fathers, numerous forgeries and interpolations which are unmistakable, and were intended to sustain the new aspect which Christianity took on in the early part of the second century. The addition of the two chapters, and the forgeries, belong to the period when the religion of Paul had passed off into the Philo-Alexandrian period of Christianity. Eusebius informs us what were the crimes of the Ebionites: "They are properly called Ebionites by the ancients, as those who cherished a low and mean opinion of Christ. For they consider him a _plain and common man_, and justified in his advances in virtue, and that he was born of the Virgin Mary by natural generation." (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist., book iii. chap. 27.)