The Clementines, moreover, preserve a saying of our Lord, contained in the Gospel in use among the Ebionites, “Keep the mysteries for me, and for the sons of my house.”(38) The Essenes, though showing great veneration for the Mosaic law, distinguished between its precepts, for some they declared were interpolations, and did not belong to the original revelation; all the glosses and traditions of the Rabbis they repudiated, as making the true Word of none effect.(39) Amongst other things that they rejected was the sacrificial system of the Law. They regarded this with the utmost horror, and would not be present at any of the sacrifices. They sent gifts to the Temple, but never any beast, that its blood might be shed. To the ordinary worship of the Temple, apart from the sacrifices, they do not seem to have objected. The Clementine Homilies carry us into the very heart of Ebionite Christianity in the second, if not the first century, and show us what was the Church of St. James and St. Peter, the Church of the Circumcision, with its peculiarities and prejudices intensified by isolation and opposition. In that curious book we find the same hostility to the sacrificial system of Moses, the same abhorrence of blood‐shedding in the service of God. This temper of mind can only be an echo of primitive Nazarene Christianity, for in the second century the Temple and its sacrifices were no more. Primitive Jewish Christianity, therefore, reproduced what was an essential feature of Essenism—a rejection of the Mosaic sacrifices. In another point Nazarene Christianity resembled Essenism, in the poverty of its members, their simplicity in dress and in diet, their community of goods. This we learn from Hegesippus, who represents St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, as truly an ascetic as any mediaeval monk; and from the Clementines, which make St. Peter feed on olives and bread only, and wear but one coat. The name of Ebionite, which was given to the Nazarenes, signified “the poor.” There was one point more of resemblance, or possible resemblance, but this was one not likely to be observed by those without. The Therapeutae in Egypt, who were apparently akin to the Essenes in Palestine, at their sacred feasts ate bread and salt. Salt seems to have been regarded by them with religious superstition, as being an antiseptic, and symbolical of purity.(40) Perhaps the Essenes of Judaea also thus regarded, and ceremonially used, salt. We have no proof, it is true; but it is not improbable. Now one of the peculiarities of the Ebionite Church in Palestine, as revealed to us by the Clementines, was the use of salt with the bread in their celebrations of the Holy Communion.(41)