Jerome admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as being written “by the hand of Matthew,” was nevertheless a book which, notwithstanding that he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane. Nevertheless, Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it but his own as _heretical_. More than that, Jerome knew that this Gospel was the only _original_ one, yet he becomes more zealous than ever in his persecution of the “Heretics.” Why? Because to accept it was equivalent to reading the death sentence of the established Church. _The Gospel according to the Hebrews_ was well known to have been the only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the _divinity of_ Christ.(264) The Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose representative was the Gnostic author of the _Clementine Homilies_, and as the author of _Supernatural Religion_ shows,(265) Ebionitic Gnosticism had once been the purest form of Christianity. They were the pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes—the kabalistic Gnostics. They believed in the Æons, as the Cerinthians did, and that “the world was put together by Angels” (Dhyân Chohans), as Epiphanius complains (_Contra Ebionitas_): “Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of Cerinthians.” “They decided that Christ was of the seed of a man,” he laments.(266) Thus again: The badge of Dan‐Scorpio is _death‐life_, in the symbol ☧ as _cross‐bones and skull_, ... or _life‐death_ ... the standard of Constantine, the Roman Emperor. Abel has been shown to be Jesus, and Cain‐Vulcain, or Mars, pierced him. Constantine was the Roman Emperor, whose warlike god was Mars, and a Roman soldier pierced Jesus on the cross.... But the piercing of Abel was the consummation of his marriage with Cain, and this was proper under the form of Mars Generator; hence the double glyph, one of Mars‐Generator [Osiris‐Sun] and Mars‐ Destroyer [Mercury the God of Death in the Egyptian _basso‐ relievo_] in one; significant, again, of the primal idea of the living cosmos, or of birth and death, as necessary to the continuation of the stream of life.(267) To quote once more from _Isis Unveiled_: A Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was found hewn upon the granite slabs of the Adytum of the Serapeum; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit of prophecy.” At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records the fact.(268) But archæology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running round the design at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.