The application by Epiphanius of the words “_sect_” and “_heretics_” to these believers, does not prove that he was speaking of a _different class_ from the early Hebrew Christians; but only that this same class began, in his time, to be spoken of in a different and more disparaging way. He is the first writer, so far as I can discover, who describes them in such reproachful language. On this point Dr. Wall observes: “He styles them heretics, for no other reason that I can see, but that they, together with their Christian faith, continued the use of circumcision and of the Jewish rites; which things St. Paul never blamed in a Jewish Christian, though, in the Gentile Christian, he did: and Epiphanius with the same propriety, as far as I can perceive, might have blamed St. James, bishop of Jerusalem, and those thousands of Jewish Christians with him, concerning whom James said to Paul, ‘Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous for the law.’”[122] And as to the Nazarenes and Ebionites separating from the general community of the Christian church, after the second destruction of Jerusalem by Adrian, and thus _bringing upon themselves_ the opprobrium of heresy, the fact, stated in this form, cannot be proved. From the first, the Hebrew Christians had formed a separate body from the Gentile Christians. But their proportion to the whole body of believers seems to have been for some time too considerable to admit of their being spoken of in contemptuous language. When the Gentile portion of the Church became altogether ascendant, and especially when it furnished all the _ecclesiastical writers_, (one of whose chief functions it has been, in every age, _to call names_,) the Jewish brethren, destitute of all pretensions to philosophy, and free from that ambitious speculative spirit out of which orthodox theology arose, were naturally treated with less respect, and regarded as exceptions to that general union which had consolidated itself independently of them, and at last completely left them out. It does not appear that any further change was wrought by Adrian’s destruction of Jerusalem, than necessarily followed from his resolution to exclude, from the new colony which he founded there, all who practised Jewish rites. This imperial determination compelled the withdrawal of the Hebrew Christians to the North of Palestine; and they were replaced by a new church, whose Gentile origin and customs qualified its members (under the Emperor’s decree) for settlement on the ancient site. II. Dr. Tattershall disparages the testimony of the witnesses cited in this cause,—Epiphanius and Jerome; and not without good reason, if there should be sufficient proof, _when the whole case is before us_, of his two allegations, viz.: First, That Epiphanius contradicts himself; affirming now the completeness, and then the mutilation, of the Gospel in question.