that one particular by which this anathema was at that time incurred by some, was affirming the necessity of the Jewish ceremonial law as part of the conditions of the Christian covenant. Now surely there is not à priori any shew of abstract impossibility in a person's holding that error, and yet seeming to himself and others to love our Lord Jesus Christ. Surely, all that in mistaken kindness is now said by way of extenuating false doctrine with regard to the Person of our Lord and Saviour, might have been advanced à fortiori, in bar of the anathema against the seducers of the Galatians, whose mistake at first sight only touched His office. It might have been said, "What hinders, but these or any men may be full of dutiful regard to our blessed Lord, although they be not fully aware of the repeal of those laws of His, which he promulgated from Mount Sinai to be a ritual for His chosen people: and although in consequence they are still for enforcing those laws on Gentile Christians as necessary to salvation?" We see at once by St. Paul's peremptory sentence, how fallacious all such pleading would have been: how impossible to be tolerated within the true Church, and how dangerous to the souls of those who persisted in it after such authoritative warning. We see that the Preachers of Circumcision in those times, although they might feel and in many respects act, as if they loved our Lord Jesus Christ, were not to be accounted as "loving Him in sincerity" and uncorruptness. We see that sincerity, enduring purity of doctrine in certain great points, is a necessary test of that love for Christ which is required to secure human error from the anathema of the Church; a necessary qualification for receiving an Apostolical blessing.
This view receives no slight illustration from certain cases in the history of heresy; cases in which the false doctrine has recommended itself in the first instance to unguarded minds by the shew of extraordinary love and respect for our Divine Master, and has ended in direct treason and blasphemy against Him. A very remarkable one occurred in Asia Minor, in the earlier half of the third century. St. Paul himself had expressly warned the Pastors of that division of Christendom, that they might expect men to arise of their ownselves who should speak perverse things to draw away disciples after them. This had begun to be accomplished in former generations by the swarming
