28; I Pet. iv. 16). And as it was a name imposed by
adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and
not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the
followers of Jesus of Nazareth, 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the
very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was _not_ the
Christ, but a false pretender to the name. [Footnote: Compare Tacitus
(_Annal_, xv. 24): Quos _vulgus_ ... Christianos appellabat. It is
curious too that, although a Greek word and coined in a Greek city, the
termination is Latin. Christianos is formed on the model of Romanus,
Albanus, Pompeianus, and the like.]
Starting then from this point, that 'Christians' was a title given to
the disciples by the heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At
Antioch they first obtained this name--at the city, that is, which was
the head-quarters of the Church's missions to the heathen, in the same
sense as Jerusalem had been the head-quarters of the mission to the
seed of Abraham. It was there, and among the faithful there, that a
conviction of the world-wide destination of the Gospel arose; there it
was first plainly seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth.
Hitherto the faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries,
and indeed often were still called, 'Galileans,' or 'Nazarenes,'--both
names which indicated the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been
nursed, and that the world saw in the new Society no more than a Jewish
sect.
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