Note (return) — Chapter VI

2. But the Jewish religion is a national religion, and Christianity burst the bonds of nationality, though not for all who recognised Jesus as Messiah. This gives the point at which the introduction of the term "Jewish Christianity" is appropriate.404 It should be applied exclusively to those Christians who really maintained in their whole extent, or in some measure, even if it were to a minimum degree, the national and political forms of Judaism and the observance of the Mosaic law in its literal sense, as essential to Christianity, at least to the Christianity of born Jews, or who, though rejecting these forms, nevertheless assumed a prerogative of the Jewish people even in Christianity (Clem., Homil. XI. 26: εαν 'ο αλλοφυλος τον νομον πραξηι, Ιουδαιος εστιν, μη πραξας δε 'Ελλην; "If the foreigner observe the law he is a Jew, but if not he is a Greek.")405 To this Jewish Christianity is opposed, not Gentile Christianity, but the Christian religion, in so far as it is conceived as universalistic and anti-national in the strict sense of the term (Presupp. § 3), that is, the main body of Christendom in so far as it has freed itself from Judaism as a nation.406