Was religious fanaticism capable of descending lower? Apparently it was so. The Cainites exhibit Pauline antinomianism in its last, most extravagant, most grotesque expression. Their doctrine was the extreme development of an idea in itself originally containing an element of truth.
Paul had proclaimed the emancipation of the Christian from the Law. Perhaps he did not at first sufficiently distinguish between the moral and the ceremonial law; he did not, at all events, lay down a broad, luminous principle, by which his disciples might distinguish between moral obligation to the Decalogue and bondage to the ceremonial Law. If both laws were imposed by the same God, to upset one was to upset the other. And Paul himself broke a hole in the dyke when he opposed the observance of the Sabbath, and instituted instead the Lord’s‐day.
Through that gap rushed the waves, and swept the whole Decalogue away.
Some, to rescue jeoparded morality, maintained that the Law contained a mixture of things good and bad; that the ceremonial law was bad, the moral law was good. Some, more happily, asserted that the whole of the Law was good, but that part of it was temporary, provisional, intended only to be temporary and provisional, a figure of that which was to be; and the rest of the Law was permanent, of perpetual obligation.
The ordinances of the Mosaic sanctuary were typical. When the fulfilment of the types came, the shadows were done away. This was the teaching of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, called forth by the disorders which had followed indiscriminating denunciation of the Law by the Pauline party.
But a large body of men could not, or would not, admit this distinction. St. Paul had proclaimed the emancipation of the Christian from the Law. They, having been Gentiles, had never been under the ceremonial Law of Moses. How then could they be set at liberty from it? The only freedom they could understand was freedom from the natural law written on the fleshy tables of their hearts by the same finger that had inscribed the Decalogue on the stones in Sinai. The God of the Jews was, indeed, the God of the world. The Old Testament was the revelation of his will. Christ had emancipated man from the Law. The Law was at enmity to Christ; therefore the Christian was at enmity to the Law. The Law was the voice of the God of the Jews; therefore the Christian was at enmity to the God of the Jews. Jesus was the revelation of the All‐good God, the Old Testament the revelation of the evil God.