The Ebionites

There were others whom the wicked demon could not shake loose from their devotion to the Christ of God; but he found them open to attack from another side and made them his own. The first Christians fittingly called these men Ebionites, since they held poor and lowly opinions about Christ. [a] They regarded him as a plain and ordinary man, a mere man who had been counted righteous by advancing in character, born from the union of a man with Mary. They held that the worship prescribed by the law was altogether necessary for them, as though they could not be saved by faith in Christ alone and by the life that goes with it. [b]

Besides these there were others who bore the same name. They escaped the outlandish absurdity of the first group and did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. Yet they too would not acknowledge that he existed beforehand, being God, Word and Wisdom. So they were turned aside into the same impiety as the first, especially since they too were zealous to keep the bodily worship of the law just as the others did. These men thought that the letters of the apostle must be rejected altogether, and they called him an apostate from the law. They used only the gospel called the Gospel according to the Hebrews and made little account of the rest. [c] They kept the Sabbath and the rest of the Jewish way of life just as the others did; but on the Lord’s days they also celebrated rites much like ours, in memory of the Savior’s resurrection. That is how, from such an undertaking, they came by their name: the name Ebionites shows the poverty of their understanding, for this is what a poor man is called among the Hebrews.