ery existed in "every province
and every family," and that they were bought and sold according to their
capacities for usefulness, and the demand for laborers--selling at
hundreds of dollars, and from that down to the price of a beast of
burden! Now, it is notorious that the gospel made considerable progress
among the citizens of the Roman empire; and, as nearly every family
owned slaves, it is certain that slaveholders were converted and
admitted into the Church. It will not do to say that the poor, including
the slaves, were alone converted to God, because the apostles make
frequent allusions to the receiving into the Church of intelligent,
learned, and opulent persons. The learned DR. MOSHEIM, in his Church
History, vol. i., relating to the _first three centuries_, settles this
question most effectually. He says:

"The apostles, in their writings, prescribe rules for the
conduct of the rich as well as the poor, for _masters_ as well
as _servants_--a convincing proof that among the members of the
Church planted by them were to be found persons of opulence
and masters of families. St. Paul and St. Peter admonished
Christian women not to study the adorning of themselves with
pearls, with gold and silver, or costly array. 1 Tim. ii. 9: 1
Peter iii. 3. It is, therefore, plain that there must have been
women possessed of wealth adequate to the purchase of bodily
ornaments of great price. From 1 Tim. vi. 20, and Col. ii. 8,
it is manifest that among the first converts to Christianity
there were men of learning and philosophers; for, if the wise
and the learned had unanimously rejected the Christian
religion, what occasion could there have been for this caution?
1 Cor. i. 26 unquestionably carries with it the plainest
intimation that persons of rank or power were not wholly
wanting in that assembly. Indeed, lists of the names of various
illustrious persons who embraced Christianity, in its weak and
infantile state, are given by Blondel, p. 235 de Episcopis et
Presbyteris: also by Wetstein, in his Preface to Origen's Dia.
Con. Mar., p. 13."

A few reflections, by way of concluding, and we are through with our
discourse, already extended beyond the limits we had prescribed:

_First._--There is not a single passage in the New Testament, nor a
single act in the records of the Church, during her early history, for
even cen