11.) In like manner, and alluding to the same change of
practices and sentiments, he asked the Roman Christians, "what fruit
they had in those things, whereof they are now ashamed?" (Rom. vi. 21.)
The phrases which the same writer employs to describe the moral
condition of Christians, compared with their condition before they
became Christians, such as "newness of life," being "freed from sin,"
being "dead to sin;" "the destruction of the body of sin, that, for the
future, they should not serve sin;" "children of light and of the day,"
as opposed to "children of darkness and of the night;" "not sleeping as
others;" imply, at least, a new system of obligation, and, probably, a
new series of conduct, commencing with their conversion.

The testimony which Pliny bears to the behaviour of the new sect in his
time, and which testimony comes not more than fifty years after that of
St. Paul, is very applicable to the subject under consideration. The
character which this writer gives of the Christians of that age, and
which was drawn from a pretty accurate inquiry, because he considered
their moral principles as the point in which the magistrate was
interested, is as follows:--He tells the emperor, "that some of those
who had relinquished the society, or who, to save themselves, pretended
that they had relinquished it, affirmed that they were wont to meet
together on a stated day, before it was light, and sang among themselves
alternately a hymn to Christ as a God; and to bind themselves by an
oath, not to the commission of any wickedness, but that they would not
be guilty of theft, or robbery, or adultery; that they would never
falsify their word, or deny a pledge committed to them, when called upon
to return it." This proves that a morality, more pure and strict than
was ordinary, prevailed at that time in Christian societies. And to me
it appears, that we are authorised to carry his testimony back to the
age of the apostles; because it is not probable that the immediate
hearers and disciples of Christ were more relaxed than their successors
in Pliny's time, or the missionaries of the religion than those whom
they taught.

CHAPTER VI.

There is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be original
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief
of thos