the various allusions to the numbers, doctrines, morals,
persecutions, and perseverance of the Christians, contained in those
letters; the object which I have in view being, to establish their
authenticity by proving the truthfulness of their allusions to these
things. If you think this too much trouble, please lay down the book,
and dismiss the consideration of religion from your thoughts. If the
letters of the apostles are not worth a careful reading, it is of no
consequence whether they are true or false.

1. These letters take for granted, that the fact of the existence of
large numbers of Christians, organized into churches, and meeting
regularly for religious worship, at the close of the first century, is a
matter of public notoriety to the world. Here, in countries eight
hundred miles distant from its birthplace, in the lifetime of those who
had seen its founder crucified, we find Christians scattered over
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia--churches in seven
provincial cities, the sect well known to Pliny, before he left Italy,
as a proscribed and persecuted religion, the professors of which were
customarily brought before courts for trial and punishment--though he
had not himself been present at such trials--and now so numerous in his
provinces, that a great number of persons, of both sexes, young and old,
of all ranks, natives and Roman citizens, professed Christianity.
Others, influenced by their example and instruction, renounced idolatry;
victims were not led to sacrifice; the sacred rites of the gods were
suspended, and their temples forsaken. The existence, then, of churches
of Christ, consisting of vast numbers of converted heathens, at the
close of the first century, is in no wise mythological or dubious. It is
an established historical fact. The Epistles of the apostles stand
confirmed by the Epistles of the governor and the emperor.

2. The second great fact presented in the Epistles, and confirmed by the
letters of the governor and the emperor, is, that the worship of the
Christian Church then was essentially the same which it is now. We find
these Christians of the first century commemorating the death and
resurrection of Christ, and rendering divine honors to him; the "stated
day" on which they assembled for worship, and the "common meal," are as
plain a description of the "disciples coming together upon the first day
of the week, to break bread," as a heathen could give in few words.