now in our hands describes these exertions, the persons employed, the means and endeavours made use of, and the labours undertaken in the prosecution of this purpose.  Again, the treatment which the history represents the first propagators of the religion to have experienced was no other than what naturally resulted from the situation in which they were confessedly placed.  It is admitted that the religion was adverse, in great degree, to the reigning opinions, and to the hopes and wishes of the nation to which it was first introduced; and that it overthrew, so far as it was received, the established theology and worship of every other country.  We cannot feel much reluctance in believing that when the messengers of such a system went about not only publishing their opinions, but collecting proselytes, and forming regular societies of proselytes, they should meet with opposition in their attempts, or that this opposition should sometimes proceed to fatal extremities.  Our history details examples of this opposition, and of the sufferings and dangers which the emissaries of the religion underwent, perfectly agreeable to what might reasonably be expected, from the nature of their undertaking, compared with the character of the age and country in which it was carried on.

IV.  The records before us supply evidence of what formed another member of our general proposition, and what, as hath already been observed, is highly probable, and almost a necessary consequence of their new profession, viz., that, together with activity and courage in propagating the religion, the primitive followers of Jesus assumed, upon their conversion, a new and peculiar course of private life.  Immediately after their Master was withdrawn from them, we hear of their “continuing with one accord in prayer and supplication;” (Acts i. 14.) of their “continuing daily with one accord in the temple” (Acts ii. 46.) Of “many being gathered together praying.” (Acts xii. 12.) We know that strict instructions were laid upon the converts by their teachers.  Wherever they came, the first word of their preaching was, “Repent!” We know that these injunctions obliged them to refrain from many species of licentiousness, which were not, at that time, reputed criminal.  We know the rules of purity, and the maxims of benevolence, which Christians read in their books; concerning which rules it is enough to observe, that, if they were, I will not say completely obeyed, but in any degree regarded, they could produce a system of conduct, and, what is more difficult to preserve, a disposition of mind, and a regulation of affections, different from anything to which they had hitherto been accustomed, and different from what they would see in others.  The change and distinction of manners, which resulted from their new character, is perpetually referred to in the letters of their teachers.  “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in times past ye walked, according to the course of this world,