Lastly; the nature of the case affords a strong proof, that the original
teachers of Christianity, in consequence of their new profession,
entered upon a new and singular course of life. We may be allowed to
presume, that the institution which they preached to others, they
conformed to in their own persons; because this is no more than what
every teacher of a new religion both does, and must do, in order to
obtain either proselytes or hearers. The change which this would produce
was very considerable. It is a change which we do not easily estimate,
because, ourselves and all about us being habituated to the institutions
from our infancy, it is what we neither experience nor observe. After
men became Christians, much of their time was spent in prayer and
devotion, in religious meetings, in celebrating the Eucharist, in
conferences, in exhortations, in preaching, in an affectionate
intercourse with one another, and correspondence with other societies.
Perhaps their mode of life, in its form and habit, was not very unlike
the Unitas Fratrum, or the modern methodists. Think then what it was to
become such at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Antioch, or even at Jerusalem.
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