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.