But if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf." The morality of the Epistles, then, was not a merely a fine theory, but an actual rule of life.

The moral codes of the apostles were received as actually binding on the members of the churches of the first century.

In this all-important matter of the rule of a good life--the fruits by which the tree is known--the integrity, authority, and success of the apostles, in turning licentious heathens into moral Christians, is authenticated by the unwilling testimony of their persecutors.

The Epistles of the apostles stand confirmed, as to their ethics, by the letters of Trajan and Pliny.
4.

The only other fact to which I call your attention, from among the multitude alluded to in these letters, is the cost at which these converts from heathenism embraced this new religion.