The Essential Faith of the Universal Church

r belief in the Unity of God and the consistency of his moral government, that they were the most immediately and the most easily incorporated with the Christian church. For proof of this, we refer to the whole of the discourse delivered by the Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost, and to every other discourse addressed by the Apostles to Jewish hearers.

The first Gentiles who were converted to Christianity were not worshipers of a plurality of Gods; but men who from intercourse with Jews, or from other opportunities of spiritual advancement, had attained to the belief of One God, indivisible in his nature and unrivalled in his supremacy. The same mode of teaching which sufficed for the Jews, sufficed for them also, as far as the essential truth of Christianity was concerned; and the same method was therefore adopted, as may be seen in the discourse of Peter in the house of Cornelius.

The next converts were from the disciples of the Pagan theology of Greece and Rome; with them a different metho