the narrative now in our hands; which accordancy shows, that it was the
narrative upon which these persons acted, and which they had received
from their teachers. Our account makes the Founder of the religion
direct that his disciples should be baptized: we know that the first
Christians were baptized, Our account makes him direct that they should
hold religious assemblies: we find that they did hold religious
assemblies. Our accounts make the apostles assemble upon a stated day of
the week: we find, and that from information perfectly independent of
our accounts, that the Christians of the first century did observe
stated days of assembling. Our histories record the institution of the
rite which we call the Lord's Supper, and a command to repeat it in
perpetual succession: we find, amongst the early Christians, the
celebration of this rite universal. And, indeed, we find concurring in
all the above-mentioned observances, Christian societies of many
different nations and languages, removed from one another by a great
distance of place and dissimilitude of situation. It is also extremely
material to remark, that there is no room for insinuating that our books
were fabricated with a studious accommodation to the usages which
obtained at the time they were written; that the authors of the books
found the usages established, and framed the story to account for their
original. The Scripture accounts, especially of the Lord's Supper, are
too short and cursory, not to say too obscure, and in this view,
deficient, to allow a place for any such suspicion.*

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* The reader who is conversant in these researches, by comparing the
short Scripture accounts of the Christian rites above-mentioned with the
minute and circumstantial directions contained in the pretended
apostolical constitutions, will see the force of this observation; the