[1]. Justin Martyr, First Apology to the Emperor Antoninus Pius.
[2]. Mosheim.
[3]. Tertullian's Apology, ch. xiii.
[4]. Mosheim's Eccl. Hist., vol. I, bk. ii, ch. 4.
[5]. Historie de Manicheism, tom ii, p. 642.
[6]. Eccl. Hist. (Mosheim), vol. I, bk. ii, part ii.
[7]. Nyssen's Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus.
[8]. I Cor. xii: 8—10.
[9]. "It does not appear that these extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit (speaking of I Cor. xii) were common in the church for more than two or three centuries. We seldom hear of them after that fatal period when the Emperor Constantine called himself a Christian; and from a vain imagination of promoting the Christian cause thereby heaped riches and power and honor upon Christians in general, but in particular upon the Christian clergy. From this time they [the spiritual gifts] almost totally ceased; very few instances of the kind were found. The cause of this was not (as has been supposed) because there was no more occasion for them, because all the world was become Christians. This is a miserable mistake, not a twentieth part of it was then nominally Christians. The real cause of it was the love of many, almost all Christians, so-called, was waxed cold. The Christians had no more of the spirit of Christ than the other heathens. The Son of Man, when he came to examine his church, could hardly find faith upon earth. This was the real cause why the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were no longer to be found in the Christian Church—because the Christians were turned heathens again and only had a dead form left."—John Wesley (Wesley's Works, vol. vii, Sermon 89, pages 26, 27).
[10]. "That it was proper for the Christian bishops to increase restraints upon the licentiousness of transgressors will be readily granted by all who consider the circumstances of those times. But whether it was for the advantage of Christianity to borrow rules for this salutary ordinance from the enemies of truth, and thus to consecrate, as it were, a part of pagan superstition, many persons very justly call in question."—Eccl. History (Mosheim), book i, cent, ii, part ii, ch. iii.