Excerpt from Commission Given by Jesus Christ to His Apostles The design of this publication is to draw the Reader's attention to that kind of Christianity which was instituted by Christ himself, and propagated by his inspired apostles according to the commission which he gave them, and which is to be found pure and unadulterated only in the writings of the New Testament. It has been the practice of those who have written on primitive Christianity to collect the greater part of their materials from the records of the first three or four centuries, whence they have exhibited a picture of that divine and heavenly religion in many respects very unlike the original. The Christian religion began very early to be corrupted. False teachers were propagating their pernicious doctrines even in the days of the apostles. In the age immediately succeeding, its original purity and simplicity were much defaced by a mixture of vain philosophy, error, mysticism and superstition, adopted and propagated by such as were reputed the most pious and orthodox fathers of the church. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.