Re: The Early Christians: In Their Own Words

While keeping in mind these practical aims, spirit-filled teachers were 
also commissioned to uphold the teaching of the apostles, and hand down 
their tradition unadulterated. This was the plumb line for the life of 
faith, the canon of truth by which all things were measured. Belief in the

church was an integral part of the apostolic confession of faith, which 
emerged from the rite of baptism. The believer was submerged into the
death 
of Jesus in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.