Pontoppidan on Modern Christians

We pretend to be the followers of the first Christians. But could we imagine that these professors of the truth in Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, etc., were a people of such mind and such manners as the great multitude among us at the present day? Equally terrible, lavish, voluptuous, miserly, thieving, harlot-like, drunken, false and cunning? If they were so, could it be possible that their preaching and worship had ever gained power and had become permanent? Or even less that it had so conspicuously and so quickly put paganism to shame, and that without the slightest outside help, even in the midst of having to face death daily?

Dr. Erich Pontoppidan, Collegium Pastorale Practicum