“Listen to holy teaching, ye who lay hold on His promise, in accordance with the command of the Saviour, in harmony with his glorious utterances. Take heed, ye sons of God, to do all things so as to be obedient to God and to be well-pleasing in all things to the Lord our God. For if any one follow after wickedness and do things contrary to the will of God, such a one will be counted as a nation that transgresses against God. Abstain then from all covetousness and unrighteousness.”[298] 2. The second proof is afforded by the place which discipline held in contemporary Christian life. The Christians were drawn together into communities. Isolation was discouraged and soon passed away. To be a Christian was to be a member of a community. The basis of the community was not only a common belief, but also a common practice. It was the task of the community as an organization to keep itself pure. The offences against which it had to guard were not only the open crimes which fell within the cognizance of public law, but also and more especially sins of moral conduct and of the inner life. The qualifications which in later times were the ideal standard for church officers, were also in the earliest times the ideal standard for ordinary members. “If any man who has sinned sees the bishop and the deacons free from fault, and the flock abiding pure, first of all he will not venture to enter into the assembly of God, being smitten by his own conscience: but if, secondly, setting lightly by his sin he should venture to enter, he will forthwith be taken to task ... and either be punished, or being admonished by the pastor will be drawn to repentance. For looking round upon the assembly one by one, and finding no blemish either in the bishop or in the ranks of the people under him, with shame and many tears he will go out in peace, pricked in heart, and the flock will have been cleansed, and he will cry with tears to God and will repent of his sin, and will have hope: and the whole flock beholding his tears will be admonished that he who has sinned and repented is not lost.”[299] In other cases expulsion was a solemn and formal act: the sinful member was cast into outer darkness: re-admission was accompanied with the same rites as the original admission. In other words, the earliest communities endeavoured, both in the theory which they embodied in their manuals of Christian life, and in the practice which they enforced by discipline, to realize what has since been known as the Puritan ideal. Each one of them was a community of saints. “Passing their days upon earth, they were in reality citizens of heaven.”[300] The earthly community reflected in all but its glory and its everlastingness the life of the “new Jerusalem.” Its bishop was the visible representative of Jesus Christ himself sitting on the throne of heaven, with the white-robed elders round him: its members were the “elect,” the “holy ones,” the “saved.” “Without were