Acts 8:12

Acts 8:12. But when they believed Philip... they were baptized, both men and women. ‘Philip,' as Bishop Lightfoot observes (Galatians, Dissertation iii.), ‘carried into practice the doctrine which Stephen preached and for which he died.' ‘Stephen was the first to look stedfastly to the end of that which is abolished, to sound the death-knell of the Mosaic ordinances and the Temple worship, and to claim for the Gospel unfettered liberty and universal rights.' Philip, by preaching to and then baptizing a number of Samaritans who believed, was the founder of the earliest Gentile congregation. The first stones of the Church of the Gentiles were laid by those men who were dispersed when the persecution ‘arose about Stephen.'