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EDINBURGH:

Printed for JoHN BELL; and fold by J. NOURSE,
and RICHARDSON & URQUHART, London.

M,DCC,LXXVI,

Tappan Prest. Ass

2-23-1932

PREFACE.

HE Chriftian Church may be con

THE

fidered as a vaft community, a

great and noble republic, founded on Divine inftitution, and governed by peculiar laws both of a religious and political nature. Its internal conftitution, its fyftem of doctrine, discipline, worship and polity, and its external situation and circumftances in the world, whether profperous or adverse, depreffed or triumphant, do justly merit attention. Here must open a wide field for curious research and observation.

THE

THE fupport and government of fo immenfe a fociety, the movements of fuch a complicated machine, and,-whilft it points to fublimer objects, and would fteer a courfe to celeftial habitations, its intimate connection, in mean time, with this world, with princes and potentates, with ftates and kingdoms, with tranfactions of peace and war, with any new event or revolution, and with men of every rank and character,-all this ferves remarkably to enrich and diversify the fcene of Ecclefiaftical Hiftory,

THIS, however, it must be owned, is too little known by many; and whilst they roam at large through other less valuable volumes of history, they preposteroufly neglect this more curious and interefting one, calculated to improve a folid, fagacious tafte; and even to gratify, in fome degree, an imagination turned

for

for romance, confidering the numerous and marvellous incidents with which it is crouded.

To remove a confiderable objection made by fome, I have, in the following performance, lopped off numberless excrefcencies which over-load our Churchhiftories in general; whilft, however, I have judged it proper, to introduce a variety of episodes and obfervations omitted by others. Yet, I find, that fome, on the other hand, have affected fuch a fhort, fyftematic method, as to render their account of things little better than a mere chronological index, jejune and uninterefting, whilst they have neglected to lay open the true fprings of action, to trace the movement and gradual evolution of affairs, or to refolve into their proper causes the various events and revolutions which they too transiently relate.

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