DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT:
District Clerk's Office.

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the first day of June, A. D. 1820, in the forty fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, James Sabine, of the said District, has deposited in this Office the Title of a Book, the Right whereof be claims as Author, in the words following, to wit:

An Ecclesiastical History, from the commencement of the Christian Era to the present time. By James Sabine, Pastor of the Congregational Church, Essex Street, Boston.

"Walk about Zion, go round about her, tell the towers thereof;
Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces;

That ye may tell it to the generation following,"

David.

In Conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, “ An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned:" and also to an Act entitled, “An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies during the times therein mentioned; and extending the Benefits thereof to the Arts of Designing, Engraving and Etching Historical, and other Prints."

JOHN W. DAVIS, Clerk of the District of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

SOME persons will undertake to read a work comprised in one volume, while if it were extended to many, they would despair of being able to go through it, and therefore it would not be begun. An objection to a heavy and voluminous work may arise from a want of leisure to read, or from a preference to books of a more concise and compact form. Young persons too, must have compendiums and abridgments, as introductory to more solid and extensive treatises. With a view to the accommodation of these classes of readers, the following humble work has been attempted, with what success the public will judge: the author can only say, that he has taken considerable pains to render it both acceptable and useful. A work of this charac, ter, it is presumed, need not claim a pretension

to have selected its materials from the old and scarce writings of the fathers, or from the heavy and many-volumed folios of ancient and foreign authors. It will, doubtless, be admitted that a few modern writers in the English language have selected, by far the greater part, of all that is valuable in ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. From these this volume is chiefly gathered.

MOSHEIM, MILNER, BROWN, HAWEIS, NEAL are among the writers principally consulted for the materials which form the history of the church from early times, down to the Reformation. These several authors were not men of the same creed, they had various prejudices, and their views of a CHRISTIAN CHURCH often clash and somewhat contradict; but each possesses a peculiar value, and to them all, the writer acknowledges himself much indebted. Mosheim, he conceives gives a history of error and superstition, rather than a history of truth and purity. Brown has filled up his few pages with much of the same matter as Mosheim. Milner, in describing churches and church characters, seems to believe too much, he was a churchman of the English establishment, allow

Preface.

ance must be made for his prejudices in favour of an hierarchy. Haweis though a beneficed clergyman of the same church seems to go into the opposite extreme, and believes too little : some personages which Milner has dressed in the white linen of the saints, Haweis has stripped, and put on them the horns and the hoofs of perdition. It is presumed the truth may be found between them. Neal is a non-conformist, and may be relied on for faithfulness, though not always correct in minute statement.

For the history of American Churches, the writer acknowledges his obligations to WINthrop, BelknAP, MORSE and PARISH, TRUMBULL and HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. As it respects present times, the author has written from observation, especially in regard to British churches. What he has said of the present state of religion in New England, though his means of observation have been limited, yet in the region where these pages have been written, it will be allowed that there is a fair sample of what is called orthodoxy and heterodoxy, both of which he exceedingly dislikes, when mixed up with national and worldly politics. The CHURCH

OF CHRIST, as distinct from every worldly and secular system, it has been his object to search out and define: this, he has endeavoured to prosecute with an unprejudiced mind, how far he has realized these professions, and attained to this object, must be left to the candid opinion of the reader.

All extracts and quotations are marked by inverted commas, but the authors are not given, because, had they been named in the notes, it would have taken up much room, and thereby have shortened the page, and prevented the insertion of much useful matter in the text.

Boston, June, 1820.