THE object of the following pages is to illustrate the ecclesiastical errors and corruptions of the fourth century, and to show what sort of opposition was made to them. The author believes that many of those innovations, which have been called a development of Church principles, in regard to doctrine and discipline, were departures from the purer Christianity of the Church of the Apostles. He believes also that the calumniated presbyter, Vigilantius, was one of those witnesses, who have been raised up from time to time by divine grace, to bear testimony to the truth, and to be the links of its continuity through ages of rebuke and darkness. There is a succession of Christianity which may be compared to that of Judaism. The genealogies of Israel are lost; the sacerdotal line can no longer be traced up to Aaron; the tribes are scattered through the world; the succession has been interrupted; but the true seed of Abraham cannot perish, nor will the promises in regard to the restoration of Israel be unful

filled. In like manner, there is a sacred and indestructible line of Christianity, which has continued since our Lord's promise of the duration of his Church, uncorrupted by those who boast of their succession from the Church of the Fathers, the Church of the Schoolmen, and the Church of Rome: often being in the visible Church, and yet not of it. The Wilderness-Church, and the succession of Witnesses in sackcloth, have been predicted from the first, and this implies a condition the very reverse of Ascendancy, and Supremacy, and Prosperity. The succession of pure Gospel Truth has been perpetuated by despised and humble witnesses, like Vigilantius; as the succession of "another gospel," called the Development system, has been perpetuated by bold and able men like Jerome, and the Schoolmen, and the Jesuits.

The author is aware of the difficulties he has had to encounter in producing a volume under the title of 'Vigilantius and his Times.' It must be a very imperfect production at the best, being principally composed out of materials handed down to us by the opponents of the Reformer.

All that he could hope to do was to make a faithful use of these materials, and not to colour or distort them to his own purposes.

Some chronological mistakes have been discovered, since the sheets containing them went through the press; but it is hoped they will not be thought to vitiate the narrative, or to lead to wrong deductions. The reader is requested to cast his eye over the table of Corrigenda and Addenda, and to correct the errors there acknowledged, with his pen.

So much variation as to dates occurs in the authorities consulted, that it was next to impossible to escape being misled occasionally. Baronius, Pagi, Tillemont, the Benedictine editors of Jerome, the editors of the works of Paulinus printed at Antwerp in 1622, and those printed at Paris in 1685, together with the French translation of the Letters of Paulinus (Paris, 1703) have been compared, to complete the chronological emendations.