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INTRODUCTION.

THE subject of Christian Antiquities will be variously regarded by different individuals according to their religious creeds and their intellectual habits and tastes. He who regards the church as the source of religious knowledge, and its doctrines and rites as revelations of the will of God, would, of course, study the history of these doctrines and of these rites with as much earnestness and zeal as he would study the Scriptures themselves. This will best account for the fondness which learned men in the Catholic church have always shown for ecclesiastical antiquities.

Protestants have generally contemplated the subject under quite a different aspect. With them the voice of the church has no authority coördinate with that of the Bible. Their interest in the antiquities of the church arises from other considerations. For them the sentiments and practices of the early church have a theological importance only so far as they serve to illustrate the sentiments and practices of the inspired writers. Hence they have been interested to show the gradual departure of the early church from the purity and simplicity of the apostolic age, and to point out the late origin of many things which others had regarded as descending from the primitive apostolical church.

The English church, occupying intermediate ground between the Catholics and Protestants, in this respect, have leaned quite as much to the former as to the latter; and this is in perfect consistency with the principles of reform originally adopted by that church.

We have alluded to these circumstances for no other purpose than that of tracing out the causes of the obvious diversity that exists among the older writers in their mode of treating this subject. In respect to the end which they have had in view, they may be divided into three general classes according to their ecclesiastical relations. The different, and often opposite considerations which have inspired their zeal, could not fail to give a peculiar feature to their works. While the individual writers of each of the three classes men

tioned above have had their individual peculiarities, with an almost endless variety in regard to ability, learning, and candor, they have, in general, been either warm polemics, or laborious apologists for their respective parties. Even where this feature is less obvious, there is a peculiar spirit and manner manifested in the topics selected, and in the relative importance attached to each, betraying the author's ecclesiastical preferences. Hence the solemn awe and tedious minuteness with which the Catholic writer describes the veriest trifles; the belligerent manner in which the Protestant, whether Lutheran or Calvinistic, musters his forces, using the weapons of the antiquary chiefly, perhaps, because others have abused them; and the pleasure with which the English churchman approaches the subject of the clerical orders and the venerable liturgy.

Far be it from us harshly to censure those great men, and profound scholars, of different parties who lived in the age of theological warfare, or to cast reproach upon any one class of them. Still we must maintain that they have all gone out of the way, some from the violence of their own passions, and more, we would hope, from the agitations of the times on which they were cast.

We are happy in the belief that we live in an age when it need not be argued that the zeal of the partizan is worse than useless to the historian. The antiquities of the church, no less than other subjects, must and will be studied with the calm spirit of philosophic inquiry. The spirit of the Magdeburg Centuriators is passing away, at least in the literary and scientific world, and a purer and nobler order of historians is rising up to adorn and bless the church. Impartiality is now the watch-word through all the higher ranks of scientific historical inquirers.

There is at present, especially in some parts of Europe, a greater interest in the study of christian antiquities than ever existed before. This is owing to a variety of causes,-to the unparalleled zeal with which every branch of history is cultivated; to the increased and increasing attention bestowed upon the study of the Christian Fathers; to the critical taste of the age, reviewing with rigid scrutiny all the grounds of historical belief; and to the attention given to the philosophy of history, as illustrative of the nature of man. Nor is it strange that reflecting men should be attracted to this study; they are influenced by important considerations, a few of which will here be named with as much brevity as possible.

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