inquiry, and as it contains accounts of things relating to our biggest interests, is the history of the church. For herein, as in a glass, we have the true face of the church. in its several ages represented to us. Here we find with what infinite care those divine records, which are the great instruments of our eternal happiness, have through the several periods of time been conveyed down to us; with what a mighty success religion has triumphed over the greatest oppositions, and spread its banners in the remotest corners of the world. With how incomparable a zeal good men have contended earnestly for that faith which was once delivered to the saints; with what a bitter and implacable fury the enemies of religion have set upon it, and how signally the Divine Providence has appeared in its preservation, and returned the mischief upon their own heads. Here we see the constant succession of bishops and the ministers of religion in their several stations, the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, who with the most cheerful and composed minds have gone to heaven through the acutest torments. short, we have here the most admirable examples of a divine and religious life, of a real and unfeigned piety, a sincere and universal charity, a strict temperance and sobriety, an unconquerable patience and submission clearly represented to us. And the higher we go, the more illustrious are the instances of piety and virtue. For however later ages may have improved in knowledge, experience daily making new additions to arts and sciences, yet former times were most eminent for the practice and virtues of a holy life. The divine laws while newly published, had a stronger influence upon the minds of men, and the spirit of religion was more active and vigorous till men by degrees began to be debauched into that impiety and prophaneness, that in these last times has over-run the world.

In

It were altogether needless and improper for me to consider what records there are of the state of the church before our Saviour's incarnation: it is sufficient to my purpose to inquire by what hands the first affairs of the

Christian church have been transmitted to us. As for the life and death, the actions and miracles of our Saviour, and some of the first acts of his apostles they are fully represented by the evangelical historians. Indeed immediately after them we meet with nothing of this nature, the apostles and their immediate successors, as Eusebius observes ) not being at leisure to write many books, as being employed in ministries greater and more immediately serviceable to the world. The first that engaged in this way, was Hegesippus, an ancient and apostolic man (as he in Phocius styles him) an Hebrew by descent, and born (as is probable) in Palestine." He flourished principally in the reign of M. Aurelius, and came to Rome in the time of Anicetus, where he resided till the time of Eleutherius. He wrote five books of ecclesiastical history, which he styled Commentaries of the Acts of the Church, wherein in a plain and familiar style he described the apostles' travels and preachings, the remarkable passages of the church, the several schisms, heresies, and persecutions that infested it from our Lord's death till his own time. But these, alas, are long since lost. The next that succeeded in this province, though the first that reduced it to any exactness and perfection, was Eusebius. He was born in Palestine, about the later times of the emperor Gallienus, ordained presbyter by Agapius bishop of Cæsarea, who suffering about the end of the Dioclesian persecution, Eusebius succeeded in his see. A man of incomparable parts and learning, and of no less industry and diligence in searching out the records and antiquities of the church. After several other volumes in defence of the Christian cause against the assaults both of Jews and Gentiles, he set himself to write an ecclesiastical history, wherein he designed (as himself tells us ) to recount from the birth of our Lord till his time the most memorable transactions of the church, the apostolical successions, the first preachers and planters of the gospel, the bishops that presided in the most eminent sees,

cel. 1. 3. e. 24. p. 94. d Cod. 232. col. 893. e. Lib. 1. c. 1. p.

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the most noted errors and heresies, the calamities that befel the Jewish state, the attempts and persecutions made against the Christians by the powers of the world, the torments and sufferings of the martyrs, and the blessed and happy period that was put to them by the conversion of Constantine the Great. All this, accordingly, he digested in ten books, which he composed in the declining part of his life, and (as Valesius conjectures,1) some years after the council of Nice, though when not long before he expresly affirms that history to have been written before the Nicene Synod. How he can herein be excused from a palpable contradiction I cannot imagine. It is true Eusebius takes no notice of that council, but that might be partly because he designed to end in that joyful and prosperous scene of things which Constantine restored to the church (as he himself plainly intimates in the beginning of his history) which he was not willing to discompose with the controversies and contentions of that Synod, according to the humour of all historians, who delight to shut up their histories with some happy and successful period; and partly because he intended to give some account of the affairs of that council in his book of the life of Constantine the Great.

The materials wherewith he was furnished for this great undertaking (which he complains were very small and inconsiderable) were besides Hegesippus his commentaries then extant, Africanus his chronology, the books and writings of several fathers, the records of particular cities, ecclesiastical epistles written by the bishops of those times, and kept in the archives of their several churches, especially that famous library at Jerusalem, erected by Alexander, bishop of that place, but chiefly the acts of the martyrs, which in those times were taken at large with great care and accuracy. These, at least a great many of them, Eusebius collected into one volume. under the title of 'Agxi Maglugian Zuraza. A collection of the ancient martyrdoms; which he refers

f Præfat. de Vit. & Script Euseb.

to at every turn; besides a particular narrative which he wrote (still extant as an appendage to the eighth book of his ecclesiastical history) concerning the martyrs that suf fered in Palestine. A great part of these acts by the negligence and unfaithfulness of succeeding times, were interpolated and corrupted, especially in the darker and more undiscerning ages, when superstition had over. spread the church, and when ignorance and interest conspired to fill the world with idle and improbable stories, and men took what liberty they pleased in venting the issue of their own brains, insomuch that some of the more wise and moderate, even of the Roman communion have complained not without a just resentment and indignation, that Laertius has written the lives of philosophers with more truth and chasteness, than many have done the lives of the saints. Upon this account a great and general outcry has been made against Simeon Metaphrastes, as the father of incredible legends, and one that has notoriously imposed upon the world by the most fabulous reports. Nay, some to reflect the more disgrace upon him, have represented him as a petty schoolmaster. A charge, in my mind, rash and inconsiderate, and in a great measure groundless and uncharitable. He was a person of very considerable birth and fortune, advanced to the highest honours and offices, one of the primier ministers of state, and as is probable, great chancellor to the emperor of Constantinople; learned and eloquent above the common standard, and who, by the persuasions not only of some great ones of that time (he flourished under Leo the wise about the year 900, but principally wrote under the reign of his successor) but of the emperor himself, was prevailed with to reduce the lives of the saints into order. To which end by his own infinite labour, and the no less expenses of the emperor, he ransacked the libraries of the empire, till he had amassed a vast heap of volumes. The more ancient acts he passed without any considerable alteration, more than the correcting them by a collation of several copies, and the enlarging some circumstances to render them more plain and easy, as appears by comparing some that are extant

at this day. Where lives were confused and immethodical, or written in a style rude and barbarous, he digested the history into order, and clothed it in more polite and elegant language. Others that were defective in neither, he left as they were, and gave them place amongst his own. So that I see no reason for so severe a censure, unless it were evident, that he took his account of things not from the writings of those that had gone before him, but forged them of his own head. Not to say that things have been made much worse by translations, seldom appearing in any but the dress of the Latin church, and that many lives are laid at his door of which he never was the father, it being usual with some, when they met with the life of a saint, the author whereof they knew not, presently to fasten it upon Metaphrastes. But to return to Eusebius, from whom we have digressed.

His ecclesiastical history, the almost only remaining records of the ancient church, deserves a just esteem and veneration, without which those very fragments of antiquity had been lost, which by this means have escaped the common shipwreck. And indeed S. Hierom, Nicephorus, and the rest do not only build upon his foundation, but almost entirely derive their materials from him. As for Socrates, Sozomen, Theodorit, and the later historians, they relate to times without the limits of my present business, generally conveying down little more than the history of their own times, the church history of those more early ages being either quite neglected, or very negligently managed. The first that to any purpose broke the ice after the reformation, were the centuriators of Magdeburg, a combination of learned and industrious men, the chief of whom were John Wigandus, Matth. Judex, Basilius Faber, Andreas Corvinus, but especially Matth. Flaccius Illyricus, who was the very soul of the undertaking. They set themselves to traverse the writings of the fathers, and all the ancient monuments of the church, collecting whatever made to their purpose, which with indefatigable pains they digested into an ecclesiastic history. This they divided into centuries, and each century into fifteen chapters, into each

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