THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES. BY J. J. BLUNT, B.D., LATE MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AT CAMBRIDGE. Sixth Edition. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1878. WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES in the WRITINGS of the OLD and THE PARISH PRIEST: His Duties, Acquirements, and Obligations. PLAIN SERMONS PREACHED to a COUNTRY CONGREGATION. Fifth Edition. Two vols., post 8vo, 128. THE RIGHT USE of the EARLY FATHERS. Third Edition, Svo, 9s. LITERARY AND CLERICAL ESSAYS. 8vo, 12s. E. J. K. 3-10-47 Margaret d. Tatrock 2.18.47 PREFACE. ▲ PORTION of the History of the Church during the First Three Centuries was delivered as a Series of Lectures during the Lent Term of 1854. It was, however, written as a connected History, the Author having always contemplated publishing it, as such, at some future time, when he should have laid aside the duties of his Professorship, and perhaps thus be at liberty to offer to the public those results of his studies which had been hitherto confined to the attendants on his Lectures. The period for the fulfilment of the design seemed to have arrived. Failing health having determined him to resign an office, the duties of which he felt himself no longer able to discharge with that efficiency and vigour without which he could not consider himself justified in retaining it, he had resolved to employ his first leisure in the preparation for the press of his History of the Early Church. It had been his intention to add to it a chapter on the leading Heresies of the period, treated in such a manner as should present a general view of the obstacles, from false doctrine, with which the Church had, in her infancy, to contend. But he was obliged to relinquish the design; his declining strength rendering him no longer equal to the labour and research that would be necessary in order to reduce so wide a subject within the limits of a popular a 2 |