TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND

CHARLES JAMES,

LORD BISHOP OF LONDON,

THE FOLLOWING WORK

IS,

WITH HIS LORDSHIP'S PERMISSION,

MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED,

BY HIS LORDSHIP'S

MUCH OBLIGED

AND VERY FAITHFUL, HUMBLE SERVANT,

GEORGE WRIGHT.

PREFACE.

THE Acts of the Apostles has ever been considered a highly valuable treatise, being the record of most interesting facts, and the authentic memorial of the faith, zeal, and labours of the inspired founders of the Church, during the first thirty years of its existence. Subsequent Ecclesiastical History does not possess, we admit, such paramount attractions: it may, however, claim to be considered a repertory of experience, containing subjects of curiosity and interest to the Christian world. The Ecclesiastical Historian cannot register works of miraculous agency, nor enumerate multitudes, who cast away their idols, or burnt their magical books, at the resistless eloquence of an Apostle; but it is his province to prove, that when the age of miracles ceased, Divine Providence raised up bulwarks to protect the infant Church, and guided and encouraged the depressed Christians, by a pillar of fire, in the darkest night of persecution and apostacy; that when "the floods came, and the rain descended, and the winds blew, the house fell not, for it was founded upon a rock." When empires and kingdoms dissolved into ruins before the ruthless hand of time, when systems of philosophy, which held men in admiration, vanished like the "morning cloud or the early dew," Christianity, the moral sun of the universe, survived the wreck of human power and wisdom, and demonstrated to the world its divine origin, by

the indestructibility of its essence, its adaptation of relief to the sorrows of mankind, and its abundant sources of whatever can instruct and confer happiness among all orders and conditions of men.

A boon so precious, to be compared only to a casket of the rarest jewels, ought to have inspired mankind with the most scrupulous care in its preservation, and with a holy jealousy, blended with charity, lest it should be tainted with worldly wisdom or alloyed with human passions but the faithful page of Ecclesiastical History records, that the lustre of the "pearl of great price" was soon obscured by rash and unholy hands; that pride, selfishness, obstinacy, superstition, and ignorance, produced schisms, heterodoxy, and hypocrisy, and disguised the native beauty and simplicity of the Gospel with the meretricious ornaments and gaudy patch-work of human invention. Nevertheless, such was the divine efficacy of the word, although impeded and debased, that "mountains were laid low and valleys exalted," all obstacles gave way at its approach, till its authority was acknowledged, not only in all parts of the Roman empire, but among barbarous tribes and nations.

But as the stream of time rolled onward, ominous mists continued to darken the light of pure religion; its wholesome doctrines were displaced, and its beautiful morality supplanted by superstitious observances; so that it suffered an almost total eclipse, both in the Eastern and Western empires, during several centuries. But it was not lost. From time to time, even in this melancholy period, arose men, who were witnesses of the Truth, and appealed to the "Law and to the Tes-