PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION REVISED

A few months after the appearance of the revised edition of this volume, Dr. Bryennios, the learned Metropolitan of Nicomedia, surprised the world by the publication of the now famous Didache, which he had discovered in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople. This led me, in justice to myself and to my readers, to write an independent supplement under the title: The Oldest Church Manual, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, etc., which is now passing through the press.

At the same time I have taken advantage of a new issue of this History, without increasing the size and the price, to make in the plates all the necessary references to the Didache where it sheds new light on the post-apostolie age (especially on pages 140, 184, 185, 202, 226, 236, 239, 241, 247, 249, 379, 640).

I have also brought the literature up to date, and corrected a few printing errors, so that this issue may be called a revised edition. A learned and fastidious German critic and professional church historian has pronounced this work to be far in advance of any German work in the fullness of its digest of the discoveries and researches of the last thirty years. ("Theolog. LiteraturZeitung,” for March 22, 1884.) But the Bryennios discovery, and the extensive literature which it has called forth, remind me of the imperfect character of historical books in an age of such rapid progress as ours.

NEW YORK, April 22, 1885.

THE AUTHOR.

FIFTH EDITION

The fourth edition (1886) was a reprint of the third, with a few slight improvements. In this fifth edition I have made numerous additions to the literature, and adapted the text throughout to the present stage of research, which continues to be very active and fruitful in the Ante-Nicene period.

Several topics connected with the catechetical instruction, organization, and ritual (baptism and eucharist) of the early Church are more fully treated in my supplementary monograph, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or The Oldest Church Manual, which first appeared in June, 1885, and in a third edition, revised and enlarged, January, 1889 (325 pages).

NEW YORK, July, 1889.

P. S.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

THIS second volume contains the history of Christianity from the end of the Apostolic age to the beginning of the Nicene.

The first Edict of Toleration, A. D. 311, made an end of persecution; the second Edict of Toleration, 313 (there is no third), prepared the way for legal recognition and protection; the Nicene Council, 325, marks the solemn inauguration of the imperial state-church. Constantine, like Eusebius, the theologian, and Hosius the statesman, of his reign, belongs to both periods and must be considered in both, though more fully in the next.

We live in an age of discovery and research, similar to that which preceded the Reformation. The beginnings of history, the beginnings of civilization, the beginnings of Christianity are now absorbing the attention of scholars.

During the present generation early church history has been vastly enriched by new sources of information, and almost revolutionized by independent criticism. Among the recent literary discoveries and publications the following deserve special mention:

The SYRIAC IGNATIUS (by Cureton 1845 and 1849), which opened a new chapter in the Ignatian controversy so closely connected with the rise of Episcopacy and Catholicism; the PHILOSOPHUMENA of HIPPOLYTUS (by Miller 1851, and by Duncker and Schneidewin, 1859), which have shed a flood of light on the ancient heresies and systems of thought, as well as on the doctrinal and disciplinary commotions in the Roman church in the early part of the third century; the TENTH BOOK of THE PSEUDOCLEMENTINE HOMILIES (by Dressel, 1853), which supplements our knowledge of a curious type of distorted Christianity in the post-apostolic age, and furnishes, by an undoubted quotation, a valuable contribution to the solution of the Johannean problem; the GREEK HERMAS from Mt. Athos (the Codex Lipsiensis, published by Anger and Tischendorf, 1856); a new and complete Greek MS. of the FIRST EPISTLE of the ROMAN CLEMENT with several important new chapters and the oldest