where the scrutiny is inexpedient, is audacity. Into what truths ought we then to search? Those which we find recorded in the Scriptures. But what we do not find recorded there, let us not search. after. For had the knowledge of them been incumbent on us, the Holy Spirit would doubtless have placed them there." Shortly after, he says: "Let us not hazard ourselves in such a risk, but speak safely; and let not anything that is written be blotted out." And in the end of his oration, he thus expresses himself: "Speak what is written, and the strife will be abandoned." In which passages, Eusebius, no doubt, alludes to the word ouoovotos.

Finally, we now advert to the testimonies of the ancients concerning Eusebius. Here one thing is to be observed, namely, however various the opinions of men have been relative to the accuracy of the religious sentiments of Eusebius, all have unanimously esteemed him as a person of the most profound learning. To this we have to mention one solitary exception, Joseph Scaliger, who within the memory of our fathers, impelled by the current of temerity, and relish for vituperation, endeavoured to filch from Eusebius those literary honours which even his adversaries never dared to impugn.* On Scaliger's opinion, we had at first determined to bestow a more ample refutation; but this we shall defer, until more leisure on the one hand, or a more urgent claim on the part of the reader, on the other, shall again call our attention to the subject.

* See Scaliger's Elench. Trihæres. chap. xxvii.; and book vi. De Emend. Temp. chap. i. near the end: and his Animadversions on Eusebius's Chronicle, page 8.

THE

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY,

BY

EUSEBIUS.

CHAPTER I.

THE ARGUMENT OF THE WORK.

As it is my purpose to record the successions of the holy apostles, together with the times since our Saviour, down to the present, to recount how many and important transactions are said to have occurred in Ecclesiastical History, what individuals in the most noted places eminently governed and presided over the church, what men also in their respective generations, whether with or without their writings, proclaimed the divine Word; to describe the character, times and number of those who, stimulated by the desire of innovation, and advancing to the greatest errors, announced themselves leaders in the propagation of false opinions, like grievous wolves, unmercifully assaulting the flock of Christ; as it is my intention, also, to describe the calamities that swiftly overwhelmed the whole Jewish nation, in consequence of their plots against our Saviour; how often, by what means, and in what times, the word of God has encountered the hostility of the nations; what eminent persons persevered in contending for it through those periods of blood and torture, beside the martyrdoms which have been endured in our own times: and, after all, to show the gracious and benign interposition of our Saviour; these being proposed as the subjects of the present work, I shall go back to the very origin and the earliest introduction of the dispensation of our Lord and Saviour the Christ of God.

But here, acknowledging that it is beyond my power to present the work perfect and unexceptionable, I freely confess it will crave indulgence, especially since, as the first of those that have entered upon the subject, we are attempting a kind of trackless and unbeaten path. Looking up with prayer to God as our guide, we trust, indeed, that we shall have the power of Christ as our aid, though we are totally unable to find even the bare vestiges of those who may have travelled the way before us: unless, perhaps, what is only presented in the slight intimations, which some in different ways have transmitted to us in certain partial narratives of the times in which they lived; who, raising their voices before us, like torches at a distance, and as looking down from some commanding height, call out and exhort us where we should walk, and whither direct our course with certainty and safety. Whatsoever, therefore, we deem likely to be advantageous to the proposed subject, we shall endeavour to reduce to a compact body by historical narration. For this purpose we have collected the materials that have been scattered by our predecessors, and culled, as from some intellectual meadows, the appropriate extracts from ancient authors. In the execution of this work we shall be happy to rescue from oblivion, the successions, if not of all, at least of the most noted apostles of our Lord, in those churches which even at this day are accounted the most eminent; a labour which has appeared to me necessary in the highest degree, as I have not yet been able to find that any of the ecclesiastical writers have directed their efforts to present any thing complete in this department of writing. But as, on the one hand, I deem it highly necessary, so also I believe it will appear no less useful, to those who are zealous admirers of historical research. Of these matters, indeed, I have already heretofore furnished an epitome in my chronological tables; but in the present work I have undertaken a more full narrative. As I said above, I shall begin my treatise with that dispensation, and that doctrine of the divinity which in sublimity and excellency surpasses all human invention, viz. that of our Saviour Christ. And, indeed, whoever would give a detail of Ecclesiastical History to posterity, is necessarily

obliged to go back to the very origin of the dispensation. of Christ, as it is from him, indeed, that we derive our very epithet, a dispensation more divine than many are disposed to think.

CHAPTER II.

SUMMARY VIEW OF THE PRE-EXISTENCE AND DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

As the mode of existence in Christ is twofold, the one resembling the head of the body, indicating his Divinity: the other compared to the feet, by which he, for the sake of our salvation, assumed that nature which is subject to the same infirmities with ourselves; hence our account of the subsequent matter may be rendered complete and perfect, by commencing with the principal and most important points in his history. By this method, at the same time, the antiquity and the divine dignity of the Christian name will be exhibited to those who suppose it a recent and foreign production, that sprang into existence but yesterday, and was never before known.

No language, then, is sufficient to express the origin, the dignity, the substance and nature of Christ. Whence even the divine Spirit in the prophecies says, "Who will declare his generation?" For as no one hath known the Father, but the Son, so no one, on the other hand, can know the Son fully, but the Father alone, by whom he was begotten. For who but the Father hath thoroughly understood that Light which existed before the world wasthat intellectual and substantial wisdom, and that living Word which in the beginning was with the Father, before all creation and any production visible or invisible, the first and only offspring of God, the prince and leader of the spiritual and immortal host of heaven, the angel of the mighty council, the agent to execute the Father's secret will, the maker of all things with the Father, the second cause of the universe next to the Father, the true and only Son of the Father, and the Lord and God and King of all created things, who has received rule and dominion with divinity itself, and power and honour from the Father? All

this is evident from those more abstruse passages in reference to his divinity, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." "All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made." This, too, we are taught by the great Moses, that most ancient of all the prophets; when, under the influence of the divine Spirit, he describes the creation and arrangement of all things, he also informs us that the Creator and Maker of the universe yielded to Christ, and to none but to his divine and first begotten Word, the formation of all subordinate things, and communed with him respecting the creation of man. "For," says he, "God said, Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness." This expression is confirmed by another of the prophets, who, discoursing of God in his hymns, declares, "He spake, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created." Where he introduces the Father and Maker as the Ruler of all, commanding with his sovereign. nod; but the divine Word as next to him, the very same that is proclaimed to us, as ministering to his Father's commands. Him, too, all that are said to have excelled in righteousness and piety, since the creation of man, Moses, that eminent servant of God, and Abraham before hin, the children of the latter, and as many righteous prophets as subsequently appeared, contemplated with the pure eyes of the mind, and both recognized and gave him the worship that was his due as the Son of God. The Son himself, however, by no means indifferent to the worship of the Father, is appointed to teach the knowledge of the Father to all. The Lord God, therefore, appeared as a common man to Abraham, whilst sitting at the oak of Mamre. And he immediately falling down, although he plainly saw a man with his eyes, nevertheless worshipped him as God, and entreated him as Lord. He confesses too that he is not ignorant who he is, in the words, "Lord, the judge of all the earth, wilt not thou judge righteously?" For as it were wholly unreasonable to suppose the uncreated and unchangeable substance of the Almighty God to be changed into the form of a man, or to deceive the eyes of beholders with the phantom of any created substance, so also it is