OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH: TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF DR. AUGUSTUS) NEANDER, BY JOSEPH TORREY, PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT. NEW EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED, BY THE REV. A. J. W. MORRISON, B. A., TRIN. COLL. CAMB., HEAD MASTER OF TRURO GRAMMAR SCHOOL. "My kingdom is not of this world." "The kingdom of heaven is like unto "The Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is "En Jésus Christ toutes les contradictions sont accordées."-Pascal. VOLUME FIRST. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 6-74-39 3v.m; 10 (iii) 11.0 45-17-10 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. THE translator deems it proper to state, that his labours on NEANDER began, and were prosecuted to the completion of several successive volumes or parts of the present work, many years ago—though not before a partial translation of the same work had already appeared in England. He has certainly no reason to regret, but rather much reason to congratulate himself, that his first translation did not find its way to the press. In 1843 Dr. NEANDER sent forth a second edition of the first volume of his work, embracing the history of the church in the first three centuries. In this new edition the alterations are numerous and important. The great features of the original work, its method and spirit, are indeed faithfully preserved; but, in other respects, there are very decided improvements. These important changes, occurring not here and there, but through entire pages and paragraphs, have made it necessary to translate nearly the whole of the first volume anew. The translator has submitted to this labour with the more cheerfulness, as it enables him to present the work to the English reader in the form in which Dr. NEANDER has been pleased to express his wish that it should appear. It has been, throughout, the translator's aim and effort to render a faithful version of the original. He has never felt himself at liberty, on any account whatever, to add anything to the text, or to omit anything from it. He has never resorted to notes for the purpose of explaining anything which could be made sufficiently plain in the place where it stood. On the extreme difficulty of giving an exact transcript in English of an author's language, so exceedingly idiomatic, so thoroughly German in all his habits of thought and modes of expression as the author of this History, he need not enlarge. If allowance be made for the slight but necessary modifications which for this reason have sometimes been resorted to, the translator believes it will be found, that as he has clearly conceived his author's meaning, so he has faithfully expressed it in some form of English that can be understood. In conclusion, he would take this occasion to express his grateful acknowledgments to all those friends who have encouraged and assisted him in the execution of his task; and in a very particular manner to the Rev. JOSEPH TRACY, whose consent to overlook the proof-sheets before they came under the translator's final revision was an act of real kindness, which will not by him be very easily forgotten. DEDICATION OF THE FIRST VOLUME. TO F. VON SCHELLING, THE PHILOSOPHER. As the first volume of my Church History is about to make its appearance in a better shape, I feel constrained to take this opportunity of presenting you a testimony of my sincere respect and love, and my hearty thanks for all the instruction and excitement to thought derived from what you have said, both publicly and in the intercourse of private life, and for all you have done, during your residence here, in the service of our common holy cause. When I dedicate a work of this character to a philosopher like you, I know that it is nothing foreign from your philosophy; for that takes history for its point of departure, and would teach us to understand it according to its inward essence. In striving to apprehend the history of the church, not as a mere juxtaposition of outward facts, but as a development proceeding from within, and presenting an image and reflex of internal history, I trust that I am serving a spirit which may claim some relationship to your philosophy, however feeble the powers with which it may be done. In what you publicly expressed respecting the stadia in the development of the Christian church, how much there was which struck in harmony with my own views! I might feel some hesitation in laying before a man of your classical attainments, such a master of form as well as of matter, a work of whose defects, when compared with the idea at its foundation, no one can be more conscious than its author. But I know, too, that fellowship of spirit and feeling will be accounted of more worth by you than all else besides. Trusting, then, that you will accept this offering in the same spirit with which it is presented, I conclude with the sincerest wishes that a gracious God may long preserve you in health, and the full enjoyment of your powers; that he would make you wholly our own, and long keep you in the midst of us, to awaken the pws TTEроOUTWp in the minds of our beloved German youth; to exert your powerful influence against all debasement and crippling of the intellect; to lead back those who are astray, from the unnatural and the distorted to a healthful simplicity; to exhibit a pattern of right method and of true freedom in science; to testify of that which constitutes the goal and central point of all history; and-so far as it comes within the province of science-to prepare the way for that new, Christian age of the world, whose dawn already greets us from afar; that for such ends as these He would prolong the evening of your life, and make it even more glorious than was its morning. These are the sincere and fervent wishes of him who calls himself, with his whole heart, Yours, Berlin, July 11, 1842. A. NEANDER. |