Excerpt from The History of the Christian Church During the First Ten Centuries: From Its Foundation to the Full Establishment of the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal Power

The student of civil history feels at every step the need of a more special knowledge of ecclesiastical affairs; and the common interest of all Christians in the rise and various developments of the Church, in all its branches and its aberrations too, is enhanced by a natural curiosity to trace the origin of Opinions, usages, and controversies, the effects of which are deeply and even passionately felt in every succeeding age.

In the effort to gratify that interest and curiosity, the author has studied to preserve impartiality; but he has not attempted to write the history of the Christian Church in a tone Of unconcern for either Christianity or the Church. The historian who w'ould do justice to the men whose actions he records, whether in civil or ecclesiastical polity, must place himself in sympathy with each age that comes under review; and the historian of the Church must have such sympathy - though not in the spirit of a partisan - With the thoughts and feelings, both of the great teachers and leaders and of the whole body of Christians, and even of the several parties, in every age of the Church.

On these principles, supreme importance belongs to the first beginnings (the origines) of the Church, and to the progress of its universal development through the time when it especially deserved the name; when it was the church, and not yet a number of churches, divided by their respective nationalities, and severed by hostile feelings and irreconcilable Opinions.

This comparative unity, even amidst the growing strife of sects, was preserved during the first three centuries by the unexpended spirit of primitive zeal and purity, and was enforced by the constraining power of persecution. These three centuries, therefore, form our first age, that of the Primitive and Persecuted Church: during which we trace the rise and progress of the Church, till the little leaven leavens the Roman Empire and works beyond its bounds; the settlement of its constitution; the development of its doctrines and usages and the beginnings of most of the controversies which have agitated it ever since.

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