The Newton Theological Institution Backus Newton Centre, Mass. 3433 G762h PREFACE. THE various testimonies of approbation with which the two preceding Volumes of this Ecclesiastical History have been received, were, I confess, sufficiently flattering to have stimulated my diligence to a less lingering execution of the remainder. My reasons for delay need not now be assigned: let it suffice to state, as one advantage resulting from the suspended labour, that, on being resumed, it wore the freshness of novelty, and allured the writer to alertness in investigation. But while I seem thus to boast of compliments addressed to me, I must not conceal a complaint with which they have been mingled, that the dignity and utility of this History have sustained considerable injury, by my detailed notice of the Joannite sect, who might have been left to expire in the socket of their own fatuity. けいう |