Excerpt from A General History of the Christian Church, to the Fall of the Western Empire, Vol. 1 of 2 The idea of writing this hifiory was firfl: fuggeiled by the attention that I have lately giv en to the eeclefial'tical writers of the four or five firfi centuries, in order to determine what was the faitri of the primitive church concerning the per fon of Chril't. Seeing that this Opinion, and o thers conneaed with it, had been greatly mifcon ceived, and miireprefented, by all the ecclefiafti cal hillorians, I was willin g to exhibit the orignal doetrine, and the gradual deviations from it, in a regular billory of every thing relating to the chrif. Tian church. For want of an ecclefiallimllnflory written on thefe jull principles, perilous were un der a neceflity of torming wrong conceptions on this important fuhjetl' from every hifiory that could fall into their hands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.