Excerpt from The Church, Past and Present: A Review of Its History Be it clearly understood that each contributor is responsible for his own work, and for nothing more. The writers approach their subjects from very different standpoints, and sometimes differ considerably in opinions; and no attempt has been made to conceal differences; for they do but emphasize their general agreement. It was no part of the original plan that the Editor should write as many as four chapters out of thirteen. Only the failure of a valued contributor at the last moment obliged him to undertake four chapters instead of two, and to write the last of the four without access to his own reference books. He would have much preferred to leave it in Professor Allen's abler 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.