ON ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. BY GEORGE CAMPBELL, D.D. PRINCIPAL OF THE MARISCHAL COLLEGE, AND ONE OF THE MINISTERS THE FOUR GOSPELS, &c. &c. A NEW EDITION. LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. TEGG & SON, 73. CHEAPSIDE; R. GRIFFIN & CO. GLASGOW; AND JOHN CUMMING, DUBLIN. MDCCCXXXIV. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following discourses on Church History are a considerable part of a course of Theological Lectures delivered in Marischal College. The Author had transcribed and revised them, and was every year making considerable alterations and additions to the Work. For more than the last twenty years of his life, his Lectures to the Students of Divinity occupied the greater part of his time, and those now offered to the Public were distinguished as the most curious and entertaining branch of the whole. By the hearers, and many others, the publication has been called for with a degree of earnestness which now seldom attends the appearance of a theological performance. Those who have read the other writings of the Author, will naturally expect here something of that clearness of apprehension and acuteness of investigation so eminently displayed in the Dissertation on Miracles in answer to Mr Hume: And such as are acquainted with the subject, will admire the Author's well-digested learning, and will readily perceive the importance of an accurate historical deduction of the progress of church power, and the establishment of a hierarchy; and how clear and decisive it is, in all that may be termed the hinge of the controversy between high church and others. Seldom, very seldom indeed, has the subject been treated with the perspicuity, candour, and moderation, which distinguish the writings of Dr Campbell. |