THE ANCIENT CHURCH: ITS HISTORY, DOCTRINE, WORSHIP, AND TRACED FOR THE FIRST THREE HUNDRED YEARS. BY W. D. KILLEN, D.D. "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God." PSALM 1Xxxvii. 3. LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. M.DCCC.LIX. [The right of translation is reserved.] Dedication. ΤΟ HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. MY LORD DUKE, I deem it a high honour that I am permitted to dedicate this publication to a peer who is at once a distinguished statesman and an ardent cultivator of literature. Your Grace is fully aware of the peculiarly interesting position occupied by the ancient Church. Your thoughts have often dwelt upon its history. An attempt is made in the following pages to throw additional light on its structure, discipline, and worship, as well as to illustrate some other points connected with it which have been hitherto involved in much obscurity. It can scarcely be expected that your Grace will adopt all the conclusions here promulgated; but it will afford me special satisfaction to know that the work, as a whole, has earned the commendation of so competent a critic. This publication is a testimony in favour of evangelical Protestantism. Where can I find for it a more appropriate patron than the Duke of Argyll? It is not the least of your hereditary honours that your Grace is descended from a saintly ancestry, and that some of the most illustrious of our martyrs for Divine Truth and Constitutional Freedom once stood at the head of your noble house. This volume supplies evidence that the religious principles with which their history is identified are ancient as Christianity and sure as the Word of God. . With many thanks for the condescension of your Grace in permitting me to send forth this work to the public under the sanction of your name, I have the honour to be, With very great respect, Your Grace's Most obliged and obedient servant, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. THE appearance of another history of the early Church requires some explanation. As the progress of the Christian commonwealth for the first three hundred years has been recently described by British, German, and American writers of eminent ability, it may, perhaps, be thought that the subject is now exhausted. No competent judge will pronounce such an opinion. During the last quarter of a century, various questions relating to the ancient Church, which are almost, if not altogether, ignored in existing histories, have been earnestly discussed; whilst several documents, lately discovered, have thrown fresh light on its transactions. There are, besides, points of view, disclosing unexplored fields for thought, from which the ecclesiastical landscape has never yet been contemplated. The following work is an attempt to exhibit some of its features as seen from a new position. The importance of this portion of the history of the Church can scarcely be over-estimated. Our attention is here directed to the life of Christ, to the labours of the apostles and evangelists, to the doctrines which they taught, to the form of worship which they sanctioned, to |