A

History of the Church,

FROM

THE EDICT OF MILAN, A.D. 313,

ΤΟ

THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON, A.D. 451.

BY

WILLIAM BRIGHT, M.A.,

FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD;

LATE PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE SCOTTISH CHURCH.

Oxford & London :

J. H. AND JAS. PARKER.

\1860. //

TO THE REVEREND

HENRY GORDON MERRIMAN, M.A.,

HEAD MASTER OF KING EDWARD'S SCHOOL, GUILDFORD,

LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF NEW COLLEGE,

This Volume

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE EARLY DAYS OF

A LONG-PRIZED FRIENDSHIP.

PREFACE.

THE following account of the Church's general progress, from the close of the age of Heathen persecution to the doctrinal settlement effected by the Fourth Ecumenical Council, is based substantially on what I had formerly occasion to prepare for my pupils at Trinity College, Glenalmond. I would fain hope that it may to some extent enable the younger students of Ecclesiastical History, and general readers interested in the subject, to increase their knowledge of a period which is second in importance to the Apostolic age alone.

Those who study such a period may be warned against two extremes, disguised in the garb of reverence and of candour. It is possible to make facts give way to an ideal, to forget that wrong is wrong in the orthodox, and to judge their opponents without equity. It is also possible, in reaction from this unfairness, to approach the subject as it were ab extra, to be cold or hostile to the great Church leaders, and to reserve one's tenderness for heresiarchs. Modern tendencies run strongly against the first of these two methods, but give some encouragement to the second. I trust that in these pages there will be found no trace of either.

One brief but most majestic Psalm, which con