Crown Church And Constitution

Much scholarship on nineteenth-century English workers has been devoted to the radical reform politics that powerfully unsettled the social order in the century’s first decades. Comparatively neglected have been the impetuous patriotism, royalism, and xenophobic anti-Catholicism that countless men and women demonstrated in the early Victorian period. This much-needed study of the era’s “conservatism from below” explores the role of religion in everyday culture and the Tories’ successful mobilization across class boundaries. Long before they were able to vote, large swathes of the lower classes embraced Britain’s monarchical, religious, and legal institutions in the defense of traditional English culture.

From the author's Preface: ...The root of the organization of the Church is the proclamation of the Word of God. The Word of God took the form of a Gospel. In the Christian preaching at a very early period the Trinitarian Confession came to the front and gave the new religion its distinctive stamp. These were the strongest motive forces in the formative period of the Church. Yet we look in vain in theological literature for monographs in which their origin, their original meaning, and their development are made clear. This noticeable gap I have sought to fill, confining myself, as regards the Trinitarian Confession, to showing the motive which led at a very early period to a bipartite or tripartite formula. The result of the investigations into 'Gospel' will be to show that on this most important point also the Christian religion displayed from the beginning the wonderful many-sidedness, elasticity, and capacity for development which is the presupposition of its universality.

The Constitution and Law of the Church in the First Two Centuries by Adolf von Harnack, first published in 1910, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.