The Post Apostolic Age

The aim of this volume is to show that the Christian faith, though varying in adaptation to the changing conditions of men and society, has ever preserved its essential identity. It has been, is, and will be, one. It has never cut from beneath it the foundations of antiquity and history. Its vital doctrines are generically the same today as they were closest touch with its origin, and as they have been held these centuries. All the advances of modern progress and all the discoveries of science have not shaken one central pillar of this blessed edifice of the faith and hopes or man. Whatever else has passed away, or will pass away, Christianity, reared by the pierced hand of its Founder upon the Rock of Truth, endures. Only to such a religion, which can face unmoved the eternal years, can the soul entrust its immortal destiny. - From the Foreword

Excerpt from The Post-Apostolic Age The demand for the series of volumes of which this is one is an interesting witness to an interesting and significant situation. Church histories have been hitherto of chief if not of exclusive interest to scholars; and even within this narrow circle the demand for merely ecclesiastical histories has been narrower still. But if our age has brought nothing else with it, it has brought an instinct of historic inquiry which has, happily, largely freed itself from partisan or ecclesiastical bias, and which has learned to read and to tell the story of the Christian centuries in a larger spirit and with a more candid utterance. To this end the whole tendency of modern scholarship, with its more critical and more independent methods, has happily contributed; and side by side with the growth of a spirit of frank and fearless inquiry, there has grown up among educated people a more intelligent judgment of historical facts, and more hearty appreciation of every endeavor to ascertain them. 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.