ib. Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a papist The high-flying clergy favoured at the restoration 388, for chapter III." read "chapter IV." PREFACE. THAT the interests of religion may be eminently promoted by the records of its history, will be denied by no one who duly reflects that the pen of inspiration was employed to write the annals of the earliest ages of the church. Ecclesiastical history forms a large portion of the Old Testament; and the first years of the Christian church, when it was under the direction of the inspired apostles, are recorded in the sacred history of the Acts. This divine book would be the model, as well as the commencement of the history of Christianity, were it possible for any, who are not endued with the same inspiration, to approach the inimitable grace with which the moral uses are there wrought into the relation of the facts. But as we must not be silent, because we cannot preach like Paul; so neither should we suffer the remembrance of the divine conduct towards the church to die away in oblivion, because we cannot I record it with the pen of Luke. Religion, which elsewhere utters her mind in pre |