MILLER'S CHURCH HISTORY

BY

ANDREW MILLER

Including the Original "Last Chapter"written by Andrew Miller.

PREFACE

As all we know of history comes to us through books, I have examined, with some care, the authors which are most esteemed in this country and considered the most reliable. And although there is frequent reference to volume and page, this by no means indicates all that has been gathered from those histories. It would be impossible to say how many thoughts, words, and sentences, are interwoven with my own. The references have been generally given, not so much to verify what has been written, as to induce the reader to study them or whatever works may now be available as he may have opportunity. The materials are so varied and abundant, that the difficulty lies in making a selection, so as to maintain a continued historic line, and yet leave out what would now be neither profitable nor interesting.

Some of my earliest and valued friends, such as Greenwood, Milman, and Craigie Robertson, conclude their histories about the fourteenth century; Waddington, D'Aubigne, and Scott, about the middle of the sixteenth; and Wylie closes his history of Protestantism with its establishment under the reign of William and Mary. Dr. M'Crie's special histories and biographies are extremely valuable; and so is the history of Protestantism in France by Felice, the history of the Reformation in the Low Countries by Brandt, the brief history of the Middle Ages and the Reformation by Hardwick, and also Cunningham's history of the Scotch Church; but good general histories from the early part of the sixteenth to the present century are indeed scarce.

I have aimed at more than mere history. It has been my desire to connect with it Christ and His Word, so that the reader may receive the truth and blessing, through grace, to his soul. And it will be observed that I commence with the Lord's revealed purpose concerning His Church in Matthew 16. Other parts of the New Testament have been carefully examined as to the first planting of the Church, but its actual history I have endeavored to trace in the light of the addresses to the seven Churches in Asia. This, of course, must be in a very general way, as I have been desirous to give the reader as broad a view of ecclesiastical history as possible, consistently with my plan and brevity.

May the Lord's blessing accompany the volume that now goes forth. LONDON ANDRE

W MILLER