PREFACE. 281.9 S THE INTRODUCTION to this volume consists of three Lectures delivered in the spring of 1857, when I entered upon my duties as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. They are reprinted, partly for the sake of presenting them in a more correct form than that in which they first appeared, partly for the sake of exhibiting the general plan under which will be comprised any special Lectures like those which form the bulk of the present volume. It is my hope,1 if I may look so far forward into the future, to fill up two of the departments indicated in the sketch of the first Introductory Lecture. I have already devoted a large share of each Academical year to Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, which I trust at no very distant period to publish; and it is my intention to appropriate at least a portion of my remaining time to the History of the Church of England. Meanwhile, it seemed to me that a course of instruction in the History of the Eastern Church would not be unfitting. The general reasons for this selection are given in the Lectures themselves. The subject is one in which I had long felt an interest, and which may, perhaps, gain from being approached through a point of view more general than that usually taken in the learned works that have been devoted to its consideration. The change from an Oxford Professorship to the Deanery of Westminster in 1863, necessarily cut short these plans. But I do not abandon the hope |