BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY (EPOCHS OF CHURCH HISTORY) LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. IN ENGLAND TO THE BY HENRY MELVILL GWATKIN, D.D. LATE DIXIE PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, CAMBRIDGE LATE GIFFORD LECTURER, EDINBURGH AUTHOR OF "THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD," "EARLY CHURCH HISTORY," ETC. WITH A PREFACE BY THE REV. E. W. WATSON, D.D. CALIFORNIA REGIUS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS PREFACE DR. GWATKIN had been engaged for some years before his lamented death, on November 14, 1916, upon a survey of English Church History. The writing was done at intervals, especially during his vacations, and each section seems to have been completed, and laid aside, before the next was begun. Hence the earlier part may in one or two points be open to the criticism that it is not quite up to date. For instance, Dr. Gwatkin has ignored the revolution in our ideas of the origin of the parish and its priest that has been accomplished by the French scholar Imbart de la Tour and the Swiss Ulrich Stutz. How fully this recent view is now accepted appears from the fact that it has received an almost official recognition in the Report of the Archbishops' Committee on Church and State, 1916. Doubtless, had he lived to revise his earlier pages, Dr. Gwatkin would have made full use of such an addition to our knowledge; and if respect for the author has forbidden any change in his text, the reader may fairly be asked to make allowance for some few statements that were adequate, so far as men knew, at the quite recent date when they were committed to writing. The readers to whom this book is addressed will, indeed, be fully capable of making such allowance. It is not a text-book for beginners. It omits matters that would be necessary for them; it offers much that they could not require. But an informed and intelligent student will find in it what, so far as I know, has never been published in England on a scale both modest and comprehensive a survey of our secular and ecclesiastical development, in due co-ordination and proportion. Dr. Gwatkin, as a lecturer, would insist on the reciprocal influence of Church and State, and claimed for himself full liberty of entry upon domains of history that might be regarded as clearly separate from his own ecclesiastical sphere. Of his competence, and of the interest with which he could invest 470563 |