GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH: FROM THE GERMAN OF ! DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER. TRANSLATED FROM THE LAST EDITION. BY JOSEPH TORREY, PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT. "I am come to send fire on the earth."-Words of our Lord. "And the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is." "But other foundation can no man VOLUME FOURTH: COMPRISING THE FIFTH VOLUME OF THE ORIGINAL First American Edition. BOSTON:. PUBLISHED BY CROCKER & BREWSTER. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. ANDOVER: JOHN D. FLAGG, STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. THIS volume completes the translation of the General History of the Christian religion and church, as far as the work had been published when its lamented author was called away from the scene of his earthly labors. A sixth volume, as he himself intimates in the Preface to his Tenth Part, was to have brought the history of the church down to the times of the Reformation. What progress had been made by the author in preparing this interesting portion of his work for the press, I do not certainly know, though I feel strongly confident it must have been such that the last labors of the eminent historian will not long be withheld from the public. In a letter to the publishers of my translation, dated April 9, 1848, Dr. Neander writes that he was then occupied with this sixth volume; and it is well known, that one of the last acts of his life was to dictate a sentence of it to his amanuensis. As he had therefore been employed upon it for as long a time, to say the least, as had ever intervened between the dates of his earlier volumes, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the volume was left by him in a sufficient state of forwardness to admit of being finished without much labor. That it may be so finished, and the whole work thus brought down to the epoch to which the author in his later volumes was evidently looking forward as a resting-place, must appear highly desirable to every one who is capable of appreciating the minute and comprehensive learning, the scrupulous fidelity, the unexampled |