’ Considered as a department of universal knowledge, church history forms a special section of the religious history of mankind. It is an account of the growth and the transactions of the religious community which is marked out from others by its attachment to Christianity. This definition already excludes from consideration a region of inquiry important in itself, which is sometimes regarded as forming an integral part of the subject. Starting from that idea of the church which is represented etymologically by the undoubtedly false derivations of the word from the German küren, to choose, or the Greek κυρίου oικos, the (figurative) house of the Lord, various writers have assumed the church to be that special section of mankind who in any age have enjoyed the true revelation of God as given by himself, and they have in consequence regarded church history as bound to deal first with the Old Testament church and then with the church of the New Dispensation. This, however, involves an amount of dogmatic prepossession to which history, simply as such, cannot commit itself. Surveying the field of mere objective fact, history can single out, under the general appellation of the church, a great society whose origin can be distinctly traced up to the personal activity of Christ, who, for this society, forms a definite and wholly new historical commencement. Whatever etymology we assign to the word church under its various modifications of ldrche, kirk, kerk, cyrkeu), zerkow, <fcc.,—whether we follow the derivation suggested by Walafrid Strabo in the 9th century, and extensively held since, from το κυριακόν, the Lord’s house, as a term introduced by the Greek missionaries into the language of the heathen tribes whom they converted, or whether we adopt the not less probable conjee ture of Lipsius, and ascribe its origin to “circ” or “cere” (connected with the Latin dr eus), the local name for the temple of Northern paganism, adopted by ancient and medi&eval Christianity, in conformity with its principle of accommodating itself as far as possible to the usages of its proselytes—there can be no doubt that the community and the movement, which, under some form of the name church among the Germanic races, and of the name ecclesia, such as église, chiesa, <fcc., among the Latin nations, succeeded in subjugating the Roman empire, along with extensive regions beyond it on all sides, to a religion whose personal centre is Christ, form a fresh phenomenon in the history of mankind, as distinct and individual in its character as Hellenism, Hinduism, or Mohammedanism. In the view of history proper, therefore, the history of Judaism cannot be taken as forming a part of the history of the church.

For the same reason history cannot take action upon a class of distinctions recognized by many who assume the functions of the church historian. Such writers, adopting some strict and special definition of the church, confine the work of church history to that section of professing Christians whose condition satisfies the terms of their definition, any other so-called division of Christendom coming in for a share of attention only in the narrative of the opposition encountered by the church. History, in the proper sense, cannot undertake to decide questions of this description. To say which among many competing churches is the true church involves a dogmatic deliverance, which is beyond its province. It must do its work in a more rough and general fashion. Under the name church it comprehends all organizations avowedly basing themselves upon Christianity and recognizing Christ as in some sense their head and leader. It undertakes to delineate the story of these in the aggregate; and with regard to the distinctions between them, and their pretensions to condemn and exclude each other, it confines itself to narrative, without attempting adjudication.

Another limitation has to be introduced into the definition of church history, when regard is had to the exact point of time at which it ought to begin. The church did not come into full-formed existence in a moment. Regarded as a community with more or less of an organization upon a Christian basis, and conscious of itself and of its aim in the history of the world, it was the result of the activity of Christ and his more immediate apostles and followers The history of what they did in giving existence to the church, as such, is a different thing from the history of the church when once existing in that character. The case resembles the difference between embryology and biography in the history of the individual. The precise point of time at which the formative activity of the church founders issues in the actual church is probably to be determined by the emergence of the consciousness of a common Christian life and aim among the separate communities originally established by apostolic labour. By some writers this is placed as low as the destruction of Jerusalem, by others as high as the first rallying of Christ’s followers after his own disappearance from the world. In any case church history is relieved of a large amount of work with which it is sometimes burdened, but which does not properly fall to its share.

What church history has to do within the limits thus indicated will perhaps be best understood by considering its province as a department of scientific theology, and its relations to the theological disciplines with which it stands most closely connected, those, namely, of dogmatics and the history of doctrine. Strictly speaking, the history of doctrine is part of the history of the church. To exhaust its task, a history of the church must embrace at least five departments of inquiry and narrative,— one connected with the external relations of the church to the world at large and its political institutions, the remaining four treating of developments and relations internal to the church itself. (1) The Progress of the church must be described, either positively, in respect of its advance, or negatively, with reference to its retrogression, at any given period. To exist at all, it must exist under one or other of these conditions; it must be either attaining or missing, approaching or receding from, its rightful influence on the social condition and political organization of mankind. (2) Its Constitution must be described. The church exists as such, in virtue of its constitution. It is not the church until it is to some extent organized, and the growth and forms of this organization must be recorded. (3) The Doctrine of the church at the various points of its development must be set forth. Doctrine is the full and finished expression of conviction, and since the church owes its existence to certain convictions, some religious, some moral, the history of doctrine occupies the very central position of the church’s history. (4) Worship, under one form or another, is an essential development of church life, as well as one of the modes in which it announces its existence, and calls for historical recognition. (5) Life, as exhibited in the number and character of the members of the church, completes the division of the matter of its history. Doctrine and worship are directed to certain practical ends, either of making proselytes to the church, or of perfecting the character of those who already belong to it, and any such results must be collected and presented both in their numerical and their moral aspects.

But while the history of the church, in the strict and comprehensive sense, must treat fully these various classes of activity, there is a narrower, if also a somewhat looser sense in which it may be taken, for ends of practical convenience. We may distinguish between the organization and its life, between the church and Christianity. On this view, doctrine, worship, and hfe fall to be treated collectively by the history of the Christian religion or in separate histories, while the history of the church becomes a narrative of the successes or defeats experienced in the world by the Christian community and the varying forms of its constitutional framework, with only such allusions to the internal and religious side of its life as are necessary to explain its constitutional changes and external fortunes. By this division it becomes possible to treat both the inner and the outer sides of the subject, each for itself, and therefore more fully and vividly. In this way, since doctrine lies at the foundation of worship and hfe, and even constitution, the history of doctrine becomes the key to the whole history of the church, and the indispensable preliminary to a scientific comprehension of it. The hfe and action of the church in the world are simply the expression of the ideas by which it is governed; and it is the business of the historian of doctrine to record the vicissitudes and developments of these, whether he writes in the interests of mere knowledge and with absolute impartiality, or, as is more common, though less scientific, with a bias in favour of a certain class of ideas, all divergences from which he chronicles as errors. The difference between church history read in the light of the history of doctrine and apart from it is like the difference which the phenomena of health and disease present to minds that possess or that want an acquaintance with the principles of physiology.

Church history, including or co-ordinate with history of doctrine, stands in an important relation to dogmatics. Dogmatics (which also contributes the formal as well as, in part, the material element in Christian ethics) is charged with the scientific statement and proof of whatever is held to be the true doctrine. In the sphere of statement the history of the church is necessary, both as introduction and commentary. Doctrine is a growth, an evolution of part after part, under the influence of special circumstances at special times. The full meaning of doctrine can therefore often be understood only in the light of its antithesis, and its relative importance as essential or accidental ascertained only from the practical crisis which demanded its declaration,—aids for which recourse must be had to the history of the church and its doctrine. As regards, therefore, the scientific articulation, proportioning, and interpretation of doctrine, church history stands in the position of an essential preliminary to dogmatics.

As regards actual church life, and any new expression of it in worship, constitution, or propagandist effort, that assumes to be based on scientific principle, the history of the church is indispensable, not only for the extended view of present circumstances that may be requisite, but also to enable the church fully to know and judge its own mind. The existing church consciousness is the product of all the past, and cannot be fully understood and criticized except in the light of its history.

2. The Sources of church history are either Monumental or Documentary. Monumental sources yield such intimatious of past transactions as are to be found on avowed monuments, memorial tablets, gravestones, churches, and other public edifices or private dwellings, or upon articles of antiquity, seals, crucifixes, furniture, vestments, pictures, coins, weapons, &c. Documentary sources, as their name implies, include all manuscript or printed information, whether originals, copies, or oral traditions committed to record. In point of comparative value, the documentary sources are, of course, the more important, being, from the nature of the case, so immeasurably richer in information. At the same time, within their own range, monumental sources are often more valuable than documentary. Forgery has less chance of success in monuments than in documents; and certain classes of facts are frequently commemorated on them which writers do not think of recording. Dates and names and the like have been fixed by inscriptions on coins, <fcc., where documents have proved defective or wrong.

Documentary sources may be divided from the point of view of their destination into (1) Public and (2) Private, and from that of their authorship into (3) Direct and (4) Indirect. Under the head of public documents we have all deliverances of an official character, such as decrees of councils, Papal bulls, civil legislation affecting the church, rules of life for monastic institutions, liturgies, confessions of faith, and even sermons, theological treatises, &c. Private documents, again, consist of personal memoirs and journals, letters, secret correspondence, and papers not originally intended for the public eye. Then by direct documentary sources are meant those in which we have the actual word of a writer or actor in any event testifying to the nature of the opinion or transaction about which information is desired. Indirect documentary sources are those in which we obtain information about the opinions of an author or the actions of any historical character, not from statements of his own, but from the testimony of some one else about him. Thus a letter of Constantine would be a direct document in reference to some purpose or performance of his own, while it might be an indirect document in reference to the history or opinions of Athanasius or Arius.

In collecting and sifting these sources so as to place all and only the right materials available before the church historian, recourse must be had to the sciences of antiquities, bibliography, and diplomatics. Antiquities, in its various divisions of numismatics, ecclesiology, heraldry, <fcc., marshals all the relevant monumental testimony and discriminates the spurious from the genuine; bibliography, taken in its widest sense, as the science which enumerates, classifies, and values all that has been written upon the various heads of human knowledge, states what documentary material is likely to be available at the different stages of inquiry, and where it is to be found; while diplomatics, or the science of documents, defines the genuineness, completeness, and general trustworthiness of the material so indicated.

Besides these more immediate sources there are collateral sources on which church history must draw in fulfilling its task. These are mainly ecclesiastical philology, the general history of Christendom, with ecclesiastical geography, statistics, and chronology. Ecclesiastical philology points to acquaintance with those languages, more particularly Greek and Latin, in which the chief part of the historical materials is expressed, whether as original or translation. The necessity of this is obvious. Besides this, some knowledge of the general history of Christendom is indispensable to an understanding of the history of the church, just as the special history of the church is essential to a comprehension of general history. The events of the church and of the world are so inextricably bound up together that the one are intelligible only in the light of the other. Hence the history of policy, law, philosophy, literature, and art must be laid under contribution in constructing a full history of the church. Clear treatment further requires acquaintance with ecclesiastical geography and statistics, the distribution of the world into Christian and non-Christiau sections, divisions by patriarchates, dioceses, parishes, ⅛c., and the physical characteristics and social habits of different localities. And along with this, ecclesiastical chronology, the correct arrangement of persons and events, both in their contemporaneous appearance and in their succession to others, is requisite to complete the list of auxiliaries to church history,

3. After the Sources, the Method of dealing with them, so as to produce history, falls to be considered. Method here comprises two main divisions,—(1) Criticism and (2) Construction. In the criticism of the materials two qualities have to be called into exercise,—the judicial faculty and historic insight. The judicial faculty has to determine two questions,—first, How far are the sources to be relied on? and second, If to be relied on, what do they really say? The question how far the sources are to be relied on depends on both the ability and the willingness of the writer to tell the truth. As to his ability, we must consider how far he was in a position to be aware of the facts, and to what extent his judgment and penetration are to be trusted in matters of fact. He may have been credulous, or an incompetent or careless observer, or he may have been so greatly biassed by party feeling or personal animosity as to be incapable of forming an impartial opinion. Then, besides the writer’s ability to tell the truth, there must be considered further his willingness to tell it. A writer may be perfectly able to tell the truth, if he liked. But he may not like. He may have reasons or motives of his own for withholding the truth, or even for substituting untruth. In using his sources the historian must be able to judge exactly how far they are in these respects to be relied on. Then supposing he has decided that they may be relied on in a given degree, he must next be able to take from them precisely the testimony as to past fact which they convey, neither more nor less. That is to say, he must be impartial,—capable of holding the scales of fairness evenly, of controlling his mind so as to prevent any preferences of his own from weakening or distorting the statement of fact derivable from his authorities, in favour of his own opinions. The historic insight, which, in addition to the judicial faculty, is essential to the thorough criticism of the materials, is the power of fully comprehending the significance and connection of the facts yielded by the sources, by realizing the point of view of the actors or writers to whom the facts dealt with are due, and determining their import as related to a general philosophy of history, and embraces three forms of insight, which may be called philosophic, psychologic, and Christian. Philosophic insight implies, first of all, ability to enter into the various forms of speculative thought, metaphysical, ethical, or whatever else, that have appeared within the church’s history, and have in greater or less degree influenced its movements. It implies further an ability to see the whole recorded facts and their connection under the light of the philosophy of history; but as this obviously cannot take place until the facts in themselves have been completely understood, this aspect of philosophic insight will come into play only when the others have discharged their function. By psychologic insight is meant knowledge of human nature affected by scientific observation of mind and its operations. The facts of history are created by individuals, and each of them may be interpreted as an exhibition of the will and intellect, of the general subjective state of some one man or body of men. This subjective state, again, may be accounted for, in part at least, by the action of certain preceding facts upon the mind of the man or men in question, which facts again are to be explained as a manifestation of the mind of some preceding man or men, and so on. In short, history is the product of human nature, affected by and dealing with certain external data, natural or supernatural, furnished by God; so that, to understand it, there is needed the ability to place before the imagination what human nature is at any point in or between the moral extremes of goodness and wickedness, and the intellectual extremes of wisdom and folly. By Christian insight is meant special capacity for sympathizing with the spirit and ideas of Christianity. What we have in the history of the church is centrally the mind and motive of Christ organizing itself in a living institution that it may enter into conflict with the evil of the world, and by persuasion subdue it to willing submission. To comprehend the development of facts produced during the activity of such an institution, there would seem to be requisite at the very outset an understanding of the thought and feeling that constitute its inner life; that is to say, there must be an intelligent sympathy with the spirit of the New Testament, which, as the primitive record of the action of Christ’s spirit and career, is, were it on no other ground, the authoritative exposition and medium of the mind of Christ. And not only must there be this acquaintance with the ideas and spiritual impulses of the New Testament, but there would appear to be also necessary some experience of their power. If Christianity be not merely a series of intellectual propositions, but a spiritual force penetrating to the motives of the soul, it can scarcely be adequately comprehended by any one who has not known what it is to yield in his innermost being to Christian influences. For while many of the greatest occurrences in the history of the church have sprung from the spirit of evil, and are fully intelligible to the historian only in virtue of his own experience of at least germinal evil, a vast number of other events are due to men who were in their degree reproductions of Christ,...