Section 2
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INTRODUCTION TO THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF EUSEBIUS. NOTE — In Part I. of the following Introduction, the references show the Book and chapter ; in Part II. they show the page. Occasionally there is a double reference. PART I—GENERAL ABSTRACT OF EVENTS. This work, the most important that has come down to us from Eusebius of Cesarea, and the most important of any, perhaps, that have came to us from the earlier Fathers of the Church, em braces the events of the first three centuries, down to the time when Constantine became sole master of the Roman world. It is divided into ten books, in chronological order, and opens with a preliminary discourse, the matter of which is strictly theological. It is an apology and exposition of Christian doctrine. The de sign is chiefly to exhibit the Christian Religion in its true antiquity, dignity and excellence, on grounds derived from the titles, offices, and exalted Nature and Dignity of its Blessed Author, and from a comparative view of facts and passages of the Old Testament, showing that the Person and Doctrine of Christ had been the object of faith and hope from the most remote ages. Here, then, we have a summary of Christian Doctrine in the Primitive Church. In this connection also, Eusebius accounts for the seeming difficulty that the Gospel was not sooner introduced ;