Section 35
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PREFACE. XXix astical history, that if every period in primitive times had had its Eusebius, we should, besides his own, be in possession of an amount of ecclesiastical information at this day, that would sub serve the most salutary purposes. What our author, however, has secured from the wrecks of time, only leaves us room to re gret what we have not. As to the matter, therefore, which the history of Eusebius embraces, no apology is necessary for presenting this to the public. It belongs to the archaeology of Christianity ; and therefore, to Christians at least must appear in an interesting light. As to the manner in which this is presented, various opinions will doubtless prevail. The critic will form his opinion of Euse bius from the original, and there he will perceive what cannot always be made to appear in a translation. One thing will strike him on the first survey, that the style of an ecclesiastical writer, three centuries after the birth of Christ, is far different from the style that prevailed three centuries before, and that the Greek authors, in the age of Constantine, are not the authors of the age of Alexander. Our Eusebius is not without his beauties, but they are so rarely scattered, that we can hardly allow him an eminent rank, as a writer, although his subject may be offered as his apology. His use of words is sometimes without sufficient precision, which subjects him occasionally to ambiguity, and his sentences are sometimes so involved as to require the hand of critical dissection. His periods, too, are sometimes of enormous length, and by their copious fulness incline much to the pleonastic and hyperbolical. We are not here to expect the uniform suavity of an Herodotus, the terse brevity of a Thucydides, though we may occasionally meet with features that would not be over looked as elegant even in these fathers of history. From the great variety of authors that he quotes, our author indeed, could not aim at the same kind of excellence, neither are his quota tions from others like those of Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and others, for the mere purpose of embellishment or illustration, but for positive information ; and, therefore, they assume all the sim plicity of a plain reference to authority. In a work so unosten tatious, it would be absurd to measure our author bv a standard 3*