PREFACE. DESIGN OF THE WORK

EUSEBIUS PAMPHILI—an especially able writer, to the extent, in particular, of inducing his readers to embrace our religion, though failing to perfect them in the faith—and Sozomen, Theodoret, and Socrates have produced a most excellent record of the advent of our compassionate God, and His ascension into heaven, and of all that has been achieved in the endurance of the divine Apostles, as well as of the other martyrs; and, further, of whatever events have occurred among us, whether more or less worthy of mention, down to a certain period of the reign of Theodosius. But since events subsequent, and scarcely inferior to these, have not hitherto been made the subject of a continuous narrative, I have resolved, though but ill-qualified for such a task, to undertake the labour which the subject demands, and to embody them in a history; surely trusting in Him who enlightened fishermen, and endued a brute tongue with articulate utterance, for ability to raise up transactions already entombed in oblivion, to reanimate them by language, and immortalise them by memory: my object being, that my readers may learn the nature of each of these events, up to our time; the period, place, and manner of its occurrence, as well as those who were its objects and authors; and that no circumstance worthy of recollection, may be lost under the veil of listless indifference, or, its neighbour, forget fulness. I shall then begin, led onwards by the divine impulse, from the point where the above-mentioned writers closed the history.