LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMAS; BY 10 DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER. EDITED BY DR. J. L. JACOBI. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY J. E. RYLAND, M.A., EDITOR OF FOSTER'S LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, AND of Dr. KITTO'S MEMOIRS; HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. M.D.CCC.LVIII PREFACE. NEANDER'S Lectures on the History of Christian Dogmas were among those to which he attached peculiar importance, and which he felt special pleasure in delivering. His hearers will recollect with interest his vivid delineation of the great men whose forms he summoned to pass before them, and how, inspired by the power of Christian life in them, he described sympathetically the course of their development. Elevated himself by the truth and greatness of his ideas, he attracted his hearers into an admiration of their sublimity, and infused into them something of the love for those great minds which filled his own heart. When obliged to animadvert on their defects, he did it earnestly, yet as one who was fully conscious of his own. Neander, in all he performed, ever kept the Ethical in closest connexion with the Scientific. Deep truthfulness was a leading feature of his character; it held him back from wishing to advance Truth itself by disingenuous methods. Of this he gave proof, frequently and plainly, when his conduct was censured (as was often the case, down to a recent period) by those who were imperfectly acquainted with his position, or less scrupulous than himself about the means they employed. It was the truthfulness, also, stamped on his works which inspired confidence, for few Historians were so well qualified to receive and to communicate the Historical with unalloyed receptivity. His method was adapted to excite cautious deliberation, for he clearly marked the respective limits of Probability and Certainty, and when Truth was found he loved to make it fruitful by protracted contemplation; but if genuine Objectivity consists not merely in confidence of assertion but |