TRANSLATION REVISED AND CORRECTED ACCORDING TO THE By E. G. ROBINSON, D.D., PROFESSOR IN THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY SHELDON & CO., 335 BROADWAY. BOSTON: GOULD & LINCOLN. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District Electrotyped by SMITH & MCDOUGAL, 82 & 84 Beekman-street. Printed by C. S. WESTCOTT & Co., 79 John-street. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. MR. RYLAND's translation of this work was made from the third edition of the original, and was first published in 1841. In 1847, appeared the fourth edition of the original, carefully revised, and containing important additions and modifications in the History itself, besides notices of all the criticisms of any value that had been made, during the six years preceding, on the third edition. In 1851, the most important of the changes found in this fourth edition were embodied by Mr. Ryland under the title of "Additions and Corrections," and appended to his translation. To say nothing of the inconvenience and awkwardness of such an arrangement, there remained, necessarily, a large number of alterations, both in the notes and in the text, of which no notice could be taken without a thorough revision of the translation itself. To make such a revision has been the attempt of the editor in the present edition. And it may not be amiss to say, that, with all the merits of Mr. Ryland as a translator-which are not few nor unacknowledged by those acquainted with his labors-there yet remained in his version of this History, not only occasional misapprehensions of meaning, but obscurities too numerous and too annoying to be perpetuated in a book which so large a circle of readers were desirous of profiting by. It may, perhaps, be superfluous to add, at this late day, that no work of Neander exhibits more conspicuously his best characteristics as a fervid Christian theologian and a sagacious and critical historian, than his "Planting and Training of the Christian 28752 |