The writer has always taken an interest in what relates to the maintenance and defence of Protestant and Evangelical religion, but did not, until two years ago, contemplate the authorship of such a volume as this. But that which a person may not at first design to do, he may, by a variety of circumstances, be induced to undertake. In these days of change and innovation in the Church, zealous partisans have made the best use they could of the daily press to promote ritualism and priestly power. It was in connection with an effort of this kind that the author contributed a series of letters in a local periodical; and a suggestion was made 'by the late Rev. Thomas Best and other clergymen that the general contents of those letters should be published in a more permanent form. The author readily attended to the suggestion, but in the first instance contemplated only a pamphlet or small volume. Finding, as he pursued the investigation of the Fathers with this object in view, how unsatisfactory it would be to give only a fraction of their testimony, he determined to include all the writers of the first six centuries, and quote them as fully as he might be able.

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