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Excerpt from Lectures on Ecclesiastical History
I proceed now to consider the ends which may be answered by ecclesiastical history, and to inquire what is the readiest and most profitable way of studying it. Before that memorable era, the incarnation of the Son of God, the history of the church of God was the history of one particular people, first distinguished by the name of the patriarch Israel, (otherwise called jacob) whose descendants they were and after the loss of the ten tribes, who were carried into captivity by Shalma nezer, king of Assyria, denominated from Judah, one of the sons of Jacob, and one whose progeny the greater part of the remnant were, the nation of the Jews. The history of that mph, and the history of the church, was under the Mosaick economy the same thing. Neither do we find in the annals, and other remains of those ancient. Times, the least vestige of the distinction of a community into church and state, such as hath obtained universally in the nations who have received the christian law. This distinction hath given rise to a speciesof history, whereof the world before had not conceived so much as an idea. It may not therefore be improper, in the first place, to trace its origin, that we may the better apprehend what is meant by the history of the church.
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