SKETCHES AND HINTS

OF

CHURCH HISTORY,

AND

THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY.

CHIEFLY TRANSLATED OR ABRIDGED FROM

MODERN FOREIGN WRITERS.

By JOHN ERSKINE, D. D.

ONE OF THE MINISTERS OF EDINBURGH.

PREFACE.

THE manners, religion, and theological

literature of this century, afford important inftructions and warnings, and well merit to be carefully ftudied. Changes in all these, especially the laft forty years, till then neither expected nor dreaded, feem big with changes ftill greater, the preventing, promoting, or improving which, deeply concerns every Chriftian. A delineation of the rife and progress of many late aftonishing events, and a juft and ftriking portrait of the prefent aspect of the times, would be a work highly ufeful and interefting. Pofterity, however, bids fairer for enjoying fuch a work than the prefent age. Bacon has fomewhere observed, that fciences often fuffer, by being too foon reduced to a fyftem. This peculiarly holds as to hiftory. When narratives of ftruggles and contentions appear, before they are fettled, luminous incidents are often omitted; and the caufes of changes, and their natural tendency and operation,

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