tlie statements in the text are based. As a means by which a careful student may rapidly test the value of historical conclusions, Gieseler s work has no superior. A year afterwards, Neander, inspired by Schleiermacher, afterwards epitomized by Guericke, and popularized by Hagenbach, issued the first instalment of his General History of the Christian Religion and Church. The distinguishing characteristic of this great work is its emphatic recogni tion of the function of history to explain events from their causes, as well as to state them in their objective reality. Neander treats ecclesiastical institutions and events as the necessary outgrowth and embodiment of the peculiar con dition of Christian ideas and aims at the given time, and his undoubted and profound sympathy with the essential spirit and conception of Christianity, and capacity for tracing these under various forms of manifestation, enable him to throw a light upon the facts of the church s history, and to account for them in ways that are always interest ing, sometimes even fascinatingly so, whatever opinion may be ultimately taken of their critical accuracy. Ranke, although his work has been confined to special histories, has exercised a great influence on the course of scientific church history. In his History of the Popes (1834-6), and especially in his German History of the Reformation Period (1839-47), he has furnished a brilliant example of the method in which ecclesiastical facts in all their relations are to be investigated, arranged, and ex plained. But probably no writer of the century has left a deeper impress on the method of studying and construct ing church history than F. C. Baur, who, from 1835 to his death in 1860, gave to the world a series of works bearing on this subject, and culminating in his great Church History, which, for wealth of erudition and variety of genius, give him a unique position even in the land of great scholars that claims his fame. Whatever may be thought of his special conclusions, it is certain that since his labours, the study of the history of Christianity, especially during the e.irlier centuries, must be a far more thorough and profound thing than ever it was before. He may, as has been said of him, be too unwilling to admit the possibility of an entirely new germ of spiritual force in the inception of Christianity, he may bo too much warped by a Hegelian tendency to resolve all historical movements into an alternation of antagonisms and conciliation, but his vast mastery of details and marvellous power of marshalling far-scatterocl facts in support of a startling and unexpected theory have necessitated a new and more penetrating scrutiny of early sources, which is far from being completed at this hour. Some of his results will probably be found of permanent value, and it is certain that in his- conception and working out of the history of dogma he has explained the formation of general ideas in theology, and their power in shaping the course of the church s history, in a way that was needed to counter balance and supplement at once the objectivity of Gieseler,
and the sentimentality of Neander.In the Roman Catholic Church, of course, scientific church history in the true sense is not to be expected; but there have been movements towards it, and painstak ing contributions have been made, which may prove useful in the hands of an unfettered writer. The great collectors of the Acts of Councils, Labb6, Hardouin, and above all, Mansi, we owe to the Catholic Church. Stolberg, Kater- camp, Ritter, and Locherer have written the history of their church from separate points of view that are full of interest, while the names of Mohler, Dollingsr, and Mont- alembert do not need to be further characterized. The manuals of Alzog and Krauz are of great value. Hefele s History of Councils is a mine of thoroughly sifted information.
Besides the powerful but one-sided ecclesiastical chap ters of Gibbon, the original researches of Routh and Burton, and the splendid works of Milman on Christianity and Latin Christianity, replete with critical sagacity, graphic power, and philosophic insight, Great Britain has not produced anything that deserves to be set beside the Continental masterpieces. Much valuable material in the form of historical monographs, biographies, and archseo- logical issues by individuals and societies has been pro duced both in England and Scotland, but nothing that deserves the name of a great church history, whether special or universal. The tractarian movement has stimu lated a certain amount of antiquarian research, and Canon Robertson of Canterbury has compiled a useful history of the church to the period of the Reformation.
For the full bibliography of the subject, reference may be made to such manuals as those of Hase and Kurtz, which have been translated, and more particularly to the latest edition of Hagen- bach s Encyklopadie u. Methodotogie der Thcologisclicn Wissen- schnftcn, as also to the same author s article " Kirchengeschichte," in Herzog s Real-Encyklopddie, and Hefele s in Vetzer and Welte s Lexicon.
born in Westminster, where for many years his father held the curacy and lectureship of St John s. At eight years of age he was sent to Westminster School, where he made no figure except by his irregularities. At nineteen he applied for matriculation at Oxford, but was rejected. He was afterwards admitted of Trinity College, Cambridge, which he quitted immediately, and to which he never returned. A Fleet marriage contracted about this time obliged him to retire, first to his father s house, and after wards to Sunderland, where he began to study for the church. In 1756 he was ordained priest, and officiated in his clerical capacity at Caclbury, in Somersetshire, and at Rainham, in Essex, at which latter place he was obliged to eke out his living by teaching. On his father s death in 1758, Churchill succeeded to his curacy and lectureship, and officiated for some time, employing his leisure in reading the classics at a ladies boarding school and with private pupils. But his innate Bohemianism was too strong to allow of such a quiet way of life for long together. He gave himself over, in conjunction with Lloyd the poet, who afterwards died in the Fleet, to every kind of loose living, ran into debt, was pursued, and had a composition of five shillings in the pound paid by the father of his boon com panion. Part of the experience gained during this period he used in his first published poem, The Pusciad (1761), a reckless but amusing satire on the artists of the several London theatres, which was issued anonymously. The success of this work vas astonishing; Churchill was not backward in avowing its authorship; and the same year he avenged himself on its critics in The Apology, a poem in which he adopted the systematic and scurrilous personality that was to make him rich and famous. He was at this time in his thirtieth year, and in the plenitude of his powers. His conduct, which had scandalized his parishioners, drew down the censure of his dean. The satirist at once resigned his charges, discarded his cassock and bands, and appeared en viveur. He separated from his wife, and apologized in the poem of Night (1762), which is a sufficiently impudent piece of irony; and in the same year he published, at irregular intervals, four books of Hudibrastic doggrel called The Ghost, in which Samuel Johnson and his associates are ridiculed with some point and much brutality. An acquaint ance with John Wilkes, which seems to have ripened rapidly into friendship, gave occasion for two of Churchill s strongest efforts, The .Prophecy of Famine, a violent attack on the Scottish influence and character, and The Epistle to Hogarth, the latter, which is said to have hastened the
great artist s death, being a reply to Hogarth s two carica-