THE HISTORY OF THE WALDENSES: CONNECTED WITH A SKETCH OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IN TWO VOLUMES. BY WILLIAM JONES. THE SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND GREATLY ENLARGED, VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR GALE AND FENNER, PATERNOSTER Row, 1816. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE History of the Christian Church, when prosecuted in minute detail, and in all its ramifications, is a copious theme, and has occupied the pens of many learned men, both of our own and other countries. The elaborate treatises of Eusebius, Du Pin, Fleury, Mosheim, Priestley, Milner, and others of inferior consideration, have most of them been long before the public, and are all well known. To discuss the subject at large, or to enter into any competition with those works, as it is not to be expected in the compass of a single volume, so it must not be considered as having at all entered into the views of the present writer. The following pages, whatever may be their merits or defects, were not designed to instruct persons of general reading; for the author is fully aware that they contain little which is not familiar to that class of men. They were compiled with the view of communicating some interesting information to a few friends whose views of the gospel of Christ, and of the nature |