IN THE MIDDLE AGES. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH COMPILED FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS. BY THE AUTHOR OF " ESSAYS ON THE CHURCH," &c. &c. cobert Banton Seng. SEELEY, BURNSIDE, AND SEELEY, MDCCCXLV. PREFACE. THE present volume originated in an attempt, a few years back, to edit an abridged edition of Milner's Church History. In the course of that endeavour, it was strongly impressed on the mind of the editor, that the general state of the Church became wholly different, in the middle of the narrative, from what it had been at the commencement ;-that, in fact, a total change was perceptible. The story, at the opening, and for more than two centuries afterwards, was of the progress of the Church of Christ;-that Church being a large community, contained within a still larger, the visible or professing Church, with which it mainly agreed in creed and sentiment. But shortly after the beginning of the fourth century, a change commences, which is completed in the sixth or seventh ;-by which the external or visible Church falls away from the faith; gives itself over to idolatry, and begins to persecute and make war upon, the true Church of Christ. From this time the state of things is precisely what had been predicted by St. John. The woman crowned with the stars flies into the wilderness, |