Excerpt from Four Periods in the Life of the Church L general view of ecclesiastical history. No one can expect or desire originality in an historical lecture truth, not novelty, must be the aim of the speaker yet every one has a slightly different manner of regarding old truths, and it is hoped that old friends will not be found to suffer from a new presenta tion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.