Ancient Church Orders eBook

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. I have endeavoured in the following pages to do for the whole series of Church Orders what was done in greater detail for the Testament of our Lord in the edition of that work published by Professor Cooper and myself in 1902. The Church Orders are an interesting series of manuals, and it may be useful to make them better known to the modern reader, and to explain the extent to which they throw light on early Christian worship and customs.

It will perhaps not be superfluous to give a word of caution to those entering on a study of the subject. There must always be some uncertainty in the determination of dates of documents when we have only internal evidence to guide us. The results arrived at in this volume must, therefore, be considered as only tentative. And I may explain that I have taken a different view of the date of the Canons of Hippolytus from that which I took in the English edition of the Testament.