AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE author considers it advisable to direct attention to two points in which a slight difference exists between the first and second volumes. In the first volume the origin of the conception of the sacraments is derived from St Paul (p. 273), and not from the earliest Christian community; whereas vol. ii. presupposes the existence of the sacraments in the earliest Church, and even suggests that they are anterior to Christianity itself (vol. ii. p. 128). On this point the author has accepted the arguments advanced by Bousset and Heitmüller.

The first volume did not clearly settle the question whether, according to St Paul, all Christians attained salvation, or only a part of them (vol. i. p. 219 seq., and p. 281), whereas the second volume presupposes that St Paul considered all the members of his congregation as the elect of God’s mercy (vol. ii. p. 91). Here the author’s doubts have been removed by studies of his own in later ecclesiastical history which has presented analogous cases. For the work as a whole these differences are of little importance, but the author begs his English readers to excuse the want of complete agreement between the two volumes.