HISTORIANS ECCLESIASTICAL.

Those writers who record the acts and monuments of the Christian Church. After the evangelical historians, the most distinguished is Hegesippus, who lived principally in the reign of Marcus Aurelius ( A. D. 161–180). He wrote five books of ecclesiastical history, called Commentaries of the Acts of the Church , wherein he described the character of the holy apostles, their mi ions, ., the remarkable events in the Church, and the several heresies, schisms, and persecutions which had afflicted it from our Lord’s death to the writer’s own times. All the writings of Hegesippus are now lost. Next follows Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, a pupil of Pamphilus, on which account he is often called Eusebius Pamphili. He wrote an ecclesiastical history in ten books, comprising a history of the Church from our Lord’s birth to the conversion of Const an tine the Great, which he compiled chiefly from the commentary of Hegesippus. St. Jerome and Nicephorus derive the materials of their history from Eusebius. The histories written by So crates, Theodoret, and Sozomen, relate to their own times only. These are the sources from which all modern historians of the early Church derive their materials.