Christians. It will be enough if they should find points of contact
in some minds, and the tentative element in them will perhaps be
the more indulgently judged now that the reconciliation of the
different branches of knowledge and belief is being so anxiously
sought for.

The instrument of the enquiry had to be fashioned as the enquiry
itself went on, and I suspect that the consequences of this will
be apparent in some inequality and incompleteness in the earlier
portions. For instance, I am afraid that the textual analysis of
the quotations in Justin may seem somewhat less satisfactory than
that of those in the Clementine Homilies, though Justin's
quotations are the more important of the two. Still I hope that
the treatment of the first may be, for the scale of the book,
sufficiently adequate. There seemed to be a certain advantage in
presenting the results of the enquiry in the order in which it was
conducted. If time and strength are allowed me, I hope to be able
to carry several of the investigations that are begun in this book
some stages further.

I ought perhaps to explain that I was prevented by other engagements
from beginning seriously to work upon the subject until the latter
end of December in last year. The first of Dr. Lightfoot's articles
in the Contemporary Review had then appeared. The next two articles
(on the Silence of Eusebius and the Ignatian Epistles) were also
in advance of my own treatment of the same topics. From this point
onwards I was usually the first to finish, and I have been compelled
merely to allude to the progress of the controversy in notes. Seeing
the turn that Dr. Lightfoot's review was taking, and knowing how
utterly vain it would be for any one else to go over the same ground,