it from the first intimation of any thing of the kind through its
various progressive stages, till it had reached its widest prevalence in
Christendom. When, however, he had arranged and filled up the results of
the inquiries which he made into the sentiments and habits of those
later writers of the Church, whose works he considered it necessary to
examine with this specific object in view, he found that the bulk of the
work would be swollen far beyond the limits which he had prescribed to
himself; he felt also that the protracted investigation would materially
interfere with the solution of that one independent question which he
trusts now is kept unmixed with any other. He has, consequently, in the
present address limited the range of his researches on the nature of
Primitive Christian Worship, to the writers of the Church Catholic who
lived before the Nicene Council, or were members of it.

In one department, however, he has been under the necessity of making,
to a certain extent, an exception to this rule. Having found no allusion
to the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin, on which much of the
religious worship now paid to her seems to be founded, in any work
written before the middle of the fifth century, he has been induced, in
his examination of the grounds on which that doctrine professes to be
built, to cite authors who flourished subsequently to the Nicene
Council.

The author would also mention, that although in substance he has
prepared this work for the examination of all Christians equally, and
trusts that it will be found not less interesting or profitable to the
members of his own Church than to any other, yet he has throughout
adopted the form of an address to his Roman Catholic countrymen. Such a
mode of conveying his sentiments he considered to be less controversial,
while the facts and the arguments would remain the same. His object is