The Plan of the Work

My purpose is to write down the successions of the holy apostles, together with the times that have passed from our Savior down to our own; to tell how many and how great were the events said to have taken place in the history of the Church; to name those who governed and presided over it with distinction in the most prominent communities; and to name those who in each generation served as envoys of the divine word, whether by the spoken word or in writing. [a] I mean also to record who they were, how many, and when, who out of a longing for novelty were driven to the very limit of error and proclaimed themselves the founders of “knowledge falsely so called,” and who, like savage wolves, have ravaged the flock of Christ without mercy. [b]

Besides these things, I mean to record the disasters that came upon the whole Jewish nation immediately after their plot against our Savior; how many and what kinds of wars the nations have waged against the divine word, and at what times; how great were those who at various times went through the contest of blood and torture on its behalf; the martyrdoms of our own time as well; and, over all of it, the gracious and kindly help of our Savior. Since this is what I have set out to hand down in writing, I will begin from no other point than the very beginning of the plan of salvation carried out in our Savior and Lord Jesus, the Christ of God. [c]

But at the outset my work must ask the indulgence of kindly readers. I confess that to make good my promise completely, leaving nothing out, is beyond my power. I am the first to take up this subject, and I am setting out, as it were, on a lonely and untrodden road. I pray to have God as my guide and the power of the Lord as my helper, for I cannot find even the bare footprints of anyone who has traveled this road before me, except for small hints, in which one writer in one way and another in another has left us partial accounts of the times through which they lived. They hold up their voices from far off like torches, and they call out as if from some high and distant lookout, directing us where we must walk and how to steer the course of our work without straying and without danger. [f] So we have gathered whatever we think useful for the present subject from the things they mention here and there. We have plucked, as if from meadows of literature, the passages that suit our purpose from the ancient writers themselves, and we will try to give the whole a body in a historical narrative. We will be content if we recover the successions of our Savior’s apostles—if not of all of them, at least of the most famous—in those churches that are distinguished and are still remembered today.

I think it is most necessary to labor at this subject, because I know of no church writer up to now who has given his attention to this part of the work; and I hope it will prove most useful to those who are eager to learn from history. I already gave a summary of these things earlier, in the chronological tables I drew up. Even so, I have set out in the present work to give the fullest account of them I can. [g]

My account will begin, as I said, with what we understand of Christ’s plan of salvation and of his divinity, which are higher and greater than anything human. [h] For anyone who means to hand down in writing the history of the Church must begin from the very first beginning of the plan of salvation that concerns Christ himself—a plan more divine than most people suppose—since it is from him that we have been counted worthy of the very name we bear.