The successions of the holy apostles, together with the times that have elapsed from our Saviour down to ourselves; the number and magnitude of the deeds said to have been accomplished in the history of the Church; the number of those who governed and presided over her with distinction in the most notable communities; the number of those who in each generation, by speech or by writings, were ambassadors of the divine word; and who, and how many, and at what time, driven by a craving for novelty to the uttermost error, proclaimed themselves introducers of knowledge falsely so called, ravaging the flock of Christ without mercy like grim wolves—
and in addition to these, the calamities that at once beset the whole nation of the Jews from the moment of their plot against our Saviour; and again, how often, in what manner, and at what times the divine word was warred upon by the heathen; and how great were those who from time to time passed through the contest of blood and torments on its behalf; and besides these, the martyrdoms of our own day, and the gracious and favouring succour of our Saviour in them all—having resolved to commit all this to writing, I shall begin from no other point than the first dispensation of God touching Jesus the Christ, our Saviour and Lord.
But at the very outset my account begs the indulgence of the kindly, for I confess that to fulfil the promise complete and without omission is beyond our power, seeing that we are the first now to set foot upon this subject, undertaking to travel, as it were, a lonely and untrodden road. We pray that we may have God for our guide and the power of the Lord for our fellow-worker; for nowhere are we able to find even the bare footprints of men who have gone before us along the same way—save only those slight occasions by which, one in one manner and another in another, they have left us partial narratives of the times through which they passed, lifting up their own voices from afar like beacon-fires, and crying out as it were from on high, from a watch-tower in the distance, directing us how we must walk and how to guide the course of the word without straying and without danger.
Accordingly, having gathered up from the scattered records of those very men all that we judge will be of profit for the present undertaking, and having plucked, as from intellectual meadows, the fitting utterances of the ancient writers themselves, we shall endeavour to give them a body through a historical narrative—content if we may rescue, if not the successions of all, at least of the most illustrious of the apostles of our Saviour, in those churches that are eminent and remembered still even now.
I consider it most necessary to labour at this subject, because I am aware of no ecclesiastical writer who up to now has bestowed care upon this part of writing; and I hope, too, that it will prove most profitable to those who are zealously devoted to the useful learning of history.
Now I have already made a summary of these matters earlier, in the chronological canons which I drew up; yet nevertheless in the present work I have set out to render the narrative of them in its fullest detail.
And my account will begin, as I said, from the dispensation and theology concerning Christ—a dispensation conceived as loftier and greater than belongs to man.
For indeed whoever intends to hand on in writing the narrative of the Church's history must of necessity begin from the very first beginning—from the dispensation concerning Christ himself, which is more divine than it seems to most—since it is from him that we have been counted worthy even of our name.