Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/48

40 history and geography. Look at the long procession as it enters the scene of assembly; see who was present and who was absent. Let us make ourselves acquainted with the several characters there brought together, so that we may recognise them as old friends if we meet them again elsewhere. Study their decrees, as expositions of the prevailing sentiments of the time; study them, as a recent historian has advised us to study the statutes of our own ancient Parliaments; see what evils are most condemned, and what evils are left uncondemned; observe how far their injunctions are still obeyed, or how far set at nought, and ask in each case the reason why. Read them, as I have just now noticed, with the knowledge given to us by our own experience of all synods of all kinds; read them with the knowledge which each gives of every other. Do this for any one Council, and you will have made a deep hole into Ecclesiastical History.

And still more let this same rule be followed with regard to persons. Take any one character. It may be, we shall be attracted towards him by some accidental connexion; it may, and should rather be, on account of his preeminent greatness. Do not let him leave you till you have, at any rate, retained some one distinctive feature by which you will know him again in the multitudes amongst which he will else be lost; some feature of mind or person which he has, and which others have not.

Many of us must have read, in part at least,