a 2

Preface

concerning the second edition of the

little church history.

This small book carries almost the same
title as the larger
impartial church
history, which has come out
in these last two years in two folio volumes original Latin: "voluminibus in folio"; these were large, expensive books printed on full-sized sheets of paper folded only once..
And therefore one or another might
conclude that this small work was only
a short excerpt of that large one;
especially when he sees that this
displays the title of a concise
history.

However, it is important to know that such
an assumption is without foundation.
For this small compendium original: "compendium", a concise summary of a larger subject.
has no other relationship with the history
of the church and heretics This refers to Gottfried Arnold's "Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie," a groundbreaking work that sought to treat "heretics" with the same historical fairness as the established church. than that in the
first centuries original Latin: "seculis". it was a
minor outline of that larger work.
This outline, however, was afterwards
changed in its elaboration to such an
extent that in a comparison original: "collation", the process of comparing two texts side-by-side to find differences.
against one another, one might find
no similarity, or very little.

Moreover, the description of the
last two centuries here is entirely
different, and almost to be viewed like a
skeleton original: "sceleton", here meaning a bare-bones or structural outline.
compared to what is found in parts II, III, and IV