So the words are given in the original and subsequent editions. The reference is to the “Bibliotheca Patrum,” in the second volume of which the liturgies mentioned will be found, —ED. So the word is given in the first, and in Russell’s edition. It seems a misprint for “procedure.” —ED. Heyl. Hist. of Presb. So early as 1556, some missionaries were sent to labor among the natives of America by the church of Geneva, and this is affirmed to have been the first protestant mission. In 1644, a petition was presented to the English parliament in favor of a similar mission to America, and an ordinance of the Lords and Commons was passed, authorizing the Earl of Warwick to take measures in furtherance of this object. “The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England,” was established in 1649, by the authority of parliament.

Eliot distinguished himself as “the apostle of the Indians,” and three authentic narratives were published, in 1653, 1655, and 1659, giving an account of the remarkable success which had attended his labors, containing several sermons by Indian converts, and mentioning several villages in which the inhabitants had wholly conformed to the principles and usages of Christianity. It is interesting to notice the germ of the vast system of modern missions; and when a disposition has been manifested to reproach our fathers for indifference to this great work, it is well to find that Owen was fully alive to its importance, and that the pressure of circumstances alone hindered British Christians in his day from engaging in it on a scale worthy alike of its momentous nature and their own eagerness to advance it. —ED. Now better known by his real name, Paul Sarpi. —ED. Socrat. Hist., lib. 5. The allusion is to Irenaeus; see Eus. 5:24. —ED. See “Discourse concerning Evangelical Love,” p. 88 of this volume. It was not till five years after the publication of this work that Dr Spencer’s celebrated work, “De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus,” appeared, in which he contends that the Hebrew ritual had been borrowed from the religious ceremonies of the Egyptians, and accommodated by Moses to the purposes of divine revelation. It is impossible, therefore, that Owen can allude to this work, although, from the wide-spread influence it exerted on theological literature in this country and abroad, it has been named as one of the causes that gave birth and impulse to neological speculation. Mr Orme (“Biblioth.

Biblic.”) affirms that the hypothesis had been already borrowed from Maimonides, and warmly urged by Sir John Marsham in his “Canon Chronicus A Egyptiacus,” published in 1672; and perhaps Dr Owen refers to this author. In a learned treatise, however, on the “Urim and Thummim,” published by Spencer in 1669, the same opinion is maintained, and the allusion of our author may after all be to Spencer.

The views of the latter as to the Egyptian origin of the Urim and Thummim had been already propounded by Le Clerc; and Grotius had long before committed himself to the notion of Maimonides, that the Hebrew rites had been copied from Egypt. Witsius and Shuckford have distinguished themselves in the refutation of this hypothesis. — Ed. These words are printed in the original edition as if they were the title of a particular treatise by our author. His treatise under that title will be found in vol. 4 of his doctrinal works; but it seems to have been published in 1693, twelve years after the present work appeared. Such a discourse is promised in his preface to his treatise on “the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer,” which was published in 1682, a year after the publication of the present work. There is some discussion on the subject of spiritual gifts in the first chapter of his great work on the Holy Spirit; but a special and separate treatise seems alluded to in the text above. To the “Discourse of Spiritual Gifts,” as published in 1693, there is a preface by Nathaniel Mather; from which the reader is led. to infer that it was then published for the first time. Perhaps the difficulty may be obviated by the supposition that Owen intended to publish it immediately, and refers to it in this work by anticipation. — Ed. The Rota is an important ecclesiastical court at Rome, before which all suits in the territory of the church may be carried by appeal, and which takes cognizance of all beneficiary and patrimonial interests.