During the last few years of Dr Hort's life he regularly chose as one of the subjects for his professorial lectures some special aspect of the history of the Apostolic and post-Apostolic age. In this way he traced at one time the various stages in the emancipation of the Church from the trammels of Judaism, and at another the gradual evolution of the conception of an Universal Ecclesia and of ecclesiastical organization. These lectures were not, I believe, primarily designed for publication, but they afforded a convenient opportunity for summarizing and bringing to a focus the results of a lifetime devoted to the patient and single-minded consideration of these fundamental questions. This volume contains the two courses which were devoted to the first of these subjects.

When the end of the academic term brought the first course to a conclusion far short of the goal which he had originally contemplated, he had just reached the discussion of the evidence to be derived from the Epistle to the Romans. As he had recently delivered a full course of lectures on the introduction to that Epistle, he had no occasion to do more than indicate the main conclusions at which he had arrived with regard to it.