THE belief that there had existed through all the ages since the Christian era churches which adhered strictly to scriptural doctrines and practice-churches which were the true successors in faith and ordinances of those founded by the apostles, and had never paid homage to Greek patriarch or Roman pope- was firmly impressed upon the minds of the Baptist church-historians of the first fifty years of the present century. To the writer it has seemed to be a matter of great consequence to be able to demonstrate that there were churches of faithful witnesses for Christ who had never paid their homage or given in their allegiance to the anti-Christian churches of Constantinople or Rome.