Henry Melvill Gwatkin

Henry Melvill Gwatkin was an English theologian and church historian who helped establish ecclesiastical history as a distinct field at Cambridge. Selections from Early Writers assembled translated documents for students tracing Christian history to Constantine. The eye for spiritual things gathers sermons, while The Knowledge of God and Its Historical Development Volume 1 Volume 1 corresponds to the first part of his two-volume Gifford Lectures, despite the repeated volume wording. Britain’s Case Against Germany: A Letter to a Neutral belongs to his late public writing and appeared after his death. Gwatkin served as Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History and wrote major studies of early doctrinal debate. The Gifford Lectures record two successive series, first on knowledge of God and then on its historical development through Christian revelation and social life. That lecture structure shaped the published volumes. His scholarship moved between source editing, historical argument, lectures, and preaching, with Macmillan and T. & T. Clark among his principal publishers.