A History of the Mass and Its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western Church

As the question will doubtless be asked why we have presumed to write upon a subject which has already been treated so largely and so often by others, we make the same reply that one of the ancient Fathers did when a similar question was proposed to him. “This advantage,” said he, “we owe to the multiplicity of books on the same subject: that one falls in the way of one man, and another best suits the level or comprehension of another. Everything that is written does not come into the hands of all, and hence, perhaps, some may meet with my book who have heard nothing of others which have treated better of the same subject.”