PREFACE ΤΟ THE FIRST EDITION. As every attempt to illustrate and recommend such opinions on RELIGION, as oppose the pride of human reason, is obnoxious to misconception, misrepresentation, and rash censure; I think it proper to entreat all who honour this book with their attention, duly to consider the high AUTHORITIES, human as well as scriptural, on which its doctrines are founded; and not to reject opinions in which their own happiness is most deeply concerned, till they shall have invalidated those human authorities, and proved themselves superior in sagacity, learning, and piety, to the great men whose sentiments I have cited in support of my own. There is no doubt but that my subject is the most momentous which can fall under the contemplation of a human being; and I therefore venture to claim for it, a dispassionate and unprejudiced consideration. The moral world, as well as the political, appears, at present, to be greatly out of order. Moral and political confusion, indeed, naturally produce each other. Let all who love their species, or their country, calmly consider whether the neglect or rejection of Christianity may not be the real cause of moral and political: and let those who are thus persuaded, cooperate with every attempt to revive and diffuse the TRUE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. "Let us meekly instruct those that oppose themselves,"* (if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth,) "not being overcome of evil, but overcoming evil with good."+ Nor let a private clergyman be thought to step out of his province, in thus endeavouring to tranquillize the tumult. of the world, by calling the attention of erring and wretched mortals to the gospel of peace. He is justified, not only by the general principles of humanity, but by the particular command of the religion of which he is a minister. Thus saith the Apostle, in a charge which may be considered as generally addressed to all ordained preachers of the Gospel, who having taken the oversight of the flock, are in the true sense of the word ETLOKOTOL, or overseers. "Feed the flock of God, as much as lieth in you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingness; not for filthy lucre, but of ready mind.‡ Take heed to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."S * 2 Tim. ii. 25. † Romans, xii. 21. § Acts, xx. 28. |