into resolution.-Whether the solicitations on their part, and the resolution on mine, were warranted by any thing in the communication to be made sufficiently worthy of public attention, must now be left to the decision of those who may favour the volume with a perusal.-To the friends themselves by whom the requests were transmitted, whether prompted by a coincidence of sentiment with my own, or simply by a desire for the free investigation of truth, my grateful acknowledgments are, at any rate, due; and they are thus publicly and respectfully presented.

It is a serious thing, to charge a professed minister of Christ with preaching "another gospel" than his. When the Apostle Paul brings the charge, he adds, with all solemnity, and, lest any should think it a hasty utterance, deliberately repeats the denunciation, "Let him be accursed!" The least, certainly, that can be inferred from this is, that we should be very sure of our ground, before we venture to advance the charge. It is sufficiently well known, that, by some at least of the advocates of uni. versal pardon and of the necessity of personal assurance to saving faith, bold and sweeping assertions have been openly made, that the gospel is not preached in this land; and, indeed, the same thing has, in substance, if not in the ipsissima verba, been avowed from the press : Mr. Erskine having, in his last publication, declared his conviction, that all who, in their preaching, connect pardon with the faith of the

gospel, preach a system of pure selfishness, which he pronounces "man's religion, and not God's," and represents as subversive of the unconditional freeness of grace. In this condemnation are included, whatever may be the simplicity of their views otherwise, both of the ground of the sinner's acceptance with God, and of the faith, or belief of the truth, by which he becomes interested in the blessing, all who do not preach the very sentiments respecting pardon and assurance, which he has himself embraced, and which he conceives to constitute the essence of the Gospel. That there is ground for many of his strictures, on the nature and tendency of certain doctrines, and modes of stating doctrines, accords with my own observation. But his censures have appeared to me reprehensibly indiscriminate; views of the faith of the gospel being grouped together, and charged with the same consequences which are evidently and materially different. Surprise and regret at this indiscriminateness, together with a conviction, which I have long entertained, that on the subjects of the two Essays there is great danger, in controverting one extreme, of falling into its opposite, have been part of my inducement to publish. Whether I have myself been enabled to shun this tendency to extremes, the reader must judge.

Various publications have recently issued from the press, in opposition to the views which are controverted in these Essays. I know not

hat any apology is due to their respective authors for my not having yet perused them; but I feel it needful to state the fact, in order to account for the absence of all allusion to them in the succeeding pages. The truth is, that, wishing to be quite untrammelled in pursuing the course of my own investigations and rea sonings, I laid down the resolution, that I would read nothing of what was written by others, till I had finished what I had to say myself. As there could not fail to be, on the general subjects, a consierable coincidence of views and arguments, I was solicitous to leave no ground, in any mind, for even a suspicion of plagiarism. And, on the other hand, aware that, on some points, there was a likelihood of material diffe. rence, both in the representations of truth, and in the grounds adopted for the refutation of error-a difference hardly less important, perhaps, in those points, than the coincidence in others, I was equally solicitous to shun the appearance of writing, with personal allusion, against any individual on the same side with myself of the general controversy.

In the first advertisement of this little work, the general title given to it was "SIMPLE TRUTH." Various objections, however, were started against this title. By some it was conceived to be deficient in dignity. And yet, what is there that can vie in real dignity with unadorned truth? To what, more justly or forcibly than to truth, can the poet's line be ap plied:

ness

Majestic in its own simplicity?”.

By others it was reprehended as assuming what it was the object of the work to prove-taking for granted, in the very title-page, that truth was on my side. This brought to my recollection a sentiment of the late Mr. Fuller, that "those writers who are not ashamed to beg the question in the title-page, are seldom the most liberal or impartial in the execution of the work." And, although, in giving to the very volume, in the preface to which this sentiment occurs, the title of, "The Gospel its own wit; or the holy nature and divine harmony of the Christian religion, contrasted with the immortality and absurdity of Deism," the excellent and able writer appears to have allowed his own remark to slip from his remembrance, yet is the remark itself by no means destitute of truth. It is always, however, conceived to contain even more of truth than really belongs to it, by persons who are predisposed against the particular views of which the writer avows himself the advocate. Such persons say, im. mediately, with an emotion half indignant, half disdainful-" Simple truth! that remains to be proved;" and the very feeling thus excited gives an addition of strength to their prejudice, and fortifies them the more against conviction. Yet, surely, every one who publishes his sentiments on any subject to the world, must, if he be an honest man, believe what he publishes to

be truth; and a title-page ought, perhaps, to be considered, rather as expressing what the au thor believes his book to be, than as a demand upon all others to receive and acknowledge it as such. Yet, since a love of truth, and a desire for its prevalence, should make us anxious to throw no obstacle, of any kind, in the way of its acceptance, I have thought it better to dismiss my original title, and to leave the sentiments on the important subjects discussed, with nothing which even a single reader might construe into a presumptuous prejudication of their claims, to the free examination, and candid judgment of my fellow Christians.

I have endeavoured to make my appeal exclusively to the Holy Scriptures. In doing this, however, I have not, on all occasions, merely quoted them. I have reasoned upon them. But my reasonings, I trust it will be found, are all directed to one or other of two ends; to the elucidation and establishment of their true meaning, or to the deduction from them of those conclusions to which they legiti mately lead. No judicious reader will put these discussions aside, under the disparaging designation of human reasonings; those reasonings which justly merit this title, being such only as, instead of resting their decisions sim. ply upon the sacred word, lead the mind away .from it, and would found divine truth on the authority of human wisdom. I think I can say, with a clear conscience, that I have not written