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PREFACE.

Reader, we here present you with the Third Volume of the FREETHINKING CHRISTIANS' MAGAZINE. If the Work has hitherto remained unknown to you, be not alarmed at the title it assumes, nor suffer your prejudices to. pass a premature judgment upon that which yet you are unacquainted with. We will presume that you are rational, intelligent, and a lover of truth; and as such, we need only remind you that names are not always correct archetypes of things; sometimes they are deficient themselves, and sometimes our pre-conceived opinions give to them significations very different from those for which they were originally used. Hence, if our title-page should excite your alarm, and rouse from their silent and settled repose the opinions of your ancestors, you will calm the emotion of sudden appeal, and proceed, with philosophic step, to investigate the nature of their cause; you will inquire whether it be the design of Christianity to fetter the intellect of man, and to forbid the exercise of those faculties with which heaven hath endued him; and if you should conclude that Christianity, instead of confining the understanding of man, is, by its very nature, calculated to enlarge it; that it commands us to think with freedom-to judge with precision and to seek after truth in every channel where it may possibly be found; and that they who declare the use of reason in matters of religion to be irreligious, are haply more guided by its corruptions than by its true spirit;-you will then see that the votary of that religion which commands freedom of thought must necessarily be a man who thinks freely, or, in the terms of our title-page, he must be a Freethinking Christian. Custom will, perhaps, remind you of the oppraai

brious ideas usually attached to freethinking ; but what have
good men to do with customs that are erroneous, or with
prejudices that are fallacious, except it be to see the folly
of such things themselves, and to display it to others? He.
who bursts. the fetters of a superstitious custom, gains a
double advantage; for he not only discovers a new truth, s,
but he removes an old error. Be not, therefore, at open
war with us on account of our name; if you think it not
correct, give us, at least, the credit of intending it such,
until, by the perusal of the volume before you, you find
more weighty reasons either for confirming or doubting
our sincerity i sjes ?

As it is the nature of a Magazine to consist of a variety
of miscellaneous matter, you will not, of course, concludes
that every article in this book proceeded from the pen of a
Freethinking Christian; much of the work we acknowledge
as our own, but much also, for the honour of our religion
and ourselves, we disavow. Some articles we have, per
haps, occasionally inserted for want of better-some to
admit a diversity of opinion--and some for the purpose of
attacking the dogmas they contain, and as affording us an
opportunity of lashing the follies of the age ; it will, there-
fore, occur, in the course of your perusal, that you will meet
with doctrines which you think untenable-sentiments
which you think erroneous and language which you may
well imagine affords ample room for improvement, both in
beauty of composition and grammatical truth; but all these
you will regard only as parts of the varied whole; and in
forming a comprehensive judgment of a work, which might
contain as many various principles as it does essays, you
will not decide in the middle but at the end.' *

When the first Volume of this work commenced its pube V plication, little did its compilers imagine that it would have any attained the conclusion of a third Volume. Their religious my opinions, and of consequence many of their moral ones, Carta were so much at variance with the general notions of the

age, that they were anxious to commit them on record for,

lication, i

lusion of a third Volume. I

ones,