ABSTRACT OF THE ANNUAL REPORTS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF ITS CONNEXION WITH THE EAST INDIA MISSIONS, A. D. 1709, TO THE PRESENT DAY; TOGETHER WITH THE CHARGES DELIVERED TO THE MISSIONARIES AT DIFFERENT PERIODS, ON THEIR DEPARTURE FOR THEIR SEVERAL MISSIONS. PUBLISHED BY DIRECTION OF THE BOARD OF THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, LONDON: PRINTED FOR F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, No. 62, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD; By Law and Gilbert, St. John's-Square, Clerkenwell, 6-19-56 MED 13-13943 PREFACE. THE claims and obligations of the Christian Covenant attach so intimately to all who have their part in it, that under every combination in which such persons can subsist, the peculiar habits of their joint profession, and the principles and maxims of their common faith, should give conformity to their domestic plans, and should distinguish the several measures of their public intercourse. As Members of a Christian Church, and as partakers of the privileges of a Christian State, these demonstrations of their character and views are indispensable. They who entertain such notions of Christianity as would confine it to the closet, and even to the private cell of each man's breast, imagine to themselves a method of Religion entirely different from any which has ever had the sanctions of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe. They who chuse to regard the Christian dispensation as a sort of speculative and retired philosophy, which can assume no public character, exercise no outward government, and which neither requires nor admits of external deinonstrations with correspondent offices and functions, frame to themselves a scheme which is opposite, in all respects to the Christian System, if we may take its model from the word of its great Founder, and from the testimony of his authorized Apostles. It is easy therefore to perceive the reasons which have induced Christians, of whatever country, in their respective settlements and removals, to plant the standard of their faith together with the colours of their nation. Wherever they have fixed the circles of their wonted residence, or taken up their temporary station and abode, they have not failed to provide in some way for those spiritual ministries among them, without which no Christian household or com |