THE EVIDENCE AND EXCELLENCE
Cupimus enim investigare quid verum fit; neque id solum, quod cum veritate, PIETATEM quoque præterea erga Deum habeat conjunctam. SADOLET.
I ENTER on the subject of this volume with un
affected diffidence. I tread on holy ground with awe. Though much of my life, devoted to letters from the earliest age, has been spent in reading the best writers` on the Christian doctrine, and more in contemplation of it, yet a sense of its high importance, and of my own fallibility, has long restrained the impulse which prompted me to engage in its public discussion. Nothing but conscious rectitude of intention, co-operating with the hope of obtaining the aid of God's holy Spirit, and the reader's indulgence, could animate the tremulous mind in an enterprise to which it feels and avows itself unequal. A conviction that the subject is peculiarly seasonable, has contributed to overcome reluctance. The TIMES indeed appear to me to call upon every professor of Christianity to vindicate, in the manner best adapted to his abilities and opportunities, its controverted truth, its insulted honour; and if I shall be fortunate enough to