PREFACE.

WHILST the subject of Scriptural difficulties has been often admirably handled both generally and in detail, there is still one arising from the very form and structure of the Scriptures, on which sufficient attention has not perhaps been bestowed; although it is a source of sensible uneasiness to some believers, and secretly influences the practice of many more. The purpose of the following pages is to state and consider this difficulty; and further, to pursue into some of its more important particulars the view, which that inquiry suggests, of the value of unauthoritative tradition, not so much in the confirmation or interpretation of Christian doctrines, but as intended to be the ordinary introduction to them.

After some account therefore of the reasons for the slight degree of attention with which the difficulty in question is sometimes regarded, and of the insufficient answers frequently proposed to it, an attempt is made to exhibit an adequate solution of it: (I.) in the principle of that practice, which has in fact been commonly pursued by considerate men in the communication of religious truth; and

of which one effect has been to prevent the difficulty itself from being much more generally felt and recognised than it is at present. (p. 1—14.)

(II.) In proof, and defence, and explanation, of this principle much more will here be advanced than many readers might consider requisite, or than to many indeed will be at all necessary. (p. 14-46.) Those however, who admit the principle at once, may neglect the arguments urged in its behalf, and proceed to consider (III.) the use and application of it (p. 46 to the end :) and if they then acknowledge its extensive utility, and perceive at the same time that it has been either undervalued by many, or lamentably neglected in practice, they will admit that a formal discussion of what was to them a very obvious position may not be altogether needless. The very existence of the truth contended for was indeed virtually denied in various writings and public speeches during the agitation of the late questions concerning the distribution of the holy Scriptures; and it is still denied in works which appear at least to obtain a very considerable circulation.

The application of the principle thus opposed, or disregarded, will extend beyond the solution of the difficulty before alluded to; and without suggesting, to pious and sensible men, any novelty in practice, may perhaps throw somewhat of additional light upon the importance of their established practice in the dissemination of Christian knowledge, or of

Christianity itself, amongst the young, and those of riper years, at home and abroad.

If these few pages can in the slightest degree contribute to such valuable ends, and if they are capable also incidentally of supplying a ready answer to certain popular objections, either against the evidence of some important articles of faith, or even against revealed religion itself, they will have been without impropriety offered to the publick at large. To the candid consideration of the Established Clergy they are submitted in a more especial manner, but with peculiar deference; they are addressed however to every thoughtful believer in Christianity, and to those also who have not yet admitted the claims of Revelation, but who are honestly intent upon the discovery of religious truth.