ADVERTISEMENT.

The Works from which I have made large Extracts, with or without acknowledgment, are the following:

Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise.

Conybeare's Lectures on Theology.

Davison on Prophecy.

Archdeacon Lyall's Propædia Prophetica.

Paley's Evidences.

J. B. Sumner's Evidence of Christianity.

Pascal's Pensées sur la Religion.

Soame Jenyns' Internal Evidence.

Dr. Arnold's Appendix on the Right Interpretation of the Scriptures, in the Second Volume of his Sermons. Bishop Maltby's Two Sermons preached at Durham. Bishop Marsh's Third Appendix to his Lectures on the Authenticity and Credibility of the New Testa

ment, and on the Authority of the Old.

PREFACE.

THE prevalence of scepticism and infidelity has been long the lamentation of pious and good men; not only of those, who are the ministers of religion, but of those, who are their hearers; those who receive its doctrines with reverence, and who would wish others to be influenced by religious feelings, like their own-such believers in the truth of revelation are disquieted, and even alarmed, when they look around them and observe the indifference of others to those principles and opinions which are to themselves so dear: which, because they believe them to be founded in truth, administer comfort and support to them under the afflictions of the present state, and afford them their hopes of happiness in the world that is to

come.

a

The feelings of pious and good men, such as have been now described, must necessarily be considered with great respect and anxiety by every man who is sufficiently at leisure to reflect upon the situation of his fellow-creatures.

I am now at the close of life, and have been much engaged in the education of young men ; and I have had great opportunities of observing the notions of men of matured age also, from having lived in the times of the breaking out of the French Revolution, when every established opinion was questioned, and in too many instances shaken and destroyed—and, on the whole, I think I may consider myself as well acquainted with the views, when they are of a sceptical nature, both of the young and the old; and I know not how I can employ any time that may yet be allowed me, better, than by drawing up a few observations on the general subject of the Evidences of Christianity.

What I shall hope to show in the ensuing pages is this that such scepticism and infidelity, wherever it exists, is not justified by the reasonableness of the case; that good and pious men