I FEEL peculiar satisfaction in inscribing this Volume to you, without your privacy, as a slight acknowledgment of obligations, which, I am fully sensible, can never be discharged. To you, under Divine Providence, I am indebted, for all that a son can owe to an affectionate and pious father: -especially, for the inestimable blessing of early religious instruction, imparted with tender solicitude, sanctified by fervent prayer, and recommended by the force of consistent example. During a long and chequered pilgrimage, you have oft experienced the cheering influence of those blessed truths, which, in this and a former Volume, I have endeavoured to defend;—and have been enabled, “without rebuke," to exemplify their practical efficacy, in the faithful discharge of all the personal and relative duties of public and private life. May the God whom you have served from childhood to age, gladden the evening of your days with "the light of his countenance!"—and, when the hour shall arrive,—may it yet be distant!that shall close the period of your residence on earth, receive you, in peace and triumph, to that celestial home, which has so long been the goal of your hopes and desires, where the sorrows of time shall give place to the unmingled joys of eternity! With every sentiment of filial reverence and love-I am, THIS Reply has swelled in its progress to a degree which I did not anticipate. There are few things, indeed, to which the phrase crescit eundo" is more strongly applicable than to a defensive work in theological controversy: and, besides the extension of the work itself, various engagements and circumstances, in the detail of which the public could have no interest, have contributed to delay its appearance so unexpect edly long. My wish being to make it a final answer, and, as far as possible, to preclude the necessity, on my part, of any prolongation of the 'discussion, I resolved, some time after having begun, to allow myself freer scope than I had originally intended; conceiving that it would not be justice, either to myself or to my subject, to omit illustrations or reasonings, which might, in any material degree, contribute to the elucidation and settlement of the questions at issue. An assertion' may be made in a single sentence, which it may require pages to refute; while the brevity and imposing confidence with which it is made, may increase, instead of lessening, the necessity for its refutation. But the ground on which I would chiefly rest, in vindicating this amplitude of discussion, is, the paramount importance of the questions themselves, and the infinite magnitude of the consequences dependent upon their just decision; a consideration, surely, which ought to be sufficient to secure an attentive examination to arguments even much more extended. Not that I consider the perusal and examination of complicated, critical disquisitions as necessary to enable any reader to resolve these questions for himself, in an enlightened and satisfactory manner, from the word of God. To use an expression of my opponent, in his Sermon on the duty and manner of deciding religious controversies," On quest ❝tions so important and fundamental, the language of revela« tion cannot be ambiguous: and neither, on the same prins ciple, can it be dark, and difficult to be understood. of To the poor the gospel is preached:"-and the holy Scriptures, like the preaching of our Lord and his apostles, are adapted, in their phraseology, not to the learned few, but to the un learned mahy; not to the wise and prudent,", but itio "babes." The way of salvation, as of salvation, as might, a prioris have been presumed, is made known there with so much plainness, that « the way-faring man, though a fool, shall not err therer, "in."-But, when attempts are made, by the pride of philosophy, misnamed theology, to pervert these Scriptures from their obvious and simple meaning, and to make the - common people jealous and distrustful, on the most momentous subjects, of that translation of the Bible, in which they have been accustomed to confide, as a faithful exhibition of the mind of God;—when Unitarian geographers endeavour, by the discovery of false readings, false renderings, and false interpretations, to lay down a map of the way to heaven, entirely different from the one which is there so distinctly delineated: it becomes an imperious duty, rightly to appreciate the pretensions of those, who are thus "confident "that they themselves are guides of the blind, lights of them "who are in darkness, instructors of the foolish, and teach"ers of babes;" to expose, as far as we are able, the unsoundness of their specious criticisms, and the fallacy of their high-minded reasonings; that, by this means, the faith of the stedfast may be confirmed, the confidence of the wavering restored, and those reclaimed from their wanderings, who may, unhappily, have been induced to forsake" the good ❝and the right way." The last of the "Discourses on the principal points of "the Socinian Controversy," closed in the following terms: "If it shall be found that these objects," (namely, the glory of God, and the eternal interests of men) "which are in their “nature inseparable, have been, in the smallest degree, pro"moted;—that the faith of God's people has been strengthen❝ed, or the minds of the wavering settled;-that, in any "one instance, the gainsayer has been convinced, or the b |