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PREFACE.

THE Apology for the United Church of Eng land and Ireland is on the eve of publication; and, as the hour approaches when it is to be transferred to the public hand irrevocably, the Author feels anxieties, with which he was not visited dur ing the progress of the Work. He perceives, with pressing solicitude, the responsibility of the charge which he has undertaken, and he is proportionably apprehensive of his having failed to do ample justice to the cause which he defends. He is aware that it must be indebted to its intrinsic excellence, and not to his name, or to the power of his talents, for its success. But if he finds in this reflection a source of fear, he finds in it a source of comfort also. He is convinced of the goodness of the cause; he is satisfied of the abundant sufficiency of the materials which he possessed for establish

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ing its merits; and he, therefore, rests assured that any injury, which its interests may sustain from his deficiencies, will not prove fatal.

Should his defence fail to place the real doctrines of this Church beyond the reach of assault hereafter, she can send forth from her sons another, and another, and another, who will correct his unskilfulness, retrieve his failures, and accomplish her security. For himself, he will say, that he is conscious that the importance of the cause, and the dignity of this Established Church, will not allow him to expect for this Work indulgences, which might be justly solicited for compositions that are candidates merely for public. favour and he will, in his own vindication, declare, that he has imparted to the subject all the energy of mind which, in the intervals of arduous and almost incessant occupations, he could lend it, and, that he never withheld from it all the assiduity, which, in his circumstances, he could bestow. He begs leave to state that, in the conclusion, he availed himself of Bishop Tomline's Refutation of Calvinism, to select from it some Extracts from Calvin's Works; and, that to Mant's Bampton Lectures he is indebted for the quotations from Overton. The Bishop has given only Translations of the Original; but, in

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