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127, 6th line of 2d note, for ministers, read mansstres.

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143, line 10th from top, for the, read they.

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PREFACE.

WHEN I published the former edition of this work in the Spring of 1828, the subjects of which it treats had not particularly occupied my mind for more than two years. Other topics of equal, one of them certainly of paramount, importance had, during the period of my presiding over the Rodney Street Congregation, engaged my attention. Besides, after my expulsion from my former charge, shunned by those commonly denominated the serious, and opposed on principle to men of latitudinarian sentiments, I had none to confer with, none to consult, in the progress of my enquiries, and the formation of a scriptural creed. Is it surprising if, under such circumstances, I should, in the original composition of the present work, have committed some mistakes?

My first information respecting the principal truths brought out and illustrated in the following pages,

was derived from the word of God itself. The fifteenth

chapter of the former of Paul's two epistles to the Corinthians, or rather that portion of it which lies between the forty-second and the fiftieth verses, was the means of originally suggesting those views, and causing me to engage in that train of investigation, which have resulted in the theory now propounded. At first, it was but a rough sketch. By degrees, the outline was filled up. The former edition of this work first brought it before the public: and, afterwards combining in my mind with the all-important scriptural and experimental doctrine of the assurance of faith, the system appeared in a still more mature shape in the two octavo volumes which I published in 1833.

In struggling with the difficulties of my subject, for difficulties it had, there were two leading topics which for many years occasioned me uneasiness. These were, the exact amount of Adam's original forfeiture, and the nature of eternal punishment. On both subjects, strange to tell! I saw through the popular fallacies, long before I was enabled to grasp the simple truth. Eight years since, it was made clear to my mind, from the scriptures themselves, that Adam could not have forfeited spiritual and eternal life, and that there could be no eternal punishment of the nature of never ending torments.

The grounds of these conclusions will be found amply stated in the subsequent treatise. But seeing no intermediate scheme at that time, between the forfeiture of spiritual and eternal life on the one hand, and the forfeiture of the life of the body merely on the other, the absurdity of the former alternative forced me on adopting and asserting the latter. And, as I was acquainted then with no other eternal punishment than eternal punishment by means of torments, the evidently unscriptural nature of such an idea constituted my reason for throwing the doctrine overboard altogether. More enlarged divine teaching has brought to light views of which at the period of the original publication of this essay I was ignorant. I have in the interim discovered the death of pure soul or natural mind, and have been satisfied that of this the death of natural body is merely the consequence; and I have also discovered, that the family of man, as possessed of Adam's nature or the wicked, undergo eternal punishment. In the corrected edition of my Three Questions now published, the Christian world has the benefit of these discoveries.

The conduct of critics, in regard to the former edition of this treatise, was what might have been anticipated. It was too contemptible a production to attract the notice of the larger reviews. The Churchmen looked at it,

and, either from despising its author, or from inability to grapple with its statements, passed it over in silence. The liberal periodicals were pleased to speak of it in a friendly tone. Some of the Evangelical dissenting journals conceived that it afforded them a capital opportunity for having a fling at the author and his sentiments. In proof of this, witness the brief and contemptuous notices by the Imperial Magazine for April, and the Congregational Magazine for July, 1828. The Christian Herald, for April, 1828, was flippant, dogmatical, and condescendingly compassionate the Edinburgh Theological Magazine, for June and July of the same year, after giving its readers to understand that it despised the author, was pleased to devote two long, and rather well-written, but, so far as theology is concerned, exceedingly superficial, articles to the consideration of his sentiments-and the Gospel Magazine, for June of the same year, in by far the most honest and intentionally candid of all the reviews which my work drew forth, after exhibiting feelings the most friendly towards me, condemned my statements in toto as a mass of "futile reasoning and vain babbling," and expressed a decided preference to those views in which the good folks calling themselves Christians have for so long a time seen meet to acquiesce. Such was the

reception which the former edition of this Essay met with at the hands of those Dii majores gentium the reviewers. It would not have been amiss if certain Editors of periodicals, who were pleased to accept of copies of a more expensive work, had honoured it with a little of that contempt with which its precursor was so copiously besprinkled.

One important consequence followed from the publication of the former edition of this Essay, and of the criticisms to which it gave birth-it rendered the necessity for the appearance and inculcation of the doctrines which I advocate strikingly manifest. Although aware that I was treating of topics of stirring interest, and that in what I was propounding I stood opposed to the sentiments of the great majority of religionists, I had actually no conception, until some time after my work was in the hands of the public, of the deep-rooted and powerful hold which the errors and delusions combated by me had taken of the minds of professing Christians. Previous to publishing, I had to a certain degree flattered myself, that all that was requisite to enable the Church to throw aside her trammels, and advance in the path of scriptural discovery, was simply to place the truth before her. Alas! I had not calculated sufficiently on that innate ignorance of divine things which

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