any means for anticibefore whose tribunal It is also necessary to
received, by a numerous and respectable auditory, far exceeded the Author's most sanguine expectations. From the commencement, urgent solicitations were made to him to allow the Lectures to be printed; and when, towards the conclusion, he announced his determination to comply with the request, it was received with the strongest expressions of satisfaction. This statement is made simply from a sentiment of gratitude, and to account for the appearance and form of the work; but without any idea on the part of the Author, that the decision of his auditory will in the slightest degree influence, or even that it can afford pating, the decision of the public at large, he has thus been encouraged to venture. state, further, that when he consented to publish the Lectures, he really was not aware of what he had undertaken. So hastily had they been prepared, that, when he had finished reading them, he hardly knew of what they consisted. He was well apprised that much revision would be necessary, and that many important things had been cursorily passed over, which must be more distinctly treated but he fully expected that the whole would have been comprised in less than three hundred pages. The work was put immediately to the press, and the first Lecture was printed without any very considerable alterations from the original copy; the five others, however, have been enlarged, upon an average, to three times their original extent; and a copious Appendix has also been added.* Altogether, the book has assumed dimensions much beyond what was wished; but for this it is hoped, the importance of the subject will be a sufficient apology. As neither the whole of the work, nor any large portion of it, was ever under the Author's eye together, till it was irrevocably fixed in print, he is aware that it may afford abundant occasion for the severity of criticism: he would wish therefore that it might be judged by its matter and design, rather than its manner and execution. If the former merit condemnation, let condemnation be awarded; but for the latter
*To the last Article of the Appendix,-the Remarks upon the late excellent Bampton Lectures by the late Rev. Mr. Conybeare,—no reference occurs in the Work itself, the Author not having read them till that part of his Work was printed in which the notice of them would properly have come : he takes the opportunity, therefore, of making the reference here.