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. 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 unexpectedly 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 |