attend to what he says; and if, in any writing, he has revealed his will to us, it is our duty carefully to read that writing, and do our utmost rightly to understand it. The language of the Christian revelation, we quickly see, concurs with that of reason in enjoining this practice; nay, it excites us still more strongly, by the example it sets before us of those who have found much comfort and improvement in it. Can I require stronger motives to induce me to make God's word the subject of my study and meditation, day and night? And if I have reason to think that, by the blessing of Heaven, I have been in some measure successful in this application of my time, does not our common Christianity, one of the great commandments of which is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," oblige me, for the benefit of others, to communicate any lights I may have received from this exercise? When they are communicated, I have discharged a Christian duty. The reception will be such as it pleases Providence to give them.

Though in these volumes I have not affirmed any thing, as my opinion, which did not at the time, and does not still, appear to me probable; and though many things in them appear certain, I desire nothing to be admitted by the reader upon my affirmation: my wish is, that every thing may be candidly and deliberately examined; that my reasons, which I commonly give where the subject requires it, may be impartially weighed, and the opinion adopted or rejected, as the reader, on due reflection, shall find cause. If to make proselytes by the sword is tyranny in rulers, to resign our understanding to any man, and receive implicitly what we ought to be rationally convinced of, would be, on our part, the lowest servility. Now, tyranny and servility, how much soever adapted to the genius of worldly domination, are by no means suited to the heavenly character of Christ's kingdom. The only means the gospel itself permits us to employ, for promoting this spiritual power, is persuasion, which operates upon the understanding, and, by it, upon the will and the affections: the great engine of secular dominion is force, which, without regarding the understanding, will, or affections, lays hold of the body. The language of our Lord to his hearers was, “If any man WILL come under my guidance;" E τις ΘΕΙΛΕΙ οπίσω μου ελθειν. Nothing is obtruded or forced upon the unwilling. Now, as the great source of the infidelity of the Jews was a notion of the temporal kingdom of the Messiah, we may justly say, that the great source of the corruption of Christians, and of their general defection, foretold by the inspired writers, has been an attempt to render it in effect a temporal kingdom, and to support and extend it by earthly means. This is that spirit of antichrist, which was so early at work as to be discoverable even in the days of the apostles.

Every thing, therefore, here, is subjected to the test of Scripture and sound criticism. I am not very confident of my own reasonings: I am sensible that, on many points, I have changed my opinion, and found reason to correct what I had judged formerly to be right. The consciousness of former mistakes proves a guard to preserve me from such a presumptuous confidence in my present judgment, as would preclude my giving a patient hearing to whatever may be urged, from reason or Scripture, in opposition to it. TRUTH has been, in all my inquiries, and still is, my great aim. To her I am ready to sacrifice every personal consideration; but am determined not, knowingly, to sacrifice her to any thing. To Lucian's advice to the historiographer, Μονη θυτεον τη αληθειᾳ, which I have inscribed in the title, it is my intention sacredly to adhere.

If the words and phrases employed by the apostles and evangelists, in delivering the revelation committed to them by the Holy Spirit, had not been agreeable to the received usage of the people to whom they spoke, their discourses, being unintelligible, could have conveyed no information, and consequently would have been no revelation to the hearers. Our Lord and his apostles, in publishing the gospel, first addressed themselves to their countrymen the Jews; a people who had, many ages before, at different periods, been favoured with other revelations. To those ancient Jewish revelations, now collected into one volume, Christians give the name of the Old Testament; and thereby distinguish them from those apostolical and evangelical writings, which, being also collected into one volume, are called the New Testament. In the latter dispensation, the divine authority of the former is presupposed and founded on. The knowledge of what is contained in that introductory revelation is always presumed in the readers of the New Testament, which claims to be the consummation of an economy of God for the salvation of man; of which economy the Old Testament acquaints us with the occasion, origin, and early progress. Both are therefore intimately connected. Accordingly, though the two Testaments are written in different languages, the same idiom prevails in both; and in the historical part at least, nearly the same character of style.

2. As the writings of the Old Testament are of a much earlier date, and contain an account of the rise and first establishment,

together with a portion of the history of the nation to whom the gospel was first promulged, and of whom were all its first missionaries and teachers, it is thence unquestionably that we must learn, both what the principal facts, customs, doctrines, and precepts are, that are alluded to in the apostolical writings, and what is the proper signification and extent of the expressions used. Though the New Testament is written in Greek, an acquaintance with the Greek classics (that is, with the writings of profane authors in that tongue in prose and verse) will not be found so conducive to this end, as an acquaintance with the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. I am far from denying that classical knowledge is, even for this purpose, of real utility; I say only, that it is not of so great utility as the other. It is well known that the Jews were distinguished, by all Pagan antiquity, as a nation of the most extraordinary and peculiar manners; as absolutely incapable of coalescing with other people-being actuated, especially in matters wherein religion or politics were thought to be concerned, by the most unrelenting aversion to every thing foreign, and the most violent attachment to every thing national. We cannot have a clearer evidence of the justness of this character, than their remaining to this day a distinct people, who, though they have been for many ages scattered over the face of the earth, have never yet been blended in any country with the people amongst whom they lived. They are, besides, the only wandering nation that ever existed of which this can be affirmed.

3. Before the tribes of Judah and Benjamin returned from captivity in Babylon to the land of their fathers, their language, as was inevitable, had been adulterated, or rather changed, by their sojourning so long among strangers. They called it Hebrew, availing themselves of an ambiguous name.* It is accordingly called Hebrew in the New Testament. This, though but a small circumstance, is characteristical of the people, who could not brook the avowal of changing their language, and adopting that of strangers, even when they could not avoid being conscious of the thing. The dialect which they then spoke might have been more properly styled Chaldee, or even Syriac, than Hebrew. But to give it either of these appellations, had appeared to them as admitting what would always remind both themselves and others of their servitude. After the Macedonian conquests, and the division which the Grecian empire underwent among the commanders on the death of their chief, Greek soon became the language of the people of rank through all the extensive dominions which had been subdued by Alexander. The persecutions with which the Jews were harassed under Antiochus Epiphanes,

Hebrew was ambiguous, as it might denote either the language spoken on the other side of the river, (that is Euphrates, which is commonly meant when no river is named), or the language of the people called Hebrews.-Preface to Matthew's Gospel, sect. 14-18.