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LITERATURE OF CHARITY, POPULATION, PAUPERISM,
POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND PROTESTANTISM.

BY STEPHEN COLWELL.

SECOND EDITION REVISED,

PHILADELPHIA:

LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO.

1852.

C 5

THE foregoing title has created impressions not intended by the author. In making it short, it has become ambiguous. It would have better expressed the meaning had it run thus :-" CREEDS, BUT NOT WITHOUT CHARITY-THEOLOGY, BUT NOT WITHOUT HUMANITY-PROTESTANTISM, BUT NOT WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY." Titles very seldom constitute an index to a book, and we trust no unfavourable presentiment will arise from that which we have adopted. We are sorry some more pleasing expression of our idea had not occurred to us. Few, however, can be willing to appropriate to themselves either horn of the following dilemma, which is found in a review of the work in the April number of the Church Review:

"There are two classes of persons who will shrink with sacred horror from the title of this book: both the formalist and the formulist will abjure it without further scrutiny. The one believes that the Church is to truth what amber is to the insect which it encloses, holds fast, preserves entire, but first kills. The latter imagines that from apostolic times, the truth was held by the Church in a state of solution until a certain modern date, when, on a sudden shaking of the vessel, that truth was instantly deposited in the form of a transparent, cold, angular, and sharp-pointed crystal, which, henceforth, can neither be improved or modified."-CHURCH REVIEW, April, 1850.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO.

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON AND CO.
PHILADELPHIA.

Printed by TK & PG Collins.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

THE favour of the public, which calls so soon for a second edition of this volume, makes us regret more than ever its serious deficiencies, and would stimulate us to attempt some considerable amendment, but that our design was not to prepare the book which the subject demands-it was rather to draw such a work from more competent hands.* We now believe this object will be attained. Our general aim has been extensively approved, and this sentiment cannot long continue to be felt without taking the form of a treatise, which, if not adequate to the subject, may still be one great step in our literature of Christian Charity.

It is not the least of our regret that these pages have given pain to some very worthy persons: but this we lament as much on their account as on our own; for while it was our part to present these views more free from de

* This volume can be of little consequence except so far as fitted to excite inquiry, and promote the discussion of a much neglected subject. If the issue shall be fairly taken up and considered, by those most able to do it justice, this hasty production will have fulfilled its design. Perhaps its very faults may contribute to this good end, as well as to hasten it into oblivion as soon as better works have appeared.

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