Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

OF

CHRISTIAN TRUTH, PIETY,

AND

MORALITY,

SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF
Joseph

DR. PRIESTLEY.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

ما لفت أن

BX

9815 •P.7 cop. 2

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1834,

BY JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Cambridge:

Manson, Emerson, and Grant, Printers.

9804

92

PREFACE.

It is many years ago that the idea of the present publication occurred to me. In looking at some of the works of this voluminous writer, I perceived that there were many passages, now unknown, which, if collected together, would form a valuable volume of religious instruction, acceptable to devout readers and honorable to the memory of the distinguished author. Various circumstances delayed the execution of the design, and I had finally committed it to the charge of a friend who proposed to do it at his leisure. Meantime some recent abusive notices of Priestley recalled my attention to the subject, and seemed to present a fitting occasion for a work which would at once instruct and animate religious readers, and do something toward vindicating the character of an injured man; `a man, who, with all his errors, and they seem to me to have been many, was yet distinguished for a pure and unalienable devotion to the cause of Christianity, a strong piety, an incorruptible love of truth, and an integrity and simplicity truly apostolic. Little as I can sympathise with many of his favorite views, I can still less sympathise with the injustice which consigns so much excellence to calumny and disgrace.

I am not insensible to the hazard which he runs who attempts to shield a name which has been abandoned to theological reproach. He is quite as likely to draw the obloquy on himself as to remove it from the

« AnteriorContinuar »