THE RIGHT REVEREND EDMUND LA W, D D. LORD BISHOP OF CARLISLE MY LORD, H AD the obligations which I owe to your Lordship's kindness been much less, or much fewer, than they are; had personal gratitude left any place in my mind for deliberation or for inquiry; in selecting a name which every reader might confefs to be prefixed, with propriety, to a work, that, in many of its parts, bears no obfcure relation to the general principles of natural and revealed religion, I fhould have found myself directed by many confiderations to that of the Bishop of Carlisle. A long life, spent in the moft interefting of all human pursuits, the investigation of moral and religious truth, in conftant and unwearied endeavours to advance the discovery, communication, and fucefs of both; a life fo occupied, and arrived at that period which renders every life venerable, commands refpect by a title, a 2 which |