A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion:: Digested in Such Order as to Present to the Pious and Reflecting Mind, a Basis for the Superstructure of the Entire System of the Doctrines of the Gospel

"No doubt can exist in the mind of a judicious Christian, but that the Sacred Scriptures comprise the most complete development of the entire system of our holy religion. But the extent and variety of information which they embrace, the loose and narrative style in which a great portion of them is written, and the picturesque and poetic imagery in which others are clothed, have presented an occasion both to ingenious and to feeble minded men, to build upon them a multitude of contending opinions, each supported by detached expressions collected from these divine oracles, or by interpretations, either plausible or forced, imposed upon their language. Divines, in order to correct or restrain this ambiguous diversity of sentiment, have endeavoured to reduce the whole of the doctrines of the sacred writings to certain definite principles, arranged in scientific order, so as mutually to illustrate and support one another. This would have been a scheme sufficiently rational, if system writers had confined their object to digesting the diffusive and expanded phraseology of the scriptures into a few simple and connected propositions, intended to present the substance of the whole to the mind, under one view. But their design has become so mingled with the discordant theories of different writers, that their extended discussions on each topic, have often destroyed the simplicity of the gospel, and led their readers, as well as disposed the writers themselves, to substitute human reason for the word of God. Instead of presenting a brief analysis of the doctrines contained in the Bible, they have too frequently attempted to make their respective explanations of the system of divine truth an entire library of theological science: It has occurred to the author that it would be desirable to students in that sphere of knowledge, to have its principal subjects distinctly pointed out, and clearly illustrated, in a short compass, in order to direct their future inquiries, and so to guard their future addresses from the pulpit, from blending discordant opinions; that they should, in no point, err against the general system of evangelic truth. He further hoped that such a compendious view might usefully aid the private Christian, in examining the sacred scriptures, and pursuing throughout the whole, the connected thread of Christian doctrine. It is his earnest prayer that the following pages may contribute in any degree to elucidate the doctrines of the holy scriptures, not to the learned only, but to the humblest Christian, for which, being freed, as much as possible, from all metaphysical discussion, he hopes they will be found to be usefully adapted"--Book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).