X PLAIN AND PRACTICAL SERMONS ON THE XIIITH, XIVTH, XVTH, XVITH, AND XVIITH PREFACE. A FORMAL and elaborate preface to a plain and unpretending volume of Sermons like the present, would be altogether out of place; as much so indeed as a splendid portico would be to a homely building. The reader will find here no display of talent and learning, of ingenuity and eloquence; no search after what is striking and novel. If the volume have any worth, it arises from the circumstance of its being designed to unfold, in a practical manner, and in regular order, however imperfectly, a highly interesting portion of Holy Writ. The writer of these pages 'views Christian godliness as essentially consisting in a deep, spiritual, ånd personal apprehension of man's apostasy from God-of his depraved nature, sinful life, and lost state; and in a deep, spiritual, and personal apprehension of man's recovery to God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. But he further views both these apprehensions to be the result, not of human reasoning or of philosophical speculation, but of the Almighty Agency of the Blessed Spirit of truth and grace on the soul; and to be also productive of all those principles, affections, and conduct, (that is, of that universal holiness,) which become a redeemed and sanctified creature, who, notwithstanding inherent evil, the solicitations . |