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HARVARD

COLLEGE

LIBRARY

OF

WILLIAM SMITH, D. D.

VOLUME FIRST.

PART I.

ON DEATH, A RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD, A FUTURE JUDGMENT, &c.

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PRINTED BY H. MAXWELL, AND SOLD BY WILLIAM FRY,

No. 25, NORTH SECOND-STREET.

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1803.

PREFACE.

THE Reverend Author of the following work having departed this life just before the emission of it from the press; the Editor is under the necessity of presenting it to the world in his own name: which he does with the greater confidence, on account of its having undergone the review of the Author's most deliberate judgment, and the most careful correction of his pen, during the illness which ended in his dissolution.

As no pains have been spared by the Editor, to justify the confidence reposed in him, he seems entitled to avail himself of the evidences which remain of the high reputation attached to the contents of these volumes during the Author's life. For although, in that long space of time, the active part of which was upwards of fifty years, many of the present generation in the different parts of the United States, have been witnesses of the excellency of his instructions from the pulpit, and to a very great proportion

A

of them his celebrity in this and in other respects must have been a familiar fact; yet it is evident, that the public opinion will be the most conspicuously apparent in the uncontradicted documents which have been long before the world; and which may be considered as pledges of the immortality of the present work.

With a view to those evidences, it will be proper to take notice, that some of the following sermons were published in England, in two editions, in the years 1759, and 1762; with the "Letter to a Clergyman," and a Plan of Education under the name of "An Idea of the College of Mirania," now published in the first volume of this work.

The sermons published in England will be distinguished to the reader, by the eloquence and the patriotism arising out of the then recent circumstances and transactions in the war between GreatBritain and France: a war that threatened the existence of the British colonies, now the United States. It is necessary to look back to the crisis then existing, for an explanation of some expressions, which might otherwise seem to indicate intolerance in religious matters. All who knew the Author can bear witness, that, however attached on conviction to the church of which he was a minister, he wished well to the preaching of the gospel under whatever

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