A Collection of Discourses on Various Subjects

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ADVERTISEMENT. The writer of this discourse seeks truth of every description; especially religious truth. For nearly half a century he has been in pursuit of it; and has neglected no means to attain it. He has watched with the ancients; has laboured with the moderns; and has searched the Scriptures; and earnestly prayed for the succours of the Spirit of Wisdom, that he might know the Truth, acknowledge it, and spread it abroad according to the power with which the Father of lights might endue him. He has acquainted himself with religious systems in general; he has examined with diligence, and he hopes, he may say, with conscientious candour, creeds and catechisms, confessions of faith, and bodies of divinity, in great numbers. All these have professed to refer him to the Bible; and from them all he turned to his Biblehe has read it carefully, with intense study and fervent prayer. As far as it was possible, he has divested himself of all the prejudices he might have received from preconceived opinions; and that he might not be warped by the common phraseology of religion, and theological expressions in general use, he has examined the originals of the Sacred Books; and, for his own use and satisfaction, translated every word of the Old and New Testaments; and conferred the originals with all the ancient and modern versions, which were within his reach; not neglecting the commentaries of the ancient Fathers, nor those of learned and pious men in modern times. He could do no moreand after all this labour, what has he found ? Should he answer, / have found the Truth; every man, whose religious creed might differ from his, would pronounce him arrogant; while believing in the same moment that his own was the truth, though he had not taken the hundredth part of the trouble ...