PART SECOND.

SACRAMENTAL CATECHISM,

ON THE PLAN OF

THE PRECEDING DISCOURSE.

PHILIPPIANS iii. 8. "The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord."

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

ALTHOUGH the following Treatise is entitled a Catechism, it is by no means intended, either that it should be committed to memory, or that its perusal should be confined to such young persons as are but beginning to be instructed in the elements of the truth.

The object of the Author is, in the first place, to present the views already exhibited in the preceding portion of the Work, under another, and what to some persons may appear to be, a more engaging or instructive form. Indeed, too much attention cannot be paid to the object of rendering the transcendently grand and interesting ideas which lie at the foundation of the Christian faith, as simple, and as free from all extraneous mixtures of human error, as possible ;-for the tendency of the human mind in all the ages of the Gospel has been to disfigure its simple beauty, by such foreign

and deteriorating mixtures,-and the great purpose, as it seems to the Author of the present work, to be effected at present for the religious improvement of mankind,—in so far, at least, as their apprehensions of religious truth are concerned, is not so much to convey to them new information, or to extend their views, as to present those ideas which are constituent of Christianity, and with which all Christian minds may be presumed to be acquainted, in that form which properly belongs to them, and as free from any human admixtures as it is possible to render them. For it is, when presented in this their native form, that these truths also appear in all their matchless interest ;—and those who have most deeply studied religious truth, and who have acquired the justest ideas of its real character, will be most ready to acknowledge, that this restoration of it to its primitive character is an object of pre-eminent importance to be secured, both for its future progress in the world, and for its effectual operation, as a regenerating instrument, upon the sentiments and affections of the human heart.

In the following Treatise, then, the Catechetical or Colloquial form has been adopted,-not, as has

already been said, either that it may be committed to memory, or that it may be made level to the capacities of those only who are but babes in

knowledge, but that the ideas presented in the preceding part may be exhibited in a simpler form,—and, consequently, according to the Author's ideas, in a form at once more conformable to their real character, and better adapted to give them their best influence on the human mind.

It has been beautifully remarked, by a great master of religious truth, that "perhaps the character of our Saviour is better understood by children than by persons of more mature age, and of greater extent of attainments,-for this plain reason, that, in some of its most striking peculiarities, their minds are less distantly removed from it ;"and this interesting remark I consider as but one instance of the more general fact, that all the ideas which lie at the foundation of Christianity, and are really constituent of it, are best understood and felt by those whose hearts and understandings are most entirely in that childlike state of candour and of docility on which our Saviour himself bestowed such high commendations, and pointed out