Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 Excerpt: ... by my long omission to acknowledge the receipt of your friendly letter; but the fact is, I have been absent from town on public business, for these last five weeks, two days excepted, and therefore could not avoid the delay. 220 Letter of Mr. Ambrose Serle. The little tracts on which you condescend to ask my opinion, though your own knowledge and experience must have rendered you a far more competent judge than I am, do certainly contain many great, solid, and fundamental truths, which no man can dispute without bringing into doubt the reality of his own faith and hope as a Christian; and I conceive it to be my duty earnestly to pray, that the widest dissemination of those evangelical principles, consonant as they are to the articles and homilies of the established church, may take place throughout the world. But I conclude that not the principles themselves, but the manner in which they are offered, have raised a difficulty among your friends. I own, with respect to myself (though I have formerly been a defaulter), that the grave and the solemn subjects of death, and hell, and a judgment to come, with all that relates to God and the salvation of man, seem to require a weighty seriousness of spirit, thoroughly impressed with a humble, awful sense of matters most indisputably momentous and sublime; but I cannot dare absolutely to condemn a more lively frame of mind in others than I can choose to allow in myself, because I have seen the blessing of God co-operating with writing and discourses, abounding with sallies of high vivacity and genius, which perhaps persons of a reserved or melancholy temper, not warranted, however, by religion, which is joy and peace in itself, might be inclined to dislike or refuse. Spiritual hilarity, too, may have its exorbitanc...
