FAMILIAR ILLUSTRATION

OF CERTAIN

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE

RELATING TO

THE POWER OF MAN TO DO THE WILL OF GOD,

ORIGINAL SIN,

ELECTION AND REPROBATION,

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST, AND

ATONEMENT FOR SIN BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.

By JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL.D. F.R.S. &c.

Search the Scriptures. JOHN v. 39.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON AND CO.,
ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD;

AND DAVID EATON, 187, HIGH HOLBORN.

BX
5201

P951f

Richard Taylor and Co., Printers, Shoe-Lane, London.

MY CHRISTIAN BRETHREN,

IN all theological controversies our appeal lics to the Bible, which contains the writings of the inspired prophets, and of the apostles and evangelists, who have recorded the precepts and doctrines of Christ. To those who lived in the times in which these books were published, they were, no doubt, very intelligible; the language in which they are written, and the customs to which they allude, being perfectly known to them. But what was easy to them, a long course of time has rendered extremely difficult to us, who use a very different language, and whose manuers and customs are so exceedingly unlike those of the Jews. On this account, it may puzzle the greatest scholar of the present age to make out the sense of a passage of scripture, which could not but have been perfectly understood by the most illiterate person in that age. In this state of things, the ignorant and unlearned are very liable to wrest the scriptures, as the apostle Peter says they ever have done, while good sense and sound learning often maintain a very unequal contest.