. ance with Holy Scripture. Such an end is, I know, one chief object of your Lordship's solicitude in an episcopal charge of no ordinary difficulty and labour. That your valuable exertions, my Lord, may long be continued to the Church, is the earnest desire of many who have witnessed the effects with which Divine Providence has been pleased to bless them, and of none more than of Your Lordship's Ever obliged, obedient, and faithful servant, THOMAS PARRY. PREFACE. THE object of the following pages, as stated in the writer's "Preface" to a similar work on the " Epistle to the Romans," is "to furnish an Exposition in a form interesting to readers in general; and such as may assist them, more especially in attaining to clear and comprehensive views of the main tenor of the Epistle, and of the connexion of its different parts, as also in practically applying its contents." Of the existence of any such work on the Epistle to the Hebrews the writer is not aware. Doddridge's is manifestly on a different plan, being strictly a paraphrase, statedly interspersed with "Improvements," as they are called. Owen's voluminous work, whatever may be its other excellencies, and however valuable many may esteem it as a book of reference, is certainly not a manual for general readers. To say nothing of its price, its bulk alone (that of seven closely-printed octavo volumes) forbids such use of it, even by those who may not find the writer (as the late Mr. Hall of Leicester found him) "intolerably heavy and prolix." The four "Lectures" by Jones of Nayland are very valuable and interesting; but are not in the form of an Exposition. On a subject so rich and inexhaustible, a variety of works may be read with advantage. No one writer, nor yet all together, can pretend, for a moment, to have done it justice. The Author would gladly have enriched his pages with more "notes" from different writers, especially from St. Chrysostom, who abounds in valuable thoughts, but for the fear of making his book larger, and in other respects more repulsive to general readers, than he wishes it to be. Having been, in a manner, obliged to enlarge on several preliminary points in the Introduction, he is unwilling to swell the volume by a long Preface: he would only, in conclusion, express his hope, as it is his prayer, that the work may prove interesting and (under the Divine Teaching') profitable to not a few ; especially among those, who, with more or less of attentive study, are anxious to obtain large and accurate views of the inspired Epistles:-an object (from many causes) of no easy attainment, and which no one 1 See Lect. VII. cause, perhaps, has so much contributed to render both difficult and uncommon, as that grievous one— the shattering of Scripture into small fragments, the minute division of it into separate sentences, and sometimes even parts of sentences, by what Dr. Johnson might have called a versicular dismemberment of the sacred text. Antigua, Dec. 20, 1833. |