4591 ON LIBRARY SEVERAL OCCASIONS TEXAS BY THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, A. M. SOMETIME FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD. A NEW AND REVISED EDITION, WITH COPIOUS INDEXES. BY THOS. O. SUMMERS, D.D. IN FOUR VOLUMES. Nashville, Tenn.: PUBLISHED BY E. STEVENSON & F. A. OWEN, AGENTS, FOR THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. PREFACE. THE following Sermons contain the substance of what I have been preaching for between eight and nine years last past. During that time I have frequently spoken in public, on every subject in the ensuing collection : and I am not conscious, that there is any one point of doctrine, on which I am accustomed to speak in public, which is not here, incidentallly, if not professedly, laid before every Christian reader. Every serious man, who peruses these, will therefore see in the clearest manner, what these doctrines are, which I embrace and teach, as the essentials of true religion. 2. But I am thoroughly sensible, these are not proposed in such a manner as some may expect. Nothing here appears in an elaborate, elegant, or oratorical dress. If it had been my desire or design to write thus, my leisure would not permit. But, in truth, I, at present, designed nothing less; for I now write, as I generally speak, ad populum: to the bulk of mankind, to those who neither relish nor understand the art of speaking; but who, notwithstanding, are competent judges of those truths, which are necessary to present and future *In the year 1747. |