Made Eafy For the Practice of the Prefent Age, As the OLD bole Duty of Man was defign'd for Autbonted by the KING'S moft Excellent Majelty With DEVOTIONS proper for feveral Occafions. THE TWENTY-NINTH EDITION. Witbout FAITH it is impoffible to please God. Heb. x. 6. This is bis Commandment. that we should BELIEVE on the Name of his Son Jefus Chrift, and LOVE one another. i Johnïïi. 23. LONDON Published and Sold by the BOOKSELLERS and by THOMAS WILSON and SON, Printers, High Ouse-gate,YORK D. THE PREFACE. THE following reasons, I hope, will justify me to a candid and considerate reader, for publishing this Whole Duty of Man; and, I trust, they are also sufficient to remove and prevent any prejudices, that at first appearance may possibly be entertained or suggested against it. It being now near one hundred years since the publication of the OLD Whole Duty of Man, it need not be matter of surprise to any, if the generality of readers begin to be but a little affected by that work. The cause of which dislike is to be ascribed in a great measure, I presume, to the distance of those times in which that treatise was wrote; for not only the words, but the manner of expression, and the ways and methods of treating such subjects are, and ought to be, very different now from what they were formerly. And though I am far from denying that a vein of sound learning and morality is visible throughout that book, or that it was well adapted for those unhappy times of strife and confusion in which it was written*; yet all this lying under the forementioned disadvantages, it is apprehended the people of the present age are never likely to be better reconciled to it. For the case in reality was this: During the times of confusion, many of the preachers (and writers) had not only forborne to inculcate the duties of morality, but had laboured to depreciate them; to persuade the people that faith was all, and works nothing. And therefore, in order to take off those unhappy impressions, the clergy found themselves obliged to inculcate, with more than ordinary diligence, the necessity of moral duties in the Christian life, and to labour to restore them to their proper share in the Christian scheme†.' Besides, *The QLD Whole Duty ef Man, as appears by Dr. Hammond's Letter, dated March, 1657, was first published under the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell, who bad subverted the constitution both in church and state. See the bishop of London's second pastoral letter, page 64, 8vo edition, B It is very evident, I think, that the subjects treated of in the OLD Whole Duty of Man, are by no means so many, nor all of them so well chosen, as they might be, for the use and necessities of the present age: and, I believe, no considerate man can doubt that our CHURCH and RELIGION have another sort of enemies to contend with now than the Solifidians of that time; men whose shocking impieties and tenets strike at the very foundation of Christianity itself: for which reason the OLD Whole Duty of Man (which, in opposition to the prevailing doctrine of those days, is chiefly confined to the moral duties) cannot, by any means, be well suited to the impious age we live in, when the articles of our Christian faith are so impudently attacked and contemned: and whether the OLD Whole Duty of Man, which for near a century last past has been indiscriminately put into the hands not only of the common people, but many others, as a complete summary of our most holy religion, when at the same time the articles of the Christian faith are quite omitted in it; I say, whether this has not in some degree contributed, during such a course of years, to produce that contempt which the Christian faith now labours under, is submitted to the considerate and judicious part of mankind to determine †. Most certain it is, that a man may be so struck with the beauty and excellency of MORAL duties, as to be less concerned than he ought to be for a sound FAITH; and may make shipwreck of the one, while he is too hastily and zealously pursuing the other. And it is also certain, that the author of the OLD Whole Duty of Man himself, conscious it may be of the defects of that treatise, speaking in his Lively Oracles of those things we are to believe, says, These are the excellencies of the doctrinal part of scripture, which also render them most aptly preparative for the preceptive, and indeed so they were designed: the Credenda and the Agenda being such inseparable relations, that whoever parts them, forfeits the advantage of both.' And as the Duty of Man was the first and the Lively Oracles the last piece of that author (for so they are placed in his works) it may reasonably be presumed, the Lively Oracles was intended to supply the defects of the said OLD Whole Duty of Man; but, the proprietors of those books not thinking fit to print them together, *Atheists, Deists, &c. + See Dr. Edwards and Dr. Gibson's Testimony on page ix. |