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selves the trouble, so much as to aim at the good of fociety.

WHAT is faid in such general terms can never offend any that are not confcious they are applicable to themselves; so that it would be impertinent to take pains to caution my reader against mistaking me, by applying that to one age and country that has too generally belonged to all others, to be understood to be pointed in particular at our

own.

Bur whatever is generally to be expected from men in power, and from those who are in a combination with them, yet there is no good man but will endeavour to feed and cherish these happy dispositions in all the ways he can. And as this inquifitive turn has brought men to look more curioufly into the fcriptures, from feeing that they alone must be the standards of truths which are not difcoverable by the light of nature; and to judge of the books of the Old and New Testament more according to the rules of criticism, from a better taste that obtains; they will contribute all the help they can to afsist others in reading them with greater advantage.

GOD had, no doubt, the wisest ends in ordering the hiftorical parts of the New Testa

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ment to be written in the way they are. The truth of them, on which the truth of the whole is built, is better attested by the method in which they are composed, than they could poffibly have been by a disposition, in which the order of time and place had been more carefully observed. But every body muft allow, that a great deal of light may be caft on the historical as well as on the other parts of the New Testament, by putting them in that order. This has engaged many learned men to take great pains in forming harmonies, histories, and chronological accounts, by which that order might be given them, to the great advancement of Christian knowledge.

WHEN I reflected on this, and found the advantage that the gospels (or the hiftory of Jefus) had received by that method of treating them; I thought that, as the Acts (which may be confidered as the hiftory of the Holy Ghost) contained the chief account that we have in the New Testament of the method of propagating the Chriftian religion in the times of the apostles, it would be of great use to have that history carefully digefted in the fame manner. With this view I fet about it, as I had leifure. After I had made fome progress in it, I thought it would be neceffary to begin the history of the apostles a little higher, and carry it up to the first time of their

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their being chosen by our Saviour; that so, putting all the places that relate to them together, I might fee what obfervations they would afford me.

AFTER I had performed this task with all the care I could, from those parts of the Gospels which relate to that matter, and from the Acts of the Apostles, I perused what had been written by Dr. Cave, Monfieur le Clerc, Dr. Whitby, Bishop Lloyd, and others; but especially by Archbishop Usher (who first threw great light on the facred chronology), and Bishop Pearson in his Annales Paulini, who has fettled the chronology of St. Paul with fuch learning and judgement, as has obliged me to follow him in most particulars where I had happened to differ from him. And though, on a careful review of the chronological order into which I had digested the Acts, I have generally preferred Bishop Pearfon to Bishop Lloyd (who had the advantage of writing after him) where they differ, yet • in some points I continue to differ from the former. The reason of my differing from him will appear, in most of the instances of any moment, either in the Abstracts, or one of the two laft Effays. But the point wherein I differ the most widely from him (as well as from Bishop Lloyd, Dr. Whitby, Mr. Pyle, and most of our later commentators) is in the time I affign to St. Paul's writing his first epistle to Timothy. And as I had not room to give my reasons for differing from Bishop Peason in the Abstracts, nor any proper occafion to give them in either of the Essays, I will do it in a Postscript, rather than break the thread of this preliminary difcourse. I will there likewife give my reasons for preferring Bishop Peason's chronology generally to Bishop Lloyd's, where they differ from each other.

I FOUND fome hints which had flipped me, not only from Bishop Pearson, but from all the rest of these authors I confulted, except Dr. Cave, who I think has little that is not very common and obvious, except fome idle legendary stories, with which he abounds. What I met with from any of them I carefully inferted; and in some other instances I found reason from them also to alter what I had done: but, on perusing them, I did not think my own labour entirely loft; neither they nor any other (as far as I know) falling in with my design. Archbishop Ufher's Chronology is a work of a vast compass as well as learning. Bishop Pearson's only fettles Paul's chronology from his being present at the ftoning of Stephen, without regarding the hiftory of the other apostles previous to that period. Monfieur le Clerc has mixed the history of the apostles with the other parts of ecclefiaftical history. And Dr. Whitby, in the end of his Commentary (as many others have done), has given us a short abstract of the greater events of the whole history of our Saviour and his apoftles, in the order of time, borrowed from a learned prelate (Bishop Lloyd), highly celebrated for this part of learning, as the Doctor tells uş in his Preface to his Commentary.

My design is different from each of these. For I have only endeavoured to give a short Abstract, in the order of time, of all the scripture-history of the apostles; and chiefly with regard to those parts of their history that may shew us what the apoftolical work and office was, as diftinguished from other minifters of the first Christian church; and what were the steps by which they were directed by Providence to spread the Chriftian religion in the world; in which, I think, the greatest wisdom, harmony, beauty, and proportion, will appear: fuch as will shew the new creation every way worthy of the Word and Wifdom by which God not only made the worlds, but introduced this new system of religion into ours. I have likewife endeavoured to represent it in a fcheme, by which the history of the apostles may be more easily traced than in any I have yet seen.

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