Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by ANDREW P. PEABODY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: PRINTED BY THURSTON, TORRY AND CO. PREFACE. THESE Lectures were prepared for the pulpit, without the slightest reference to their publication. They have been sent to the press as first written, at the urgent solicitation of many of the author's parishioners. They are not offered to the public, as a full compend of Christian doctrine, or as a fair exhibition of the positive side of the author's own faith; but simply as a discussion of the prominent points at issue between the Unitarian and the Calvinistic portion of the Christian Church. As such, they were deemed valuable and satisfactory by those who heard them; and it is hoped that they will prove so to those who may read them. To the Parish, whose uniformly kind and indulgent appreciation of his services and labors he is happy thus to acknowledge, they are respectfully and affectionately inscribed by PORTSMOUTH, N. H., Jan. 8, 1844. THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. THE SCRIPTURES.* 2 TIMOTHY III. 16. ALL SCRIPTURE IS GIVEN BY INSPIRATION OF GOD, AND IS PROFITABLE FOR DOCTRINE, FOR REPROOF, FOR CORRECTION, FOR INSTRUCTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS. In the present Lecture, designed to be preliminary to a series of discourses on Christian doctrine, I shall present and defend my view of the authority of the Sacred Scriptures, and especially of the New Testa ment. The Old Testament consists of thirty-nine separate books, all of them originally written in Hebrew, by nearly as many different authors, and at intervals during a period, as is commonly supposed, of more than a thousand years. The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books, written originally in Greek, by ten different authors, in the interval between the reputed date of our Saviour's ascension, and the close of the first century. These last books I shall quote in the following Lectures as of plenary authority on all mat * The substance of this Lecture, originally delivered from the pulpit, was published in the Christian Examiner for May, 1842. |