THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN THE SOUL BY P. DODDRIDGE, D. D. THOMAS NELSON, EDINBURGH; AND VIII. PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. MDCCCXLVI. DEDICATION TO THE REV. DR. ISAAC WATTS. REVEREND AND DEAR SIR, WITH the most affectionate gratitude and respect, I beg leave to present to you a Book, which owes its existence to your request, its copiousness to your plan, and much of its perspicuity to your review, and to the use I made of your remarks on that part of it which your health and leisure would permit you to examine. I address it to you, not to beg your patronage to it, for of that I am already well-assured; and much less from any ambition of attempting your character, for which, if I were more equal to the subject, I should think this a very improper place; but chiefly from a secret delight, which I find in the thought of being known to those whom this may reach, as one whom you have honoured, not only with your friendship, but with so much of your esteem and approbation too, as must substantially appear, in your committing a work to me, which you had yourself projected as one of the most considerable services of your life. I have long thought the love of popular applause a meanness, which a philosophy far inferior to that of our divine Master might have taught us to conquer. But to be esteemed by eminently great and good men, to whom we are intimately known, appears to me, not only one of the most solid attestations of some real worth, but, next to the approbation of God and our own consciences, one of its most valuable rewards. It will, I doubt not, be found so in that world to which spirits like you are tending, and for which, through divine grace, you have obtained so uncommon a degree of ripeness. And permit me, Sir, while I write this, to refresh myself with the hope, that when that union of hearts, which has so long subsisted between us, shall arrive to its full maturity and endearment there, it will be matter of mutual delight, to recollect, that you have assigned me, and that I have, in some degree, executed a task, which may perhaps, under the blessing of God, awaken and improve religious sentiments in the minds of those whom we leave behind us, and of others, who may arise after us in this vain, transitory, ensnaring world. Such is the improvement you have made of your capacities for service, that, I am fully persuaded, heaven has received very few, in these latter ages, who have done so much to serve its interests here below; few, who have laboured in this best of causes with equal assiduity, and equal success. And therefore I cannot but join with all who wish well to the Christian interest among us, in acknowledging the goodness of Providence to you and to the church of Christ, in prolonging a life at once so valuable and so tender, to such an advanced period. With them, Sir, I rejoice, that God hath given you to possess in so extraordinary a degree, not only the consciousness of intending great benefit to the world, but the satisfaction of having effected it, and of seeing such a harvest already springing up, I hope as an earnest of a much more copious increase from thence. With multitudes more, I bless God, that you are not in this evening of so afflicted and yet so laborious a day, rendered entirely incapable of serving the public from the press, and from the pulpit: and that amidst the pain which your active spirit feels, when these pleasing services suffer long interruptions from bodily weakness, it may be so singularly refreshed by reflecting on that sphere of extensive usefulness in which, by your writings, you continually move. I congratulate you, dear Sir, that while you are in a multitude of families and schools of the lower class, condescending to the humble, yet important work of forming infant minds to the first rudiments of religious knowledge, and devout impressions, by your various Catechisms and Divine Songs; you are also daily reading lectures of Logic, and other useful branches of philosophy, to studious youths; and this not only in private academies, but in the most public and celebrated seats of learning; not merely in Scotland, and in our American colonies (where, from |