III.

THE

EVIDENCES

OF

CHRISTIANITY;

ABRIDGED FROM

DR DODDRIDGE'S

THREE SERMONS UPON THAT SUBJECT.

"We have not followed cunningly-devised fables. "

2 Pet. i. 16.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE

OF

DR DODDRIDGE.

THE three admirable Discourses by Dr DODDRIDGE, which have furnished the materials for the third Tract, were, on their first publication in 1736, combined with seven others; but, at the request of one of the highest dignitaries of the Established Church, who thought it desirable that they should be thrown into the widest possible circulation, they were subsequently printed in a separate form.

Our adversaries, it has been truly observed, never trouble themselves to sift the evidences of religion, but take all their knowledge of it from a few objections casually brought forward in light conversation. The true reasoner seeks for evidence, before he listens to objections. Secure of the first, he is not easily shaken by the latter.

It gave the author, we are told, singular pleasure to learn, that those Sermons had been the means of convincing two gentlemen of a liberal education and distinguished abilities, who had been Deists, that Christianity was true and divine: and one of them, who had set himself strenuously to prejudice others against the Gospel, became afterwards a zealous preacher and ornament of the religion which he had once denied and despised.

They are, also, made the subject of study and examination in one of the two principal colleges in the University of Cambridge.

Their lamented writer died at Lisbon, whither he had gone for the recovery of his health, in 1751, in the fiftieth year of his age: but, by his works, "though dead, he yet speaketh.'