Deeply impressed with the dangers of controversy, the Writer has been unfeignedly solicitous not needlessly to offend, but he dares scarcely anticipate that he will be exempted from the blame so freely imputed, and too often deservedly imputed, to controvertists of every party. In laying before the public the present work, the fruit of some application during hours rescued from sleep and relaxation, he feels to have performed his duty, and he does it at all risks. He has friends, however, valued friends, some of them ministers, attached to the Establishment, to whose esteem he would earnestly deprecate any thing which seemed to diminish his claims. Yet not even to them can he offer any apology for his principles, or stoop to compromise them. The view which he has taken of the tendency of religious Establishments, even should it be deemed erroneous, will, he trusts, justify his earnestness, with those who give him credit for sincerity, in advocating what he regards not as the cause of a party, but, to adopt the words of the excellent Doddridge *, as the cause "of truth, honour, and liberty, and, in a great measure, the cause of serious piety too."
* "Free Thoughts on the best Means of reviving the Dissenting "Interest."