APPENDIX TO A COURSE OF SERMONS, PREACHED BEFORE The University of Cambridge, During the month of April, 1816. H It is satisfactory to the author of the preceding Sermons to find that the representation, which he had given in them, of Mr. Simeon's late Discourses before the University, is abundantly confirmed by their own testimony, a fact which he has been enabled to ascertain by the recent appearance in print of those Discourses of Mr. Simeon, under the title of "An Appeal to Men of Wisdom and Candour." He is anxious, however, to put his readers likewise in possession of the necessary materials for forming an opinion of their own on the matter, and, for that purpose, he here intends to extract from Mr. Simeon's Sermons, both those passages to which he referred in his own, and also any others, which he may have previously omitted to consider, and which appear to bear upon the questions he has discussed. He has preferred throwing these quotations, and the observations he has to offer on them, into the form of an Appendix, instead of attaching them to the several sentences to which they respectively apply, that he might avoid the necessity of diverting the reader's attention and interrupting the course of the argument, and that he might consult the convenience of the possessors of his first edition. The references, at the beginning of each note, will be made to the pages and lines of the author's own Sermons, which are the same in both editions; and the numbers, subjoined to the quotations from Mr. Simeon's Discourses, will point out the page and line from which they are taken, Trinity College, Cambridge. Nov. 30th, 1816. APPENDIX &c. NOTE 1.-to p. 2, 7. 25.-" Ministers of the Gospel.". It will be generally granted that the Gospel, which the apostle Paul preached, was the true Gospel, and we find that the foregoing marks were inseparable from his doctrines: his statements were disapproved by those, who were carried away either by philosophy and vain deceit on the one hand, or by superstition on the other hand: to the Jews his doctrine was a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness. If, therefore, the Gospel, which we preach, be disapproved by the same persons as disapproved of his we have so far an evidence in its favour." (p. 6, l. 1.)—To give any force to this argument, it is absolutely necessary to suppose that they, who disapprove of the statements of Mr. Simeon and his friends, are carried away either by phi losophy and vain deceit on the one hand, (" proud and self sufficient sciolists," as he elsewhere calls them, p. 4.) or by superstition on the other hand; an assumption, neither very charitable, nor perhaps perfectly self-evident, and which amounts in truth to a petitio principii. But what if some persons should oppose his doctrines merely from an opinion that they are not the same with those of St. Paul? Opposition, from such a motive, would argue just as much against him, as, on his present gratuitous assumption, it does for him. NOTE 2. to p. 4, note.-" We are all by nature blind to the things of God." (p. 13, l. 6.)" Where a nature is so depraved, as ours from the foregoing statement appears to be, there can be no disposition to any thing truly and spiritually good on the contrary there must be an aversion to what is |