that it's influence may shed a divine light upon the elevated orbit in which you move; and that it's unfading honours may be your future recompense, when the distinctions of rank shall indeed be lost, and when the only nobility allowed will consist in an alliance with HIM, who in the days of his pilgrimage upon the earth, had not where to lay his head.

I have the honour to remain,

with high consideration,

MY LORD,

Your Lordship's much obliged

and most obedient servant,

WILLIAM BENGO COLLYER.

BLACKHEATH-HILL,

Oct. 21, 1809.

PREFACE.

IT is a pleasing duty now devolving upon me, in sending forth into the World this Second Edition of LECTURES on SCRIPTURE FACTS, to express the gratitude which I owe to the Public, for that favourable, and even flattering reception, which has distinguished my feeble, but well-intended efforts. Perhaps the best and most expeditious mode of explaining the design of this work, will be to transcribe some observations prefixed to the First Edition: to which I shall take the liberty to subjoin some remarks relative to the criticisms which have passed upon it, and the alterations which I have felt it necessary to make in the present impression of these Lectures.

"The history of the publication is sim

"ply as follows. It was suggested to me "about seven years since, in a cursory con"versation, that it would be a desirable

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thing to produce a confirmation of the "facts recorded in the sacred writings, "from contemporary historians, so far as "these could be obtained: and where "the remoteness of scriptural narrations "stretched beyond the chronology of "heathen compositions, to adduce such

fragments of antiquity as time has spared "to us, so far as they bear any relation "to events transpiring at the earliest pe"riods. It was justly observed, that while τό many and successful efforts have been "made, and are daily making, to eluci "date and defend the doctrines and the

precepts of Christianity, the facts re"corded in the Bible have not been placed "in the same advantageous point of view. "Some have perhaps been deterred by "the toil necessary to collect such testi"monies, to select from the mass evidences "which are more prominent than others, "and to discriminate such portions of hea"then records as mingle truth with fable,

"---to detect and expose the one, and to produce and enforce the other. It is also "probable that not a few have declined "to adventure upon this plan, because it is so unlike the usual and popular modes of

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pulpit discussion. Thus while the cita"del of revealed religion has been ably "and zealously defended, the out-works "have been abandoned, or at least over"looked; and the posts where some veterans of old times fought, have, since "their removal by death, remained unfill"ed. Upon revolving this conversation "in my mind, I felt that the remark was important, and I began seriously to think of undertaking the proposed dis"cussion, just so far as it might be useful "to my own congregation, and would not "interfere with the other arrangements "of my ministerial labours. My first ob

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ject was to discover by whom the ground "had been trodden before me. I well re"collected that Grotius had expressly set

apart a portion of his Treatise on the "Truth of the Christian Religion, to the consideration of Foreign Testimonies :

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" and in that useful little volume will be "found many of the authorities produced "in the following pages. But Grotius has "written in Latin, and is not, therefore, "accessible to an English reader. He has "been translated; but the plan proposed "forms a very small part of his produc

tion; and the whole work can only be "considered as an epitome of the Evi"dences of Christianity, where the prin"cipal arguments in it's favour are enu"merated and stated, but never dilated, " and seldom more than barely named. "Various have been the productions which "tend to this point, under the sanction "of such illustrious names as Shuckford, "Prideaux, Lardner, Bryant, Stillingfleet, "Pearson, Gale, Doddridge, and others. "But these all enter only into a part of my

scheme; they elucidate a particular por"tion of the sacred writings, or advert in

general terms to the stability of the "whole. Above all, it appeared to me "that there was yet wanting a work, which "might interweave foreign testimonies to "the truth of Scripture history, with the