CONTENTS. I. Page On the Value and Credibility of " the Gospel ;" andits adaptedness to our Sorrows, Fears, and Moral Necessities. II. On Strained Interpretations of the Doctrine of Faith or Conversion, which may induce a Despondent Impression that we are and shall be destitute of it. III. On Suspicions that Faith may not be Genuine, induced by the Frequent Observation and Partial Experience of Self-Delusions. 1 38 61 IV. On Fears that Faith or Conversion is not Genuine, arising from a nice Analysis or Scrutiny of Motives. V. On the Painful Doubts excited by the Prevalence of Evil and 86 . 99 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. In 2 Vols., 12mo., Price 148., THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY, DEDUCED FROM SOME OF THOSE EVIDENCES WHICH ARE NOT FOUNDED ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF SCRIPTURE. "In reviewing these volumes, we cannot but have received a deep impression of their value, and a strong feeling of gratitude, that so copious a body of information, hitherto accessible only to a few scholars and men of leisure, is here placed within the reach of popular readers, made attractive even to those whose minds are not inured to literary toil, and applied by calm, judicious, and powerful reasoning to the most beneficial of all intellectual and practical purposes."-Eclectic Review. "The Author of this Work is well known to the public by his beautiful little Work on Private Devotion; the present is of an entirely different character, but does no less credit to his talents, his learning, and his acuteness. He is quite a Baxter for his scrupulosity in weighing and balancing proofs, and much more judicious in his manner of arguing them. The work is in some danger of repelling superficial readers; both the arrangement and the learning of it require more study than they who wish to arrive at the knowledge of all science and art by the shortest road, are generally disposed to give to any subject. But the lover of close argument and satisfactory information will be amply repaid by the studious examination of these volumes."-Orme's Life of Baxter, V. II. p. 35. "We recollect no writer who has availed himself so fully, and made so extensive and conclusive a use of the accumulative evidence arising from indirect, extraneous, and even hostile matter, as Mr. Sheppard has done; and his work is of great value for the comparative originality of its materials, the extent of its research, the acuteness of its remarks, the candour of its statements, the force of its reasoning, and the direct and conclusive bearing of every part of it on the Divine Origin of Christianity.""-Christian Observer, Appendix, 1830, p. 808. AUTHOR OF THOUGHTS ON PRIVATE DEVOTION," &c. "Voulez-vouz sauver quelque chose de ce débris si universel, si inévitable donnez à Dieu vos affections; nulle force ne vous ravira ce que vous aurez déposé en ses mains divines."-BOSSUET. LONDON: WHITTAKER, TREACHER & CO., AVE-MARIA LANE, MDCCCXXXIII. 247. |