Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1837, by ANDREWS NORTON, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE:

FOLSOM, WELLS, AND THURSTON,

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

PREFACE.

I BEGAN the work of which I now publish the first volume, in the year 1819; and was then so much in error respecting the inquiries to which it would lead me, that I recollect believing that it might be completed in six months. I have since deceived myself and some of my friends with the expectation of its speedy conclusion. The causes of delay have been partly circumstances merely personal, partly my being occupied by other objects theological and literary, but principally the fact, that the inquiry on which we are about to enter, when thoroughly pursued, presents itself in unexpected relations to many important subjects, all of which it is necessary to examine in order to its satisfactory discussion. As regards some of the principal of these subjects, the truth did not seem to me to have been established; and, as regards. every subject that may be embraced in such a work

as the present, he who would execute it in a proper manner should examine for himself; trusting as little as possible to second-hand information, and neither adopting old opinions because they have been acquiesced in, nor new opinions because they have been confidently asserted.

The various bearings of the inquiry have given occasion to the large body of notes contained in this volume. Some of them, as will be perceived, present a detail of the facts on which assertions in the text are founded, and resemble the authorities annexed to an historical work. Others are properly dissertations on subjects intimately connected with the main question, though they possess at the same time an independent interest, which I have not thought it necessary to keep out of view. In these dissertations, as well as in the text of the work, I have endeavoured so to explain myself as to be readily understood by all intelligent readers, whether familiar with theological studies or not.

I have published this volume separately, because it completes one division of the work intended, containing the statement of the testimony of the great body of early Christians to the genuineness of the Gospels. It likewise comprises as large a number of subjects as it may be well to present at once to