C1304.6 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE FAMILY OF NOVEMBER 16, 1927 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. THE Tracts collected in this volume all have a common purpose, to vindicate the truths of Christianity from errors which have been connected with them, or by which they have been assailed. But, in the interval between the composition of the earliest of these articles and the latest of them, errors of very different kinds, errors contradictory to and destructive of each other, have prevailed, some at one time, and some at another, in that portion of the Christian world with which we have most concern. We may hope that they are beginning to pass away; but their pernicious consequences, and the causes by which they have been produced, will long remain; and the errors themselves will continue to appear, if not under their old, under new aspects. The truth has not yet made such progress as to take their place. If there be any value, there fore, in these Tracts, it must be partly in their present, and partly in their historical relations. It is a preservative against false opinions to know their history, to know that they have been maintained, and why they have been rejected. |