PRE F A C E. THE following work was undertaken in the ardour of friendship, and from a zeal for the intereft of truth, the civil and religious liberties of our country, and the improved education of the rising generation, without ftaying to count the coft, or to confider the difficulties which lay in the way of its execution. In the collected motives which induced the engagement to the public, there can be no juft caufe for cenfure. In the execution of the defign, the editor fufpends his confidence, and refers his readers to his express ftipulations, in which he made himfelf responsible only for "the humble produce of difinterested industry and fidelity." As the biographer of Dr. John Jebb, and the editor of his works, I have availed myfelf of all the information which could be derived from long perfonal knowledge, and from a 2 from an intimate and uninterrupted friendship: I have also had access to fome private papers which demonftrate the integrity and piety of his mind. Nevertheless, certain difficulties and embarraffments have arifen in both departments, which, though they were in fome degree foreseen, and were formidable on several accounts, have neither been flighted, nor fuffered to impede or obftruct my progrefs. The recent death of Dr. Jebb, while it facilitates the knowledge of fome facts, involves no fmall difficulty in the impartial recital of them. More particularly, as he bore a confiderable part in tranfactions of a public nature, his name is neceffarily connected with many living characters. And wholly to have fuppreffed all mention of others, would have been to have overlooked a fruitful field of observation; or to have drawn a curtain before that mirror, in which both our contemporaries and our pofterity will look for truth and improvement. To have affected an excess of candour, would have been equally blamable, as it could not have been maintained without without more important facrifices. If on the prefent, and on fimilar occafions, the workers of iniquity meet with reproof, they fhould recollect, that as they fowed, they might expect to reap: and, on their own account, we may hope they will feel more pungent mortification, in the recollection of having done a wrong and injuftice to truth and the common intereft of mankind, than at the barely being reminded of it. I will only add, that as I have not gone out of my way to feek inftances of defection from virtue, for the fake of detailing the difgrace of others, but have rather fuppreffed in filence, what did not neceffarily concern my direct purpose; fo, where the circumstances of the cafe required the exhibition of what appeared to me to be a criminal delinquency, I have brought forward the facts, and, for the most part, left my reader to make his own comment; at leaft, when my facts are special, my obfervations are general. Of the importance of events and of pers, different perfons will form very contrary judgments. Some, which may feem uninterefting 2 3 pa uninteresting in the prefent moment, may afford not an unuseful leffon in future time and on fome future occafion: if they shall not produce the completion of those bleffings to which they have been directed, they may, at least, induce a better temper in the opponents to their eftablishment. But, we may go further in our reasonable expectation: we owe to the great principles of the reformation and the revolution that portion of religious and civil liberty which we do enjoy; and in the cultivation and comprehenfion of these principles in their proper extent, we may, by gradual, and perhaps not flow paces, advance in the ways of peace, to the perfection of our christian and conftitutional privileges, until both prince and people fhall enjoy the utmost practical extent of true liberty of both kinds. In the difpaffionate perufal of our author's labours, the members of the church, the univerfities, and the ftate, may learn wif dom; and in the reflection of having rejected the friendly offers of his ardent defire for |