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INTRODUCTION.

SOME years ago, in a conversation with that very venerable prelate John Lord Bishop of Rochester, respecting the Sacrifice of Christ, I recited my opinion on that subject from a sermon which I had preached a great while before. When I had finished reading it, the Right Reverend Father, whose authority and judgment both had considerable weight with me, immediately advised me to a more extended discussion in Latin, of those points which I had touched on in a brief and cursory manner in my English discourse. As soon as I had undertaken it, I considered that my first task must be an attentive examination of the principal Socinian writers, with whom I perceived my controversy would chiefly lie. Whoever peruses their works will find them to have formed such notions of the death of Jesus Christ, and of his sacrifice which they always separate from his death, that they have expressly denied every idea of vicarious suffering to the former, and supposed that no favour with God is obtained for us by the latter; concluding that though the influence of his death may in some respect extend to God, yet the efficacy of his sacrifice terminates upon men. And these sentiments are still

maintained by all the followers of Socinus.

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