Premonition to the Reader
Li laying before the Church of Christ, (to whom I hereby dedicate this volume,) an octavo edition of the Expositions of that peerless divine and star of the first magnitude, that shone through two-thirds of the seventeenth century, Dr. Thomas Goodwin; the only apology I have to make is for the labor of reducing more than a thousand folio pages to the present cheap form and portable size, by condensing the same without sacrificing scarce an idea of the original. The diminution of the type, margin, and paragraphs, might account for the work being of an equal number of pages: and it has been further compressed by relieving the Exposition on the Ephesians of a multitude of repetitions, chiefly used at the commencement of the sixty sermons into which the original divides it; the more convenient form of a division by verses, and the more perspicuous mode of sub-dividing verses under prominent heads, (an index for which is found at the top of each page,) being substituted: I have also used in general a less circuitous phraseology; preserving withal so carefully every important expression, and the force of every phrase, that in some pages I have not ventured to omit, or add, or alter, a word of several sentences together; whilst I trust I have succeeded, without affecting the originality of the style, not only in condensing, but in removing from several passages that obscurity which still surrounds some others. Although the truth of most of the statements is set forth in an irresistible light, there are a few in which no one reader will perhaps fully concur: still as an editor, I owe it to the Church as well as to him, “who being dead yet speaketh,” to give a faithful transcript of all the author’s ideas, from the animalcula to the hugest behomoth, from the hedge-star to the brightest luminary in the heavens: and while the babe ivillfind here its milk, the robust its strong meat, and every one his portion; there are some astounding notions, with which only minds of peculiar dimensions can grapple, but which once grasped afford a reward indeed. In studying such a divine class-book with the bible before him, the strongest intellect will find exercise enough, and the weakest understanding, (enlightened by the Spirit of God,) may wade easily through this river of Ufa and pleasure.
Of the works of this gigantic theologist, the Comment on the Epistle to the Ephesians takes up eight hundred pages of the first of five very scarce and expensive folio volumes; and though it was never prosecuted beyond the commencement of the second chapter, it contains a complete body of divinity, and is remarkable for its undesigned testimony against the spirit of Popery, and all those “damnable heresies,” which have. no alarmingly threatened the vitality of the Protestant Church; while his Exposition of the Book of Revelation, (taken from two hundred pages of the second folio,) most fully anatomizing and detecting
Antichrist and (he mystery of iniquity, peculiary interests these our days; and as if contains withal the name rich vein of ideas and practical observations as that of the Ephcsians, I scruple not to say, “Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this volume, and keep these things which are written therein.” The life of the Author is prefixed to the Jifth folio, and it is hoped the perusal of his experience, as well as of the present portion of his writings, will be acknowledged by the Holy Ghost, in comforting and strengthening the hearts of God’s “own elect,” in these perilous times: for as he lived to see the beginning, and as we are now in the last of “the latter days,” he wrote under the tame impressions with which we still read; so that he seems, as if by a prophetic spirit, to have “written for our admonition, upon u-hom the ends of the world are come:” and I feel assured, that except our pulpits are made to ring again with the trumpet-sound of the glorious scriptural doctrines here set forth, no other barrier can be efficient against the universal domination of the Papacy.
Jin objection may arise among some members of our Church, tending to invalidate the testimony of this pre-eminent minister of Christ, and to reflect on his present editor; “but he was a seceder,” (as the alary of Naaman was marred by a single syllable; “but he was a leper: ) This but / would re-but, by observing, That Dr. Goodwin lived in communion with our Church upwards of thirty years, and for some time was under the patronage of Charles I. during which period several of his works were written; and as they all contain ttie same spirit and doctrine, who could discern, from what is before him, whether it was under Charles or James, or in the days of Cromwell, that he rvas ricechancellor of Oxford P it is only evident, that in whatsoever firmament he appeared, “he was a burning and a shining light.” Let any bishop, or priest, or lay-divine, dying in our own communion, be pointed out as having written so deeply, so fully, so convincingly, so blessedly, on the whole of all the mysteries of grace •, and I will confess my error in re-editing such an author, as another such I do not believe has been given to the world since the age of apostles: and should the Church of Christ require it, I shall, by God’s grace and strength, prepare another corresponding volume, containing some of his treatises and discourses, which are the most perfect master-pieces of theology on the most important subjects I ever perused.
The reader should be ailmonisfad, that I have chosen to express the Greek words in Roman, and the Hebrew in Italic capitals, the Latin being in small Italics with capital initials: and as I was now tempted to write my manuscript with one hand, and correct the press with the other, 1 hope I shall not again have to deplore so many errata of all sorts as the reader will discover; of whom I thus take leave, praying the Holy Ghost to be with him in the patient perusal of these pages, that therein he may sec “the glory of Gad in the face of Jesus Christ.”
THE EDITOB.
Plymouth, July, IK 12.