The alterations which have been made in this Edition have been principally expansions and enlargements of the argument, which had before been more shortly and summarily stated. These I must leave to speak for themselves; only expressing my regret that still they are more summary than I could wish them. But the greatness of the subject, and my own continual and pressing occupations, have made it impossible for me to take so wide a range of argument and illustration as the subject admits, and perhaps requires.

In one point I have made an alteration of arrangement; for whereas in the former Edition I had placed the Pastoral Commission before the Commissions to baptize and to absolve, on the ground of its appearing to be a larger and vaguer Commission, capable of being, as it were, divided, or regarded more particularly in the other Commissions, I have now placed it after those Commissions. This has been done partly because the solemnity with which the other two Commissions were given appears to put them into a more eminent and important rank than the Pastoral; and partly because the Pastoral having been given, although to all the Apostles in design, yet to one only in word, I was unwilling to write or print any thing which might, even mistakenly, lead to the impression of my wishing to support that doctrine which I cannot but regard as the source of corruption in the Church, the true cause and provocative of all the manifold schisms of later years, the πρῶτον ψεῦδος of debased Christianity, the doctrine of the supremacy of the Pope, or the absolute need of submission to him in order to membership of the Church of Christ, and...