Few are the writers who have exprefsly treated on the Authenticity of the books of the New Teftament, and fewer ftill who have done it in a manner always fatisfactory to the reader. Du Pin is miferably defective: and Jones feems to have been anxious rather to fhew that certain writings are Apocryphal, than to prove that the books of the New Teftament are Canonical. Indeed he has paffed over all the Epiftles and the Apocalypfe without paying the leaft regard to them.

But fince his time Dr. Lardner has employed immenfe labour and profound erudition on the fame fubject: nor do I know any man to whom the Chriftian world has more obligations than to the author of the Credibility of the Gofpel-Hiftory. He appears to have almoft exhaufted his fubject, and to have rendered any fubfequent undertaking of a fimilar nature perfectly unneceffary. Inftead of giving my own opinion on the difference between the present treatise and the voluminous work of Lardner, I will lay before the reader the fentiments of the great Michaelis and of the Rev. Herbert Marth, one of the most accurate Theological scholars that any age or country has ever produced. "The beft treatifes" fays Michaelis

that it is the refult of a confcientious, even anxiously confcientious inquiry, which he had inftituted for his own private conviction. Doubts on which Lardner never thought, he has felt and proved."-Thus far Michaelis: and his learned tranflator has borne his teftimony to the value of the prefent work in a note to the paffage juft quoted: "It would be impoffible" fays he " to give an abridgement of it in these notes, as the author himself is very concife: but the whole deferves to be tranflated in a feparate work."-To the teftimony of such authorities I will add nothing: that which has obtained the praise of Michaelis, and the recommendation of Marsh, needs no further panegyric.

I have only to fay a few words in respect to the tranflation.-It is made from the last edition of the Original printed at Gottingen 1786, and is always, it is hoped, faithful to the fenfe of the author, and generally as literal as the peculiar idioms of the different languages will allow. The whole work of Dr. Lefs, which is called by the general name of Geschichte der Religion, or History of Religion, is comprised in three volumes. The first is employed on the hiftory of both natural and revealed Religion.

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