How a man may obtain and retain the favor of his Maker? how a sinner may be reconciled to his God, and be saved from his sins? have appeared to him questions of the highest importance, and he has attempted their discussion in the following pages. He has not pretended to examine systems of religion in detail, but merely the plans of what may be called initiatory salvation. On the awfully important subject of the Question in the text, he lays the result of his own researches and convictions before his Readers. It is true that they will all be found to issue in what is commonly called Orthodoxy. But he begs leave to say that they have not arrived at this issue by any sinuous ways. The conclusion is the spontaneous natural result of the principles laid down, and the reasonings founded upon them.

With a heart full of charity for all mankind, and with respect and reverence for the good and pious of every denomination, he dismisses the whole, with the fullest conviction that the doctrine of justification by faith, through the atoning sacrifice of that Eternal Word which was manifest in the flesh, is the only way by which a fallen soul can regain the favor, and be restored to the image, of its Maker; and be at last brought, through the sanctification of the Divine Spirit, to the ineffable glory of God.