OF THE REV. JOHN MACLAURIN. EDITED BY W. H. GOOLD, D.D., EDINBURGH. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. EDINBURGH: JOHN MACLAREN. MDCCCLX. 2516 A ( 105k32 PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. THE reader has, in the two volumes which follow, the first and only complete edition of the Works of JOHN MACLAURIN. All his productions are posthumous. None of them received final revision for the press from his own pen. It is singular that on his death he should have left such an amount of valuable manuscript, which must have been intended for the public eye ultimately, but which he had never taken the trouble to commit to print. The author would seem to have formed no sufficient estimate of the value of his own productions; and the circumstance is all the more remarkable, since it contrasts so strikingly with the reception which has been given. them by the Christian public for a century back. They are not, with perhaps the exception of one famous sermon, the kind of works which command sudden popularity and extensive circulation. And yet few theological writings of the same character have been oftener reprinted. The first edition of his Sermons and Essays appeared in 1755, under the care of his son-in-law, the Rev. Dr. John Gillies, one of the ministers of Glasgow, and otherwise known in religious literature as the compiler of the "Historical Collections." Encouraged by the favour with which the "Sermons and Essays" were received, he gave to the world in 1773, Maclaurin's "Essay on the Prophecies." The latter has never been reprinted till now, though in some respects it is the most elaborate in design |