To The Young Gentlemen of Great Britain, and, Particularly, to those of the Inns of Court in and About this Great Metropolis

Summary

Permit me, I beseech ye, young Gentlemen, among the Crowd of Writers that have ingag’d in the present important Controversy, to throw in among you, a little common Sense and plain Reasoning, in Behalf of Christianity, which may possibly affect the Minds of such of you as are not resolutely harden’d against all Conviction.

As to the principal Leaders of the present Apostacy, I own I have not much Hopes that any thing I shall offer, will have Influence upon them. They are Persons that seem to be given up to a Reprobate Mind, and their Pride, their Vanity, their Disappointments, their Love of Novelty, or their Gain, may operate so strongly upon them, as to secure them equally against the Possibility of Conviction, and of Repentance.

But for such as are only Smatterers in Infidelity, because it is a New Thing; who can have no Worldly Views to gratify by the new-fangled Impieties; who, whatever Loose they may give themselves at present, must, one Time or other, enter into the solid Parts of Living and of Thinking, and may possibly one Day think it Policy, at least, to attempt to keep their Families, Children, and Servants in Order by the sacred Ties of Religion and Piety: For such, I say, I am in some Hopes, that they may be made sensible, on due Reflection, of the Folly of jesting with edg’d Tools, of turning sacred Things into Ridicule, and playing with their Perdition, till it overtake them; till they are given up to a Reprobate Mind, and are thrown headlong, if not into a State of Despondency (for from that their want of Faith may secure them) into a State of final Impenitence.

What I have aim’d at in the following Sheets, is, to accommodate myself to the plainest Capacities, by easy and familiar Reasonings, without entering into the abstruser Points of Divinity; and as Mr. Locke is reckon’d upon by some Persons, as the Corner-stone of the present Scepticism; and as a different Use has been doubtless made of his Writings, than he ever intended; I have, in the Course of the Argument, selected a few Paragraphs from that sublime Reasoner, in Vindication of Christianity;