ANTECEDENT HOLINESS, AND THE NATURE AND OBJECT BY ARCHIBALD M'LEAN. NEW-YORK : SCATCHERD AND ADAMS, PRINTERS. PREFACE. No apology is deemed necessary for the detached form in which the following essays are presented to the public. Though the controversy in the course of which they were written is now almost forgotten, and the writers themselves have long since passed to their account, the questions here discussed, it will at once be seen, possess an interest of no local or passing character; they concern the alone ground of a sinner's hope in the presence of God, and in this view can never be destitute of interest while men continue to be burdened with a sense of guilt, and to put the anxious question-how shall a man be just with God? Another reason for the republication of these essays, is to be found in the circumstance, that a subsequent publication of Mr. Fuller, entitled "Strictures on Sandemanianism,” in which the same corrupt doctrine and specious reasoning, here so ably refuted, is again urged with pertinacity and an air of triumph, has been widely circulated in this country; and is now confidently appealed to as an unanswerable piece of argument, and as forever settling the points at issue, by many who have never read the writings he attacks, and who have certainly never studied their Bibles to any good purpose. The Strictures referred to, appeared some eight or nine years after the following essays were written, and very near the close of Mr. M'Lean's life, which sufficiently accounts for their not having received from him a distinct answer: whether the friends of truth have any reason to regret this circumstance, the readers of this little work are called upon to decide. With regard to the importance of the questions here discussed, a few words may be said: the writer is fully persuaded that they involve the whole difference between the truth, as it is in Jesus, and another gospel; that from the answer which any man is prepared to give to them, may be fairly inferred what is the ground of his hope in the presence of God. Nothing seems to |