XIV GENERAL PREFACE.
rash intermeddling with the costume of his thoughts, and to adhere with scrupulous jealousy to the ancient text.
The punctuation has undergone a thorough revisal. Passages which, from negligence in this respect, were previously veiy obscure, have brightened into significance, so as even to impart to the style a measure of clearness and animation of which it might have been deemed incapable. In the more important treatises, we have endea- voured to make a judicious and sparing restoration of the Italics, of which copious use is made in the old editions. They were employed, not merely for the purpose of emphasis, but to indicate quotations, and the train of thought. Quotations are now denoted by the ordi- nary marks in modern printing. The Italics are retained, where emphasis seems to have been designed, and where they tend to give connection and vividness to the composition.
In common with the authors of that age, Owen indulged freely in divisions and subdivisions of any topic under his consideration. The numerals employed to indicate the progress of thought were found in much confusion, — omissions occurring even in the early editions which appeared before the author's death, and changes having been subse- quently introduced (of course without the author's sanction), which often destroy the connection and force of his statements, and bewilder his readers in a labyrinthine maze of numeration. Care has been taken to rectify these errors, and the subdivisions are denoted by the usual gradation in the numerals — I, 1, (1), [1], first, and first. It would have been an advantage if we could have dispensed with this cumbrous and complex apparatus ; but such a course would have been questionable in principle, and indeed, on a little examination, will be seen to have been impossible.
The Scripture references demanded serious attention. A score of errors has sometimes been detected in a single sheet. Occasionally, moreover, v/hen the words of Scripture were quoted, whether from mistakes in transcription and printing, or in consequence of the quo- tations having been made from memory^ several inaccuracies have been noticed. These have been all con-ected. No attempt, how- ever, has been made to interfere, when it was evident that the author, as he sometimes does, purposely varied the translation of the autho- rized version of the Scriptures, in order to elicit more fully the im- port of the original.
Perhaps the works of Owen have suffered most injustice in regard to his quotations from the Greek and Latin Fathers. Even the editions which were printed when he was himself alive, here abound in errors to a degree that is a scandal to the British press. The
GENEKAL PREFACE. XV
circumstance can only be explained from the pressure of multifarious duties leaving the author little time to attend to the details in the printing of his own works. It would seem that this task was often devolved on others, who, in the department of the Greek and Latin citations, have not given much evidence of their competency for it. To these original errors many more were added in each successive edition, till some passages from the Fathers, but for the characters in which they were printed, when Greek, might have been Latin as well as Greek, — or when Latin, might have been Greek as well as Latin, for all the meaning that could be expiscated from them; and the riddle they presented to the reader could only be solved by the use of that suspicious instrument of criticism, — mere conjecture. So Herculean seemed the task of correcting and verifying these references and quotations, that Mr Russell, in 1826, expressly declined to under- take it. In a note to the treatise on the " Reason of Faith," he re- marks, " The editor takes this opportunity of stating, that he does not undertake — nor would it be possible, without a prodigious, and at the same time almost useless, expenditure of time and labour, and a boundless accumulation of books — to verify the numerous quota- tions of Dr Owen from the Fathers, and schoolmen and controver- sialists of a more recent period." We have only to state, that, so far as circumstances permitted, the best attention of the present editor has been given to these quotations, and that at least all the most important of them have been duly verified and collated, and the proper reference given to their place in the writings of the Father from whom they may have been adduced.
A prefatory note has commonly been given to the different trea- tises. It is intended by the note simply to indicate the design of the treatise, to submit a brief analysis of its contents, and to specify the date of its original publication, the judgment that has been formed of its merits, and any circumstances of interest bearing on its cha- racter, or connected with its history. The perusal of a work presup- poses some knowledge of its design and contents, before the reader is induced to devote his time to the examination of it. When old works are republished, there is no present impulse to discuss their merits, and the organs of periodical criticism seldom bestow on them a formal and detailed review ; so that a reader is sometimes at a loss to judge of the treatise of an old author, whether it be worthy of his attention, or likely to interest him, or what precise object it was intended to serve. Prefatory notes, therefore, supplying a key to the author's intention, so far as it can be gathered, have been in- serted in the present edition. Explanations have been sometimes