PREFACE BY THE TRACT SOCIETY.
The friends of the Sabbath will doubtless receive this little volume as a valuable relic of the past—as a word from one of the tried and faithful friends of the truth, one who not only loved the day of God's weekly rest, but greatly delighted in the promise of a future and glorious sabbatism with the people of God. Edward Stennet, the author, was the first of the series of Sabbatarian ministers of that name, who for four generations continued to be among the foremost of the Dissenters in England, and whose praise is still in all the churches. He was an able and devoted minister, but dissenting from the Established Church, he was deprived of the means of support; and, his family being large, he applied himself to the study of medicine, by the practice of which he was enabled to give his sons a liberal education. He suffered much of the persecution which the Dissenters were exposed to at that time, and more especially for his faithful adherence to the cause of the Sabbath. For this truth, he experienced tribulation, not only from those in power, by whom he was a long time kept in prison, but also much distress from unfriendly dissenting brethren, who strove to destroy his influence, and ruin his cause. He wrote several treatises upon the subject of the Sabbath besides this, but they are very rare, and perhaps cannot all be found in a perfect state of preservation. It would be well, no doubt, to revive all of them, and, if practicable, republish them in the same form as this, that they might be bound together, and placed, as they deserve to be, in every Sabbath-keeper's library. They all breathe the genuine spirit of Christianity, and in their day were greatly conducive to the prosperity of the Sabbath-keeping churches.
New-York, July, 1848