To his most ingenious and worthy Friend and Countryman, Benjamin West, Esq. History Painter to his Majesty, he is happy to acknowledge himself indebted for the elegant designs, taken from two of his most capital paintings, which are placed as frontispieces to these volumes.
To his dear and valuable friend, the Author of the late accurate and elegant Translation of Thomas à Kempis, he is sincerely thankful for his kind and chearful advice and assistance, in conducting the whole publication, to which the author's inexperience in printing, as well as his frequent and necessary absence from the press, would have rendered him altogether unequal.
He hath only to add, that the revisal and publishing of these discourses was undertaken at the instance of some of the most respectable names in the list of his subscribers to the first edition, under whose kind patronage, and in hopes of every indulgence from the candour of the publick, he hath ventured to send them abroad.
Hampstead, 1st March, 1780.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST.
The Character of Wisdom's Children.
St. Luke, Chap. vii. Ver. 35.
"But Wisdom is justified of all her Children."