“To the Reader. Perhaps few books, lately published, have been more useful, to serious and pious readers, than that entitled ‘The Golden Treasury,’ It will be easily observed, that this is wrote on the same plan, containing a short exercise of devotion for every day of the year. The chief difference, between the one and the other, I apprehend, is this,—they do not only contain the first principles of religion, repentance towards God, and faith in Christ, the doctrine of justification, and the new birth; but likewise the whole work of God in the soul of man, till being rooted and grounded in love he is able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and to be filled with all the fulness of God.
“Pembroke, July 30, 1764.
“John Wesley.”
4. In Lloyd’s Evening Post, for June 5, 1765, appeared the following advertisement.
“On Thursday the 1st of August will be published, price 6d., Number I. of Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament. By John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln college, Oxford. Conditions. 1. That this work will be printed in quarto, on a superfine paper. 2. That it will be comprised in about 60 numbers (as near as can be computed) making two handsome volumes.[634] 3. That each number will contain three sheets of letterpress, printed on a new type. 4. That the first number will be considered as a specimen, and, if not approved of, the money paid for it shall be returned. 5. That the work will be delivered weekly to the subscribers, without interruption, after the publication of the first number. 6. That the whole will be printed in an elegant manner, no way inferior to the very best work of the kind ever offered to the public. Bristol: Printed by William Pine. Sold by J. Fletcher & Co., in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London; and by the Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland.”
Such was the advertisement. The work was really published in three quarto volumes, making 2622 printed pages, the preface being dated “April 25, 1765,” and the last page of the work, “December 24, 1766.” Wesley writes:
“About ten years ago, I was prevailed upon to publish Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. When that work was begun, and, indeed, when it was finished, I had no design to attempt anything further of the kind. Nay, I had a full determination not to do it, being thoroughly fatigued with the immense labour of writing twice over a quarto book containing seven or eight hundred pages.
“But this was scarce published, before I was importuned to write Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament. This importunity I have withstood for many years. Over and above the deep conviction I had of my insufficiency for such a work, of my want of learning, of understanding, of spiritual experience, for an undertaking more difficult by many degrees than even writing on the New Testament, I objected, that there were many passages in the Old which I did not understand myself, and consequently could not explain to others, either to their satisfaction or my own. Above all, I objected the want of time: not only as I have a thousand other employments, but as my day is near spent, as I am declined into the vale of years.”
He then proceeds to state, that he cannot entertain the thought of “composing a body of notes on the whole of the Old Testament”; but that he will give the pith of Matthew Henry’s Exposition; leaving out the whole of what Henry wrote in favour of particular redemption; also all his Latin sentences, abundance of his quaint sayings, and the far greater part of his inferences from and improvements of the chapters. His notes however would not be “a bare abridgment of Mr. Henry’s Exposition”; for he would make as many additions from Mr. Pool’s Annotations as he made extracts from Mr. Henry’s Exposition; and would add to the whole such further observations, either of his own or of other authors, as might occur to him. Here and there he had made a verbal alteration in the text; but, he says, “I have done this very sparingly, being conscious of my very imperfect acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue.” He concludes: “my design is not to write sermons, not to draw inferences from the text, or to show what doctrines may be proved thereby, but to give the direct literal meaning of every verse, of every sentence, and, as far as I am able, of every word, in the oracles of God.”