WHILE some are usefully and commendably employed in celebrating the various merits and talents of a Priestley; in describing and discriminating with accuracy and skill the capacities and resources of his fertile and comprehensive mind, which, without perplexity or confusion, could embrace a variety of objects, and excel in experimental philosophy, metaphysics, philology, historical disquisitions, and speculations on civil government; be it my task (as far as my abilities can enable me to accomplish it) to trace and mark his progress as a Theologian, and to exhibit a brief, but faithful view, of those numerous productions that flowed from his pen, on subjects (as he justly thought) the most important and interesting of all others.

Intended and set apart, as he was, in the counsels of his nearest and best friends at an early period, for the Gospel Ministry, his own serious and devotional mind excited him to coincide with their views, and carried him forward with alacrity in the pursuit and attainment of his favourite employment, notwithstanding the embarrassments arising from a weak and delicate constitution, and the still greater difficulties that came in his way from the bigotry and hostility of those whose apprehensions of divine truth were different from his own.