1800] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 421 



CHAPTER LX. 



Dr. Smith fegins to execute a i-urtose formed in 17S9 and ArrROVF.n by the 

 General Convention of that year, kut !;y a variety of causes delayed, 

 to publish, in a collected form, his wokks— only i wo volumes tudlished 

 out of five, which he contemplated publishing— these two printed liy 

 Maxwell, a puislisher of Philadelphia during Dr. Smith's lieepime, but 

 not published until after his death. 



So far back as the year 1789, on his return from Maryland, Dr. 

 Smith announced his intention to pubhsh, in a collection, his 

 sermons upon the most important branches of practical Chris- 

 tianity. This was made in the form of a communication to the 

 General Convention of the church in that year, which we now give 



in this place. 



Philadelphia, August 5, 1789. 



To the Right Reverend and Reverend the Clergy, and the Worthy and 

 Honorable Lay Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in 

 the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 

 Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, now assembled in Gen- 

 eral Convention. 



My Worthy Friends and Brethren : 



The sermons and discourses, whereof the texts and titles follow, are 

 the result of the author's labors as a preacher of the blessed Gospel for 

 near forty years past. Sundry of them, which were composed and de- 

 livered on special public occasions, have been already printed, and have 

 passed through several editions, in Europe as well as America; but the 

 main body of them was composed and delivered at different times, in 

 the character of a parish minister, viz. : in the years 1764 and 1765 at 

 Christ Church and St. Peter's, in the city of Philadelphia; from thence- 

 forward to the year 17S0 in the churches of the Oxford Mission, in the 

 county of Philadelphia; and from the latter part of the year 1780 to 

 July ist, 1789, in Chester parish, Kent county, Maryland. 



During the foregoing long period of ministerial service the author 

 hath frequently been solicited to print or to give manuscript copies of 

 sundry of the sermons, and hath, as his leisure would allow, so often 

 indulged some of his too partial friends and hearers in the latter way 

 that copies have been multiplied in manuscript and circulated in a con- 

 dition not only very incorrect, but wholly without those last improve- 



