PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. THE present edition of Barrow's Treatise is intended to form the first of a series of republications, consisting of the most valuable and effective works which have appeared on the Popish Controversy, which, should the publisher be encouraged in his undertaking, may form a complete Protestant Library. No such library could be deemed complete without including the masterly Treatise ofBarrow; and though it has been very frequently reprinted, it was thought that, at the present time, when the controversy has been revived in such extraordinary circumstances, another edition, accompanied with Introduction and Notes, was still demanded. The Treatise is seldom to be met with now apart from Barrow's works, which usually amount to four volumes octavo. And, besides the cheapness of the present volume, it is hoped that this edition will be found to possess several advantages above all its predecessors. The original manuscript of the Treatise is understood to be still preserved in TrinityCollege, Cambridge, ofwhich Barrowwas Master. But it was left ina very imperfect state; and no revision of the work, according to that manuscript, can supply the defects, or produce any thingmore than the first edition by Tillotson, which, we have reason to believe, was a faithful copy of the original. No attempt. however, has ever been made by subsequent editors to improve upon the first edition of the Treatise. It has been reprinted, over and over again, exactly as it appeared in 1680. To any who will be at the trouble of making the comparison, the improvements we have made on the former editions will at once be manifest; others, and those which have cost the greatest labour, may not be so apparent. We may specify, however, the following particulars: - 1. To the Treatise is prefixed an Introductory Essay, relating to the subject, the author, and the Treatise itself. This seemed to be demanded by the distance of time since the work was published, and the peculiar aspect which the supremacy of the pope has assumed in our day. The editor has attempted here, and throughout his notes,
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