THE PREFACE TO THIS BOOK OF DEATH AND HEAVEN. When it was translated into the German Language, and published at Halle, in Saxony, 1727. TO THE READEit. HERE is communicated to you a treatise, in which the late pions Mr. Frank, professor of divinity at Halle, found so much edification and satisfactions that be engaged an able person to translate it into our German tongue, to make,others partake of the same spiritual benefit. This treatise consists of two funeral serinons, which an English divine, who perhaps is still living, composed on the death of two eminent per- sons, which he enlarged afterwards for their publication. Thesubject of the first is death, taken from 1, Cor. xv. 26. The second is heaven, from Heb. xii. 22. From this last he takes an occasion of flying with his thoughts into the blessed mansions of the just made perfect, by giving us not only a very probable and beautiful idea of the glory ofa future life in general, but also an enumeration of the many sorts of employments and pleasures, that are to be met with there. After the several false notions, people of different complexions have of eternal life, are laid open, the author of the preface goes on and quotes some German authors, who have writ upon that subject, and says at last : I hope nobody will presume to aver this doctrine to have been so far exhausted by those authors, that nothing new could he said upon it. For several learned writers in England, who in meditating and searching after hidden truths, have shewn an extraordinary capa- city, prové the contrary ; and amongst others there is the treatise, called Thefuture State, published 1683, by a gentleman whose name is concealed, which appeared in French 1700, and is now printed in Ger- man, with a, preface of the famous I3r. Pritius, senior, at Frankfurt ad Mmnum. There is among Sir R. ßlackmorés Essays, one upon. the future beatitudes. The traces of these two English gentlemen are fol= lowed by our present English divine, I. WATTS, who, however, in many points has outdone these his predecessors, and advanced a step farther in his contemplations. Though the first sermon contains many elegant passages worthy to. be read, yet the latter Teems to be a more elaborate piece, because it sets the doctrine of eternal life in a greater light, and enriches it with many probable inferences drawn from the word of God. He proposes his excellent thoughts in most emphatical terms, in that beautiful order, and with such a vivacity of style, that he keeps the reader in a continual attention, and an eager desire to read on. It is plain the, author's mind was so taken up with the beauty of heaven, that his mouth could not but speak from the abundance of his heart. There is á secret unction in his expre4sions, which leaves a sweet savour in the reader's heart, and raises in him a desire after the blessed society he speaks of. And though the reader should trot entirely agree with the author's notions, yet by will not peruse this treatise without a portico.-
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