THE NEW APOLOGETIC; OR, THE DOWN-GRADE IN CRITICISM, BY PROFESSOR ROBERT WATTS, D.D., LL.D., ASSEMBLY'S COLLEGE, BELFAST, AUTHOR OF "THE NEWER CRITICISM, THE RULE OF FAITH AND INSPIRATION," 66 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY," ETC. ETC. EDINBURGH: T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 1242. e 120 PREFACE. A POLOGETICS hold a prominent place in the history of Christianity. From the outset the propounders of the faith were, of necessity, obliged to meet and obviate objections to the doctrines they were commissioned to proclaim. Hence the discourses of our Lord and His apostles are at once expositions of the faith and defences of its principles. In like manner, the writings and formulated creeds of the early Fathers and of the Reformers, are both expository and vindicatory. They state the great leading truths of the Gospel, and do so in such a way as to instruct inquirers, fortify believers, and leave gainsayers without excuse. In these expositions and defences of the doctrines of the Gospel they are careful to put the truth clearly defined in the foreground, and they never modify it in order to obviate objections or conciliate objectors. Calvin's Institutes may be regarded as a colossal Apologetic. That immortal work, framed on the lines of the Apostles' Creed, was designed to recall the Church to the faith she had abandoned, and to repel the charge that the Reformers were introducing doctrines alien to the Gospel of Christ. |
