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THE FRIEND AND BIOGRAPHER OF

DOCTOR TOWNSON,

THE VENERABLE RALPH CHURTON, M.A.,

ARCHDEACON OF SAINT DAVID'S;

RECTOR OF MIDDLETON CHENEY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE;

AND LATE FELLOW OF BRASEN-NOSE COLLEGE,

OXFORD;

THESE SELECT DISCOURSES

ARE,

WITH A GRATEFUL SENSE

OF THE CONFIDENCE REPosed,

MOST RESPECTFULLY,

AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,

BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND,

THE EDITOR.

DECEMBER XVII. MDCCCXXIX.

A 3

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THE Author of the following Discourses was a man deservedly eminent in his generation: the friend, and, had his modesty permitted, the competitor of LoWTH; the chosen coadjutor of PORTEUS; raised by the unanimous voice of his University to the highest academical honours; and solicited, by the Minister of the day, to accept the Divinity Chair of Oxford, as confessedly the properest person in England to fill it. His works, admired and valued by the brightest ornaments of the last age, will, probably, be regarded among our first theological productions, by judicious divines and scholars, in an age to come.

These pages were neither prepared, nor intended, for publication, by Dr. Townson. When I pressed him,' says Archdeacon Churton, a few days before his death, for leave to publish a volume or two of his sermons, he did not consent: saying, and, doubtless, with great truth, that they were not written or prepared, with any such design.'*

* Townson's Works, vol. ii. p. 203.