Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1831, by ANN WHEL LEY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York, in the Second Circuit.

THE first of the following numbers was published in the New-York Courier. A note in that paper, the following day, stated, that the editor of the paper declined publishing the remainder of the work, because it was likely to give offence. I preferred a public paper to a pamphlet form, for two reasons: one was, that a newspaper is read by many persons who seldom have leisure, or inclination, to labour through the Essays on didactic theology, found in Magazines, Sermons, and Systematic Discourses. The other was, that I entered on the publication not as a theologian or controversialist, but as a spectator and reporter of facts.

To be candid, the work was principally designed for the edification of those who would be willing to be styled high-toned Calvinists. And it may seem, perhaps, to some a little paradoxical, that the very first number should kindle such a flame of resentment, as to cause alarm to the editor, of whose correct taste and liberal sentiments I have no