Prefatory note.

The dedication and preface to these Sacramental Discourses sufficiently explain in what circumstances they were given to the world. The original publication of them was superintended by the Rev. Richard Winter, B.D., an excellent and useful minister in London, the co-pastor and successor of the Rev. Thomas Bradbury, in the Independent Church, New Court, Carey Street. An edition of them appeared in 1844, with a brief recommendatory preface by William Lindsay Alexander, D.D., of Edinburgh. We avail ourselves of an extract from it, as a just estimate of their character. Among works designed to promote the right observance of the Lord’s Supper, these Discourses, he affirms, “by the venerated and learned John Owen, have long occupied a prominent place in the esteem of all competent judges. Though issued originally under the most unfavourable circumstances, — having been not only a posthumous publication, but derived from notes taken from the author’s spoken addresses, which were never, in any shape, subjected to his subsequent revision, — they contain so much valuable instruction, profitable exhortation, and pious reflection, in a small compass, that even had they appeared under the sanction of a less illustrious name, it would not have been surprising that they should have gained an extensive and permanent reputation.” He commends this work of Owen to all “not already acquainted with its excellencies, as, upon the whole, one of the most useful and instructive companions to the Lord’s table with which the literature of our country can supply them.” — Ed.