Produced by Colin Bell, Daniel J. Mount, Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net $Inspiration and Interpretation:$ SEVEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD: WITH PRELIMINARY REMARKS: BEING AN ANSWER TO A VOLUME ENTITLED "Essays and Reviews." BY THE REV. JOHN WILLIAM BURGON, M.A., FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, AND SELECT PREACHER. * * * * * I CANNOT HOLD MY PEACE, BECAUSE THOU HAST HEARD, O MY SOUL, THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET, THE ALARM OF WAR. Oxford & London: J. H. and Jas. PARKER. 1861. $Printed by Messrs. Parker, Cornmarket, Oxford.$ TO THE REVEREND WILLIAM SEWELL, D.D., FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE: LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD; AND LATE WARDEN OF ST. PETER'S COLLEGE, RADLEY. * * * * * MY DEAR FRIEND, Let me have the satisfaction of inscribing this volume to yourself. I know of no one who has more faithfully devoted himself to the sacred cause of Christian Education: no one to whom those blessed Truths are more precious, which of late have been so unscrupulously assailed, and which the ensuing pages are humbly designed to uphold in their integrity. Affectionately yours, JOHN W. BURGON. * * * * * ΔΕΙ ΓΑΡ ΚΑΙ ἉΙΡΕΣΕΙΣ ἘΝ ὙΜΙΝ ΕΙΝΑΙ, ἹΝΑ ΟΙ ΔΟΚΙΜΟΙ ΦΑΝΕΡΟΙ ΓΕΝΩΝΤΑΙ ἘΝ ὙΜΙΝ. Ac si diceret: Ob hoc hæreseôn non statim divinitus eradicantur auctores, ut probati manifesti fiant; id est, ut unusquisque quam tenax, et fidelis, et fixus Catholicæ fidei sit amator, appareat. Et revera cum quæque novitas ebullit, statim cernitur frumentorum gravitas, et levitas palearum: tunc sine magno molimine excutitur ab areâ, quod nullo pondere intra aream tenebatur.--VINCENTIUS LIRINENSIS, _Adversus Hæreses_, § 20. PREFACE. I am unwilling that this volume should go forth to the world without some account of its origin and of its contents. I. Appointed last year, (without solicitation on his part,) to the office of Select Preacher, the present writer was called upon at the commencement of the October Term to address the University. His Sermon, (the first in the volume,) was simply intended to embody the advice which he had already orally given to every Undergraduate who had sought counsel at his hands for many years past in Oxford; advice which, to say the truth, he was almost weary of repeating. Nothing more weighty or more apposite, at all events, presented itself, for an introductory address: nor has a review of the current of religious opinion, either before or since, produced any change of opinion as to the importance of what was on that first occasion advocated.