In reply to your correspondent C. PAINE, JUN. I beg to say that this University has recently requested me to undertake the completion of Ussher's works. Dr. Elrington has left about half the fourteenth volume printed off: but I have found considerable difficulty in ascertaining what he intended to print, or what ought to be printed, in the remaining half. The printed portion contains the archbishop's Theological Lectures, in reply to Bellarmine, never before published.[2] I have found amongst Dr. Elrington's papers a volume of sermons (a MS. of the latter half of the seventeenth century), which are attributed, in the MS. itself, to Ussher; but the authenticity of these sermons is, it appears to me, very doubtful. I therefore hesitate to print them. [Footnote 2: Elrington's Life of _Ussher_, p. 26.] I am anxious to find a treatise on the Seventy Weeks, by Ussher, which I have some reason to think once existed in MS. This tract, with another on the question of the Millennium, from Rev. xx. 4., formed the exercises which he performed for the degree of D.D., at the commencement of the University in 1612: and I remember Dr. Elrington telling me (if I did not mistake his meaning), that he intended to print them in the fourteenth volume. My difficulty is, that I cannot find them amongst Ussher's MSS., and I do not know where they are to be had. Some imperfect fragments on the Seventy Weeks are preserved in MS. in Trinity College Library, in Ussher's autograph; but they are far too crude and unfinished for publication. The _Bibliotheca Theologica_, a work on the same plan as Cave's _Scriptores Ecclesiastici_, exists in MS. in the Bodleian Library, and a copy from the Bodleian MS. is in Dublin. This work has not been included in Dr. Elrington's edition; and I remember his discussing the subject with me, and deciding not to print it. His reasons were these:--1. It is an unfinished work, which the archbishop did not live to complete. 2. It is full of errors, which our present increased materials and knowledge of the subject would easily enable us to correct; but the correction of them would swell the work to a considerable extent. 3. The work was used, and is frequently quoted by Cave, who seems to have published the most valuable parts of it. Its publication, therefore, would not add anything to our knowledge, whilst it would probably detract, however unfairly, from the archbishop's reputation: for the public seldom make allowances for an unfinished work. 4. It would probably make _three_, if not _four_ volumes; and Dr. Elrington did not think its publication of sufficient importance to warrant so great an addition to the cost and bulk of the Works. The _System of Theology_ having been disclaimed by Ussher himself (although it is quoted as his by the Committee of the Privy Council in their decision of the "Gorham Case"), has not been included by Dr. Elrington in the collection of Ussher's works.