But, are such prejudices new? or was the baneful root of them confined only to the regions of Judæa? No. In this land, and in this day, with all the advantages which we derive from the free circulation of the word of God, and from a national establishment so auspicious to the interests of truth, there are multitudes, who are ready to cry out, when they hear the gospel, as “certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics” did, when Paul preached at Athens, “Thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. May we know what this _new doctrine_, whereof thou speakest, is?” Acts, xvii. 19, 20. Thus, with many, to attribute novelty to a system, is the way to reprobate, and make it odious. And there are not a few, who satisfy themselves with no other argument for their unbelief, than that they may have happened not to hear before, what they contemptuously spurn. As if the nature of truth can be altered, or the credit of it shaken, by the want of previous acquaintance. We should have thought it a strange species of argumentation, had the Athenian philosophers attempted to demonstrate, that St. Paul’s doctrine must have been false, merely because it was new, and they happened not to hear it before. Yet upon this weak ground, do numbers reject the truth, and militate against their own happiness; while their conduct is as grossly repugnant to the dictates of calm reason and common sense, as it is reprobated by the voice of scripture. It will be a poor excuse, for any to make at the tribunal of Christ, that they contemned the great doctrines of revelation, merely because they thought them novel, when they neglected the opportunity of being convinced to the contrary; or that they adopted their ideas, and regulated their practice, by the maxims of the world. Such apologies, with all the mistake and precipitancy on which they are founded, may pass current now with those, who are credulous enough to drink in the monstrous absurdities of infidelity, whether ancient or modern. But, they will never satisfy those, who wishing to investigate truth at the fountain-head, like the noble Bereans, “search the scriptures daily, whether those things are so.” Acts, xvii. 11. And that none here may ignorantly plead such excuses, for their indifference or unbelief on a subject of such vast concern, I will endeavour, _First_, to show what the doctrine is which we preach, and on which we build our eternal all; and, _Secondly_, That this doctrine is no more justly chargeable with novelty, than it is with error; and, _Thirdly_, That other objections brought against the ministers of the gospel, are equally frivolous and undeserved.