In all respects, this was an unwise publication. Prefixed to it is a somewhat egotistic and ostentatious address, "To all the true members of Christ's holy Church," in which Whitefield says:-- "As the whole of this great nation seems now more than ever in danger of being hurried into one or other of these equally pernicious extremes--irreligion or fanaticism--I thought myself more than ordinarily obliged to rouse your, perhaps, drowsy vigilance, by warning you of the nearness of your peril. Take the friendly caution I give you in good part, and endeavour to profit by it. Be mindless of me, and attend wholly to the saving truths I here deliver to you from the mouth of God Himself. Of this only be persuaded, that they are uttered by one who has your eternal salvation as much at heart as his own." The chief faults, however, of this sermonic pamphlet are its pious, but personal abuse of Dr. Trapp. The minister of the four churches of St. Leonard's, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Christ Church, and Harlington, merited rebuke; but Whitefield's epithets and strictures were of greater service to Dr. Trapp than to the man who wrote them. With all his faults, Dr. Trapp was a distinguished man. At different periods of his life, he had been Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford; in the same college he had been appointed to the first Birkhead professorship of poetry; he had filled the office of chaplain to Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor of Ireland; and he had published several poetical and other works, of one of which the University of Oxford had marked their approval, by conferring upon him the degree of D.D. Further, he was now in his sixtieth year, and therefore much more than twice the age of Whitefield. His attack on young Whitefield had been fierce, almost savage; Whitefield's retaliatory attack was what? The reader must judge for himself. Whitefield writes:--