an

EXPOSITION

of the

EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL

to the

COLOSSIANS,

by

THE RIGHT REV. JOHN DAVENANT, D.D.

lord bishop of salisbury;

president of queen’s college, and lady margaret’s professor of divinity in cambridge:

originally delivered, in a series of lectures, before the university.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN;

with a life of the author,

AND NOTES

illustrative of the writers and authorities referred to in the work:

BY JOSIAH ALLPORT,

minister of st. james’s, birmingham

to the whole is added, a translation of

dissertatio de morte christi,

by the same prelate

Quæ Pauli Epistola non melle dulcior, lacte candidior?—Ambr. Serm. 68

VOL. I.

london:

hamilton, adams, and co.

birmingham:

beilby, knott, and beilby

mdcccxxxi.

After the Original Picture in Queens College, Cambridge

John Davenant.

Bishop of Salisbury,

Died April 20th 1641

LONDON

to

his most gracious majesty

KING WILLIAM IV.

Sire,

IT is a cause of joy to your grateful subjects to behold your Majesty uniformly evincing a lively interest in, and attention to, whatever is adapted to promote the welfare and increase the happiness of your subjects. Her Majesty the Queen, your Royal Consort, also proves herself a help-meet indeed in all that can second your beneficent aims—can render your Court exemplary in character, beneficial in influence, and attractive to the virtuous, the patriotic, and the good—and can secure to you both the affections of your subjects, and the protection and blessing of heaven.

Sire, it is the operation and the love of true Religion, with obedience to that Righteousness which is its essence, that exalts a nation—ennobles its princes—and will be the safeguard of them and their people. That Religion and Righteousness were never elucidated, at large, in a human composition, with greater excellence of manner, or power of argument, than in the Volumes here presented to your Majesty’s approbation; the matter of which was put forth two centuries ago in the Latin language, and has never before been published in English.

In presuming to lay before your Majesty’s subjects, in their vernacular tongue, this incomparable Exposition of a most interesting portion of the Word of God, to whom could the individual who has ventured on the hardy task, under all the considerations connected with it, crave permission to dedicate this Edition, but to your Majesty, whom the Providence of God has placed as a Nursing-Father over the Church of which he is an unworthy Minister.

Should your Majesty, and your Royal Consort, deign to give any countenance to the performance of one, who rests all his claim thereto on the unrivalled merits and the unspeakable utility of his Author, and who would not permit himself to aspire to it on any lower grounds, your Majesty may, by such condescension, be instrumental in promoting the welfare of the Church; for your countenance will commend to the attention of many, a work singularly adapted to impress upon the judgment those principles, which will be influential, where ...