LYMAN BEECHER, D. D. PRESIDENT OF LANE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE SYNOD OF CINCINNATI. CINCINNATI: PUBLISHED BY TRUMAN AND SMITH. NEW YORK: LEAVITT, LORD AND CO. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1836, BY TRUMAN AND SMITH, In the Clerk's Office for the District Court of Ohio. CINCINNATI: INTRODUCTION. TO THE SYNOD OF CINCINNATI. BELOVED BRETHREN: I AVAIL myself of the earliest opportunity permitted by prior engagements, to comply with your request, that I would publish at as early a day as possible, a concise statement of the argument and design of my Sermon on Native Depravity, and of my views of total depravity, original sin, and regeneration, agreeably to my declaration and explanation before Synod.' I am cheered in this attempt by the consideration that the Synod saw nothing in my views, as explained by myself, to justify any suspicion of unsoundness in the faith,' and expressed their entire satisfaction with the terms of my acquiescence in their decision, and their belief that nothing insuperable remained to prevent my usefulness, or impair confidence in me, as a minister of the gospel in the Presbyterian church. I am cheered, because, though my doctrinal opinions have been unchanged from the beginning, and have been published often, and are in accordance, as I suppose, with the received expositions of the Confession of Faith, and the Bible, and have seemed to receive some token of Divine approbation, and as eternity approaches are increasingly precious to my own soul, it is nevertheless true that I had fallen under suspicions. The causes of these suspicions, I shall not stop to explain; nor am I disposed to regard them with entire disapprobation. In one view, I regard them with pleasure, as evidence of a |