DR. SOUTHEY has remarked, in his Life of Wesley, that "the history of men who have been prime agents in those great moral and intellectual revolutions, which from time to time take place among mankind, is not less important than that of statesmen and conquerors—and there may come a time when the name of WESLEY will be more generally known, and in remoter regions of the globe, than those of kings and czarinas. For the works of such men survive them, and continue to operate, when nothing remains of worldly ambition but the memory of its vanity and guilt."
This fifth edition of Wesley's Works, the First Complete and Standard American Edition, and the first ever stereotyped in any country, will greatly contribute to verify the above prophetic passage. It will be read throughout the American continent. Even before its completion, orders had been received for it from regions extending from our northeastern to our southwestern borders; and from the shores of the Atlantic, nearly to the base of the Rocky Mountains, which form the western limit of the great valley of the Mississippi; regions where but recently, savage men and savage beasts were the sole and undisturbed possessors. And as the ever thickening and spreading population shall extend itself over the length and breadth of the land, so also the Gospel, through the enterprise and zeal of its itinerant heralds, under the admirable system revived and established by MR. WESLEY, will spread and radicate itself, and Wesley's Works with it, till time shall be no more. This is our belief: and with these views, we have incurred the expense, and been at the pains, to produce an edition of these Works in a form at once complete and permanent.
The first and second volumes contain MR. WESLEY'S Sermons, including two more than were ever published in any of our former editions of these invaluable Discourses. The whole constitute one of the best bodies of divinity extant in the English language. They are written in a style of great purity, simplicity, and energy; and are models of brevity, perspicuity, and chaste elegance, as well as of sound doctrine. At the close of the second volume, we have added "Notes on the Sermons," consisting chiefly of translations of such passages in foreign languages, ancient or modern, as had been left untranslated by MR. WESLEY; with brief notices of a few other things.
The third and fourth volumes comprise MR. WESLEY'S Journal, from October 1735, to its close in October 1790, a few months before his death; embracing a period of more than fifty-five years; together with is Last Will and Testament, and the Deed of Declaration, designating