Excerpt from Immanuel, or a Discovery of True Religion, as It Imports a Living Principle in the Minds of Men, Vol. 1: To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author, and a Discourse Concerning Communion With God Amongst the many stupendous spectacles that are wont to surprise and amuse inquisitive minds, there seems to be nothing in the world of a sadder and more astonishing observation, than the small progress and propagation of the christian religion. This I call a sad observation, because religion is a matter of the most weighty and necessary im portance, without which it is not possible for an immortal soul to be perfected and made happy: I call it astonishing, because the christian religion hath in itself such advantages of recommending itself to the minds of men, and contains in it such mighty engines to work them into an hearty compliance with it, and to captivate their reason unto itself, as no other religion in the world can with any face pretend to. I do earnestly, and I suppose rationally and scripturally hope that this veritas magna, those sacred oracles will yet more prevail, and that the founder of this most excellent religion, who was lifted up upon the cross, and is now exalted to his throne, will yet draw more men unto himself: and this, perhaps, is all the millennium that we can war rantably look for. But, in the mean time, it is too too evident, that the kingdom of satau doth more obtain in the world, than the gospel of Christ, either in the letter, or power of it. As to the former, if we will receive the pro bable conjecture of learned inquirers, we shall not find above one sixth part of the known world yet christianized, or giving so much as an external adoration to the crucified Jesus. As to the latter, I will not be so bold as to make any arithmetical conjectures, but judge it more necessary. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.