The Author, at an early period of his Ministry, was accustomed to send daily to a sick friend a few words of spiritual comfort or admonition, in the shape of an extract from some approved Theological writer. He thus formed the habit of transcribing passages, as they struck him in the course of his reading; a practice, which he afterwards continued for his own edification. Subsequently, it occurred to him that his selections might furnish the means of illustrating and enforcing particular texts of Scripture. He therefore transferred them to an interleaved New Testament, adapting them, as he went on, and, in order to fill up the many unavoidably vacant Spaces, borrowing from different Commentators; until the gradual accumulations of many years at length assumed the form of a Collecta on the Sacred Volume.
