, very few writers please me more. I will rejoice
if the plan you propose shall be the means of producing a new edition of
his works, which are far less known than they deserve to be, and have
hitherto been chiefly in the hands of that class of persons least
qualified for relishing some of his distinguishing excellencies." There
can be little doubt, as Dr. M'Crie has here hinted, that in Binning's
discourses, there is occasionally an apparent neglect of order and method,
and that we could have wished, for the sake of his hearers particularly,
or with a view to attract attention and assist the memory, he had more
frequently stated the outlines of his plan in two or three general heads.
But few surely will feel sorry that his eloquent periods are not broken
down into detached fragments, or will wish that he had substituted a dry
detail of disjointed particulars for his powerful and impassioned appeals
to the understanding and feelings of his auditors. Few will wish that he
had discussed all his texts in the way he has handled 1 Tim. i. 5.(55) The
presbytery of Glasgow prescribed to him this text as the subject of one of
his probationary discourses. That is the reason, probably, that his
sermons upon it are composed upon a different plan from his others, and
more in accordance with the conventional mode of the day.

Although Binning held the doctrine of predestination, in what the enemies
of that scriptural doctrine consider its most repulsive form, being, like
Samuel Rutherford, and David Dickson, the author of Therapeutica Sacia,
and many other eminent divines of that time, a supralapsarian, he was far
from exacting in others a rigid conformity to his particular opinions. It
is impossible not to admire the Christian spirit that dictated the
following passage in one of his sermons, "If we search the scriptures, we
shall find that they do not entertain us with many and subtile discourses
of God's nature, and decrees, and properties, nor do they insist upon the
many perplexed questions that are made concerning Christ and his offices,
about which so many volumes are spun out, to the infinite distinction of
the Christian world. They do not pretend to satisfy your curiosity, but to
edify your souls, and therefore they hold out God in Christ, as clothed
with all his relations to mankind, in all those plain and easy properties,
that concern us everlastingly,--his justice, mercy, grace, patience, love,
holiness, and such like. Now,