The little verses now before the reader were written at the desire of my most worthy and honoured friend, the Reverend Mr. Clark of St. Albans, and are published at his request, as what he hopes may, by the divine blessing, do some good in the rising generation. I was the more willing to undertake the task, because I had often observed with how much ease and pleasure children learn verses by heart, how fond they are of repeating them, and, by consequence, how much longer they retain them than they do what they learn in prose...

Doddridge defines 'inspiration' and explains in what sense the New Testament writers are self-aware in their claim to it and the logical incoherence of their various statements if they were uninspired.