First edition, very rare. After Riddoch’s death in 1779, his old friend James Beattie, professor of moral philosophy at Marischal College in Aberdeen from 1760, promised Riddoch’s poverty-striken widow that he would edit his sermons for publication. By April the following year, though, he was writing to William Forbes:

'I have, since the college broke up, been hard at work upon Mr. Riddoch’s manuscript sermons; but I have only got through five of them, and there are still twenty-five before me. Never did I engage in a more troublesome business. There is not a sentence, there is hardly a line, that does not need correction. This is owing partly to the extreme innacuracy of the writing, but chiefly to the peculiarity of the style; an endless string of climaxes; … the unmeasurable length of the sentences; and such a profusion of superfluous words, as I have never before seen in any composition. To cure all these diseases is impossible … yet, to do my old friend justice, I must confess, that the sermons have, in many places, great energy, and even eloquence, and abound in shrewd remarks, and striking sentiments.'

The two volumes finally appeared, without acknowledgment of Beattie’s involvement, in 1782, and are unaccountably rare. ESTC shows three copies only: National Library of Scotland, and Aberdeen (2 copies).