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these sheets, as that unknown person sent them to me; whom I never saw, as far as I remember; and who will not suffer me to give any other account of him, but that he lives in one of the universities. His copy of my work being of the second edition, only some very few of the errors marked that had crept into the second, but that were not in the first edition, are struck out. In several particulars I do not perfectly agree with these corrections; but I set them down as they were sent me, without any remarks on them; and I give my hearty thanks in the fullest manner I can, to him who was first at the pains to make this collection, and then had the goodness to communicate it to me in so obliging a manner: for he gave me a much greater power over these papers than I have thought fit to assume.

The next paper is a much shorter one. It is indeed the abstract of a larger paper, but I have taken out of it only that which relates to my History and have not meddled with some remarks made on Harmer's Specimen, and many more made on the Rights of an English Convocation. These did not belong to my subject, so I have not copied them out. The writer has not let me know his name; he sent the sheets to me in an unsubscribed letter, to which I wrote an answer by the conveyance that he marked out to me but I have heard no more of him.

The sixth and last paper was sent me by the sincere and diligent Mr. Strype, who has descended to such a full and minute correction, both of my History, and of my copies of the Records, that I confess it gave me great satisfaction: many of his corrections may seem so inconsiderable, that it may be suggested that they were not worth the while. But my whole concern in writing being to deliver the transactions of a former age faithfully down to posterity, nothing could please me more than to have every error I had fallen into discovered; and it was no small satisfaction to me to find, that a writer, who has been now above thirty years' examining all that passed in that age, and has made great discoveries of many secrets hitherto not known; and who was so kind as to pass over nothing, how small and inconsiderable soever it may appear to be, that was liable to correction; yet did not touch upon any one thing that is of any moment in my whole work. This I look on as a very authentic confirmation of it all, except in the places thus censured by one who has searched into all the transactions of that time with so much application and success.

This work was composed above a year ago; and after it was read and corrected by some proper judges, it was put

in the press, and was printed off to the end of King Edward's reign, before the 1st of August last: nor has any thing been added to it since that time, except some very few particulars in the last book relating to Scotland.

I cannot conclude this preface, and so dismiss this work out of my hands, without some reflections on what has appeared among us of late, but too evidently, in a course of some years. Many, who profess great zeal for the legal establishment, yet seem to be set on forming a new scheme, both of religion and government; and are taking the very same methods, only a little diversified, that have been pursued in popery, to bring the world into a blind dependence upon the clergy, and to draw the wealth and strength of the nation into their hands.

The opinion of the sacrament's being an expiatory sacrifice, and of the necessity of secret confession and absolution, and of the church's authority acting in an independence on the civil power, were the foundations of popery, and the seminal principles out of which that mass of corruptions was formed. They have no colour for them in the New Testament, nor in the first ages of Christianity; and are directly contrary to all the principles on which the Reformation was carried on; and to every step that was made in the whole progress of that work; and yet these of late have been notions much favoured, and written for with much zeal, not to say indecency; besides a vast number of little superstitious practices, that in some places have grown to a great height, so that we were insensibly going off from the Reformation, and framing a new model of a church, totally different from all our former principles, as well as from our present establishment: to all which they have added that singular and extravagant conceit, of the invalidity of baptism, unless ministered by one episcopally ordained; though this not only cuts off all communion with the foreign protestant churches, of which, perhaps, they make no great account, but makes doubtings to arise with relation to great numbers, both among ourselves, and in the Roman communion.

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This I lament; not that I think that there is such a sacredness in any human constitution, that it is never to be called in question, or altered for if we had the same reasons to alter any thing established at the Reformation, that our fathers had to alter the former establishment in the times of popery, I should acknowledge we had now as good grounds to change the present, as our ancestors had then to change the former constitution. The Scriptures are the

only sure foundation of our faith that is unalterable: all other constitutions being always to be governed by that perfect declaration of God's holy will with relation to mankind. But it gives a just indignation, to see the same men make wide steps to great alterations on the one hand, and yet make heavy complaints where there is no just occasion given, and that about points of mere speculation; whereas the other relate to matters of practice, which had been in former ages so managed, that the whole complex of the Christian religion was totally depraved by them.

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We have also rules and rubrics for worship, that are our standards, fixed by law and yet we see a humour of innovation making a great progress in these, without the least complaint, by the same persons who are apt to make tragical outcries on the smallest transgressions on the other hand.

Both are very culpable: but of the two, we find the growth of superstition has been so spreading, as well as so specious, that the extremes of that hand may be justly reckoned the more dangerous, one of the worst effects of superstition being that with which our Saviour charged the pharisees of his time, that while they were exact in “tithing mint, anise, and cummin, they omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." In opposition to which he gives a standing rule, applicable to all such cases, "These things ye ought to have done, and not to leave the other undone." This relates to practices of a lower order, but such as are commanded; whereas voluntary and assumed ones, like the washings among the Jews in our Saviour's time, eat out the sense of the great duties of religion; instead of which some trifling performances are set up, and are highly magnified, while the others are spoken of more coldly: nor does any thing feed a censorious and uncharitable temper more than these voluntary and distinguishing practices, which as they are the badges of different parties, so they are engines to keep up that wrath, emulation, and hatred, that have made such havoc among us, of the great and indispensable duties of " peace, brotherlykindness, and charity."

These have been but too visibly the arts of Satan to divide and distract us; and have oftener than once brought us near the brink of ruin. God has often rescued us, while the continuance and progress of these evil dispositions have as often made us relapse into a broken and disjointed state. Oh that we may at last" see the things that belong to our peace," and "follow after those things that make for peace,

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and the things wherewith we may edify one another!" In this prayer I will continue as long as I live, and I hope to end my days with it. We must ask it of God, and of him only it is in vain to ask it of some men, who, when we "speak to them of peace, make them ready to battle;" we must look for it only to him, who said, " Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you." The world will only give it to those of their own knot and party. But " the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated; full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy and the fruits of righteousness are sown in peace of them that make peace."

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INTRODUCTION.

I COME, after a long interval of three-and-thirty years, to give all the finishing to the History of our Reformation that I have been able to collect, either from new discoveries that have come in my own way, or the kind advertisements of friends, and the severe animadversions of critics; of which I have endeavoured to make the best use that I could. It has been objected to me, that I wrote in haste, and did not reflect enough on the matters I wrote about. That may be very true; and I will give an account how it happened to be So. When Sanders's History was published in France, it had so ill an effect there, that some of our best divines were often called on to hasten such an answer to it as might stop the course of so virulent a book. Those to whom these advices were sent thought me a proper person to be engaged in it.

The ancient, the learned, and the pious bishop of Worcester, is the only person now alive that was concerned in the choice and he having read all the printed books that he could hear of relating to those times, had taken the dates of every remarkable thing that passed out of them; which he caused to be copied out for me. They are about eight sheets of paper. Upon this stock I set out, and searched all the public offices about the town, with a labour and diligence that was then looked on as no contemptible performance. I marked every thing as exactly as I could. I might, in such a variety, make some mistakes, for which men of candour will make just allowances. But when I had gone through all that lay thus open to me, I knew what treasures were still in the Cotton Library.

The present bishop of Worcester carried me to Sir John Cotton, to ask admittance: but a great prelate had been beforehand with us; and had possessed him with such pre

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