I Have at length yielded to your Importunity; and do here offer these Sermons to public view, and your own; which were, one day the last Summer, preached under your roof; attributing more to your pious design herein, than to my own reasons against it. I no farther insist upon the incongruity, having divers years ago published a small Treatise of Self-dedication, now again to ⟨image 3⟩send abroad another on the same Subject. For the way of Tractation is here very different; this may fall into the hands of divers, who have never seen the other; and however, they who have read the other, have it in their choice whether they will trouble themselves with this or no. And tho' your purpose which you urged me with, of lodging one of these little Books in each family of the hearers, might have been answered by so disposing of many a better Book already extant; yet you having told me how greatly you observed them to be moved by these plain Discourses, considering the peculiar advantage of reading what had been, with some acceptance and relish heard before (through that greater vigour that accompanies the Ordinance of ⟨image 3⟩Preaching to an Assembly, than doth usually the solitary first reading of the same thing) I was not willing to run the hazard of incurring a guilt, by refusing a thing so much desired, and which, through God's blessing, might contribute something, tho' in never so low a degree, to the saving of mens Souls. I could not indeed, as I told you, undertake to recollect every thing that was spoken, according to that latitude, and freedom of expression, wherewith it was fit to inculcate momentous things, to a plain Country-Auditory. But I have omitted nothing I could call to mind. Being little concerned that the more curious may take notice, with dislike, how much, in a work of this kind, I prefer plainness (tho' they may call it rudeness) ⟨image 4⟩of speech, before that which goes for wisdom of words, or the most laboured Periods.
I Have at length yielded to your Importunity; and do here offer these Sermons to publick view, and your own; which were, one day the last Summer, preached under your roof; attributing more to your pious design herein, than to my own reasons against it. I no farther insist upon the incongruity, having divers years ago published a small Treatise of Self-dedication, now again to ⟨image 3⟩send abroad another on the same Subject. For the way of Tractation is here very different; this may fall into the hands of divers, who have never seen the other; and however, they who have read the other, have it in their choice whether they will trouble themselves with this or no. And tho' your purpose which you urged me with, of lodging one of these little Books in each family of the hearers, might have been answered by so disposing of many a better Book already extant; yet you having told me how greatly you observed them to be moved by these plain Discourses, considering the peculiar advantage of reading what had been, with some acceptance and relish heard before (through that greater vigour that accompanies the Ordinance of ⟨image 3⟩Preaching to an Assembly, than doth usually the solitary first reading of the same thing) I was not willing to run the hazard of incurring a guilt, by refusing a thing so much desired, and which, through God's blessing, might contribute something, tho' in never so low a degree, to the saving of mens Souls. I could not indeed, as I told you, undertake to recollect every thing that was spoken, according to that latitude, and freedom of expression, wherewith it was fit to inculcate momentous things, to a plain Countrey-Auditory. But I have omitted nothing I could call to mind. Being little concern'd that the more curious may take notice, with dislike, how much, in a work of this kind, I prefer plainness (tho' they may call it rudeness) ⟨image 4⟩of speech, before that which goes for wisdom of words, or the most laboured Periods.
