Parentator. Memoirs of remarkables in the life and the death of the ever-memorable Dr.…

I am no Pretender to what some have been Commended for, The Art of good Narrative And therefore, as for the Style of this Narrative, I will make no Excuses, till you, Gentlemen-Critics, first can show your Patent for your Criticising, and who Constituted You to be Censors for the rest of Mankind; and until you are better agreed among yourselves, upon the Rules of Criticising; for I cannot Learn that there are any Two of you, but what are Intolerably Severe and Cruel in your Censures upon ⟨p. vi⟩one another. I acknowledge, That I am too liable to an Infirmity, of Salting my Sentences now and then with short, Instructive, and Unforced Intermixtures of something or other that I have Read of; but as I was upon Reforming it, I stumbled upon a Passage in a Letter of Monsr. Tournefort unto the Lord Pontchartrain, You gave me leave to insert some touches of Erudition, to heighten the Subjects treated of▪ And I fancy such Additions will, make them the less tiresome: And this a little hardened me. However, having Exhibited the Lives of about Seventy Ministers, all Published in one Volume, and the Characters of near Twenty more, at several times in more Separate Publications, it can't well be expected, that I should be very Liberal in dealing out those intermixed Embellishments, which make a Narrative less Tedious to the Sons of Erudition: or have my Speech Seasoned with so many Grains of Salt as it use to be. And yet I can truly say, I have Studiously laid aside that Care of Embellishing: I have dropped a World of what some would count Ornaments, which while I was Writing Offered themselves unto my Mind; Resolving upon a Plain, Simple, Honest Narrative of ma•ters, which alone would by being so Remarkable afford a continual Feast unto the Readers. And indeed there is a Truth in what Pliny says Honest factis Veritas Sufficit.

I am no Pretender to what some have been Commended for, The Art of good Narrative And therefore, as for the Style of this Narrative, I will make no Excuses, till you, Gentlemen-Criticks, first can show your Patent for your Criticising, and who Constituted You to be Censors for the rest of Mankind; and until you are better agreed among yourselves, upon the Rules of Criticising; for I cannot Learn that there are any Two of you, but what are Intolerably Severe and Cruel in your Censures upon ⟨p. vi⟩