To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Tichborne, Lord Mayor: Together with the Honourable Court of Aldermen of the Renowned City of London

Greatly Honoured,

This imperfect piece, and almost born out of due time, puts itself forth into the world by your command, but like Zarah giving out the hand, the body to which that appertained remaining still in the womb. For this sermon is but one member (and indeed, not so much the hand, as the foot, that is, the latter part) of a larger bulk or body of sermons, preached just before elsewhere upon those foregoing verses of this chapter. My real purpose (after your order for this one) was to have presented the whole entire discourse to you, and I found not time, so much as leisure, and spirits failing me in the performance. I have therefore done as the midwife for that child did (in the same Genesis 38:28) bound upon this foot (for by your force, and in obedience to you, it comes wrong and backward) this scarlet thread of dedication, saying (as she) this is come forth first: that if hereafter the rest may see the light, you may know (if you will grant it) how to own and appropriate them all as yours, as being thus consecrated to you by these (in respect of the publication) the first-fruits of that whole lump.

And now, what is my earnest desire and prayer for you? But according to the tendency of the matter, it might be blessed to be a helper to your faith, against the time of your being unclothed of your flesh, your going into another world: where you all profess to look for another, and better city, that is, a heavenly one, whose maker and builder is God, who has or must work us for the self-same thing, or we perish everlastingly.

And, my Lord,

I have particularly directed it to wait on your honour in the contemplation of this very aim, as a signal whereof, Providence, and not my design, having seemed to give forth this semblance in that it allotted no other season (for it could not come forth one day sooner) for its attendance on you, but the very day of your being unclothed of your office (which are little civil deaths) and going out of this your transitory government over this great city (the best, and best governed in the world.) But the honour of this performed among us, you still remain clothed with, and will ever wear, indeed, and be clothed upon to a glory for it at the latter day.

Those things even now said to you all, being the brief collect of this ensuing sermon, I turn into a prayer for you all, who am

Your true honorer and servant in the gospel, Thomas Goodwin. Magdalen College, Oxford. October 23, 1657.