To the Christian Reader
The following discourses of our most reverend author contain his judicious and pious thoughts, upon the third chapter to the end of the First Epistle of St. Peter, which together with the commentary on the first and second chapters, published the last year, make a complete and useful explication of that whole epistle. They might have been all of one impression, and so have come into your hands at the same time, and in one volume, had not some prudent considerations obliged us to change the printer: however we have taken care so to print this second part, that it may conveniently be bound up with the first; and there is little loss by the delay, but that of time, which perhaps is not so much neither, but that it may (with more profit to you) be happily redeemed.
I know that some do not relish the phrase and contexture of such discourses; but I am on the other hand assured by others, very able and competent judges of such performances, that they are highly valuable in their whole scope and tendency: for they think that they not only contain the purity of doctrine according to Scripture, but also the life and spirit of Christian morals; and that they happily cement together, and bear in upon the heart right notions of God and religion with solid piety: in a word, that, as they are written by a primitive spirit and in a plain style, so they may, through God's grace, sow the seeds of primitive devotion, which is too much worn out in this age; the seat of which is more in the heart, than in the head. If they serve in any measure those great ends, our labor is highly rewarded.
Let such then, as shall reap this benefit by these well designed papers, be pleased to know, that it is not so much to me, as to the pious zeal and care of our great and now blessed author's surviving relations, that they owe this happy enjoyment: whose virtue and piety afford matter enough for a large preface, if their modesty did not so awfully restrain my too forward inclinations, that I must content myself to say, that they now live like him, whom they tenderly loved while he was among them; and that as he did, so they make it their business to do good, without letting the world know of it. It has been at their charge and pressing desire, that all those papers that are already printed, have been copied out, prepared for the press, and published. They neither proposed to themselves, nor expect any other advantage but your edification, and therein the glory of God; rich returns indeed, and which nothing can rob them of, but merely your unproficiency, and if that happen (which God forbid) the loss shall be more yours than theirs.
I was not willing that such good ends should be obstructed by my declining any part of the trouble that fell to my share; on the contrary I considered it a duty I owed first to God, and then to the memory of the excellent author, whose divine conversation and wonderful example, gave me early and powerful resolutions to dedicate myself to God, and the service of his Church.
In my performance I have done my best (though short of what I wished) to serve you; there remains in our hands some brief but lively discourses upon the Epistle to the Ephesians, upon the Decalogue, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, which possibly may be made public in a convenient time. When this is done, I think we have ended all we intend to publish at present. Let us therefore set about the reformation of our lives, in the use of these means, depending upon God for the success; and that he by his free grace and good Spirit, may enable you and me, by this and all other helps, which this age affords, to make greater and greater advances towards heaven, and so to finish our course with joy, is and shall be the hearty prayer of,
Your servant in the Lord, I. Fall. York, March 13th, 1694.
