Sir,
It has been our custom until now, who were appointed by the author to this service, to inscribe or dedicate the several treatises we have put forth, to some or other of his special friends, as proofs of our fidelity in discharging the trust reposed in us, and special emblems of the author's great abilities. For if in every trivial and small epistle, a man does imprint upon the paper some pieces of his soul, he does it much more doubtless in his studied exercises, wherein he cannot but conceive his memory may live, and some part of himself be kept alive, and sweet to all posterity.
If he could say, 'I shall not wholly die,' because he was a poet, and think his poem a monument that time itself would not be able to devour — how much more may he say it who draws himself to the life in an immortal dye, and writes such characters as are not subject to decay and perish? For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass: the grass withers, and the flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever — and this is the word which by the gospel is preached to you (1 Peter 1:24-25).
Seeing therefore it has pleased God to preserve these pieces yet alive, and after long deferring and desiring, to produce and bring them forth to public view, we have thought good, in a prime and special manner to entitle you to them, and to send them out to the world under the covert and shadow of your name.
For seeing it pleased the author to choose your habitation, wherein to put off and lay up his — then decaying and declining — body, why should it not be proper and convenient to send these living and surviving pieces of his soul to attend it? Considering especially how much his body heretofore had waited on his soul, which otherwise, in human probability, might still have been alive.
Neither is there any doubt, but these vigorous and useful breathings of his spirit will find access and entertainment where his languid, and at last breathless, body did. Especially these, which may more properly be counted his than anything that has yet seen the light — and this we dare be bold to say for these: that none of them did more express the author to the life.
Those that did either know him in his lifetime, or since have much and frequently perused his writings, shall find these three things everywhere occurring.
The foulness of sin, the freeness of grace, and the fullness of duty — which in other pieces only scattered and sparkling here and there, are here collected under proper heads, and handled so professedly and clearly, as nothing more concerning them can be desired.
In the first are the danger and deformity of sin, driving the spouse to sad and low expressions of herself, as those virgins were commanded (Deuteronomy 21:11-13) — even to shave her head, and pare her nails, and bewail her father and her mother — that is, her natural and inbred evils and corruptions.
In the second is the glorious freeness of the grace of Christ, receiving this dejected and humbled captive to favor, and — with that great King (Esther 5:2) — reaching forth the golden scepter of his love and mercy to her, not only to the pardon and forgiveness of all her sin, but entitling her also to all things. For all things are hers — whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come — all are hers, because she is Christ's (1 Corinthians 3:21-22).
In the third, the fullness of her duty is pressed upon her. For the grace of God that brings salvation does no sooner appear to any man, but it teaches to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world (Titus 2:11-12). Just as before, Ahasuerus had the virgins purified that were to approach his bed, with various and costly powders and perfumes (Esther 2:12, etc.), so Christ, when once the soul is faithfully espoused to him, perfumes and washes her in his most precious blood, and beautifies her with a variety of graces, that he may present her to himself a glorious spouse, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blame (Ephesians 5:27).
And now what remains, but that these treatises crave shadow and protection from you — indeed, own you for their patron? Does not the low and humble posture of your mind entitle you to the first? Your high opinion of free grace, to the second? And your holy and spotless carriage, to the third? Having so just a title — besides other engagements — by this threefold claim, it is but justice to call your name upon it; and, by your acceptance of it, you shall show friendship to this posthumous work, and especially oblige
Your already much obliged and engaged, Thomas Goodwin, Thomas Ball.
