A RATIONAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF EVERY THING LITURGICAL IN BISHOP SPARROW, MR. L'ESTRANGE, DR. COMBER, DR. NICHOLS, OR OTHERS, UPON THE SAME SUBJECT; COLLECTED AND REDUCED INTO ONE CONTINUED AND REGULAR METHOD, THE PREFACE. N a former edition of this book which was printed in folio, I was at rest. I was to bespeak his candour as to an entire new book, or whether only the continuance of it as to a new edition of an old one. I called it indeed the third edition in the title-page; though I think I had but little other reason for doing so, than my having twice published a treatise upon the same subject before. For scarce a fifth part of what I then offered to the world was printed from either of the former editions; nor had so much of them, as I have mentioned, been continued entire, had I foreseen how little I should have confined myself to the But when it first went to the press, I had no other design than to have reprinted it exactly from the second edition; except that I had yielded to the request of the booksellers, who being encouraged by the quick sale of two large impressions in a smaller volume, were willing to run the hazard of one in a larger size. This was all the alteration I proposed: nor did I think of any other, till the introductory discourse, the whole first chapter, and great part of the second, were worked off from the press; which therefore, for the most part, stand just as they did before, and not in the method into which I should have thrown them, had I known from the beginning what alterations I should have made. However the reader will have no reason to complain; since though the form would have been different, the arguments notwithstanding must have been much the same: and they sure will appear to a better advantage by standing entire, and in the light they are set by the authors themselves, from whom I have borrowed them; than if they had been broke into comments and notes, and produced in parcels, as the rubricks would have required: which was the method I afterwards thought fit to pursue *. For when I observed at the close of * I desire that what I have said may be principally understood of the introductory discourse (which is almost verbally transcribed from Dr. Bennet's Brief History of the joint Use of precomposed set Forms of Prayer) and of the three first sections of the second chapter; for the first of which I am partly obliged to bishop Beveridge's discourse on the Necessity and Advantage of Publick Prayer; for the second, to Dr. Cave's Primitive Christianity; and for the third, to Mr. Roberts's excellent sermon at the primary visitation of the late bishop of Exeter, at Oakhampton. The two |