| Summary: | "The author of these writings, is a person of great learning, great judgment and wisdom, and of great virtue and piety. He hath written diverse learned and compleat works upon other subjects, but for these writings here published, they were written, as were also many others of the like nature, ex tempore and upon this occasion, it hath been his custom for many years, every Lord's Day in the afternoon after evening sermon (between that and supper-time) to employ his thoughts upon several subjects of divine contemplations: and as things came into his thoughts, so he put them into writing; which he did for these two reasons. 1. That he might the more fix his thoughts, and keep them from diversion, and wandring. 2. That they might remain, and not be lost by forgetfulness or other interventions. And as this was the occasion and manner of his writing them, so this doubtless was all that he intended in them, unless moreover to communicate them to his children or some particular friends in private upon occasion: but for publishing them, certainly he had not the least thoughts of any such things much less hath he revised them for that purpose; nor so much as read over some of them since he wrote them; nor indeed so much as finished some of them. Nay so far was he from any thoughts of publishing them, that when he was importuned but to give his consent to the publication of them, he could not be prevailed with to do it. And therefore that they are now published, the reader must know that they are published not only in their native and primogeneal simplicity, but without so much as the Author's privity to it"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).
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