206813 1 - TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY MONARCH, OUR DEAR AND DREAD SOVEREIGN LORD, JAMES, BY THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD, KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND IRELAND, THE MOST WORTHY AND MOST ABLE DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, AND MOST GRACIOUS PATRON OF THE CHURCH; ALL PEACE AND HAPPINESS. MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN: I CANNOT so over-love this issue of my own brain *, as to hold it worthy of your Majesty's judicious eyes; much less of the highest patronage under heaven: yet now, my very duty hath bidden me look so high, and tells me it would be no less than injurious, if I should not lay down my work, where I owe my service; and that I should offend, if I presume not. Besides; whither should the rivers run, but into the sea? It is to your Majesty (under the Highest) that we owe both these sweet opportunities of good, and all the good fruits of these happy opportunities: if we should not, therefore, freely offer to your Majesty some præmetial handfuls of that crop, whereof you may challenge the whole harvest, how could we be but shamelessly unthankful? I cannot praise my present, otherwise than by the truth of that heart from which it proceedeth: only this I may say, that seldom any man hath offered to your royal hands a greater bundle of his own thoughts (some whereof, as it must needs fall out amongst so many, have been confessed profitable), nor perhaps more variety of discourse. For here shall your Majesty find Morality, like a good handmaid, waiting on Divinity; and Divinity, like some great lady, every day in several dresses: Speculation interchanged with Experience; Positive Theology with Polemical; Textual with Discursory; Popular with Scholastical. This is the original Dedication, prefixed to the first volume of the works, when collected by the author in folio.-H. |