most humbly lay before Your MAJESTY, with the profoundest respect and fubmiffion. May God preferve Your MAJESTY, till You have gloriously finished what You have fo wonderfully carried on. All that You have hitherto fet about, how fmall foever the beginnings and hopes were, has fucceeded in your hands, to the amazement of the whole world: the moft defperate face of affairs has been able to give You no ftop. Your MAJESTY feems born under an afcendant of Providence; and therefore, how low foever all our hopes are, either of raising the power of Religion, or of uniting those who profefs it; yet we have been taught to defpair of nothing that is once undertaken by Your MAJESTY. This will fecure to You the bleffing of the present and of all fucceeding ages, and a full reward in that glorious and immortal state that is before You: to which, that Your MAJESTY may have a fure, though a late admittance, is the daily and moft earnest prayer of, May it please Your MAJESTY, moft obedient, and most devoted Subject and Servant, GI. SARUM, C. G. PREFACE. IT has been often reckoned among the things that were wanting, that we had not a full and clear explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles, which are the fum of our doctrine, and the confeffion of our faith. The modefty of fome, and the caution of others, may have obliged them to let alone an undertaking, that might seem too affuming for any man to venture on, without a command from thofe who had authority to give it. It has been likewise often fuggefted, that thofe Articles feemed to be fo plain a tranfcript of St. Auftin's doctrine, in thofe much difputed points, concerning the Decrees of God, and the Efficacy of Grace, that they were not expounded by our Divines for that very reafon; fince the far greater number of them is believed to be now of a different opinion, I fhould have kept within the fame bounds, if I had not been first moved to undertake this work by that great Prelate, who then fate at the helm: and after that, determined in it by a command that was facred to me by refpect, as well as by duty. Our late Primate lived long enough to fee the defign finished. He read it over with an exactness that was peculiar to him. He employed fome weeks wholly in perufing it, and he corrected it with a care that defcended even to the fmalleft matters; and was fuch as he thought became the importance of this work. And when that was done, he returned it to me with a letter, that, as it was the laft I ever had from him, fo it gave the whole fuch a character, a 4 racter, that how much foever that might raise its value with true judges, yet in decency it must be fuppreffed by me, as being far beyond what any performance of mine could deferve. He gave fo favourable an account of it to our late bleffed Queen, that she was pleased to tell me, she would find leifure to read it: and the laft time that I was admitted to the honour of waiting on her, fhe commanded me to bring it to her. But fhe was foon after that carried to the fource, to the fountain of life, in whofe light fhe now fees both light and truth. So great a breach as was then made upon all our hopes, put a stop upon this, as well as upon much greater defigns. This work has lain by me ever fince: but has been often not only reviewed by myself, but by much better judges. The late moft learned Bishop of Worcester read it very carefully. He marked every thing in it that he thought needed a review; and his cenfure was in all points fubmitted to. He expreffed himself fo well pleafed with it to myself, and to fome others, that I do not think it becomes me to repeat what he said of it. Both the most reverend Archbishops, with feveral of the Bifhops, and a great many learned Divines, have alfo read it. I muft, indeed, on many accounts own, that they may be inclined to favour me too much, and to be too partial to me; yet they looked upon this work as a thing of that importance, that I have reason to believe they read it over feverely and if fomé small corrections may be taken for an indication that they faw no occafion for greater ones, I had this likewife from feveral of them. : Yet after all these approbations, and many repeated defires to me to publifh it, I do not pretend to impofe this upon the reader as the work of authority. For even our most reverend Metropolitans read it only as private divines, without fo fevere a canvaffing of all particulars as muft have been expected, if this had been intended to pafs for an au thorised thorised work under a public ftamp. Therefore my defign in giving this relation of the motives that led me first to compofe, and now to publish this, is only to juftify myself, both in the one and in the other, and to fhew that I was not led by any prefumption of my own, or with any defign to dictate to others. In the next place, I will give an account of the method in which I executed this defign. When I was a Profeffor of Divinity thirty years ago, I was then obliged to run over a great many of the fyftems and bodies of divinity that were writ by the chief men of the feveral divifions of Christendom. I found many things among them that I could not like the stiffness of method, the many dark terms, the niceties of logic, the artificial definitions, the heaviness as well as the fharpnefs of ftyle, and the diffufive length of them, difgufted me: I thought the whole might well be brought into lefs compafs, and be made fhorter and more clear, lefs laboured, and more fimple. I thought many controverfies might be cut off, fome being only difputes about words, and founded on miftakes; and others being about matters of little confequence, in which errors are lefs criminal, and fo they may be more eafily borne with. This fet me then on compofing a great work in divinity: but I ftayed not long enough in that ftation to go through above the half of it. I entered upon the fame defign again, but in another method, during my ftay at London, in the privacy that I then enjoyed, after I had finished the hiftory of our Reformation. These were advantages which made this performance much the eafier to me and perhaps the late Archbishop might, from what he knew of the progrefs I had made in them, judge me the more proper for this undertaking. For after I have faid fo much to juftify my own engag ing in fuch a work, I think I ought to fay all I can to juftify, or at least to excuse, his making choice of me for it. When |