matter, I mean a man in my capacity, than to detect and condemn the
wickedness, warn the evil doer of the Judgment, and fly therefrom
my self. But Oh! that I might not only deliver my self! Oh that
many would hear, and turn at this my cry, from sin! that they may
be secured from the death and Judgment that attend it.

Why I have handled the matter in this method, is best known to my
self: and why I have concealed most of the Names of the persons
whose sins or punishments I here and there in this Book make
relation of, is,

1. For that neither the sins nor Judgments were all alike open;
the sins of some, were committed, and the Judgments executed for
them only in a corner. Not to say that I could not learn some of
their names; for could I, I should not have made them publick, for
this reason.

2. Because I would not provoke those of their Relations that
survive them; I would not justly provoke them, and yet, as I think,
I should, should I have intailed their punishment to their sins,
and both to their names, and so have turned them into the world.

3. Nor would I lay them under disgrace and contempt, which would,
as I think, unavoidably have happened unto them had I withall
inserted their Names.

As for those whose Names I mention, their crimes or Judgments were
manifest; publick almost as any thing of that nature that happeneth
to mortal men. Such therefore have published their own shame by
their sin, and God, his anger, by taking of open vengeance.