as a taste of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein I
have now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and if
I can bring it to a perfection before I die, shall reckon I have
well employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life. This indeed
is more than I can justly expect from a quill worn to the pith in
the service of the State, in pros and cons upon Popish Plots, and
Meal Tubs, and Exclusion Bills, and Passive Obedience, and Addresses
of Lives and Fortunes; and Prerogative, and Property, and Liberty of
Conscience, and Letters to a Friend: from an understanding and a
conscience, threadbare and ragged with perpetual turning; from a
head broken in a hundred places by the malignants of the opposite
factions, and from a body spent with poxes ill cured, by trusting to
bawds and surgeons, who (as it afterwards appeared) were professed
enemies to me and the Government, and revenged their party's quarrel
upon my nose and shins. Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I
written under three reigns, and for the service of six-and-thirty
factions. But finding the State has no farther occasion for me and
my ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into speculations more
becoming a philosopher, having, to my unspeakable comfort, passed a
long life with a conscience void of offence towards God and towards
men.

But to return. I am assured from the reader's candour that the
brief specimen I have given will easily clear all the rest of our
society's productions from an aspersion grown, as it is manifest,
out of envy and ignorance, that they are of little farther use or
value to mankind beyond the common entertainments of their wit and
their style; for these I am sure have never yet been disputed by our
keenest adversaries; in both which, as well as the more profound and
most mystical part, I have throughout this treatise closely followed