offices.  He likewise follows me through the several recapitulations I had made of the state of things before the Reformation, and finds errors and omissions in most of these; he adds some things out of papers I had never seen.  The whole was writ with so much malice, and such contempt, that I must give some account of the man, and of his motives.  He had expressed great zeal against popery, in the end of King James’s reign, being then chaplain to Archbishop Sancroft, who, as he said, had promised him the first of those prebends of Canterbury that should fall in his gift:  for when he saw that the archbishop was resolved not to take the oaths, but to forsake the post, he made an earnest application to me, to secure that for him at Archbishop Tillotson’s hands.  I pressed him in it as much as was decent for me to do, but he said he would not encourage these aspiring men, by promising any thing, before it should fall; as indeed none of them fell during his time.  Wharton, upon this answer, thought I had neglected him, looking on it as a civil denial, and said he would be revenged; and so he published that specimen:  upon which, I, in a letter that I printed, addressed to the present Bishop of Worcester, charged him again and again to bring forth all that he pretended to have reserved at that time, for, till that was done, I would not enter upon the examination of that specimen.  It was received with contempt, and Tillotson justified my pressing him to take Wharton under his particular protection so fully, that he sent and asked me pardon.  He said he was set on to it; and that, if I would procure any thing for him, he would discover any thing to me.  I despised that offer, but said that I would at any price buy of him those discoveries that he pretended to have in reserve.  But Mr. Chiswell (at whose house he then lay) being sick, said he could draw nothing of that from him, and he believed he had nothing.  He died about a year after.”—­BURNET’S History of the Reformation III, vii. [T.  S.]]

Come we now to the reasons, which moved his lordship to set about this work at this time.  He “could delay it no longer, because the reasons of his engaging in it at first seem to return upon him[17].”  He was then frightened with “the danger of a popish successor in view, and the dreadful apprehensions of the power of France.  England has forgot these dangers, and yet is nearer to them than ever[18],” and therefore he is resolved to “awaken them” with his third volume; but in the mean time, sends this Introduction to let them know they are asleep.  He then goes on in describing the condition of the kingdom[19], after such a manner as if destruction hung over us by a single hair; as if the Pope, the devil, the Pretender, and France, were just at our doors.

[Footnote 17:  Page 27.]

[Footnote 18:  Page 28.]

[Footnote 19:  Page 28.]