To me it belongs in the first part of this Preface, following the common and approved custom of those who have left the memories of time past to after ages, to give, as near as I can, the same right to history which they have done.  Yet seeing therein I should but borrow other men’s words, I will not trouble the Reader with the repetition.  True it is that among many other benefits for which it hath been honored, in this one it triumpheth over all human knowledge, that it hath given us life in our understanding, since the world itself had life and beginning, even to this day:  yea, it hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over:  for it hath carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space of many thousands of years, and given so fair and piercing eyes to our mind; that we plainly behold living now (as if we had lived then) that great world, “Magni Dei sapiens opus,” “The wise work (saith Hermes) of a great God,” as it was then, when but new to itself.  By it (I say) it is, that we live in the very time when it was created:  we behold how it was governed:  how it was covered with waters, and again repeopled:  how kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen, and for what virtue and piety God made prosperous; and for what vice and deformity he made wretched, both the one and the other.  And it is not the least debt which we owe unto history, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors; and, out of the depth and darkness of the earth, delivered us their memory and fame.  In a word, we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal; by the comparison and application of other men’s fore-passed miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings.  But it is neither of examples the most lively instruction, nor the words of the wisest men, nor the terror of future torments, that hath yet so wrought in our blind and stupified minds, as to make us remember, that the infinite eye and wisdom of God doth pierce through all our pretences; as to make us remember, that the justice of God doth require none other accuser than our own consciences:  which neither the false beauty of our apparent actions, nor all the formality, which (to pacify the opinions of men) we put on, can in any, or the least kind, cover from his knowledge.  And so much did that heathen wisdom confess, no way as yet qualified by the knowledge of a true God.  If any (saith Euripides) “having in his life committed wickedness, thinks he can hide it from the everlasting gods, he thinks not well.”

To repeat God’s judgments in particular, upon those of all degrees, which have played with his mercies would require a volume apart:  for the sea of examples hath no bottom.  The marks, set on private men, are with their bodies cast into the earth; and their fortunes, written only in the memories of those that lived with them:  so as they who succeed, and have not seen the fall of others, do not fear their own faults.  God’s judgments upon the greater