TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THOMAS ALLEYNE, LORD MAYOR OF THE CITY OF LONDON, WITH THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL ALDERMEN, HIS BRETHREN. As, in obedience to your favorable invitation, this Sermon was first preached; and the Author, conscious of his great unworthi- ness, employed in so honorable a work ; so it is your pleasure, against which my judgment must not here contest, that hath thus exposed it to the public view; which yet I must confess doth not engage you in the patronage of any of the crudities and imperfec- tions of this hasty work, it being the matter, which is of God, that so far prevailed for your acceptance as to procure your pardon of the manner, which is too much my own. Rejoicing is so highly valued, even by nature, that I thought it a matter of great neces- sity to help to rectify and elevate your joys. The corruption of a thing so excellent must needs be very bad ; and it being the great and durable good that must feed all great and durable joy ; and seeing these little transitory things can cause but little and transi- tory delight, I thought it my duty to insist most on the greatest, on which, in your meditations, you must most insist ; which I repent not of, especially noW you have given my doctrine a more loud and lasting voice, because it is only our heavenly interest that may be the matter of universal, continued delight; and so the subject maymake the' sermon to be of the more universal and continued use,when asubjectofless excellency and duration than heavenwould have depressed and limited the discourse, as to its usefulness. And also I was forced in this, as in all these sublunary things, to estimate the mercy in which we did all so solemnly rejoice but as ameans, which is so far to be valued as it conduceth to its end ; and is something or nothing as it relateth to eternity. Since I placed my hopes above, and learned to live a life of faith, I never desire to know anymercy in any other form or name, nor value it
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