And in this time of his retirement, when the common people were amazed and grown giddy by the many falsehoods, and misapplications of truths frequently vented in sermons; when they wrested the Scripture by challenging God to be of their party, and called upon him in their prayers to patronise their sacrilege and zealous frenzies; in this time he did so compassionate the generality of this misled nation, that though the times threatened danger, yet he then hazarded his safety by writing the large and bold Preface now extant before his last twenty Sermons;--first printed in the year 1655;--in which there was such strength of reason, with so powerful and clear convincing applications made to the Non-conformists, as being read by one of those dissenting brethren, who was possessed with such a spirit of contradiction, as being neither able to defend his error, nor yield to truth manifest,--his conscience having slept long and quietly in a good sequestered living,--was yet at the reading of it so awakened, that after a conflict with the reason he had met, and the damage he was to sustain if he consented to it,--and being still unwilling to be so convinced, as to lose by being over-reasoned,--he went in haste to the bookseller of whom it was bought, threatened him, and told him in anger, "he had sold a book in which there was false Divinity; and that the Preface had upbraided the Parliament, and many godly Ministers of that party, for unjust dealing." To which his reply was,--'twas Tim. Garthwaite,--"That 'twas not his trade to judge of true or false Divinity, but to print and sell books: and yet if he, or any friend of his, would write an answer to it, and own it by setting his name to it, he would print the Answer, and promote the selling of it." [Sidenote: A meeting in Little Britain]