With the facts and quotations, therefore, supplied by the Abbé Boileau’s book, I have undertaken to compose this History of the Flagellants. With these materials, the quantity or number of which I determined neither to increase or decrease, I attempted to write a book; proposing to myself a task of much the same nature with that kind of play which sometimes serves to amuse companies of friends in winter evenings, in which sets of words in appearance incompatible with one another, are proposed, and, without any of them being left out, or even displaced, are to be made into some consistent speeches, by the help of intermediate arguments. Such task I have, as I say, tried to perform, without setting aside any of the facts contained in the Abbé Boileau’s book: only I have taken great liberty with respect to placing and displacing such facts, as, without that indulgence, the task, on this occasion, was not to be performed. The work or problem, therefore, I proposed to myself, instead of being that which more commonly occurs, and may be expressed in the following terms: _Certain arguments being given, to find the necessary facts to support them_? was this: _A certain number of facts, pretty well authenticated, being given, to find the natural conclusions and inductions which they suggest_? To this paraphrase thus made on the materials afforded by the Abbé Boileau, and to a few occasional sentences of his, which I have preserved, I have added an ample Commentary, in which I have introduced not only such facts as either my own memory, or other authors, supplied me: so that the Abbé’s work, a twelves book, printed on a very large type, has swelled into the majestic octavo which is now laid before the public. In composing this octavo, two different parts I have performed. In the Paraphrase on the Abbé Boileau’s work, I have, keeping to the subject, and preserving as much as I could the turn of my Author’s book, expressed myself in that style and manner, in which it was not unlikely a doctor of the Sorbonne, and a dean of the church of Sens, might have written: in the Commentary, I have followed my own inclination. Conformably to that which is often practised on the Stage, where the same player fills two different parts at the same time, by speedily altering his dress, I have, in the present work, acted in two different alternate capacities, as I changed sides: in the text, I acted the part of a doctor of the Sorbonne; and then, quickly resuming my former station, I expatiated and commented, in the note, upon what the doctor had just said in the text.