To convince you, Sir, how much more I am concern’d to have you think, I can Obey well, than Write well; I venture to send you the _Account_, (as imperfect and unpolish’d as it is) that you are pleas’d to command _Of the last Hours of Theodora_. But I must beg your leave to accompany it with another _Account_ (though but a short one) how I came to meddle with this Subject; and why what I present you about it, is so much Maim’d, and has no more Uniformity. Having had occasion many years ago to turn over a Martyrology, and some other Books, that related to the Sufferings of the Primitive Christians; I chanc’d to light on those of a Virgin, who, though (to my wonder) she was left unnam’d by the other Writers that mentioned her, seem’d plainly to be the same, that is by one of them expresly call’d _Theodora_: I own, I was not a little affected, at the reading of such moving and uncommon adventures as hers: and finding her story to be related, by the Author that nam’d both her and her Lover, not only very succinctly and imperfectly, but very dully too; I found my self tempted so to enlarge this Story, as that it might be contriv’d into a somewhat voluminous Romance: But upon second thoughts, it appeared incongruous to turn a Martyr into a Nymph or an Amazon: And I consider’d too, that (to omit what else might be objected against that sort of Composures) _as_ true Pearls are Cordials and Antidotes, which counterfeit ones, how fine soever they may appear, are not; _so_ True Examples do arm and fortify the mind far more efficaciously, than Imaginary or Fictitious ones can do; and the fabulous labours of _Hercules_, and Exploits of _Arthur_ of _Britain_, will never make men aspire to Heroick Vertue half so powerfully, as the real Examples of Courage and Gallantry afforded by _Jonathan Cæsar_, or the _Black Prince_. But yet, thinking it great pity, that so shining a Vertue as _Theodora_’s should prove Exemplary, but to her own time, and to one City; and remembring, that soon after the Age which she Ennobl’d, it was counted among the Primitive Christians an act of Piety, to build fair Monuments, upon the formerly abject Graves of the Martyrs; to repay, by Honours done to their Memories, the indignities and Disgraces they had suffer’d in their Persons; I thought fit to try, if I could rescue from more unskilful Hands than even mine, a story that abundantly deserv’d to be well told.