I freely confess, Sir, that, if the following Piece had been written by One, that I were fond of Censuring, I could my self find enough in it to Criticize upon; and should object against it, besides the want of Uniformity throughout, That if judg’d of by the strict Rules of Art, it ought to pass for an Irregular Piece. And therefore I shall not wonder, if Nicer Criticks, and more vers’d in Exquisite Composures than I pretend to be, shall find fault with this Artless one of mine. But the reception that the following Papers met with, from the Persons for whom they were chiefly written, affords me the Consolation derivable from the ingenious saying of that excellent Wit, who declar’d, _He had rather the Dishes serv’d up at his Treat, should please the Guests, than the Cooks_. And I might say too, that some of the Passages that may meet with Censure, would perhaps escape it; if in writing this Book many years agoe, I had not had some Aims, that I then thought more fit to be Pursu’d, than I now do to be Declar’d. Yet I will not here dissemble, that I know it may be thought by some, that this Paper should have consisted less of Conversations, and more of Narratives. But I chose the way of Writing I have employ’d, _partly_ because the Authors I met with furnish’d me with so very few matters of Fact, that if I would have confin’d my self to Relations; I must have compriz’d this piece in a very few Pages, and have finish’d it presently after I had begun it: And _partly_ too, (and indeed much more) because (as I lately began to intimate) my chief design was not so much, to perform the Office of a meer Historian, as to take Rises from the several Circumstances I should relate, to convey unperceivedly, into the minds of those young Persons of Quality for whom I wrote, Sentiments of true Piety and Vertue. And these I thought would not so happily gain admittance and entertainment, it they were presented in a Scholar like Discourse, or a profess’d Book of devotion, as when they were taken, not from common places but from the Nature of the Things and Persons Introduc’d; and without formality Instill’d by the occasional discourses of a young Gentleman and fair Lady, for whom the Beauty and the Merit ascrib’d to the Speakers, had given the Hearers a great Esteem and Kindness. And I shall not scruple to own, that I, who value time above most other things, did not think it worth the expence of mine, to give my self the trouble of Writing a Book, only to give others a Divertisement in Reading it. And whilst I was Conversing with such Excellent Company, as our noble Martyrs, and Meditating on such Serious Subjects, as are Death, and the Worth of that Heavenly Religion for whose sake They despis’d It; I found my self Incited, and thought my self Oblig’d, to aim less at the Pleasing of some few Nice Exactors of Regularity, than to Possess many Readers with high and noble Sentiments of the Christian Religion, and the sublime Dictates