For those facts I have generally given my authorities, that my readers may judge for themselves of the credit due to them; and for the speculations which accompany them, whether doctrinal or practical, I may say that they are meant to serve the cause of truth and equity, not of party; it is for others to say whether they are reasonable, and to let them prevail only so far as they prove so--_valeant quantum valent_. INTRODUCTORY LETTER. _St. Mary’s Parsonage,_ _Conversion of St. Paul, 1837._ My Dear Brother: When you proposed to me that I should write an Introduction to Mr. Blunt’s “Sketch of the Reformation in England,” included, at my suggestion, in your “Library of Christian Knowledge,” I saw an admirable opportunity to invite attention to that great crisis of the Christian world; and I consented. As I meditated on the subject, it deepened in interest, and rose in elevation, and increased in magnitude, till it became absorbing and overwhelming. I felt that _an Essay on the English Reformation_, that should trace it from its true beginnings, contemplate all its bearings, and carry out its just conclusions, was a work to fill a volume, and to take up years. Is not the “Sketch” itself--I was thus brought to think--which Mr. Blunt has drawn, the very thing best suited to the present purpose? In its design, a bird’s-eye view of that illustrious passage in the history of man; in its execution, rapid, vigorous, picturesque; the manliest conceptions in the raciest words; so intensely interesting that he who takes it up will never lay it down unread, nor read it without the strongest impulse to read more--surely, this is the very result to which I proposed to address myself; and to attract attention to the study of the English Reformation, and to make men in love with its ennobling themes, and to imbue their minds with its instructive lessons, and to possess their hearts with its inspiring influences, and to inflame them with its martyr spirit, the book itself shall be its own best introduction.