Note the obstacles which have checked the wider currency of the book. Knox wrote in the "Engliss tongue," with a liberal admixture of good Scots words. But English prose was then only in its birth. Knox's spelling is now hopelessly archaic, if not anarchic; his punctuation is no help, and almost a hindrance; and his style of composition, in his more sustained periods, is ponderous and involved. Nor is this all. Knox's original conception of his task seems to have been that of an exact record or chronicle of the occurrences between 1558 and 1561 of which he had personal knowledge, or documentary or other credible evidence. He has, therefore, conscientiously transcribed complete copies of letters, treaties, bonds, instructions to deputies ("credits" he calls them), and even of such lengthy documents as _The Confession of Faith_ and _The Book of Discipline_, as well as of sermons preached on sundry occasions. To the historian, all these records are invaluable; but they only serve to distract the ordinary reader's attention from the main current of the narrative. They blunt his interest, instead of whetting it. The present edition is a serious attempt to remove the obstacles to which we have just referred. The editor has not bound himself to reproduce the _ipsissima verba_ of Knox at every point; although quotations from documents have been transliterated with some exactness. His main object has been to make Knox's book utterly readable, and it may be claimed that the complete historical narrative is now given to the English reader. Here and there a parenthesis has been dropped, here and there a "meary tale" which carries the illustration of the argument a little further than modern ideas of decorum permit. Essential clauses of letters and other documents have been retained: nothing is omitted that will substantially further the high purpose of the history. _The Confession of Faith_, commonly known as Knox's, and _The Book of Discipline_ were reckoned too important for abridgment. These have been transferred bodily to the Appendix, to avert a serious block in the narrative.