After a labour of more than five and twenty years, this history at length appears in public view; to the compiling of which I was induced from the consideration that the rise and increase of that religious society, which in this work I have given a circumstantial account of, is indeed so rare and wonderful a thing, that I think few will be met with in modern histories, which in the like respect may be compared therewith; because the Quakers, so called, are become a great people, under such heavy oppression as is herein after mentioned: and that not by any human power, or making resistance, but merely by an harmless deportment, and the exercising of patience; for bearing arms and resisting the wicked by fighting, they always have counted unlawful, and contrary to the doctrine of our Saviour. Thus they who had no king, prince, nor potentate to protect them; and who in the beginning had not among themselves any man of renown or literature, but relying on their integrity, and trusting to God alone; have at length triumphed over the malice of their opposers, by suffering, (which rose to that degree that it was at the expense of the lives of many of them,) under violent oppression from high and low, and the opposition of learned and unlearned. All this after much search, being found out by assiduous diligence, appeared so wonderful to me, that I resolved to give a relation thereof, notwithstanding the great labour I soon perceived this work required. To this may be added, that when I considered that several authors, both Germans and others, had published books and accounts of this people stuffed with gross untruths, I was the more spurred on thereby to set down in due order, for my countrymen’s sake, what I knew of the matter; for it seems indeed to be of small advantage that when any thing is well known to us, we keep that knowledge only to ourselves,[1] without imparting it to others. [1] Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.--_Pers. Sat._ 1.