Now how difficult soever I found it, yet having made a beginning, I resolved to go on; and so I did, though often stopped by several accidents, and also other work: for during this labour I have not only translated several bulky books into Dutch, besides Rennet’s Antiquities of Rome, but also composed several treatises of moment, and among these my great dictionary, English and Low Dutch. And notwithstanding all these impediments, I continually resumed this work by intervals so often, that I have written it almost thrice to make it complete; for doubting of somethings, and finding others defective, it made me write to England for better information; which having gotten at length, after much pains and long writing, I was several times obliged to lay aside part of my former description and make a new one; which happened so often, that had I not been supported by an unwearied application, the difficulty of the labour, which had been much greater in Holland, than if I had composed the work in England, would have made me give it over. But I went on, and so finished this history in that form as it now appears. And I am not without thoughts, that I was prepared to be instrumental for such a work as this: for several remarkable things I have made use of, I had noted down before ever I thought of composing such a history; and even in my young years, when I was in England, I copied out from manuscripts several pieces and letters, which are inserted in this history: it may be hardly to be found elsewhere. At the first sight perhaps some will be ready to think that I might have superseded this labour, since the learned world hath long ago seen a book written by Gerard Croese, with the title of Historia Quakeriana. But be it known to the reader, that though the author got the chief contents thereof from me, yet that relation which he gives of the rise and progress of the Quakers, is very imperfect and defective; and that he presumed to relate things of which he had no true knowledge. I gave him indeed many things in writing, but not all I had collected; besides having since that time written to my acquaintance in England, I got narratives of many remarkable occurrences given forth in print there, and many authentic pieces in manuscript. Now though this collection was, as Ovid calls the chaos, ‘_Rudis indigestaque moles_,’ ‘a rude undigested heap;’ yet from thence, and from my own collection of matters known to me, I have compiled the greatest part of this history: but as to the life and transactions of G. Fox, who is largely treated in this work, I took them chiefly from his journal; and the greatest part of other occurrences, or the lives and transactions of others, I have taken from the works of deceased authors; and out of abundance of small books published in print not long after the things happened, and not contradicted by whatever I could learn.