IN previous reprints of this work, instead of the prefaces which the author himself had written for the different parts of the work as they issued from the press, one general preface was concocted out of them all. The design may have been to save space, but it seems scarcely fair that the work should appear without the author's explanation of the objects which he had in view as indicated in his own language, and of the circumstances in which each volume originally appeared. The result, moreover, of this unwarrantable attempt at compression, was the omission of some interesting paragraphs, which shed light upon his state of health at the time when the volumes were published. All these prefaces are now published in full. The first of them, page 5, was prefixed to the first volume of the work, published in 1668, immediately before the introductory Exercitations; and the second appeared in the same volume, before the Exposition of two chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. To the second volume, published in 1674, was prefixed the preface which is numbered III. in the following arrangement. The third volume, published in 1680, contained the fourth preface. To the fourth volume, published in 1684, one year after the author's death, the fifth preface belongs, with the initials H. G. attached to it.—ED.
