Excerpt from The Works of John Howe, M.A., Sometime Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon, Vol. 1: The Blessedness of the Righteous; The Vanity of This Mortal Life; And Man's Creation in a Holy but Mutable State
I am not at all solicitous, that the world should know the history of the conception of this treatise. If there be any thing that shall recompense the pains of such as may think fit to give themselves the trouble of perusing it, in the work itself, I should yet think it too much an undervaluing of them, if I did reckon the minuter circumstances relating thereto, fit matter for their entertainment. Nor am I more concerned to have it known what were the inducements to the publication of it. Earnest protestations and remonstrations of our good intentions in such undertakings, as they leave men still at liberty to believe or doubt at their pleasure; so they gain us little if they believed. It is no easy matter, to carry one even, constant tenour of spirit through a work of time. Nor is it more easy to pass a settled invariable judgement concerning so variable a subject; when a heart that may seem wholly framed and set for God this hour, shall look so quite like another thing the next, and change figures and postures almost as often as it doth thoughts. And if a man should be mistaken in judging himself, it would little mend the matter, to have deceived others also into a good opinion of him. But if he can approve himself to God in the simplicity of an honest and undeceived heart, The peace that ensues, is a secret between God and him. They are theatre enough to one another, as he (Seneca) said to his friend. It is an inclosed pleasure: a joy which the stranger cannot intermeddle with.
It is therefore any man's concernment herein rather to satisfy himself than the world. And the world's rather to understand the design of the work than the author; and wither it tends, rather than whereto he meant it. And it is obvious enough, to what good purposes discourses of this nature may serve.
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