on without being
magnified.

Having mentioned those few who have shewn themselves the Enemies of this
Paper, I should be very ungrateful to the Publick, did not I at the same
time testifie my Gratitude to those who are its Friends, in which Number
I may reckon many of the most distinguished Persons of all Conditions,
Parties and Professions in the Isle of _Great-Britain_. I am not so vain
as to think this Approbation is so much due to the Performance as to the
Design. There is, and ever will be, Justice enough in the World, to
afford Patronage and Protection for those who endeavour to advance Truth
and Virtue, without regard to the Passions and Prejudices of any
particular Cause or Faction. If I have any other Merit in me, it is that
I have new-pointed all the Batteries of Ridicule. They have been
generally planted against Persons who have appeared Serious rather than
Absurd; or at best, have aimed rather at what is Unfashionable than what
is Vicious. For my own part, I have endeavoured to make nothing
Ridiculous that is not in some measure Criminal. I have set up the
Immoral Man as the Object of Derision: In short, if I have not formed a
new Weapon against Vice and Irreligion, I have at least shewn how that
Weapon may be put to a right Use, which has so often fought the Battels
of Impiety and Profaneness.

C.

[Footnote 1: The Stamp Act was to take effect from the first of August.
Censorship of the press began in the Church soon after the invention of
printing. The ecclesiastical superintendence introduced in 1479 and 1496
was more completely established by a bull of Leo X. in 1515, which
required Bishops and Inquisitors to examine all books before printing,
and suppress heretical opinions. The Church of Rome still adheres to the
'Index Librorum Prohibitorum' begun by the Council of Trent in 1546; and
there is an Index Expurgatorius for works partly prohibited, or to be
read after expurgation. In accordance with this principle, the licensing
of English books had been in the power of the Archbishop of Canterbury
and his delegates before the decree of the Star Chamber in 1637, which
ordered that all books of Divinity, Physic, Philosophy, and Poetry
should be licensed either by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by the
Bishop of London personally or through their appointed substitutes. The
object of this decree was to limit the reprint of old books of divinity,
&c. Thus Foxe's Book of Martyrs was denied a license. In