eth, A. WOOD, and after prayers, he conducted him
up to the dining rome, where archb. SHELDON received him, and gave him
his blessing. There then dined among the company, JOHN ECHARD, the author
of _The Contempt of the Clergy_, who sate at the lower end of the table
between the archbishop's two chaplaynes SAMUEL PARKER and THOMAS
THOMKINS, being the first time that the said ECHARD was introduced into
the said archbishop's company. After dinner, the archbishop went into his
withdrawing roome, and ECHARD with the chaplaynes and RALPH SNOW to their
lodgings to drink and smoak.

[JOHN EACHARD, S.T.P., was appointed Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge,
in 1675.]

_THE PREFACE TO THE READER_.

_I can very easily fancy that many, upon the very first sight of the
title, will presently imagine that the Author does either want the Great
Tithes, lying under the pressure of some pitiful vicarage; or that he is
much out of humour, and dissatisfied with the present condition of
affairs; or, lastly, that he writes to no purpose at all, there having
been an abundance of unprofitable advisers in this kind.

As to my being under some low Church dispensation; you may know, I write
not out of a pinching necessity, or out of any rising design. You may
please to believe that, although I have a most solemn reverence for the
Clergy in general, and especially for that of England; yet, for my own
part, I must confess to you, I am not of that holy employment; and have
as little thought of being Dean or Bishop, as they that think so, have
hopes of being all Lord Keepers.

Nor less mistaken will they be, that shall judge me in the least
discontented, or any ways disposed to disturb the peace of the present
settled Church: for, in good truth, I have neither lost King's, nor
Bishop's lands, that should incline me to a surly and quarrelsome
complaining; as many be, who would have been glad enough to see His
Majesty restored, and would have endured Bishops daintily well, had they
lost no money by their coming in.

I am not, I will assure you, any of those Occasional Writers, that,
missing preferment in the University, can presently write you their new
ways of Education; or being a little tormented with an ill-chosen wife,
set forth the doctrine of Divorce to be truly evangelical.

The cause of these few sheets was honest and innocent, and as free from
all passion as any design.

As for the last thing which I supposed objected_, viz., _that t