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MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, IT was an usual saying of King James (your Majesty’s most learned grandfather) of blessed memory, that, of all the Churches in the world, he knew not any which came nearer to the primitive pattern, for doctrine, government, and worship, than the reformed Church of England. A saying which he built not upon fancy and affection only, but on such just and solid reasons as might sufficiently endear it to all knowing men. The truth and certainty whereof will be made apparent by the following History, which here, in all humility, is offered to your Majesty’s view. It is, (dread sir), an History of the Reformation of the Church of England, with all the various fortunes and successes of it, from the first agitations in religion under Henry the Eighth (which served for a preamble thereunto) until the legal settling and establishment of it by the great Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory. A piece not to be dedicated to any other, than your sacred Majesty; who, being raised by God, to be a nursing father to this part of his Church, may possibly discharge that duty with the greater tenderness, when you shall find upon what rules of piety and Christian prudence the work was carried on by the first reformers. Which being once found, it will be no hard matter to determine of such means and counsels whereby the Church may be restored to her peace and purity; from which she is most miserably fallen by our late distractions. It cannot be denied but that some tares grew up almost immediately with the wheat itself; and seemed so specious to the eye, in the blade or stalk, that they were taken by some credulous and confiding men for the better grain. But still they were no more than tares, distinguished easily in the fruits (the fruits of error and false doctrine, of faction, schism, disorder, and perhaps sedition) from the Lord’s good seed. And, being of an after FB1 sowing (a supersemination, as the Vulgar reads it FB2 ) and sown on purpose by a cunning and industrious enemy, to raise an harvest to himself, they neither can pretend to the same antiquity, and much less to the purity, of that sacred seed with which the field was sown at first by the heavenly Husbandman. I leave the application of this parable to the following History, and shall conclude with this address to Almighty God—That, as he hath restored your Majesty to the throne of your father, and done it in so strange a manner as makes it seem a miracle in the eyes of Christendom, so he would settle you in the same on so sure a bottom, that no design of mischievous and unquiet men may diturb your peace, or detract any thing from those felicities which you have acquired. So prayeth, Dread Sovereign, Your Majesty’s most obedient Servant, and most loyal Subject, PETER HEYLYN.

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