(N.B., this note applies to the Methuen edition only)\parWHAT is here offered to the reader is a reprint of the First Edition of the Serious Call, published by William Innys in 1729. Our pages are smaller, but the contents of each page are the same, and in every respect — with the exception of some unimportant details of typography — this edition may be regarded as a facsimile of the Editio princeps.
Law’s writing is so transparently clear that no notes, beyond such as are embodied in this Introduction, appear to be either necessary or desirable.
In the case of so modern and so English a book, the object of scholarly fidelity is best attained by presenting the text as nearly as possible in the exact shape in which it left the hands of the author.
Even the spelling, and the archaic use of capital letters and italics have been carefully preserved. They will serve to remind the reader that Law wrote in the eighteenth century, not in the nineteenth — a fact which, as is pointed out in the following pages, is in many respects of importance.
