The Preface.
1. The Authour's Apologie for writing this Treatise, there being so many already on the same Subject. 2. That what he has wrote are the proper Emanations of his own Minde, and may have their peculiar serviceableness for men of the like Genius. 3. That he affects not Rhetorick, nor Philologie, nor the pompous numerosity of more popular Arguments, but solid and unresistible reason in a perspicuous Method. 4. That he has undeniably demonstrated the Existence of God, this one Postulate being but admitted, That our Faculties are true. 5. His peculiar Management of the first Argument of Des-Cartes: 6. And the Reasons of his Rejection of the rest. 7. His caution and choiceness in the managing such Arguments as are fetch'd from the more general Phænomena of Nature: 8. As also in those from Animals. 9. His carefull choice in such Histories as tend to the proving of Spirits. 10. His assuredness of that kinde of Argument. 11. The reason of his declining the recitall of the miraculous Stories of Holy Writ. 12. His studied Condescension and compliance with the Atheist to win him from his Atheism.
Reader,
1. BY what inducements I was drawn to publish this present Treatise, notwithstanding the Numerosity of the Writings of this kinde, I had rather leave to thine own quick-sightedness to spy out, then be put upon so much immodesty my self as to speak any thing that may seem to give it any precellency above what is already extant in the world about the same matter. Onely I may say thus much that I did on purpose abstain from reading any Treatises concerning this Subject, that I might the more undisturbedly write the easie Emanations of mine own Mind, and not be carried off from what should naturally fall from my self, by prepossessing my thoughts by the inventions of others.
2. I have writ therefore after no Copy but the eternal Characters of the Minde of Man, and the known Phænomena of
