Preface to Several Pieces gathered into one volume

Summary

To all rational and meek-spirited readers, who are men most fit to judge.

Friends, I do not write this epistle to set up myself, as if there were something more in me than other men; I tell you plain, I have nothing but what I do receive from a free discovery within, therefore I write it to set forth the spirit's honour, and to cast a word of comfort into a broken and empty heart. Sometimes my heart hath been full of deadness and uncomfortableness, wading like a man in the dark and slabby* weather; and within a little time I have been filled with such peace, light, life and fulness, that if I had had two pair of hands, I had matter enough revealed to have kept them writing a long time; and such matter as hath been my own experience in by-past or present time, which hath filled my heart with abundance of sweet joy and rest.

Then I took the opportunity of the spirit and writ, and the power of self at such over-flowing times was so prevalent in me, that I forsook my ordinary food whole days together; and if my household-friends would persuade me to come to meat, I have been forced with that inward fulness of the power of life to rise up from the table and leave them to God, to write.