Note 632 — Chapter XXIII
Reading edition
This tract is printed in Somers' Collection, iii. 329, 388. My own judgment of it agrees with Mr. Hallam's:—"It is not written with extraordinary ability; but it is very candid and well designed, though conceding so much as to scandalize his brethren."—Const. Hist. ii. 93.
Marvell, in his Mr. Smirke on the Divine in Mode, speaks of the work as having been originally printed only for members of Parliament, and not published, but that a printer got hold of it, and "surreptitiously" multiplied copies without the author's knowledge. Yet the published edition, though commencing with the words, "An humble petition to the Right Honourable the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled," contains an address "to the reader" at the beginning, and another to the Nonconformists at the end.