transactions, while they are yet the subject of conversation, divide
the opinions, and employ the conjectures of mankind, are delivered by
these petty writers, who have opportunities of collecting the different
sentiments of disputants, of inquiring the truth from living witnesses,
and of copying their representations from the life; and, therefore, they
preserve a multitude of particular incidents, which are forgotten in a
short time, or omitted in formal relations, and which are yet to be
considered as sparks of truth, which, when united, may afford light in
some of the darkest scenes of state, as, we doubt not, will be
sufficiently proved in the course of this miscellany; and which it is,
therefore, the interest of the publick to preserve unextinguished.

The same observation may be extended to subjects of yet more importance.
In controversies that relate to the truths of religion, the first essays
of reformation are generally timorous; and those, who have opinions to
offer, which they expect to be opposed, produce their sentiments, by
degrees, and, for the most part, in small tracts: by degrees, that they
may not shock their readers with too many novelties at once; and in
small tracts, that they may be easily dispersed, or privately printed.
Almost every controversy, therefore, has been, for a time, carried on in
pamphlets, nor has swelled into larger volumes, till the first ardour of
the disputants has subsided, and they have recollected their notions
with coolness enough to digest them into order, consolidate them into
systems, and fortify them with authorities.

From pamphlets, consequently, are to be learned the progress of every
debate; the various state to which the questions have been changed; the
artifices and fallacies which have been used, and the subterfuges by
which reason has been eluded. In such writings may be seen how the mind
has been opened by degrees, how one truth has led to another, how errour
has been disentangled, and hints improved to demonstration, which
pleasure, and many others, are lost by him that only reads the larger
writers, by whom these scattered sentiments are collected, who will see
none of the changes of fortune which every opinion has passed through,
will have no opportunity of remarking the transient advantages which
errour may sometimes obtain, by the artifices of its patron, or the
successful rallies, by which truth regains the day, after a repulse; but
will be to him, who tra