e errors and neglects in the style, seems not to have
received the author's[2] last correction. It is written with some
vehemence, very pardonable in one who had been an observer and a
sufferer, in England, under that diabolical fanatic sect which then
destroyed Church and State. But, by comparing in my memory what I have
read in other histories, he neither aggravates nor falsifies any facts.
His partiality appears chiefly in setting the actions of the Calvinists
in the strongest light, without equally dwelling on those of the other
side; which, however, to say the truth, was not his proper business. And
yet he might have spent some more words on the inhuman massacre of Paris
and other parts of France, which no provocation (and yet the King had
the greatest possible) could excuse, or much extenuate. The author,
according to the current opinion of the age he lived in, had too high
notions of regal power; led by the common mistake of the term Supreme
Magistrate, and not rightly distinguishing between the legislature and
administration: into which mistake the clergy fell, or continued, in the
reign of Charles II., as I have shewn and explained in a treatise, &c.
J. SWIFT. March 6, 1727-8.

[Footnote 2: Peter Heylin, D.D. (1600-1662) was born at Burford,
Oxfordshire. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and became in
succession, chaplain to Charles I., rector of Hemmingford, rector of
Islip, and a prebendary of Westminster. He wrote the weekly paper,
"Mercurius Auhcus," and lost his estates during the Civil War. He was
reinstated at the Restoration into all his preferments. His works are
voluminous, consisting of a "Cosmography," "A Help to English History,"
a "Life of Charles I.," a "History of the Reformation," a "History of
Presbyterians," a "Life of Archbishop Laud," and a few theological
works. The work on the Presbyterians, here referred to by Swift, was
published in 1670. [T.S.]]

* * * * *

CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE,
LONDON.

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