SERMON Preached before the Honourable House of COMMONS, January the 30th, 19%. Being an Anniversary SER MON for the DA Y. By WILLIAM STEPHENS, B. D. Rector of Sutton in Surry. From a Copy corrected by the Author. LONDON: Printed in the Year 1700. Advertisement. N. B. The Honourable Auditory before whom the following fermon was preached, having expreffed their mislike, I never defigned to have had it printed: but fince it is ftolen uncorrectly into the world, without my privity, I hope it will not be imputed as a crime, that I amend the errata of the prefs. WILL. STEPHENS. THE OR EDIT TO THE PREACHER. SIR, SINC i INCE the Printer informed me, that he will make a fecond impreffion of your fermon, I thought it might be fit to offer you fome fatisfaction for printing it without your, confent. For although I was told, that you were obftinate in refufing to print it, yet I thought it might be useful to the public, and no ways differviceable to you to publish it. Wherefore, having gotten a copy, I gave it to a printer, only with this charge, that he fhould make the impreffion as cheap as he could, for as I obferved, that the preaching of it made you fome enemies, fo I concluded that the printing of it might gain you fome friends; because the mifreprefentations which were given abroad concerning it would vanish away. And as to the reflection which was made upon you by a fuppofitious clergyman, I appeal to my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, if he did not receive fatisfaction from a worthy member of parliament, being a man of unspotted reputation, that was objected against you by the reflecter as to your flying from a fufpected profecution*, was wholly falfe and fcandalous. SIR, I wish you well, and am yours, &c. High-churchmen were fo much exasperated against the author for this discourse, that they raised and propagated a shameful lie, of his being obliged to fly from Briffel for fodomy. |