"All who venture upon such tasks [as this work] must gather trust and encouragement from reflections like those by which their great forerunner prepared himself for his endeavours;—by recollecting that they are aiming to advance the best interests and privileges of man; and that they may expect all the best and wisest of men to join them in their aspirations and to aid them in their labours. "Concerning ourselves we speak not; but as touching the matter which we have in hand, this we ask;—that men deem it not to be the setting up of an Opinion, but the performing of a Work; and that they receive this as a certainty; that we are not laying the foundations of any sect or doctrine, but of the profit and dignity of mankind:—Furthermore, that being well disposed to what shall advantage themselves, and putting off factions and prejudices, they take common counsel with us, to the end that being by these our aids and appliances freed and defended from wanderings and impediments, they may lend their hands also to the labours which remain to be performed:—And yet, further, that they be of good hope; neither feign and imagine to themselves this our Reform as something of infinite dimension and beyond the grasp of mortal man, when, in truth, it is of infinite errour, the end and true limit; and is by no means unmindful of the condition of mortality and humanity, not confiding that such a thing can be carried to its perfect close in the space of one single age, but assigning it as a task to a succession of generations.""