Having been desired by my learned and pious Friend Mr. Edmund Elys, to draw up such a Persuasive as I now present the Reader with; finding my self well at leisure from other Business, and considering that it was suitable to my Profession, and present Condition; as being conducive to my preparation for that change, which the pains and infirmities I laboured under, seemed to threaten the near approach of, and might possibly be in some measure useful and beneficial to others: I was easily induced to comply with his Request, and to employ those Intervals I had of ease or remission of pain, in Meditations upon this Subject. I do not pretend to any thing new, or not delivered by others. Practical Divinity and Morality are such beaten Subjects, and have exercised the Wits and Pens of so many thinking Men, that there is nothing of this Nature can be said or written, which hath not already been so.