Appreciatìon of the Work. xxxi
author wilfully perverted the true story, but no writer can approach the history of any nation with the object of establishing a preconceived ^heory without modifying the interpretation of events in the dircction of his own ideas. In his introduction to the ist edition of 1716, the author says : ^' Yma y cewch weled, tra fu ein Hynafiaid yn gwneuthur yn ôl ewyllys yr Arglwydd, na thycciai ymgyrch un Gclyn yn eu herbyn." And further on he says to the reader : " Dôs yn y blaen, gan hynny, fal Chriftion uniown-gred, Na thwyller dì ag eirìau ofer^'^ &c. Again, in the Latin dedication of the 2nd edition, we find a passage which may be thus rendered into EngHsh : " If I may cxpress a hope, I trust these annals will not be un- acceptable or entirely useless to our fellow- countrymen, in that they may see that our Church as established by law has not in the least departed from Holy Scriptures or from the primitive Catholic Church, so that the Anglican — to use a term of Bishop Beveridge — may justly be named the Primitive Church restored in these latter times."
Quotations might be made from almost every page of the text enforcing this conception of the author's worlc, but the above, I belie^e, arc sufficiently explicit without burdening this chapter without muItipHcation of instances,
The writer was not anxious to contribute to the passing polemical literature of the day. He sought rather to help on the Kingdom of God upon earth, and to give his view a sure basis in historical fact. What a powerful hold the book had upon the nation is witnessed to all time by the remarlcable popularity of the work from his own down to the present day.
