the key to all preferments in the Church thought the study and cultivation of the Welsh language to be a retrograde step, and one to be assiduously and persistently opposed.
APPRECIATION OF THE WORK.
THE second edition published in 1740 contains many alterations and additions made by the author himself after the first edition of 1716, and is therefore the one here reprinted. The conception of the work, however, remains the same. Curiously, the Introduction to the first edition was omitted from the second; but as it is naturally full of interest to the reader, and shews the light in which the author himself regarded his work, it is reprinted in full below. It need hardly be stated here that the book purports to be a history of the Welsh people from the earliest times down through the first centuries of the Christian era, the second part dealing with the preaching of the Gospel and early history of the Church in Britain, with chapters on Church Government, the Sacraments, &c., as observed in those days.
The enormous amount of reading involved in the preparation of the work, and the number and diversity of the authorities referred to in the text, prove that the author was determined to spare no effort to make the book as weighty a document as possible on the subject in hand. Its reception must have exceeded his most sanguine expectations: five editions and reprints appeared in the course of the eighteenth century, while fourteen more are known to have been brought out
