so much advanced the power of Satan as the making of sinfull gods The young man looking on the statue of Jupiter soothed his own lust and drew the nourishment of his sin even from Altars So doth the son who beholds himself in the vices of his father and takes paternal authority for pledg of his wickedness I leave you to think if in Exodus 22. He who unawares suffered a silly spark to flie into his neighbours corn be guilty of the fires hurt as we heretofore told you what will it be with a father who in his house shall enkindle the torch of iniquity to enflame his whole family First then lay the foundation of piety and consequently find employments for your children lest they consume in idleness which is the seminary of all vices Charlemain soon put his sons to exercises and commanded his daughters to sow or spin that the gate might be shut up against lazy sluggishness of spirit wherewith the soul suffers it-self insensibly to slide into all sorts of corruptions Yea great discretion must beused in this point not to enforce children to undertake vocations wholy disproportionable to their humours and qualities to make them thereby row all the rest of their life against the stream Saint Basil in the Epistle to Eudoxus praiseth the Athenians who tried the nature of their children before they put them to any profession proposing unto them sundry instruments of all kind of arts and easily admitting that to which they most inclined As for accommodation you must therein reasonably provide according to your estate and not according to the extrauagant ideas of this insatiable Age. It is an admirable thing to see to what a height these offices and huge marriages are mounted I think they will flie into the Kingdom of the Moon The time hath been when a man was thought rich who had fifty crowns of yearly rent We find when the marriages of the daughters of France exceeded not six thousand crowns payd down Nay which is more daughters were bought and now they purchase husbands with prodigious sums This is it which wasteth spirits which renders instructions unprofitable and throws all our evils into the despaire of remedy If you knew well how to order this matter you would find repose and facility in the rest of the government of youth and when you have done that which belongs to you leave the rest in the hands of the divine providence who well understands how to handle the web of our lives and to apply every one to what is fittest for his salvation If all I have said O fathers and mothers be not sufficient to instruct and perswade you I would draw hither out of the other world Hely the High-Priest severely punished by the revengeful hand of God for negligences committed in the education of his children He would cry aloud unto you I am that Hely heretofore the prime man amongst the people of God that Hely from whose lips passed so many brave oracles that Hely who with the winck of an eye made the people obedient that Hely who shined as a pharos in the Tabernacle of God and in the mean space for permitting youthful follies and indiscreet libertie to my children see me become the object of the most enflamed anger of God which may be imagined against one of my profession Behold me cast from the High-Priest hood as a rotten member my house everlastingly deprived of that honourable dignity all my posterity condemned to die under the scourge of God and not any one of them ever to attain to mans estate another enriched with my spoils which my Nephews shall never see but to wither with grief in consideration of the felicity of their rival my two sons sensual and voluptuous slain in one day my daughter in Law dead in child-bed but above all through my sin the Ark of God taken away by enemies and dishonoured by Infidels and lastly my self buried under the ruins of my countrey as the last victim of Gods justice O Sovereign Creatour of Heaven and earth how terrible thou art nay how just nay how severe to chastise parents for the sins of their children but how reasonable in this their punishment Fathers and mothers fear fathers and mothers shake under the hand of the Omnipotent fathers and mothers be satisfied with your own sins and carry not your childrens into the other world instruct them so that in their education you may find the discharge of your consciences they good doctrine and you rest and comfort to have well bred them The fourtieth SECTION Advice to children concerning the duty they should render to their fathers and mothers contrary to the contumacy of irregular youth THe Wiseman said it was a hard matter to Funiculus â—â—plex difficile rumpitur break a triple coard A triple law divine natural and civil hath straightly bound children to the honour and duty they ordinarily yield to parents He is forsaken of God an enemy of nature and an infringer of publick tranquility who would be exempted First I say nature distilleth with the soul those amorous infusions of amity which children have towards their fathers and mothers The beam belongeth to its sun the river to its fountain the branch to its tree and the child to his progenitours They are not Storks alone who have taught us the law of reciprocal love Lions though of nature untractable of life savage even in their roring moods which make woods and mountains tremble give us a lesson of this charity Lions whelps whose paws itch and bloud boileth in their veins go chearfully a hunting to seek out food for their fire now worn with age And hunters have often observed an old Lion lying in the entrance of a cave and a young one to come laden with booty putting it into the paws of the other who expected it He received the prey making shew of a thousand thanks to his whelp which freely divided the prize according to the law of nature These inclinations are found even in birds of rapine who pull the prey one from another to feed those with it who begat them Albertus Magnus noteth that fowlers seeking for goshawks found one in a vast wilderness perched upon a tree not offering to stir from them but seeming wholly immoveable They wondring why this bird flew not away at the sight of men as well as others of her kind perceived she was weak blind lame and wasted with decrepit age whereupon they hid themselves expecting the coming of other goshawks when instantly behold two hastened thither laden with meat which they pulled in pieces and thrust into the beak of the poor old one They made no doubt but these were the young who fed the dam. O what charms of nature Nay rather what providence of God! Is not he an Apostata to the great Law of the world who violateth charity due to fathers and mothers As for humane Laws what have they in them more noble or Religious than the
the miserie of the time and malice of Herod permitted Mariamne still reposing in the calmness of her Prudence of Mariamne noble spirit declared to the King in her natural sweetness That he was the support of her house greatly decayed and at that time upon such terms that she had no care to pretend to scepters she onely desired to breath her last in the world with honour If he should give a Miter to her brother Aristobulus it were to make a creature from whom he had no cause at all to fear his throne being throughly established and he being one from whom resonably he might expect any thing having the tender youth of this Prince as a soft piece of wax in his hands This act would make him rule in hearts as well as in Provinces when he should be known to be a father and a Protectour of a young son of Hircanus whose virtue he always had honoured Briefly that the honour which she had by matching with him seemed not compleat to her whilst she saw her allies kept from degrees wherein he might establish them without prejudice of his authority Herod suffered himself this time to be gained by The youn Aristobulus created High-Priest the charming sweetness of Mariamne and having deliberated the affair with his Councel he resolved to give the High-Priests place to young Aristobulus his brother in law which was performed with much ceremonie He assembleth his friends in the hall of his Palace then sending for Alexandra he made in the presence of them all a premeditated speech complaining of her saying she had a mutinous turbulent spirit which sought nothing but to embroyl the affairs and take a Scepter from him which heaven had caused him to purchase with so much travel and pain to put it into the hands of an infant to the prejudice of the Queen her daughter Notwithstanding that forgetting all injuries he could not neglect his own disposition which was to do good even to those that wished him ill in confirmation whereof he gave the High-Priesthood to her son his purpose having never been other and the subrogation of Ananel having not been made but during the time of expectation of maturitie in the tender age of an infant This ambitious mother according to her sex The ambitious woman and indeed beyond her sex upon the offer of this High-Priests place was so sensibly transported with joy that tears gushed from her eyes and she at that instant freely protested to Herod That she had endeavoured all she could possibly to keep the Miter in the Royal familie supposing it an unworthy thing to transfer it els-where but as for the Kingdom she never had pretended thereunto and that such resolutions should never enter into her thoughts Whensoever it should please Almightie God to call her out of the world she would die well satisfied leaving her son High-Priest and her daughter Queen As for the rest if she had exceeded in some words she was excusable as a passionate mother towards a son who well deserved to be beloved a mother in law of the King to whom kindred and alliance permitted somewhat the more libertie and a daughter of a King to whom slaverie was a hard morsel and her stomach unable to digest it But hereafter since he used her so courteously he should have no cause to complain of her obedience Hereupon they shook hands and behold they are friends But out alas The amities of the world are like the felicities thereof If the amities be deceitful the felicities are tyed to a rotten cable or grounded upon the moving sand The poor mother rejoyced for a little sense-pleasing flattery of her feaverish ambition and saw not that her son was not to speak really the High-priest but a sacrifice of the savageness of Herod The discreet Mariamne who by long observation had learned to hold prosperity as suspected suffered her heart not to be so dissolved into joy but that she stood still armed against the counterbuffes of Fortune The feast of the Tabernacles greatly celebrated Entrance of Aristobulus into the High-Priesthood amongst the Jews being come Ananel after he had served as an o in ciphering is shamefully rejected Aristobulus beginneth to excercise his charge He was at that time but seventeen years of age yet of a gallant stature tall and straight as a palm tree radiant as a star and very like his sister When the people beheld him cloathed with the pontifical habiliments which were replenished with majesty and to go towards the Altar and perform those ceremonial rites with so much gravity and comliness he appeared as a new Sun which brake out of the clouds and came to gild the world before covered over with darkeness All the hearts of those poor Hebrews which so much had sighed in the civil wars freshly bloomed and newly opened themselves as roses at the benigne and gentle aspect of this young Prelate His excellent natural graces enchased in the majesty of his robes rendred an incredible lusture which dazeled the eyes of all beholders Some stedfasty beheld him and became as statues yet shewing by their tears their eyes were not made of marble Others spake to him with infinit dumb testimonies of a never-silent hearty affection The rest made resentments of their hearts burst forth from their lips not being able to with-hold acclamations too free and profuse for the season but for their love excusable They remembred the virtue of the ancient Machabees who had delivered them from Idolatry they knew the wretched Hircanus was no other than a shadow following his own funerals they retained the fresh memory of the grand-father of this young High-priest Aristobulus the Great who had been carried bound fettered to Rome like a gally-slave they were not ignorant how Alexander his father and Antigonus his uncle had lost their lives by opposing the government of a stranger This young Prince onely remained free from so many shipwracks and in the green tenderness of his youth they saw all the hopes of their Country to bud and blossom And as one is credulous to hear what he affecteth they perswaded themselves Herod who at the beginning had demanded the Kingdom in the name of this young Aristobulus would come to let go his hold giving way to justice and for this cause they with the more liberty enlarged themselves in these applauses but poor creatures they reckoned without their host Herod having beheld this countenance in the people instantly observed that according to his own Maxims he had played the Clark and that this was not his ordinary manner of proceeding entring at that time into a furious jealousy he maketh the High-Priest and his mother and wife to be so narrowly watched that neither within nor without the Palace they could stir a finger but Herod Malice of Herod was advertised of it The prudent Mariamne amongst these suspitions lived still in grace sweetning upon one side and other all acerbities as
Finally if we will give any credit to ancient monuments the marbles in Churches and tombs of our Ancestours speak for us Behold verily the powerful and invincible reasons Most wholesome advise how to resolve on choise of Religion Augustin contra ep fund which made S. Augustine resolve upon the Religion we profess Many great considerations said he with much reason keep me in the obedience of the Catholick Church The consent of people and Nations hold me The authority of the same Church which is risen up by miracle nourished with hope augmented by charity established by its antiquity The succession of Bishops holds me therein whith beginning in the See and authority of S. Peter to whom God recommended Evangelio non crederem nisi me Ecclisiae Catholicae commoveret authoritas Contra ep Manich. Most weake foundation of the Pretenders the care of the flock is maintained to this present time Lastly the name of Catholick holds me in it He addeth he would not believe the Gospel it self if he were not convinced by the authority of the Church Let us now see whether you have better choise and more consideration than this worthy man who is one of the prime wits of the world Let us see what your Ministers oppose against so many infallible proofs to cover their want of antiquity mission succession miracles sanctity judgement and reason They cease not to buzze out every where a false pretext of Scripture which verily is the greatest illusion that ever was For these wicked ones seeing themselves battered on every side from the beginning of this reformation knew well in their consciences the Scripture was against them Yet notwithstanding said they to mock at the faith of mankind and lead them into Atheism we must avoid the decisions of a Power lively and lawful we must onely take colour from the holy text we will make it say what we list we will maintain nothing is to be believed but what is written and that which is written we will disguise with our glosses and consequences to catch those who think they have some wit Behold the onely means to colour our pretences You then who are endowed with sufficient and Reasons which shew the nullity of this foundation solid judgement consider a little how deceitfull weak and ruinous this foundation is First it appears the devil and all Hereticks of former times have 1. Reason taken the same foundation ever saying the Scripture was on their sides which is most untrue Notwithstanding behold to what pass all hereticks came Munter proved by Scripture he was the Prophet Neque enim natae funt haereses nisi dum scripturae bonae intelliguntur non bene August ad Consentium ep 222. David George a diabolical man that he was God Eon condemned by the Councel of Rhemes that he was the true Messias even by the same Scripture Secondly the world having been two thousand years and more without Scripture the first were 2. Reason written in Hebrew by abbreviation with such ambiguity that every one following his own opinion might frame a Bible to his own liking Yea sometimes such diversity was found in the Hebrew Greek Latine and Chaldaick letter that where one read David another read a bowl where one the liver another a pillow where one beauty another a savage beast where one the word another life where one read the liâ—â—â—g another the dead And you who neither know Hebrew Greek nor Latine on whom will you relie Thirdly upon passages written in every express 3. Reason terms as This is my body the spirits of men have forged two hundred opinions quite different what then will become of difficulties more thorny Julian Bishop of Tolledo wrote a volumn of apparent contradictions Juliani 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Scripture which in substance hath none but which notwithstanding seem many times to say things directly contrary such obscurity there is in some passages Whom should we believe Do you not see this were a means to maintain eternal divisions if there were not Judges to decide differences in a kingdom but that every one should carry the cause according to the proportion of his loud crying to make his texts and allegations to be of force What would this come unto And you would bring the like disorder into the Church Fourthy in the ancient law the Bible was in the 4. Reason Ark and no man durst open it and turn it to resolve controversies upon this Rule but did expect the decision thereof from the Priests mouth who had a lawful succession The lips of the Priest are the Malach. 2. 7. store-houses of knowledge and from his mouth you shall enquire the law said the Prophet Malachie Fiftly the wisest men in the world after they had 5. Reason maturely thought upon it found no other way to determin controversies but to have recourse to the decision of a Head Such is the opinion of S. Irenaeus S. Augustine and S. Hierome Vincentius Lirinensis and all other Sixthly it is the commandment of God When any Ezech. 44. 24. A most just proceeding controversies shall be raised my Priest shall hold sessions and shall judge For of necessity we must have an authority commanding magistral and decisive For Conclusion can one speak any thing more 6. Reason just than that in case any place of Scripture hath obscurities in it it were to much better purpose to hear thereupon the decision of ancient Fathers disinteressed from our controversies than to enforce our selves to pass upon the judgement of a passionate Adversary without warrant or authority When in the year 1523. heresie began first in France and that there was but one Minister a wool-carder called John Clarck in the Citie of Meaux where should we find the interpretation of Scripture in the mouth of this carder or in a lawful Councel Judge behold what you go about you may hereby see how much this pretext of Scripture is malicious shifting and frivolous I adde that they overthrow themselves by those 7. Reason ways wherewith they seek to establish themselves For if we ought not believe any thing but that which is written in what place of their Bible will they find that twenty thousand passages must be taken out of ours In what place will they shew us the books of the Macchabees are not Canonical In what place that Sunday must be kept holy and not Saturday In what place that vows must be broken In what place that Iesus Christ is eaten by the mouth of faith and so many other places which make us sufficiently understand they ruin themselves by their own hands Finally for the fourth consideration take the 4. Point Math. 7. Effects of heresie maxim from the Son of God To judge well of a sect you must judge by the fruits and the effects What fruits and what effects have we seen to come from this pretended Religion The fear of God stifled
blown up and cracked in a moment but the hell of envy is an admirable hell for it is a voluntary hell where nothing pleaseth and each thing tormenteth a hell which conteineth fire in it and affordeth no light a hell which always hath the worm present and never the remedy a hell which surprizeth by the eies and diveth even into the heart a hell which incessantly devoureth and never consumeth which hath mischiefs without hopes toyls void of repose and torments without mercy which is as the common fever of all the gall of this universe which exerciseth rage and fury which hath the wanness of death without dying and the cares of a disastrous life without life To divert the hearts of men from it I can propose but two reasons the first shall discover the malignity and the other the calamity thereof It is true that all vices are steeped in the venom of malice which should be a powerful motive for those to fly them who naturally love goodness but Greg. Thaum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Basil Seleuc. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyprian de◠zelo livore Greg. Niss in vita Mosis envy hath I know not what kind of particular influence which maketh it infinitely odious and execrable S. Gregory Thaumaturgus saith it is a wasp of Satan which stingeth men as the gad-flie doth oxen S. Basil of Seleucia calleth it the mother of murders S. Cyprian the moth of souls and S. Gregory Nyssen a disease of nature a poysoned gall the root of vices the mother of death and a voluntary Phthisical consumption All the ancient Fathers breath out fire flames when they discourse of it and indeed never can they speak enough of it Besides their authority which is of great value reason herein is very potent For we must needs affirm that by how much the more a vice participateth of the nature of Divels who are as it were the patrons of si by so much the more it is a vice and envy is of the same condition for it is the sin by singularity of denomination called the sin of the Divel As in heaven the first was the sin of pride so the first on earth was that of envy committed by the spirit of impurity and S. Augustine excellently saith envy is a vice Sap. 2. invidiâ diaholi mors introivit in orbem terrarum Aug. l. 2. de doct Christianâ meerly diabolical a sin which defileth the Divels and irrecoverably damneth them It shall not be said to Satan in the sentence of his damnation that he hath polluted the beds of men by his adulteries that he hath taken the goods of other men by his rapines that he hath seized on demains and possessions driving away the lawful owners but that he hath envied the felicity of man The same Authour saith on the Epistle to the Galatians that this vice Homini stanti invidisti Aug. in Epist ad Galat citatur in glossa In zelo invidiae tota sua viscera serpens concutit in haec imprimenda quasi pestem vomit hath the property to pour into the heart of men the poyson of the enemie Yea so it is that particularly the infernal serpent when he imprinteth the sin of envy in the heart of man doth turmoyl his very bowels and extreamly striveth as it were to vomit the blackest pestilence which hell conteineth Dicourse even with your self whether the envious be not tainted with a special malignity since that beyond all other sinners they transcendently suck in the breath of the serpent This black malice more easily discovereth it-self in this than in all the other mortal sins which are verily great exorbitancies of nature but they seem to have some pretext which mollifieth the evill The thief robbeth for his profit the carnal man seeketh out his unlawfull lusts to extinguish the fire of his passion the covetous man saith he is upon good husbandry the ambitious flattereth himself with the thirst of honour which hath heretofore born sway upon Altars and so of other sins their malice hath allways some heat of passion of apparence of good to excuse them But the envious what can he propose but a cold malignity a black cruelty a will determinately ill without sembleance of good Yea you shall find many that are in infinit abundanceas dogs couched on hay who will not eat thereof for it is not their custome nor are they willing other creatures for whom God hath ordained it should come neer it Many there are as Tantalus ever in the middest of fountains yet drink not and perpetually beholding him with a jealous eye that would tast therof The fable of the two envious men so celebrated is not feigned we too much approve it in our manners For it being permitted them to choose what each would aske on this condition that his request being allowed him his companions share be doubled the first who was extreamly covetous had all his desires fixed in the earnest demand of gold and silver but discoursing with himself that by asking he should doe a pleasure to another this onely consideration stayed him and never would he afterward open his mouth to make such a request the other made choise to loose one of his own eyes that his companion might have it doubled and be deprived of both How many are there at this day in the world who embarked with their enemies in the same vessel care not to perish so that they dying may glut their eyes with the death of those whom they hate A most strange malignity to forget the preservation of ones own person to which we are by nature streightly obliged to ruin another The eyes of Gorgons the hissing of serpents the aspect of basilisks are nothing in comparison of an enraged Courtier when he beholdeth him to be carried on the wings of favour whom he would gladly see utterly confounded without recovery Doe we not behold the eyes of a dog when the fortune of another is envied and the heart of a stag when question is made of the works of courage Where are not men to be seen who devour one another alive with mischievous aspects and carry even on their foreheads the gall of their envenomed hearts Where are not such malign spirits to be found who play at fast and loose thrusting him in an instant down to the lowest part of the wheel who was at the top At the Court all things most commonly fall short but malice and envy It is verily the extremity of misery when great ones doe with an open ear too much grace the designs of the envious making themselves as it were instruments of a furious pancher for the ruin of the innocent If we ought to stop our ears with wax among the songs of Syrens here we have need to have them all of diamond What can the envious man expect from this diabolical malice but the reward of Cain in the separation from the sight of God and perpetual affrightments O Cain
victorious and free from slander It is a very strange thing to pretend the most enormous of crimes against persons of our reputation and qualitie without saying wherefore or how Nothing is spoken of letters poysons complots conspiracies suborned servants it is onely affirmed we are parricides and proofs are pretermitted If this be sufficient you shall have in the world no more innocency but that which calumny shall disdain to fix her tooth in Our enemies who for many years have spun this web never could alledge any other thing but that we were old enough and of sufficient courage to do it and that we might perform it in revenge of the death of our mother Mariamne As for the first reason who seeth not how weak it is If nothing but age and valour be necessary to perpetrate a parricide it is to fill the whole world with bloud to put all fathers into jealousie and all sons into crime For the second which concerneth our dead mother she left us in an age wherein neither could we as yet bewail nor feel her misery After we came out of our child-hood we have not been willing to search into your counsels to sift out your resolutions the issue of them ought to make us not more audacious to undertake evil but more stayed and advised to do good We onely have afforded tears to her not to bemoan her death for such were unprofitable but to satisfie our passion seeing our enemies ceased not to disturb the ashes of her whose bloud they had shed Father if our tears which proceed from so just a resentment of nature be in your Court accounted criminal where shall we any more find safety but in your justice Never in the so sensible apprehensions hath any word of bitterness escaped us against you but rather against those who abuse your authority to the ruin of yours We have no cause at all to hate your life but to love it by so much the more as you have judged us capable above the rest of our brothers to succeed to your Crown You have set all the marks of regality upon us al the blessings we could hope for to ask more would be to require liberty to overthrow us To what end should we seek by parricide a Kingdom which is purchased for us by your favour that so heaven earth seas conspiring with Caesar might shut the gate against us for which we should have been desirous to make a key steeped in the bloud of our father Your majesty hath begot us perhaps more unfortunate than now would be expedient for your estate but never shall we be so sottish nor impious as to do a mischief irrecoverably to undo us Most honoured father suppress the suspition which you have conceived or if you be pleased stil to retain it we both will leave this life of which we are not so fondly affectionate that we would be willing to preserve it to the displeasure of him that gave it This Oration accompanied with the tears of this young Prince struck all the standers by with admiration and as they were both beheld with lowly looks expecting the Judges sentence every one was enkindled with desire to justifie them Caesar casteth his eye on Herod to see his countenance who shewed himself much moved with compassion and could have been content never to have thought of such an accusation for verily this action in the apprehension of those present much hurt him and caused his credulity to be condemned Augustus who would not confound them pronounced that undoubtedly his children had done ill to displease him but as for the pretended crime he should raze it out of his papers These young Princes were too well born and bred to proceed so far there remained for them hereafter to live in good correspondence and renew this holy knot of nature which could not be dissolved by so good a father nor children so futurely hopeful This said Herod embraced his sons one after another much weeping which drew tears even from those who were not interressed in this affair After all manner of complements were done behold them upon return with their father and brother Antipater who had caused all this goodly Tragedie to be played Notwithstanding this wicked creature overwhelmed them with courtesies and congratulations as if he would make bonfires of joy in his heart Thus dissimulation goeth along in Court till such time that God taketh away the mask Being returned to Jerusalem one year was scarcely spent but that calumnie set new snares to entrap the innocency of these poor Princes Pheroras resolved to excite Alexander with jealousie telling Horrible malice him in great secret Herod his father made too much of the beauteous Glaphyra his wife daughter of King Archelaus supposing it was a powerful means to turmoyl his spirit and enkindle it with fury against the King his father and this way to precipitate him into ruin These words upon the matter were most sensible to this generous heart and then he began with a jealous eye to prie into Herods actions who it is true familiarly conversed every day with this Princess endowed with incomparable beauty but in conclusion he observed no other thing in such conversation but loving entertainments of a father-in-law towards a sons wife worthy to bee cherished for many excellent parts Alexander notwithstanding after this advertisement of Pheroras turned this honey into poyson interpreting all in an ill sense and was so transported that one day entering into his fathers chamber he discovered the jealousie and suspition he had conceived with sighs and tears of rage Herod found himself much troubled with this accident and thinking it a thing unworthy his person to justifie himself to his son with many words to excuse that which was not he onely said My son who hath put this into thy head The other replieth he knew much of it himself and Pheroras had confirmed it Pheroras was instantly sent for and Herod who oft-times used him as a servant casting a furious glance of his eyes upon him Rake-hell saith he what hast thou said to this young Prince It is not a word thou hast put into his ear but a sword into his hand against his father for verily he would no more endure a companion of his bed than I in my Kingdom Ingratefull creature shouldst thou not rather tear out thy own heart than entertain such a thought of thy brother Such crimes as this never were in our house nor ever will be unless thou bring them hither Get hence and let me see thee no more I ordain tortures for other delinquents but for thee since thou art so wicked I leave thee to thy own conscience not being able to find a fitter executioner Pheroras who was not much astonished with this noise answereth he knew nothing but what Salome who was there present had told him as indeed this came from her But the subtile woman casting out at that instant a loud complaint and tearing
which might slide into the heat of contention and guided all the affairs to peace In the end Arius Condemnation of Arius is condemned and a form of faith conceived for the equality of the Word with the Father whereat many Arians much amazed failed not to strike sail and yield themselves to the plurality of voices fearing least their contestation might ruin their reputation with the Emperour It is thought Eusebius the Historiographer was of this number a man of the time who knew how to comply readily with the humour of those who had authority and force in their hands As for the other Eusebius Bishop of Nicomedia who had maintained the faction of Arius with much passion he saw himself shamefully fallen from the opinion of his great credit and durst not refuse to sign the doctrine of the Councel Greatly was he streightned in another Session to pronounce excommunication upon Arius his creature saying he was consenting to the decision of the Councel under shadow of some perplexed words which he made use of to cover his opinion The fathers shutting up their eyes to all human reasons and fortifying their arms against favour surprized this Eusebius and Theognis Bishop of Nice in the condemnation of Arius which they would not sign declaring them upō this refusal deprived of their Bishopricks They interposed the authority of the Emperour who suspended the execution on such condition that they gave satisfaction to the Councel Never were men more humbled namely Eusebius who thought himself the all-predominant for he was constrained speedily to retire and address his request to the Bishops in terms most suppliant in which he protested wholly to submit himself to the decrees of the Councel yet notwithstanding he spared not to embroil matters with an infinity of wiles and malice which made the Emperour open his eyes to confirm their sentence who had condemned him and send him into banishment with subrogation of another in his place though he afterward by ordinary submission was repealed At that time happened a marvellous labyrinth of affairs in which began the combats of great S. Athanasius which are to take up another S. Athanasius History besides this it extending much further beyond the years of Constantine As for the success of Arius after the banishment of ten years he still intermedling with factions found means to be heard in another Councel of Jerusalem where feigning a penitence artificially counterfeited he handled the matter so by the practises of Eusebius who was then in favour that he was absolved with commandment given to the good Alexander Bishop of Constantinople to receive him into the communion of the Church The holy Prelate stoutly refused it knowing well it was an hypocrisie which tended to annul the decrees of the Councel of Nice and bring confusion into the Church But Eusebius of Nicomedia ceased not to make armed inhibitions threatening that in case of refusal he would deprive him of his Bishoprick He who cared not so much for the loss of his dignity as the safety of the Church forsook all these subtilities of Theologie and exhorting his people to a fast of seven days by the counsel of S. James of Nisibis who was then present spared not to macerate his body with austerities and present to God day and night his humble supplications to divert this scourge In the end the affair being very shortly to be determined he prostrated his face against the earth before the Altar and said My God if it be true that Arius ought to morrow to be received into the communion of the faithfull I beseech you let your poor servant Alexander go in peace and not loose the faithfull people with the wicked But if you be resolved to preserve your Church and I may be assured you will do it look on the threats of Eusebius and deliver not your inheritance to the scorn of the wicked but rather take Arius out of this world lest we receiving him may seem to introduce heresie and impiety into your house The next day Arius went early in the morning End of Arius from the Emperours Palace very well accompanied with Eusebius and walked in pomp through the streets of Constantinople He was a man more subtile than confident and it is thought the apprehensions he had of the issue of this combat put terrour in him and this terrour caused him to step out of the way Behold the cause why being by chance in the market-place of Constantinople he retired into a publick place of ease to satisfie the necessities of nature Socrates holdeth he cast forth a great quantity of bloud and thereupon falling into a swoon not being able to be holpen he yielded up his wicked soul by a just punishment from Heaven leaving to posterity a perpetual detestation of his life with a horrour of the very place of his death Eusebius caused the body to be intrerred Alexander breathed again and all the Church triumphed upon the admiration of the judgements of God seeing that he who had raised so many bloudy tragedies was dead in his own bloud and after he had infected the soundest parts of the world with his poison vomited up his contagious soul in the publick infections drawing on his criminal head the execration of all Ages The twelfth SECTION The government of Constantine HAving shewed unto you the greatness of Constantine Constant 19. Constantinople erected in matters of Religion let us now behold it in his politick government It is no slight note of the vigour of his spirit that he enterprized to make another Rome and so prosperously to have perfected this his design There is found among the Gentiles a certain Epigram in the ruines of ancient Rome which said It stood in need of Gods to make it but there was but one God necessary to destroy it What may we say of the courage prudence happy success of the Emperour in the establishment of Constantinople We will not make him a God as the Pagans but say he was a man singularly assisted by the providence of God in the greatness of his undertaking He perceived in this new change of Religion there were in Rome many harsh spirits and that even among the principal whom he could not reclaim to Christianity as his zeal fervently desired Behold whether desirous to consecrate to God a place better purified from Idols where he might be served with more consent and better judgement or whether he were transported with the desire of honour and the memory of posterity he resolved to build a City which should bear his name and be as it were the master-piece of a great Monarch For this purpose he had some desire to build on the ruins of Troy the Great thinking the fame of the place renowned for its unhappiness through all the parts of the habitable world might contribute somewhat to the glory of his name but he having laid the foundations God gave him notice in sleep that this was not the place
impatience She to appease him excused herself upon the necessity of the accident happened but this notable Astrologer hearing speech of the birth of a child forsooke the pot and glass which he dearly loved and endeavoured to set the Horoscope of this Ablavius newly come into the world And thereupon said to the hostess Go tell your neighbour she hath brought forth a son to day who shall be all and have all but the dignity of an Emperour I think with Eunapius that such tales are rather made after events to give credit to judicial Astrology than to say they have any foundation upon truth It is not known by what means he was advanced but he came into so great an esteem that he governed the whole Empire under Constantine who freely made use of him as of a man discreet and vigilant in affairs though much displeased to see him too eager in his proper interests And it is said that walking one day with him he took a stick in his hand and drew the length of five or six foot on the earth then turning towards his creature Ablavius why so much sweat and travel In the end of all neither I nor thou shall have more than this nay thou dost not know whether thou shalt have it or no. He was the cause by his factions that Constantine almost caused one day three innocent Captains to be punished with death being ill inform'd had it not been that S. Nicholas then living appeared in a dream the same night to Constantine and Ablavius threatning if they proceeded any further God would chastise them which made them stay execution Ablavius notwithstanding was so tyed to the earth that the words and examples of his Master had small power over his soul in such sort that he had an unhappy end ordinary with those who abuse the favours of God For after the death of Constantine Constantius who succeeded in the Empire of his father taking this man as it were for a Pedagogue so much authority had he assumed unto himself and thinking he could not free himself of his minority but by the death of Ablavius caused him miserably to be butchered sending two for executours of this commission men suborned who saluted him with great submissions and knees bended to the earth in manner of Emperour He who before had married one of the daughters of the Emperour Constans brother of Constantius thinking they would raise him to the dignity of Caesar asked where the purple was They answered they had no commission to give it him but that those who should present it were at his chamber dore He commandeth them to be speedily brought in These were armed men who approaching near unto him instead of the purple inflicted a purple death transfixing him with their swords and renting him as a Sacrifice If the poor man following his Masters example had been willing to set limits upon his fortune and taken shelter at least in the storm to meditate upon the affairs of his conscience he would the less have been blamed but natural desires have this proper that they are bounded by nature which made them The fantasies of ambition which grew from our opinions have no end no more than opinion subsistence For what bounds will you give to the falsehood and lying of a miserable vanity which filleth the spirit with illusion and the conscience with crimes When one goeth the right way he findeth an end but when he wandereth a-cross the fields he makes steps without number errours without measure and miseries without remedy The thirteenth SECTION The death of Constantine IT seemeth great men who have lived so well should never die and that it were very fit they still did what they once have done so happily But as they entred not into life by any other way than that of birth as men so must they issue out from this ordinary residence of mortals as other men Constantine had already reigned thirty and one years and was in the threescore and third of his age living otherwise in a prosperous old age and having a body exceedingly well disposed to the functions of life for he incessantly travelled in the duty of his charge without any inconvenience ordering military matters in his mind instituting laws hearing embassages reading writing discoursing to the admiration of all the world This good Prince earnestly desired the conversion of all the great-ones of his Court. Behold why not satisfied with giving them example of a perfect life he inflamed them to good with powerful words which were to souls as thunder-claps to Hinds not for the delivery of a beast but the production of salvation A little before his death he pronounced in his Palace to those of his Court a very elegant Oration of the immortality of the soul of the success of good and evil of the providence of God in the recompence of pure souls of the terrour of his justice upon the incredulous and reprobate This divine man handled these discourses with so much fervour and devotion that he seemed to have his ear already in heaven to understand mysteries and enjoy an antipast of Paradise A while after he felt some little inequality of temperature in his body which was with him very extraordinary so sound and well composed he was Thereupon he was taken with a fever somewhat violent and causing himself to be carried to the baths he remained not long there for little regarding the health of his body in comparison of the contentment of his soul he was possessed with a great desire to go to Drepanum in Bythinia a Citie which he surnamed of his good mother where was the bodie of S. Lucian the Martyr to which he had a particular devotion He being transported into this desired place felt in this heart an alacrity wholly celestial and for a long time remained in the Church notwithstanding the indisposition of his body fervently praying for his own salvation and the universal repose of his Empire From thence he went directly to a Palace which he had in the suburbs of Nichomedia where feeling the approaches of death he disposed himself for his last hour with the marks of a piety truly Christian His Princes and Captains who heard him speak of death being desirous to divert his mind from this thought said He was become too necessary for all the world and that the prayers of all men would prolong his life But he Of what do you speak to me as if it were not true life to die to so many dead things to live with my Saviour No this heer is not a death but a passage to immortality If you love me hinder not my way one cannot go too soon to God This spoken he disposed of his last Will with a constant judgement and couragious resolution declaring in his Testament the estate of affairs he would establish even in the least particulars and very well remembring all his good servants for whom he ordained pensions and rewards for every one
to the Saviour of the world which is yet at this time to be seen hanging over the Altar of Saint Sophia So did Mauritius so Henrie the Emperour at Clunie who made offer to the Church of a World all over diversified with most exquisite precious stones This is the cause why the King sent this present Flodoardus Philippus Bergomensis Savaro p. 15. de pietate Regis Ludovici as the History expresly mentioneth to be hanged up before the chief Altar of Saint Peter at Rome in token of the offer he made to God of his person and estate as the eldest Son of the Church And he that would well consider the foundation of the History shall find this Diadem called the Kingdom or Realm was a kind of crown come from Constantinople For it is said that the Emperour Anastasius who sought support from the favour of the King of France against the Goths that swayed in Italie understanding the great feats of arms done by our Clodovaeus sent a solemn Embassage unto him to congratulate and offer him the title of an honourable Consul the purple robe and the Crown which the Grecians of this time called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clodovaeus very gladly entertained this Embassage and shewed himself attired with those ornaments in the Church of S. Martin where he made a largess of gold and silver then acknowledging all these prosperities came to him from God after he was baptized he consecrated this rich jewel which had been presented to him by the Emperour in the chief Church of Christendom to serve as an eternal monument of his Religion Behold how this illustrious Monarch began at that time to manifest the marks of his zeal and to cement together the good intelligence which France afterwards had with the Pastor and spiritual Father of the whole world I am bound to touch this as I pass along with all sincerity being naturally an enemy of these questions which are many times moved with too much servour and inconsideration in the point of contestations of the jurisdiction of Sovereign authorities We are learned enough when we know that Jesus Christ who had the source of power in himself distributed it to Popes and Kings constituting the one for spiritual government the other for temporal It is his pleasure we honour the character of his authority both in the one and other and not to argue upon fantasies God hath set them over out heads to admire their lustes and not to controul their power Amongst the follies of Nero it is reported that one day beholding a space of land which separated two seas and held them in excellent order he had a desire to cut it that these two seas might encounter and himself see what countenance they would carry when they commixed together Take you good heed saith the Oracle unto him otherwise they will overflow to drown you Leave matters as God hath appointed and confound not the limits of nature It is true Ecclesiastical and civil power are two great seas God hath limited and divided them by the interposition of spiritual and temporal administration Both exercise their functions and live in fair peace God preserve us from those miseries which may dis-mantle the wall and cause them to intermingle together so that we may behold the world in a deluge of calamities To what purpose is all this The Sun doth not the work of the rain nor the rain of the Sun Constantine Communis Episcopus corum que extra exclesiam said the Bishops were Bishops in their Churches in that which concerneth Religion and God had appointed him for the government of his Empire in matters temporal Let us rest in these limits Give we to Caesar that which belongeth to Caesar to God what appertaineth to God We have better learned to live than dispute and our Ancestours have preserved a Monarchy so flourishing the space of twelve hundred years not with disputations and unprofitable wranglings but with the arms of wisdom obedience and courage We have always rendered to the Pope the honour 1 Pet. 2. Sub diti estote omni humanâ— creaturae propter Deum sive Regi quasi praecellenti sive â—ucibus tamquam ab co missis he deserveth as to the Sovereign Pastour of the Universal Church which is under Heaven We have confessed and do acknowledge the King true and absolute Monarch in the government of temporal things singularly honouring him and with most cordial affections loving him as an animated pourtraictute of the greatness of the Divine Majesty God thereupon maketh us to prosper and tast by experience that there is no science more noble than obedience nor any felicity but the accomplishment of the will of the sovereign Master On the contrary it is observed in the History of so many Ages that the wounds from Heaven have on all sides fallen upon those who have sought to cast the apple of discord into the house of God The wind blown from their moutheâ— returned on their heads since it is fit iniquity should first kill it self with its own poison The eighth SECTION The good success which God gave to Clodovaeus after he became a Christian CLodovaeus was no sooner become a Christian but that it seemed God had tied to his arms some secret virtue which made him triumph over his enemies and crown all his enterprizes with most glorious successes The first war he undertook after his Baptism was against Gombaut King of Burgundie of whom we have very amply spoken heretofore I much wonder at certain Authours who measuring the affections of Saints with the weaknesses of their own spirits and esteeming it a sweet glory to be revenged upon enemies from whom some notable injuries are received have said that Clotilda excited her husband to the ruin of her uncle to derive an account from him of the death of her father and mother This is too inferiour a conceit of a Lady who was arrived to so high a degree of perfection nay it was so much otherwise that she should enkindle the fire of this war that Gombaut being in the full possession of Clodovaeus to bereave him of life she withheld the fatal blow afterwards seeing he by his ill deportment had lost his Kingdom she did all that possibly she might to preserve a part thereof for Sigismund son of Gombaut her cousin-germane That which first of all ruined this unhappy King Paul Emil. of Burgundie was his heresie which drew upon him the vengeance of God for it being often preached unto him and he convinced by reasons offering himself in private to become a Catholick yet still retained Arianism in publick Behold the cause why he having divided his heart God divided his Kingdom The second cause of his ruin was his nature cruel and covetous which rendered him uncivil and an enemy of all order He sent his Neece as it were in anger to Clodovaeus giving her not any thing in marriage but many complements Whereupon the King making
motto which said Haereticum hominem devita that is to say we must avoid an Heretick alluding to his father Levigildus Disputation which concerneth the estate of Princes is a ticklish piece where the most part of those who speak of it use their own interest for text and their passion for Commentary Silence and peace which are the two mansions of a good conscience are of much more worth than all the questions which enkindle divisions I think the best doctrine is that which best knoweth how to cement up concord among Miters Diadems and Crowns entertain the obedience of people towards their Sovereigns and if there be verities which are the daughters of the abyss and silence as those Ancients said to leave them in the house of their father and mother where though they nought avail they shall ever be better lodged than in publick It is not vice but the times which divideth Saints and every one thinketh an affair probable which he hath taken upon the byass of his own understanding S. Leander approved the separation of Hermingildus in Spain S. Gregorie of Towers blamed it in France I enter not into all the considerations of them both but I think this Prince took ways too violent in his beginnings levying arms against his father which were not according to the counsel of his wife and I will have no other Authour but himself since he condemned his own design so soon as he began to become holy The thirteenth SECTION The reciprocal Letters of the father and the son upon their separation HErmingildus extreamly incensed at the affront which he received in the person most dear unto him in the world and who wanted not a Nobility round about him that enkindled the fire of choller burst forth in the beginning with violence The father an old suspitious man felt himself much displeased with this alteration and the step-mother ceased not to throw flames through her throat and crie al-arm as loud as she could to transport affairs instantly unto the utmost point of severity Levigildus notwithstanding before he would proceed to extremities sought to do something by letters which are found couched in the History wherein this Prince flattereth his son with fair words to surprize him Behold here the copy of them SON I would willingly say that unto you present which I cannot sufficiently express in my Letters If you have as much confidence in me as I yet have love towards you I verily think were you with me and alienated from the evil counsels of those who abuse the facilitie of your excellent nature I might do much upon your spirit both as a father and as a King so that at the least if you fear my Scepter you would love my charitie which still openeth its arms to your obedience I have bred you up from your tender infancie to make you heir of my Crown and since you arrived to full age I have conferred so many benefits on you that they have surmounted your hopes and as it were drained my liberalities I have put a Scepter into your hand to serve your father with the more authoritie and not to deliver it over to mine enemy I have caused you to be stiled a King to become a support to my Crown and not a Lord over mine Empire I have given you all to repose my old age upon the hope of your dutie and not to afflict me And yet notwithstanding after I have done all this beyond custom beyond your age and above your merit you pay me with impietie and ingratitude Expect yet a little and the law of nature will give you that which you seek by ambition Alledge not Religion unto me to justifie your arms it hath been a crime in you to take a Religion contrary to my commands and an impietie in your Religion to separate your self from my obedience I counsel you as a friend and command you as a father to render your self as soon as possibly you may at my Court and set your self in the way of dutie otherwise I fear you may implore mercie when there will be no other Kingdom found for you but that of justice Hermingildus deliberated upon the answer he was to make to these Letters but his Councel too fervent shewed him it was now no time to retire back that he had to do with a man imperious and turbulent a mother-in-law irreconciliable who had no other aim but to ruin him and that if he took not arms to defend his own life he would be chased away like a beast and should not find safety even in deserts Behold the cause why he wrote back in this manner Sir I give thanks to my Religion which hath already afforded me patience enough to bear the sharpness of your words and which is more resolution also not to be shaken with the severitie of your menaces I have ever freely protested that I am tied unto you with immortal obligations and am besides ready prest to acknowledge them even to my last breath were it not that some now endeavour with you to render all my duties unjust and my thoughts criminal Your Majestie should quickly see me by your sides if she who will not behold me at your feet but in the quality of a Delinquent had not pre-occupated your heart and ears to stop up the one to charitie the other to justice What assurance can I have of my life in a place where she for whom I live hath been dragged by the hair and trampled under foot The wound sticketh so sensibly upon me that time can neither find a lenitive nor reason a remedie As for the change of Religion made by me I go along with the main current of wisdom and sanctitie of the whole world and where I find my salvation most assured I cannot live with more authoritie nor die with more hope and if you condemn me for it your Majestie shall know that a father requireth obedience out of the limits of nature when he exacteth it beyond conscience Sir I beseech you to adde to so many benefits by you afforded me the liberty of an honest repose lest our arms may be as shamefull for the Conquerour as miserable to the vanquished Levigildus was more exasperated upon these Letters and the wicked Step-mother ceased not to rub the sore as much as she might All designs tended to war the father upon the one side maketh great levies of souldiers the son fortifieth Sevil and Cordova and draweth to his party some Forces of the Empire having sent an honourable Embassy to the Emperour of Constantinople which was at that time Tyberius to intreat great succours Acts of hostility were practised both by the one and other part and in the end Hermingildus is besieged in Sevil where he made his abode the space of two or three years after his departure from the Court King Levigildus who was an old fox endeavoured then to entertain the Catholicks with much sweetness to divert them from his sons
on thy part what ingratitudes on mine Preserve me in what is thine and wash away with the precious bloud of thy Son what is mine Shelter me under the wings of thy protection from so many shadows apparitions and snares of the father of darkness and grant that though sleep close my eys yet my heart may never be shut to thy love Lastly fall asleep upon some good thought that your night as the Prophet saith may be enlightened with the delights of God and if you chance to have any interruption of sleep supply it with ejaculatory prayers and elevations of heart as the just did of old called for this reason The crickets of the night Thus shall you lead a life full of honour quiet and satisfaction to your self and shall make every day a step to Eternity The marks which may amongst others give you good hope of your predestination are eleven principall 1. Faith lively simple and firm 2. Purity of life exempt ordinarily from grievous sins 3. Tribulation 4. Clemency and mercy 5. Poverty of spirit disengaged from the earth 6. Humility 7. Charity to your neighbour 8. Frequentation of the blessed Sacrament 9. Affection to the word of God 10. Resignation of your own mind to the will of your Sovereign Lord. 11. Some remarkable act of virtue which you have upon occasion exercised You will find this Diary little in volume but great in virtue if relishing it well you begin to put it in practice It contains many things worthy to be meditated at leisure for they are grave and wise precepts choisely extracted out of the moral doctrine of the Fathers Though they seem short they cost not the less pains Remember that famous Artist Myrmecides employed more time to make a Bee than an unskilfull workman to build a house EJACULATIONS FOR THE DIARY In the Morning MY voice shalt thou hear in the morning O Lord In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee and will look up Psal 5. 3. Thou shalt make thy face to shine upon me and all the beasts of the forest shall gather themselves together and lay them down in their dens Psal 184. 22. My dayes are like the dayes of an hireling Untill the day break and the shadows flie away Job 7. 1. Cant. 4. 6. Beginning a good work In the volume of the book it is written of me I delight to do thy will O my God yea thy Law is within my heart Psal 40. 7. 8. In good Inspirations The Lord God hath opened mine ear and I was not rebellious neither turned away back Isaiah 50. 5. At Church How amiable are thy Tabernacles O Lord of hosts Psal 84. 1. Before reading Speak Lord for thy servant heareth 1 Samuel 3. 9. Speaking My heart is inditing a good matter I speak of the things which I have made touching the King Psal 45. 1. Eating Thou openest thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every living thing Psal 145. In Prosperity If I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth If I prefer not thee above my chief joy Psal 137. 6. Adversity The Lord killeth and maketh alive 1 Sam. 2. 6. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil Job 2. 10. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glorie Luke 24. 26. Troubles Surely man walketh in a vain shew surely they are disquieted in vain Psal 39. 6. Calumnies If I pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ Gal. 1. 10. Praises Not unto us O Lord not unto us but unto thy Name give glorie Psal 115. 1. Against vain hope As a dream when one awaketh so O Lord when thou awakest thou shalt despise their image Psalm 73. 20. Pride Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased Luke 14. 11. Covetousness It is more blessed to give than to receive Acts 20. 35. Luxury Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ 1. Cor. 6. 15. Envy He that loveth not his brother abideth in death 1 John 3. 14. Gluttony The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink Rom. 14. 17. Anger Learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart Matth. 11. 29. Sloth Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord negligently Jer. 48. 10. Rules of Faith God cannot be known but by himself What is to be understood of God is to be learned by God Hilar lib. 5. de Trin. God doth not call us to the blessed life by hard questions In simplicity must we seek him in piety profess him Idem lib. 10. Remove not the ancient bounds which thy fathers have set Prov. 22. 28. Many are the reasons which justly hold me in the bosom of the Catholick Church Consent of people and nations Authority begun by miracles nourished by hope encreased by charity confirmed by antiquity August lib. De utilitate credendi To dispute against that which the universal Church doth maintenance is insolent madness Idem Epist 118. Let us follow universality antiquity consent Let us hold that which is believed every where always by all Vincentius Lyrinensis De profanis vocum novitatibus Acts of Faith Lord I believe help thou mine unbelief Marc. 9. 24. I know that my Redeemer liveth c. Job 19. 25. Hope Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me Psal 24. 4. I will be with him in trouble I will deliver him and honour him Psal 90. 15. Charity Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee My flesh and my heart faileth but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever Psal 73. 25 26. Feed me O Lord thy suppliant with the continual influence of thy Divinity This I request this I desire that vehement love may throughly pierce me fill me and change me into it self Blosius PRAYERS for all Persons and occasions For the Church WE beseech thee O Lord graciously to accept the prayers of thy Church that she being delivered from all adversitie and errour may serve thee in safety and freedom through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the King WE beseech thee O Lord that thy servant CHARLS by thy gracious appointment our King and Governour may be enriched with all encrease of virtue whereby he may be able to eschew evil and to follow Thee the Way the Truth and the Life through Jesus Christ our Lord. For a Friend ALmighty and ever-living Lord God have mercy upon thy servant N. and direct him by thy goodness into the way of eternall salvation that through thy grace he may desire those things which please thee and with his whole endeavour perform the same through Jesus Christ our Lord. For Peace O God from whom all holy desires all good counsels and all just works do proceed give unto us thy servants that peace which the world cannot give that both our hearts may be set
carry him in triumph to his throne he thought himself a sleep and in a dream and imagined it so sweet that he in his blindnesse feared the day-light He learned from his son all the successe of this negotiation and the valor us atchievements of the French He knew not what he should believe what he might hope nor what to admire A world of wonders overwhelm his mind and more then ever he bewaileth the losse of his eyes to behold himself bereft of the sight of these incomparable men who seemed to be sent from heaven Finally he saith he is satiated with Empire and worldly greatnesse and that he putteth all his state into the hands of his son His son embraceth him with all unexpressible tendernesse calling him his Lord and Father and protesting he will not intermeddle with any thing of the Empire but the cares whilst he liveth leaving the dignity to his discretion who had given him birth The Father on the other side answered that the piety of his son was more to him then all Empires and that he hereafter should repute himself the happiest man in the world being enlightned by the raies of such virtue in the deprivation of temporall light This was an admirable strife which made it appear that if there be impetuous desires in the Courts of great men there are likewise sometimes to be found moderations which surpasse all mens imagination I am not ignorant Nicetas saith that this affection afterward turned into jealousie but we must note this Authour is passionate against Alexis and his father by reason of the amity he contracted with strangers The French judged it fit that the son should reign by the authority of the father and in respect of his infirmities take the whole government of the State into his hand which he did and all seemed to prosper in his beginnings when after the retreat of ours who had made havock enough in the city out of the liberty of arms rebels stirred who put the whole city into combustion exciting it against the young Emperour and saying that under pretext of Publick good he had called in strangers to the saccage of his Countrey which made him unworthy both of Empire and life The conspiring was so violent that Alexis having no leasure to look about him was betrayed by one of his intimate friends named Mursuflus who pretending to put him into a place of safety threw him into an ugly dungeon where twice having tried to put him to death by poison and seeing his plot succeeded not he out of a horrid basenesse caused him to be strangled Deceitfull Felicities of the world True turrets of Fayeries which are onely in imagination Where shall your allurements prevail from henceforth The poor father hearing the death of his son and the sudden alteration of affairs saith Good God! to what calamity do you reserve my wretched old age I have consummated evils and evils have not yet ended me I am now but a rotten trunk deprived of vigour and the functions of life and if I have any feeling it is onely of my miseries Take this soul which is on my lips and which is over-toiled with worldly Empires and put it in a place where it may no longer fear either hostilities or treasons Ah! Poor son thou art passed away like froth on the water and Fortune did not raise thee within the imaginary Circuit of her Empire but to cast thee down headlong I bewail not my blindnesse it is the happiest of my evils since it bereaves me the aspect of the horrible accidents which by heap passe through my ears Dear Sonne thou hast out-stripped me but I follow thee with a confident pace into the shades of death which shall for me hereafter be the best of lives He gave up the ghost in these anguishes whilst the city of Constantinople was divided by a thousand Factions and turmoiled with fatall convulsions which ministred matter of presage of the change of Empire The people weary of the government of the Angels whose names were Isaac and Alexis had already chosen one called Canabus a man before unknown who was quickly put down by the power and violence of Mursuflus He was a Prince arrogant incontinent and more cunning then prudent who kept not long that Sceptre which he by such wickednesse had usurped For scarcely two moneths and a half were past but that the French returned and besieged Constantinople which the new tyrant had already very well fortified But the Grecians then were so cowardous and affrighted that they made very little resistance and flew before the French and other Westrin and Northem people as before so many Giants Mursuflus as faint-harted in peril as he had been adventurous to commit a treason puts himself upon the sea to flie into Morea but is taken and slain by the divine Vengeance which perpetually hath an armed hand over surious and bloody ambitions The City and Empire of Constantinople yield in the end to the Western power and Baldwin Earl of Flanders is chosen Emperour by the consent of all the army Nicetas a Greek Authour who lived at that time deploreth this change with the Lamentations of Jeremy But it was Gods judgement who would purifie the Eastern Throne defiled by so many wicked actions making a Prince so chast to sit thereon that Nicetas himself is enforced to praise and admire his singular continency as I have observed in my first Treatise Throughout all these Discourse we now see how the desires of the ambitious are chastised and how their hopes being vain their joyes are likewise short and unhappy 7. Historians give most of our Kings this praise that they never had turbulent and troublesome spirits but Moderation of the Kings of France loved Peace and mainteined Justice The History of the Fathers of the West assures us that in the generall combustion of Wars between the French and the English there was a good Hermite named John of Gaunt who ceased not to beseech heaven to quench the fire of these fatall Divisions that he was sent by God to meditate Peace between the two Kings He first went to our Charles the Seventh whom he found infinitly disposed to all the conditions of a good Peace and this gave him occasion to promise him infinite many benedictions from heaven that he should have a Son successour of his Estates to crown his Felicities which happened to him as being a voyce from God and an Oracle of Truth But when the Religious man came to the King of England he would in no sort hearken to him but caused him to be used in a manner unworthy his person which drew the anger of God upon the Kingdome and occasioned him great calamities This subject is so plentifull that I am willing to abbreviate it ambitious desires being so frequent that they have more need to be corrected then sought into Observations upon ANGER and REVENGE BEhold here the Passion from whence sparkles flames and coals proceed which
trouble those spirits which have an inclination to mildnesse they say that Joab was his kinsman his faithfull servant the best of his Captains the chief Commander that had followed him from his youth accompanied him through infinite dangers and upheld the Crown a thousand times shaking upon his head He never medled in the factions that were raised against the King he was alwayes the first that dissipated them by the vigour of his spirit resolution counsell of his Arms and of his Sword If he slew Abner it was in revenge of his Brother which the other had slain If he stabbed Amasa it was the chief Captain of the Rebell Absolon whom they would have put in his place for to lay then great faults of the State upon him If he spoke freely to David it was alwayes for his good and for his glory in the mean time at his Death he recommended him to be punished after that in effect he had pardoned him all his life But to all this I say that the last actions of so great a King are more worthy of honour then censure The punishment of Joab proceeded not from a Passion but from a Justice inspired by God which would satisfie the voyce of blood the which cryed still against the murders committed by this Captain Further also there was a secret of State as saith Theodoret which is that this Joab shewed himself against the re-election of Solomon and was ready to trouble the peace of the Realm And as concerning Shimei to whom he had sworn that he would not cause him to dye he kept his promise to him faithfully abstaining from doing him any evil while he lived although he was in absolute power for to hurt him but as his oath was personall he would not extend it upon his sonne and tye his hands contenting himself to recommend unto him that he should do justice according as his wisedome and discretion should direct him It is very fitting that we should think highly of this Prophet and that we should rather search out the reason of many of his actions from the secret inspiration of God then from the weaknesse of humane judgement He lived near upon three-score and twelve years reigned fourty and dyed a thousand and thirty two years before the birth of our Saviour leaving infinite treasures for the building of the Temple and eternall monuments of his devotion and understanding It was a speciall favour to him that the Saviour would be born of his bloud and that his birth was revealed to him so many dayes before it was known to the world He hath often set it down upon the title of his Psalmes and was in an extasie in this contemplation by the fore-taste of that his happinesse Men are accustomed to take their nobility and their names from their Ancestours that go before them But David drew it from a Son which is the Father of Glory and Authour of Eternity The industrious hands of men have taken pains in vain to carve him out a Tomb Death hath no power over him seeing that he is the Primogenitour of life All things are great in his person but the heighth of all his greatnesse is that he hath given us a Jesus SOLOMON SOlomon was he that ordered the holinesse of the Temple and yet he can hardly find place in the Holy Court The love which gave Solomons entry into the Realm full of troubles him the Crown by the means of his mother Bathsheba hath taken from him his innocency The Gentiles might have made him one of their Gods if Women had not made him lesse then a man His entrance into the Throne of his father was bloudy his Reign peaceable his Life variable and his End uncertain One may observe great weaknesses at the Court at his coming to the Crown confused designs desperate hopes a Prophet upright at the Court a woman full of invention an old Courtier overthrown and little brotherhood where there is dispute of Royalty David was upon the fading of his Age and his Throne looked at by his Children which expected the dissolution of their father He had taken the authority upon him to decide this question by his commands not willing to be ruled therein by nature nor to preferre him whom she had first brought into the world but him which should be appointed by God and best fitted thereto by his favours Bathsheba a subtil woman Bathsheba fitly insinuares her self and procures the Crown for her son Solomon that had carried him away by violence of a great affection kept her self in her possession and had more power over the mind of the King then all his other associates Amidst the kindnesses of an affectionate husband which is not willing to deny any thing to her whom he loves she drew this promise from David that he would take her sonne Solomon to be successour in his Estates This was a little miracle of Nature in his Infancy Solomons infancy pleasing and it seemed that all the Graces had strove together to make a work so curiously polisht His mother loved him with infinite tendernesse and his father could not look upon him without amazednesse He was married at the age of nineteen years and David before he departed from the world saw himself multiplied by his son in a second which was Roboam Aristotle hath observed well that children which are married so young do seldome bring forth great men and this observation was verified in Roboam who caused as many confusions in his life as he had made rejoycings at his birth This strengthened Solomon at the beginning in his own and his mothers pretences But Adonijah his brother which immediately followed Absolon was before him in the right of Eldership and promised himself to have a good part of the Empire The example of that unfortunate brother which had Adonijah competitor of the Crown and his faction expired his life in the despair of his fortune was not strong enough for to stay him which treading as it were in the same steps went on infallibly unto his last mischance David endured too long for him and it seems to him that the greatest kindnesses that a rich father could do for his sonne when he is come to die is to suffer himself to die He had sufficiently well knitted his party together binding himself closely to the chief Priest Abiathar and to Joab It seemed to him that having on his side the Altars and Arms he was invincible But in that burning desire that he had to reign he The fault of Adonijah in his Counsel of State committed very great faults which put an end to his life by an event very tragicall He did not sufficiently consider the power of his father who governed himself by the orders of them in the disposition of their Royalty and saw not that to undertake to succeed him without his good will was to desire to climb to the top of the house vvithout going up by the stairs His
that great Kingdome It was an Edict of Death not of the death and of the ruine of one man or of one City or of one Province but of a whole Nation The evil was universall and carried on all parts Menaces Bloud Slaughters Fears and Affrights from Euphrates even to Nile The terrour began at the capital city Shushan where the Edict was seen and read by all the world hanged upon the pillars and on the walls of Publick places bearing these words Artaxerxes the Sovereign Lord and King of all the Nations that are from India as farre as Ethiopia to the Princes and Governours of the seven and twenty Provinces of our Empire Greeting Since the time that I subdued the universe under my Laws it was never my will to abase the greatnesse of my Power but I have desired to govern my good Subjects with all clemency and sweetnesse making them enjoy a peace and tranquility to be wished for by all mortalls and for this purpose inquiring of the means that I might use for the effecting of this design Our most dear Haman the second person of our Kingdome which exceeds all the men of the world in capacity and fidelity hath represented to me that the Jewish people dispersed through all the Provinces of my Empire being separated both by Religion and Laws from all the other Nations despise our Edicts and cease not to render themselves troublers of the publick Quiet Which having been well and duly considered we have ordained and do ordain That they be punished according to the orders of our most dear Haman who is the Superintendent of all our Provinces and whom we honour as our true father Furthermore we will and intend that this Edict shall be put in execution the thirteenth day of the Moneth Adar the last of the year to the end that all the wicked descending into Hell in one and the same day may render peace and quietnesse to our good Subjects which they have troubled by their Factions Such is our good pleasure Given at Shushan the first of the Moneth Nisan Behold how Haman and his Complices workers of Iniquity cut their Furies Quills and dipped them in Bloud to make the King of the Persians say what ever pleased them having his Seal and Authority in their hands Poore Mordecai seeing the great Tempest that was ready to fall upon the heads of all his people having read that Edict and knowing that Haman was at the Table with the King who was not seen by any endeavoured to move the whole World to pity clothing himself with Sack-cloth and covering himself with Ashes together with all his people that wept and howl'd about him This sad Squadron marched even to the Walls of the Palace without entring in for it was not permitted not so much as to Mordecai to be seen at Court in so deplorable a Condition which would have offended the eyes of the delicater sort Bad news hath Wings to fly and abundance of Voyces to make it self be heard The frighted Maids and Eunuches fail not to tell Queen Hester of what ever had passed whereat shee was much amazed and hearing that her Uncle was at the Gate covered over with Ashes with Sack-cloth upon his back she sent him secretly a Sute of Clothes which he refused judging it not sutable to his fortune which made her dispatch another Messenger which was Athac the Eunuch that waited on her who went out of the Castle and inquired of Mordecai of all the state of so sad a businesse The other made him a short Narration of it and gave him a Copy of the Edict to present unto the Queen praying him to tell her that she must necessarily go and see the King and act powerfully with his Majesty for the deliverance of his people Athac returns readily to his Mistresse and faithfully relates to her what he had heard of Mordecai The poore Princesse was in an equall ballance greatly racked in minde Shee durst not go to the King without being sent for and to reject the intreaty of her Uncle in an accident so pressing it was another Death to her She sends Athac back again to represent again to the good Mordecai the danger of that Negotiation and to tell him that there is a Law established by the Prince that ordains That whosoever shall present himself before his eyes without being called for shall be punished with Death unlesse that by his mercy he holds out his Sceptre to him in sign of safety and that thereupon she had not seen his Majesty these thirty Dayes not knowing in what posture she is at present in his heart that if she should finde him in some ill Humour there were an end of that Life which she seeks not to preserve but for the safety of her People Notwithstanding all these Remonstrances her Uncle sends to her to go tells her that if she neglected to negotiate in so important an occasion God would find other means to save his people But she should had need to take great heed lest her Fathers House and her self also should perish by too great a care of their Preservation and that she ought to think that perhaps the Divine Providence had placed her where she was it may be for that onely reason Here one knows not what one ought to admire most whether the Authority that Mordecai took over the Queen or the Obedience that the Queen rendered to him She had no sooner heard that Reply of his but she said It is concluded I will go and sacrifice my self to Death with all my heart to obey my Uncle and save if I can my Nation Go to him Athac and bid him assemble all the Jews that are in Shushan let them keep a Fast of three dayes for the successe of this Attempt with continuall Prayers I will do the same on my side with my servants here and afterward we will adventure upon the businesse Behold how we ought to proceed in great Negotiations making God alwayes to march in the head of them who is the source of all good Successes There was then an admirable Consort of Devotions both within and without the Palace Mordecai was in the middst of his People lifting up his hands to Heaven and saying Great God whose Empire hath no limits and whose absolute will suffers no contradiction Your hands have formed both Heaven and Earth with all the beauties that are included in their bosome and there is nothing that can resist the puissance of your Arm. My God you know every thing and are not ignorant that the refusall that I have made to reverence the proud Haman proceeds of Pride or Vanity that is in me for from this present time I would kisse the ground whereon he treads for the safety of my people But I have been afraid to transferre the honour of the Creatour to the Creature and to give a companion to your Majesty and therefore I be-you O the God of our Fathers to cause one ray
that it was not to break the Sabboth but rather to sanctifie it Following these pathes he was the first of all the Jews that made a League with the Romans which hath seemed a little harsh to Rupertus and some other Divines But we must consider what Saint Paul saith That if all commerce with the Gentiles had been forbidden to the Jews and to the first Christians they should have been constrained rather to go out of the world then converse in it Never did this great Captain in his most pressing necessities cause the Roman souldiers to come into Palestine fearing lest their approach might bring some damage and profanation to an Holy Land But forasmuch as he saw himself environed all round with Kings that bowed under the puissance of the Roman Empire he thought that it would be convenient to endeavour to gain their friendship to obtain more easily Justice against the oppressions of his neighbours He employed the power of the Infidels not to torment the faithfull but to ruine infidelity He sought to those into whose hands God had put the Power to have the exercise of it to the glory of him that had communicated it to them this was not a crime but a most exquisite piece of prudence The false high Priest Alcimus Judas's adversary did not use the matter so who caused the Armies of Antiochus to come to the destruction of the Altars and to the massacre of his brethren which caused him to be smitten with a stroak from heaven and rendred him execrable to the memory of men But we must acknowledge that of all the great qualities that hath shined in this so famous man Valour hath alwayes held one of the upper ranks He was made for Military virtue and furnished with all the necessary conditions that make Generalls of Armies and Conquerours An elevated birth an happy beginning that he had made under his father science of Warre Authority Happinesse Vigilancy Activenesse Boldnesse Government and whatsoever is best in the profession of Arms had contributed to make of him the wonder of his age He was a Lion's heart that found security in dangers and would not have even Crowns themselves if he did not pluck them out of the midst of thorns One cannot read without admiration the two books of the Maccabees in considering the great progresses that he made in so little time and so many various encounters In the space of six years he sustained the great and prodigious forces of three Kings of Asia opposing himself with a little flying Camp against Armies of fourty sixty an hundred thousand men which he put into disorder and confusion He defeated in ranged battels and in divers combats nine Generalls of the Infidels killing some with his own hand and carrying away their spoils The first amongst them was Apollonius who was of an high repute in Antiochus his Reign because that he had been employed in the principall businesses of the Realm treating with the Romans and the Egyptians for his Master It is the very same that entred into Jerusalem with an army of two and twenty thousand men and under pretence of Peace made there an horrible spoil Assoon as he had heard that Judas Maccabeus had put himself into the field with a strength very little considerable he thought that being Governour of Syria and of Phenicia and at that time upon the place the businesse concerned him above all others and therefore he collects together great troops to stop the progresse of the Jews and to succeed with all security But the valorous Maccabeus prevented him so vigorously that he had not the leasure well to bethink himself he gave him battle wherein his men seeing the assaults of the faithfull people that seemed the assaults of giants began to stagger Whatsoever pains he took to rally them fear had so farre gained upon them that they destroyed themselves for fear of being destroyed Judas by Joseph Gorians report made that day the heads of his enemies to fall under his cuttle-ax as fast as the ears of corn-fall under the hook of the reaper He chose Apollonius out of the middle of his best souldiers and ran to him challenging him to a duel in which the other was overcom in the sight of a trembling army and Judas took away his sword which he used the rest of his dayes in so many glorious combats Seron that was Lieutenant under Apollonius pushed on with vengeance and with glory that made him long since seek out an occasion to make himself renowned thinking that Apollonius his defeat was but a stroke of Fortune and that he should quickly bring Judas into good order rallyed all his forces increasing his army as much as possibly he could which gave at first a great terrour to the Hebrews seeing that the heads of that Hydra which they thought had been cut off pushed forth so suddenly They had journied and fasted the very day of the combat and seemed all discouraged but Judas exhorted them with an ardent speech that put fire and spirit into all his Army It fell so opportunely upon the enemy that Seron thought he had to do rather with hungry wolves then men and although he came with a great deal of bravery to the encountre he quickly perceived that he had sung the Triumph before the Victory and had very much ado to retire with a whole skin contenting himself to run away after he had had the hope of conquering Lysias that was the Almighty under King Antiochus grew mad to see himself out-braved by so small an army of men contemptible and knew not what account to give the King his Master to whom he had promised to root out the remainders of the Jewish people so that there should not be any memory of them left behind He chose on divers occasions three of the best Generalls of all the Armies which were Ptolomy Gorgias and Nicanor Ptolomy made not any great brags Gorgias was vain enough to promise himself the victory and perswaded himself that he was very dreadfull But Judas though he had then but three thousand men badly armed defeated him and took his camp which was filled with great riches which gave a great temptation to the Jewish Army that desired nothing but readily to throw themselves upon the booty Yet their Conductour that knew the art of Warre and that many busying themselves about the spoils had lost their honour and their life gave a strict command that they should not touch that prey of the Infidels before the defeat was perfected and thereupon set himself to pursue his enemies that were in a disorder and after he had killed a good number of them put the rest to flight Nicanor that was the third of those Generalls after he had experimented the valour of Judas with the losse of his men resolved not to commit his reputation to the incertainty of combats but put off the Lions skin to take the Foxes endeavouring to surprise Judas by treachery seeing that he
and pierced it with his sword but finding himself cooped in by the multitude of men that were about and over him he could not make a retreat soon enough but was as S. Ambrose said buried in his triumph Yet Judas having perceived the puissant forces of the King saw well that the party was not tenable and made an honourable retreat into Jerusalem Lysias failed not to follow and to besiege him in his trenches with abundance of engines of stone and fire The other defended himself very courageously resolving rather to bury himself in that place then to yield it up by any sort of basenesse The besieged after some time were reduced to some extremity being combated by arms and hunger in a year of rest wherein the Jews according to their custome had sowed nothing and were no more in hopes to gather any fruits There was every where a very great desolation but as the favours of heaven happen often to good men in the bottome of their miseries behold an unexpected accident that provided farre other businesse for Lysias and his pupill Philip took his time and seeing his Rivall busied in that Jewish warre was resolved to ruine him and to make Eupator a companion of his misery seeing he had rendred himself the instrument of his will The deceased King had a brother named Demetrius who was at that time at Rome given in hostage having not the liberty to return unto his Kingdome Philip pricked with jealousie against Lysias failed not to solicite that young Prince to seize upon the Empire businesses being not yet well settled in the Nonage of King Eupator It was an injustice and perfidiousnesse against the sovereign but forasmuch as Antiochus the last dead father of Eupator had hereunto supplanted his Nephew by the same artifices Demetrius left not to hearken to it In those fair hopes of the Crown and in his captivity he was as a bird that torments himself in his cage upon the arrivall of a spring and burned with a strong passion to have his dismission from the Roman Senate to put in order as he said the affairs of the Kingdome and to assist the King his nephew after his fathers death But the Romans that took pity on the pupil by reason of Justice and that feared lest this man would embroil the State denyed him the liberty that he desired Philip failed not to possesse himself of the city of Antioch the Metropolis of the Kingdome and to tread out the way for Demetrius to his Nephew's throne There were men suborned that ceased not to sow amongst the souldiers and people That it was not a fundamentall Law in the Kingdome of the Seleucides that the Nephew should precede the uncle and although men had a mind to introduce it that the father of the pretended King had abrogated it usurping the Sceptre upon his Nephew that one should do his race no injury to render it the same usage that there was no reason to refuse a Prince of four and twenty years of age well made full of spirit of courage and authority to take a child that had neither strength nor counsel nor industry and which was born for nothing but to ruine all To this was added that it was not the bloud of the Seleucides that was upon the Throne but that Lysias Reigned and went about to render himself usurper of the Crown of Asia which was the uttermost of reproaches that so generous a Nation could endure to see a man of nothing insolent savage to make himself master of the most considerable part of the world and to exercise a tyranny upon men of honour and merit that oppose his pernicious designs These complaints often redoubled ceased not to stirre up spirits and to procure the change of State that followed Lysias saw well that it was not now a time to be obstinate on the ruine of the Jews nor to busie himself about the siege of one place when the whole Realm was a tottering He thought on nothing but on getting speedily out of that warre with some little honour thinking it not convenient to provoke a people mutinous enough in that commotion He caused the young King to look upon them with a quite other countenance and told him that it was best to let them live in peace without disturbing them in the matter of Religion assuring him that in all other cases they would contain themselves within their duty and that good services enough might be drawn from them Yet that he might not discover any lightnesse in this change he laid all the fault upon Menelaus that was an Apostate Jew and an enemy of his Nation who he said had been the cause of all the confusion by his railing speeches and therefore he made him serve for a sacrifice to that treaty of Peace in which he singularly obliged the Jews and washed away the blot that the favour expressed by him to this wicked villain had printed upon his face He shewed by this action the counsel that Politicians give their Sovereigns to abandon those to the publick hatred that have carried them to reproachable excesses to disburden themselves of the envy and if he had practised this example towards him that then made himself the teacher of it his Sceptre had been more secured and his life most lasting Lysias before he raised the siege of Jerusalem made an Oration publickly before the Principals of the Army and all the souldiery alledging fair pretenses for that resolution but taking great heed not to discover the chief cause for fear lest that news should wave the minds of those that inclined enough already to the side of novelty and sedition He used a wonderfull diligence to render himself before the city of Antioch into which he entred and Philip who found not himself yet strong enough to hold out a long siege quitted to him the place and fled away to Egypt This first successe puffed up the heart of Lysias who became exceeding haughty and considered so little the Romans in that high puissance that made the earth to tremble that he permitted an Embassadour sent to him by the Senate to be assassinated without shewing any reason In the mean time one Diodorus that had bred up Demetrius in his infancy transported himself from Syria to Rome and animated him by a great vigour of words and reasons to render himself an usurper of the Crown He certified him that his Nephew Eupator which was a child but nine years old was not any whit considered that Lysias was the object of the publick execration that he had confidence in no body nor any one in him that all the souldiery and people sought a new Master and that he was assured that if he did onely shew himself though he should be followed but with one servant onely all the world would run to him to carry him to the throne He kindled so strongly the ambition of that young Prince that he secretly stole away from Rome and made account
all Nature He was Indefatigable in his Travels Zealous for the honour of God disobliged from his own interest in the punishment of the Sacrilegeous Patient in his own Injuries Familiar to Few Courteous to all a Companion of Angels the Favorite of God of a Life very long and of a Memory that shall have no end SAMUEL DANIEL SAMVEL DANIEL SAmuel that seemed to have been born for nothing but to pray and to passe away his life in the Tabernacle of God got very forward at Court and in the managing of the great affairs of State His Birth is a Miracle his Life an Example and his Death the immortality of his virtues He was one of those infants that are expected a long time before they come that are the sons of so many vowes and that pay the expectation of their Nativity by the happinesse of their Life It belongs onely to great things to be seen before they are by presages by desires by hopes and to make themselves be seen after they are no more by an eternall memory Hannah his mother barren in children but fruitfull in virtues conceived him rather by her sighs then by her pleasures He was a gift of the Tabernacle which she rendered to the Tabernacle and as she had obteined him by supplication she made of him a man of prayer devoted from his infancy to the Divine Ministeries and a Nazarite by expresse vow which lived in abstinence and had no other profession but contemplation It is by these exercises that God raises great Personages and we cannot choose but expect brave actions on earth from a man that hath much commerce with heaven So God began betimes to communicate himself to him and to make him partaker of his secrets He informed him of the destruction of his Master Eli the High-Priest and powerfully fitted him for his Service This Eli was a reverend old man a Judge of the People that had lived in an high reputation and great glory amongst the Israelites but his reign being too soft his children that were now great abusing his authority practised a petty Larceny even as far as unto the sacrifice it self and committed impurities and debaucheries of women which are most ordinarily two of the chiefest things that make a change of Government there being nothing that doth more exasperate the subject then the avarice and the luxury of those that rule the one making attempts upon their goods and the other upon their bed A grave father of the Church addressing a spirituall direction to a Governour admonishes him That it is not enough for him to be innocent if all his family doth not imitate him and form themselves according to his examples for what profit is it sayes he to a miserable people to have a Prince or Governour wise and moderate if while he absteins from things not permitted there be one of his servants that making use of his name and power takes occasion to satiate his Avarice These wicked sons of Eli Hophni and Phineas committed a thousand extortions under the authority of their father and dishonoured his gray hairs by the incontinence of their dissolute youth The complaints thereof came to their fathers ears but instead of depriving them of their Offices and Commissions which they held of him which would have been a means to wash away the stain that was imprinted on his renown he contented himself with giving them a weak admonition which having little force upon their passions had yet lesse effect upon their actions God then took the businesse in hand after a very strange manner for the Philistims the sworn enemies of the chosen people ran upon their Frontiers and put an army into the field which obliged the Israelites to arm to hinder the waste that they made but being come to the encountre they lost the Battell wherein 4000 men were slain upon the place The conquered people resuming heart and arms set on foot an huge Army that marched under the wings of the Ark of Covenant conducted by Hophni and Phineas to whom it apperteined by office But these debauched men and ill-train'd for war rather precipitated then gave a scond Battel and did their businesses in it so ill that thirty thousand men were cut in pieces and they themselves increased the number of the dead and were both slain in defence of the Ark that was taken and carried away by the Philistims This deplorable news being come to the ears of Eli gave him such a confusion of spirit that he let himself fall and dyed upon the place mourning for the Ark of Covenant above his own children His house fell into great contempt after his death as had been foretold him and none of his race came to old-age the hand of God not ceasing to revenge the Injuries of his Tabernacle and of his People to instruct great ones that are in Offices to look carefully to this that Religion and Justice as two sisters by an indissoluable knot be kept fast to one another The Affairs of the Jews were in a piteous estate after the losse of those two Battels and there was need of a puissant hand to repair those losses But the Sovereign Master lent his thereto and raised up Samuel to settle again all that the furies of the wars had shaken This good Pilot consecrated himself by a Tempest and took the Government when every rationall man would have thought of quitting it This was a sign that he entered into it by wayes very clean coming in a time when there was more matter for compassion then Ambition He had no other Love but that of the Publick good he knew no other Avarice but that of time nor other Pleasures but Businesses His first aime in the Government was to banish Idolatry and to put in vigour again the worship of the true God well knowing that the most fatall plagues of States come from the contempt of Religion He was a man of order of a great understanding and of a powerfull speech that never fell to the ground He caused ordinarily whatsoever he had a mind to establish surest to passe Generall Assemblies that what concerned the good of every man might be done by the advice of all the World One of the first functions that he exercised was to make an excellent Oration to the People and to tell them of their infidelity making them see That Gods forsaking them came from that they had forsaken God and that if they would enjoy the favours of his protection as their fathers did they ought necessarily to banish the strange Gods and to abolish eternally the names of Baal and Astaroth to whom many amongst them had devoted themselves that God the Sovereign Master could not endure any companion in his Throne and would not have to do with hearts divided to imaginary Deities That if they served him faithfully he hoped that he would deliver them from the hand of the Philistims and would exalt again the glory of their nation that had
an ox for the space of seven years this had been enough to have made him been declared an Impostour and been banished from the Court Neverthelesse it is a strange thing that Nebuchadonozor makes no reply thereto but hears patiently the counsel that he gives him to expiate his sinnes by Alms and by good Works He was seized with a great fear of God with an affright that took from his mouth all manner of reply to think by what means he might appease the menaces of heaven But we must averre that this great King had something in him very wild and a spirit that had no more subsistence then the clouds and winds He passed often from one extremity of the passions to the other without lighting upon the middle and sometimes he appeared humbled to the abysse and sometimes also clave to the air and clouds and planted his Throne by extravagant imaginations even above the stars This Dream of the Tree kept him in his wits a pretty while but scarce were twelve moneths expired but being one day in his Palace he entred into a mad vanity about the city of Babylon which he said he had builded by the strength of his wit and of his arm and for the high magnificences of his glory The word was yet in his mouth when the anger of God fell upon his head as a sudden flash of lightning and he was changed into a beast not that he lost his humane soul nor the ordinary figure of his body but he entred into so violent and so extraordinary a frenzy that he perswaded himself that he was an ox and instantly forsook his Palace and his Throne ran up and down the fields and fed on grasse with the beasts and although endeavour was used to cure him by all sorts of remedies yet experience shewed that this evill was a wound from heaven for which no case was to be found He became so mad that they were fain to bind and chain him and yet he brake his chains and tore his clothes and exposed himself all naked to the rain to the winds and to all the rigours that the seasons brought His hair increased horribly and his nails so crooked that they would make one believe that he was some bird of rapine All the Court was in mourning and sadnesse for this so terrible an accident and although his burnt bloud and his violent passions had much contributed to his malady yet so was it that the blindest saw that there was in it a manifest punishment of God Evilmerodach his son took the government of the Empire in quality of Regent during the indisposition of the King his father and although he appeared to be much moved at that change yet there was more shew in it then reality But in fine this miserable frantick having passed seven years in a pitifull condition came again to his right senses and the first thing that he did was to lift up his eyes to heaven to blesse God to acknowledge that his might was without limits that his kingdome was an everlasting kingdome that all men of the habitable earth were but nothing before him that he disposed of all as well amongst the heavenly virtues as amongst the creatures of this lower world that nothing could resist his power without experimenting his Justice His good Subjects touched with a great compassion sought him out again and re-placed him upon his Throne where he reign'd with a great modesty and lived in the knowledge of the true God as so farre as to work out his own salvation as S. Augustine assures us together with other Fathers of the Church So every thing was restored to him with more splendour and Majesty then before his accident bringing no diminution to his Authority This gave incomparable joyes to holy Daniel who amidst all the Grandeurs of the Court wished for nothing but the conversion of his Master Evilmerodach that had taken some liking to the Regency was not contented at this change but expressed so much despight at it that the King his father distrusting him kept him in prison which was very bitter unto him seeing himself descended from the Throne in a moment to the condition of a captive It is held that Nebuchadonozor reigned after his re-establishment the space of six or seven years and that the successour of his Empire was this Evilmerodach his prisoner who remained a long time in the languor of his captivity He found in that prison Jehojakim King of the Jews and as men in misery have a kind of obligation to love the like he looked upon him with a good eye and recreated himself often with him having no other company at all The memory of this friendship accompanied him to the Throne and he caused his companion to be delivered out of prison using him honourably and giving him even Offices of importance in his Court The new King passing from one extremity to another in such a sudden behaved himself but ill for it is said that he caused the body of his father to be torn in pieces for fear he should return again from the gates of death to resume his Sceptre and that he reigned with much insolence taking a pride to trample under-foot all that his predecessours had exalted And therefore that eclipse that Daniel was in at Court as it appears from the sacred Text might have happened at this time since that the Jews were retir'd and had little credit in the kingdome This holy Prophet seeing himself discharged of the businesses of the Court and ranged in a solitude was in his element and recollected all his thoughts to give to his heart the joyes of God which good souls find in a retirement It was then that he entred farther into the commerce of the intelligences that he was visited by Angels with more favour that he learn'd the secret of Empires and saw all the glory of the world at his feet yet he could not belie his good heart nor avoid but that the contempt of the true Religion and the affliction of his poor people that suffered much in this alteration was very sensible to him Evilmerodach was never the happier for leaving the pathes of Piety which his father had trod out for him for after a short and wicked Reign he was suppressed by his brother-in-law Neriglossor who having a child by his wife named Belshazzar the grandchild of the great Nebuchadonozor put him forward to succed in the Empire In the mean while the father governed the kingdome in quality of a Regent and when Belshazzar was of age he remitted all the power into his hands which he used moderately during his fathers life but as soon as he was dead he laid aside his vizard and grew dissolute in the quantity of excesses and of debauches shamefull to a Prince of his extraction The heighth of his fatall pleasures was in the most sumptuous banquet that he made to which he invited a thousand persons of the best quality in his kingdome
to men but well known to God that appeared to him and comforted him asking of him what he made there Whereto he answered That he was zealous with an ardent zeal for the God of Hosts but the children of Israel had forsaken him demolished his Altars killed his Prophets and that he alone remained yet for all that they ceased not to seek his life to extinguish the whole service of God Upon this God commanded him to come forth and to stand upon the mountain to see great sights caused by the presence of God And suddenly there came an impetuous whirlwind that overturned the Mountains and brake the Rocks but God was not therein after that impetuous Wind came an Earthquake but God was not therein after the Earthquake devouring-Fire but God was not in those flames after the Fire behold there came a small gracious gale and God was in it And therefore Elijah ravished with a profound respect covered his face with his Mantle and kept himself at the entry of his Cave where he heard a voyce that demanded of him again what he did there whereto he answered as before that he fled from the perfecution of those that would give him the stroke of death for the zeal which he had to the service of the Living God But the voyce commanded him to return and to take again his way through the desert into Damascus and gave him order to Anoint and declare two Kings the one over Syria which was Hazael and the other over Israel which was Jehu that should succeed his Persecutour Furthermore God informed him that all was not lost but that he had yet reserved to himself seven thousand servants that had not bowed the knee to Baal nor lifted up their hands to adore his Idol He added yet farther that he should take Elisha for his Companion and Successour of whom he had reason to expect good effects Such was Elijahs Vision and his discourse with God and it seemed that this Sovereign Teacher of the Prophets shewing him the representation of an impetuous wind of an Earthquake and of Fire in which God was not although he was in a little gentle blast and would signifie to him that His Spirit is not in those great commotions that would seem to overturn all nature but in a certain Calm that produces little noise but much fruit filling the earth with blessings So also would he make him hope that after these violent persecutions and those fatall Convulsions of Kingdoms there should come a sweet and peacefull Messias and that forasmuch as concerned him Jezabels persecution should cease and his soul after the toyles of that banishment should taste the sweetnesse of an anticipated Paradise He took then his way again according to the command of God without passing by Samaria and finding Elisha plowing the ground with twelve yoak of Oxen cast his Mantle on him to signifie to him that he was called of God to that sacred ministery of Prophecy which the other understood and quitting instantly his Oxen ran to Elijah whom he beseeched that he would permit him to go and give the kisse of peace to his Father and Mother after that he would adhere to nothing but render himself up to him which Elijah having granted he when he had acquitted himself of his duty returned and sacrificed two Oxen which he boiled with the wood of his Plough and made a Feast with them for the people after which he ranged himself under the conduct of the Prophet and was a perfect imitatour of his virtues An ill occasion embarked him again in a Combat against Ahab and Jezabel which was fatall to them both The King had a mind to enlarge his Gardens and Naboths Vineyard was near his Palace and for his advantage he calls for him and asks him very courteously for it promising to pay him the price that it was worth or to buy him a better inheritance in whatsoever place he would The desire was very civill and not like that of so many other Princes and Lords that disposed at that time of the goods of their subjects as of their own usurping by violence that which they could not have by right Yet this good man that measured all by the affection he bare his Vineyard and not by the submission he owed his Master was obstinate and told him That it was the wealth of his Fathers which he would no way part with Ahab was much troubled at this denyall and returning to his Palace threw himself upon his bed and would not eat at the ordinary hour of his repast The Queen his wife being surprised at that accident goes to see him and inquires after the cause of his indisposition which he declared to her out of a desire he had to receive some ease This Princesse which was a daughter of the King of Sidon and who knew how her Father reigned absolutely over his subjects falls a laughing and meaning to blame the weaknesse of her husband said to him It appears plainly Sir that you are a Prince of great authority very worthy to govern a Kingdome since you receive affronts from your subjects and revenge them upon your self by the losse of your dinner But if that be all that hinders you I pray arise be merry and eat for I know the way to make you possessour of that Vineyard that you desire At the same instant that Imperious Queen takes her seal writes a Letter to the Principall men of Jezreel and commands them to call an Assembly under colour of a Fast and Publick Prayers to call Naboth to it to make him sit amongst the chief and not to fail to suborn two witnesses against him that should depose that he had blasphemed against God and his King and thereupon indite him and stone him Behold how so many Ministers of Iniquity use the Innocent not seeing that at the same time as they lay snares against the honour the goods and the life of their neighbour an invisible Hand draws up in Heaven the decree of their ruine This Letter being come to Jezreel the principall men assemble themselves and not seeking any delay or incident to sweeten a bad businesse betray their conscience to avoid the fury of the King executing that which was commanded them and before they are Judges render themselves Criminall Thus go violent Reigns where virtue is abandoned by some through wvaknesse and persecuted by others through fury Miserable Naboth astonished at that wicked calumny protests his innocence in the face of Heaven and Earth justifies and defends himself by good reason but the false Witnesses which are the instruments of Satan and the chief furies against the peace of mankind urge and torment him His Judges sold to iniquity condemned him He is led out of the City delivered to the fury of the people overwhelmed as a Blasphemer of God and the King with a bloody tempest of stones and flints every hand making it self injurious against him some through a false zeal and
with a prodigious army against which there was no humane resistance He sent a certain man named Rabshakeh in an Embassage to King Hezekiah who vomited out blasphemies and proposed to him conditions shamefull to his reputation and impossible to all his powers All the people were in an affright expecting nothing but fire and sword The King covered with sackcloth implores the heavenly assistance and sends the chief Counsellours of his State to the Prophet Isaiah to turn away this scourge by his prayers The holy man in that confusion of affairs wherein one could not see one onely spark of light encourages him animates him and promises him unexpected effects of the mercy of God The Prophecy was not vain for in one onely night the Angel of God killed an hundred fourscore and five thousand men in the Army of the Assyrians by a stroke from heaven and a devouring fire which reduced them to dust in their guilded arms This proud King was constrained to make an ignominious retreat and being returned to Niniveh the capitall city of his Empire he was slain by his own children This is a manifest example of the amiable protection of God over the Holy Court who defended his dear Hezekiah by the intercession of the Prophet as the apple of his eyes He expressed yet another singular favour to him in a great sicknesse caused by a malignant ulcer of which according to the course of nature he should have died and therefore Isaiah went to see him and without flattering him brought him word of his last day exhorting him to put the affairs of his State in order This good King had a tender affection to life and being astonished at that news prayed God fervently with a great profusion of tears that he would have regard to the sincerity of his heart and to the good services that he had done him in his Temple and not to tear away his life by a violent death in the middle of its course The heart of the everlasting Father melted at the tears of that Prince and he advertised Isaiah who was not yet gone out of the Palace to retread his steps and carry him the news of his recovery He told him from God that he should rise again from that sicknesse and within three dayes should go up to the Temple ro render his Thanks-giving Further he promised him that his dayes should be augmented fifteen years and that he should see himself totally delivered from the fury of the Assyrians to serve the living God in a perfect tranquility The King was ravished at this happy news and desired some sign of the Divine will to make him believe an happinesse so unhoped for Isaiah for this purpose did a miracle which since Joshua had not been seen nor heard which was to make the Sun turn back so that the shadow of the Diall which was in the palace appeared ten degrees retired to the admiration and ravishment of all the world And to shew that the Prophet was not ignorant of Physick he caused a Cataplasme composed of a lump of figs to be applyed to the wound of the sick man whereby he was healed and in three dayes rendred to the Temple This miracle was not unknown to the Babylonians who perceived the immense length of the day in which it was done and their Prince having heard the news of it sent Embassadours to King Hezekiah to congratulate his health and to offer him great presents whereat this Monarch that was of an easie nature suffered himself to be a little too much transported with joy and out of a little kind of vanity made a shew of his treasures and of his great riches to those strangers which served much to kindle their covetousnesse And therefore the Prophet who was never sparing of his remonstrances to the King rebuked him for that action and fore-told him that he made Infidels see the great wealth that God had given him through a vain glory which would cost him dear and that having been spectatours of his treasures they had a mind to be the masters of them and that at length they should compasse their design but that it should not be in his time This Prince received the correction with patience and took courage hearing that the hail should not fall upon his head passing over his to his childrens Manasses his son succeeded him a Prince truly abominable who wiped out all the marks of the piety of his father and placed Idols even in the very Temple of the living God All that Idolatry had shown in sacriledges cruelty in murders impudence in all sort of wickednesses was renewed by the perfidiousnesse of this man abandoned of God Poor Isaiah that had governed the father with so much authority had no credit with the son this tygre was incensed at the harmonious consorts of the divine Wisdomes that spake by his mouth and could no more endure the truth then serpents the odour of the vine Yet he desisted not to reprehend him and to advertise him of the punishments that God prepared for his crimes whereat this barbarous man was so much moved and kindled with fury that he commanded that this holy old man that had passed the hundreth year should be sawn alive by an horrible and extraordinary punishment O Manasses cruell Manasses the most infamous of tyrants and the most bloudy of hang-men this was the onely crime that the furies themselves even the most enraged should never have permitted to thy salvagenesse This venerable Master of so many Kings this King of Prophets this prime Intelligence of the State this Seraphim this instrument of the God of Hosts to be used so barbarously at the Court by his own bloud after so many good counsels so many glorious labours so many Oracles pronounced so many Divine actions so worthily accomplished All the Militia of heaven wept over this companion of the Angels and the earth caused fountains to leap up to bedew her lips in the midst of her ardent pains His Wisdome hath rendred him admirable to the Learned his Life inimitable to the most Perfect his Zeal adorable to the most Courageous his Age venerable to Nature and his Death deplorable to all Ages JEREMIAH BEhold the most afflicted of Holy Courtiers a Prophet weeping a Man of sorrows an heart alwayes bleeding and eyes that are never dry He haunted not great men but to see great evils and was not found at Court but to sing its Funerals and to set it up a tomb Yet was he a very great and most holy person that had been sanctified in his mothers womb that began to prophecy at the age of fifteen years a spirit separated from the vanities and the pretensions of the world that was intire to God that lived by the purest flames of his holy love and quenched his thirst with his tears He drank the mud of bad times and found himself in a piteous Government in which there was little to gain and much to suffer After that the
was called Jesus and that it was difficult for me to strike my heels against the sharps of the spurre And immediately as I lay in amazement prostrate on the ground with those that were with me he commanded me to rise and said unto me That he would make choice of me for his people and for the Nations of the earth to give a testimony of him and to draw them from the power of wicked Spirits to come unto the Light that they may obtain remission of sins and the inheritance of Saints by the means of Faith which subsisteth in Jesus Christ Sirs For this I was not rebellious to the heavenly Vision but incontinently I set my self to preach the Word of God and to exhort all the world to convert themselves unto him by the works of Penitence Behold all my fault having done not any thing against the Law the Temple or against Cesar having alwayes counselled all the Subjects that ever heard me in the Empire to render unto him perfect obedience Neverthelesse certain of the Jews caused me to be apprehended in the Temple and excited the people against me who had torn me in pieces if I had not been succoured by the Armies and the Legions of the Empire God hath preserved my life until this present to discharge the Ministery and the Commission that he hath given me which is to deliver to the Nations the news of eternall Salvation Sirs I do observe you to be great observers of the Religion of the Gentiles you have Idols and Temples most magnificent but we ought not to imagine that God who is a most pure Spirit the Creatour of heaven and earth is inclosed in Temples built by the hand of men or that he stands on need of their works for the accomplishment of his Glory It is he that giveth life breath wealth honour profit and all that we can hope for in this world It is he who from one man hath derived the vast multitude of the people who by a continuall succession do inhabite the roundnesse of the earth It is he who giveth measures unto Times and bounds unto Empires and who inhabiteth a Light unapproachable It is he who inspires us all with a generous curiosity to seek him and to do our endeavours to find him and to touch him with fingers if his condition render him palpable But he is not farre from every one of us For in him we live we move and have our being and to speak according to your own Poet We are of the generation of God It is not then permitted to vilifie the Divine nature beneath us and to make it like unto things insensible as to gold silver precious stones and other materials elabourate by art and by the invention of men And certainly God from on high hath with compassion beheld this ignorance of men and hath given them his Sonne the substantiall Image of his Beauties and the Character of his Glory true God and true Man who is dead for our sins to wash us and regenerate us in his Bloud whose Words are Truth and whose Life a miracle even to the triumphing over Death by his Resurrection It is by him that the eternall Father will judge at the last both the quick and the dead and we all shall be represented before the Throne of his Majesty to receive the salary of the Good or Evill which in our bodies we have done This sovereign Monarch of Angels and of Men suffers not himself to be taken by the flesh or the bloud of bullocks or by the perfumes of incense but by the exercise of Justice and by the purity of our bodies in all sanctification Therefore Sirs as he hath advanced you in Dignity above other men so he hath more particularly obliged you to acknowledge and serve him and to adore him in Spirit and Truth and to render Justice according to the Commission which you have received from Cesar which is to deliver the innocent from the persecution of the insolent that so being true imitatours of his Justice and Mercy you may be one day partakers of his Glory This Discourse was well received by divers of them The effect of his Oration and a day was appointed for another Appearance where he so much explained and enlarged himself that he was sent back and pronounced guiltlesse and permitted to preach the Gospel in Rome with all liberty which gave much encouragemt to all the faithfull and even those who had before forsaken him did now reassemble themselves preaching in the Name of Jesus Phil. 1. 13. and exhorting all the world to Repentance Cornelius reports the opinion of some men who affirm that Saint Paul was expresly delivered by the advice and the authority of Seneca who at that time began miraculously to delight in his conversation And although they could not see one another as often as they would by reason of the considerations of State yet they mutually did write to one another which hath given occasion to some weak men who have not their spirits to counterfeit their letters ill imitated and which all knowing men are assured to be not of the strain either of S. Paul or Seneca Howsoever the fiction of the style doth no way hinder the truth of the antient Deed seeing that S. Hierome doth cite the true Letters which were in his time and doth alledge the Texts which are not now to be found in the Libraries of the Fathers Saint Paul continued at Rome two years after his first voyage where he gained many Christians to the Faith and some of the Court of Nero as is declared in his Epistles Seneca was amazed at the Authority which he had and desired that he might enjoy amongst his the like opinion of Belief as S. Paul had amongst the Christians but there was a difference in their spirits and their proceedings were from divers Methods Seneca was a man and S. Paul The parallel betwixt S. Paul and Seneca a demy-God The one studied with Attalus and Socion the other had the Word for his Doctour and the Angels for his Disciples The one sought after Nature the other found out the God of Nature The one lahoured after Eloquence the other studied Silence which is the father of Conceptions The one pleaded the Causes of parties the other pleaded the Cause of God The one governed the Republick of men the other laid open before us the Hierarchy of Angels The one was in the porch of Zenon the other in the school of Jesus The one laid the world low at his feet with his golden words and when he pleased did carry it on his head the other subdued it with mortification and the arms of the Crosse The one was full of good Desires the other of great Effects The one sought for himself in himself the other found himself altogether in God The one was a Minister of State the other of Heaven The one promised much and performed little the other promised nothing of
Nature The Christians followed them melting into tears calling them their Fathers and their Pastours and besought them not to abandon their Flock But they with countenances as clear as are the smiles of the fairest morning did comfort them and did promise not to forget them in the other life They did exhort them to shew themselves courageous in Persecutions assuring them that they were the places of Pleasure where even the Thorns should grow into Crowns They both looked back upon Rome and beheld it as the field of their dearest Conquest And God did discover to them the effects of their Bloud how that Infidelity was subdued the Church was established in the capitall City of the Universe the Crosse was planted on the root of the Capitoll where they died as amongst palms and the odour of their Sacrifice did ascend to heaven As long as there shall be Intelligences and Stars above as long as there shall be Ages and Men below these two Apostles shall be beheld as the two Eyes of the Christian world The Fathers and the Doctours of Mankind the Gates of Heaven and Triumphers over unbelieving Rome which they have now converted into Rome the Holy At their Palmes all the Laurels of the Conquerours shall fade and the instruments of their Punishments shall obscure their Trophies The tongues of men can pronounce nothing more pleasing then their Name The Church hath nothing more precious then their Virtues nor more powerfull then their Examples nor more honourable then the Veneration of them The detestable Nero the year after these Martyrs suffered finding himself tormented with Furies invested with infernall Shades torn in his conscience by Vultures and wounded with sharp Razors being abandoned both by God and men understanding that Vindex from France and Galba was marching against him from Spain to revenge his Sacriledges he did fly away and killed himself it being impossible for him to die by a more polluted or a more execrable hand Queens and Ladies MARY STUART The most excellent Princesse Mary Queene of Scotland and Dowager of France IN the last place I will produce the History of the incomparable Queen Mary Stuart where in the height of its lustre I will represent unto you Innocence persecuted as much by the jealousies of love as State and that by a general combat of all passions on which she hath raised a Trophey by the invincible constancy at her death I have taken delight to peruse many Authours on this Subject and to draw out the truth from a confused Chaos where the malice of many passionate Historians had extreamly perplexed the Story and I have done it the more willingly because it is a service which I render to the first Truth which I adore To France which nourished and advanced that great Spirit To the King of Great Brittain who is honoured for his Bloud and Royal Virtues To Scotland who brought her forth and to England it self the sounder part whereof have alwayes detested the attempt which was committed on her person I must intreat the Reader to believe that there was never History more disguised by a knot of Hereticks never wickedness did carry more artifice nor calumny more fables or fables more colours or impiety more strength to crie down a poor Princess And this hath made so bold a noise that some Catholicks either too ignorant or too negligent not taking the pains to read and examine the reasons alledged were betrayed themselves to an indifferent belief of the defaming Libels of the Enemies of our Religion as if they would believe the History of Jesus Christ compiled on the reports of the Scribes and Pharisees A Calvinist of late the Authour of a Spanish History hath thrust into his Book many outragious reports against the Memory of Mary Queen of Scotland by a Digression stale enough which doth eclipse the light of the History and the Day of her passion If that man had any modesty he would have acknowledged his small abilities to be seen in print If he had any reverence he would have spared the person of a Queen If his heart had been touched with any piety he would have pardoned the Dead If he had in his soul any sence of honour being in the service of the King of England he would never have printed such insolent things to the disadvantage of his Majesty he would never have barked at the ashes of so great a Ladie Reader to make you the better to understand with what equity I will proceed in this Narration I will not alledge unto you either Sanders or Bosy or Florimond of Raymen or Father Hilarius of the Order of the right reverend Fathers of the Minims who have all wrote very worthily concerning this Subject I will derive the principal truths I shall produce from Cambden a Hugenot Historiographer of the Queen of England who hath wrote this Story not in Pamphlets running without authority but in authentick Memorials It hath pleased God that this person having a generous ambition to speak the truth should search into the Records and produce papers that had been buried which sufficiently do make appear the artifices of Elizabeth the innocence of the Queen of Scotland Reader Behold whither the abundance and the force of Right and Truth doth carry us that we take even our enemies for our Judges and Witnesses in this cause MARY STUART the onely Daughter of The Birth Education of this Queen Mary Stuart James the Fifth King of Scotland and Mary de Lorain Grand-child to the thrice virtuous Antonietta of Bourbon was a Queen who in my judgement hath equalled the excess of her disasters with the height of her glory and it seems her whole life was no other than a Theater hung round with blacks and covered with bloud where the revolution of humane affairs did act unheard-of Tragedies Never did Nature produce more beauties nor Grace more wonders in a personage of that high condition Never did Fortune deal more rigorously with a head which Heaven had made to support three great Crowns She was born in Scotland she lost her Father eight In the year 1542. on the 〈◊〉 Deâ—ember on S. Lucies Day dayes after her birth she was brought into France at the age of five yeares and was nourished in the Court of Henrie the Second and Katharine de Medicis who did love her most entirely She was yet but as the Bud of a Rose which within her first infancy did preserve her Graces undisclosed But as she began to lay them more open by the increase of age we might then behold a Princess descended from the bloud of a hundred Kings who had a body formed and fashioned by the hand of Beauty a fine and a clear spirit a deep and a sound judgement a high Virtue and an incomparable Grace in her expressions All which made Henrie the Second resolve to give Her marriage and widowhood her in marriage to his son Francis to whom she was espoused about the