Prince's taking a fancy to bathe himself at that time caused the interruption of his March and that interruption gave occasion to that great Victory that founded the Third Monarchy of the World In like manner how much of Casualty was there in the preservation of Romulus as soon as born exposed by his Uncle and took up and nourished by a Shepherd for the Story of the She-wolf is a Fable and yet in that one Accident was laid the Foundation of the Fourth Universal Monarchy How doubtfull a case was it whether Hannibal after the Battle of Cannae should march directly to Rome or divert into Campania Certain it is that there was more reason for the former and he was a Person that had sometimes the command of Reason as well as of Regiments yet his Reason deserted his Conduct at that time and by not going to Rome he gave occasion to those Recruits of the Roman strength that prevailed to the Conquest of his Countrey and at length to the Destruction of Carthage it self one of the most puissant Cities in the World And to descend to Occurrences within our own Nation How many strange Accidents concurred in the whole business of King Henry the Eighth's Divorce yet we see Providence directed it and them to an entire Change of the Affairs and State of the whole Kingdom And surely there could not be a greater Chance than that which brought to light the Powder Treason when Providence as it were snatch'd a King and Kingdom out of the very Jaws of Death only by the mistake of a Word in the Direction of a Letter But of all Cases in which Little Casualties produce great and strange Effects the chief is in War upon the Issues of which hangs the Fortune of States and Kingdoms Caesar I am sure whose great Sagacity and Conduct put his Success as much out of the power of Chance as Humane Reason could well do yet upon occasion of a Notable Experiment that had like to have lost him his whole Army at Dyrrachium tells us the Power of it in the Third Book of his Commentaries De Bello Civili Fortuna quae plurimum potest cùm in aliis rebus tum praecipuè in bello parvis momentis magnas rerum mutationes efficit Nay and a greater than Caesar even the Spirit of God himself in Eccles. 6.11 expresly declares That the Battle is not always to the strong So that upon this account every Warriour may in some sence be said to be a Souldier of Fortune and the best Commanders to have a kind of Lottery for their Work as amongst us they have for their Reward For how often have whole Armies been routed by a little Mistake or a suddain Fear raised in the Souldiers minds upon some trivial Ground or Occasion Sometimes the misunderstanding of a word has scattered and destroy'd those who have been even in possession of Victory and wholly turned the fortune of the day A spark of fire or an unexpected gust of Wind may ruine a Navy And sometimes a false senceless report has spread so far and sunk so deep into the Peoples minds as to cause a Tumult and that Tumult a Rebellion and that Rebellion has ended in the Subversion of a Government And in the late War between the King and some of his Rebel Subjects has it not sometimes been an even cast whether his Army should march this way or that way Whereas had it took that way which actually it did not things afterwards so fell out that in very high Probability of Reason it must have met with such success as would have put an happy Issue to that wretched War and thereby have continued the Crown upon that blessed Prince's Head and his Head upon his Shoulders Upon supposal of which Event most of those sad and strange alterations that have since happened would have been prevented the ruine of many honest men hindered the Punishment of many great villains hastned and the preferment of greater spoil'd Many passages happen in the world much like that little Cloud in 1 Kings 18. that appear'd at first to Elijah's Servant no bigger than a man's Hand but presently after grew and spread and blackned the face of the whole Heaven and then discharged it self in Thunder and Rain and a mighty Tempest So these accidents when they first happen seem but small and contemptible but by degrees they branch out and widen themselves into such a Numerous train of mischievous consequences one drawing after it another by a continued dependance and multiplication that the Plague becomes Victorious and Universal and a personal miscarriage determines in a National calamity For who that should view the small despicable Beginnings of some things and persons at first could imagine or Prognosticate those vast and stupendious encreases of fortune that have afterwards followed them Who that had lookt upon Agathocles first handling the Clay and making Pots under his Father and afterwards turning Robber could have thought that from such a condition he should come to be King of Sicily Who that had seen Masianello a poor Fisherman with his red Cap and his Angle could have reckon'd it possible to see such a pitifull thing within a Week after shining in his Cloth of Gold and with a Word or a Nod absolutely Commanding the whole City of Naples And who that had beheld such a Bankrupt Beggarly fellow as Cromwell first entring the Parliament-House with a Thread-bare Torn Cloak and a Greasy Hat and perhaps neither of them paid for could have suspected that in the space of so few years he should by the Murder of one King and the Banishment of another ascend the Throne be invested in the Royal Robes and want nothing of the state of a King but the changeing of his Hat into a Crown 'T is as it were the Sport of the Almighty thus to baffle and confound the Sons of men by such Events as both cross the methods of their actings and surpass the measure of their Expectations For according to both these Men still suppose a Gradual Natural Progress of things as that from great Things and Persons should grow greater till at length by many steps and ascents they come to be at greatest not considering that when Providence designs strange and mighty changes it gives men Wings instead of Legs and instead of Climbing leisurely makes them at once fly to the Top and Height of all Greatness and Power So that the world about them looking up to those Illustrious upstarts scarce knows who or whence they were nor they themselves where they are It were infinite to insist upon Particular instances Histories are full of them and Experience seals to the truth of History In the next place let us consider to what great purposes God directs these little Casualties with reference to particular Persons and those either Publick or Private 1. And first for publick Persons as Princes Was it not a mere accident that Pharaoh's Daughter met with Moses Yet it
in present ready money and so have no other way to improve them so that it may be suspected that the change of their Salary would be the strongest argument to change their opinion The truth is Interest is the grand wheel and spring that moves the whole Universe Let Christ and Truth say what they will if Interest will have it Gain must be Godliness if Enthusiasm is in request learning must be inconsistent with Grace If pay grows short the University Maintenance must be too great Rather than Pilate will be counted Caesar's enemy he will pronounce Christ innocent one hour and condemn him the next How Christ is made to truckle under the world and how his truths are denied and shuffled with for profit and pelf the clearest proof would be by Induction and Example But as it is the most clear so here it would be the most unpleasing Wherefore I shall pass this over since the world is now so peccant upon this account that I am afraid Instances would be mistaken for Invectives 3. The third Cause inducing Men to deny Christ in his truths is their apparent danger To confess Christ is the ready way to be cast out of the Synagogue The Church is a place of Graves as well as of Worship and Profession To be resolute in a good cause is to bring upon our selves the punishments due to a Bad. Truth indeed is a Possession of the highest value and therefore it must needs expose the owner to much danger Christ is sometimes pleased to make the profession of himself costly and a man cannot buy the truth but he must pay down his life and his dearest blood for it Christianity marks a man out for destruction and Christ sometimes chalks out such a way to Salvation as shall verify his own saying He that will save his life shall lose it The first Ages of the Church had a more abundant experience of this What Paul and the rest planted by their Preaching they watered with their Blood We know their usage was such as Christ foretold he sent them to Wolves and the common course then was Christianos ad Leones For a man to give his name to Christianity in those days was to list himself a Martyr and to bid farewell not only to the pleasures but also to the hopes of this life Neither was it a single death only that then attended this profession but the terrour and sharpness of it was redoubled in the manner and circumstance They had Persecutors whose Invention was as great as their cruelty Wit and Malice conspired to find out such tortures such deaths and those of such incredible anguish that only the manner of dying was the punishment Death it self the deliverance To be a Martyr signifies only to witness the truth of Christ but the witnessing of the truth was then so generally attended with this Event that Martyrdom now signifies not only to witness but to witness by death The word besides its own signification importing their practice And since Christians have been freed from Heathens Christians themselves have turned persecutors Since Rome from Heathen was turned Christian it has improved its persecution into an Inquisition Now when Christ and truth are upon these terms that men cannot confess him but upon pain of death the reason of their Apostacy and Denial is clear men will be wise and leave Truth and Misery to such as love it they are resolved to be Cunning let others run the hazard of being Sincere If they must be good at so high a rate they know they may be safe at a cheaper Si negare sufficiat quis erit Nocens If to deny Christ will save them the truth shall never make them guilty Let Christ and his flock lie open and exposed to all weather of persecution Foxes will be sure to have holes And if it comes to this that they must either renounce their Religion deny and Blaspheme Christ or forfeit their lives to the fire or the sword it is but inverting Iob's wife's advice Curse God and live 3. We proceed now to the Third thing which is to shew how farr a man may consult his safety c. This he may do two ways 1. By withdrawing his Person Martyrdom is an Heroick act of Faith An Atchievement beyond an Ordinary pitch of it to you says the Spirit it is given to suffer Phil. 1.29 It is a peculiar additional gift it is a distinguishing excellency of degree not an essential consequent of its Nature Be ye harmless as Doves says Christ and it is as Natural to them to take flight upon danger as to be Innocent Let every man throughly consult the temper of his faith and weigh his courage with his fears his weakness and his Resolutions together and take the measure of both and see which preponderates and if his spirit faints if his heart misgives and melts at the very thoughts of the fire let him flie and secure his own soul and Christ's honour Non negat Christum fugiendo qui ideò fugit né neget He does not deny Christ by flying who therefore flies that he may not deny him Nay he does not so much decline as rather change his Martyrdom He flies from the flame but repairs to a Desert to poverty and hunger in a wilderness Whereas if he would dispense with his conscience and deny his Lord or swallow down two or three Contradictory oaths he should neither fear the one nor be forced to the other 2. By concealing his judgment A man sometimes is no more bound to speak than to destroy himself and as Nature abhorrs this so Religion does not command that In the times of the Primitive Church when the Christians dwelt amongst Heathens it is reported of a certain Maid how she came from her Fathers house to one of the Tribunals of the Gentiles and declared herself a Christian spit in the Judges face and so provoked him to cause her to be executed But will any say that this was to confess Christ or die a Martyr He that uncalled for uncompelled comes and proclaims a Persecuted Truth for which he is sure to die only dies a Confessour of his own folly and a Sacrifice to his own rashness Martyrdom is stampt such only by God's command and he that ventures upon it without a call must endure it without a Reward Christ will say who required this at your hands His Gospel does not dictate imprudence No Evangelical Precept justles out that of a lawful self-preservation He therefore that thus throws himself upon the Sword runs to Heaven before he is sent for where though perhaps Christ may in mercy receive the man yet he will be sure to disown the Martyr And thus much concerning those lawful ways of securing our selves in time of Persecution not as if these were always lawfull For sometimes a man is bound to confess Christ openly though he dies for it and to conceal a Truth is to deny it But now to shew when it
cause of all these mischiefs and thereupon to redeem his Father's Sacrilege gave more and richer things to Temples than his Father had Stollen from them Though by the way it may seem to be a strange method of repairing an injury done to the true God by adorning the Temples of the false See the same sad effect of Sacrilege in the great Nebuchadnezzar He plunders the Temple of God and we find the fatal doom that afterwards befell him he lost his Kingdom and by a new unheard-of Judgment was driven from the Society and converse of Men to table with the Beasts and to graze with Oxen the impiety and inhumanity of his sin making him a fitter companion for them than for those to whom Religion is more Natural than Reason it self And since it was his unhappiness to transmit his sin together with his Kingdom to his Son while Belshazzar was quaffing in the sacred Vessels of the Temple which in his pride he sent for to abuse with his impious Sensuality he sees his fatal Sentence writ by the finger of God in the very midst of his profane mirth And he stays not long for the Execution of it that very Night losing his Kingdom and his Life too And that which makes the Story direct for our purpose is that all this comes upon him for his profaning those sacred Vessels God himself tells us so much by the mouth of his Prophet in Dan. 5.23 where this only sin is charged upon him and particularly made the cause of his sudden and utter ruine These were Violaters of the First Temple and those that prophaned and abused the Second sped no better And for this take for instance that first born of sin and Sacrilege Antiochus the story of whose profaning God's House you may read in the 1. book of Maccab. 1 ch and you may read also at large what success he found after it in the 6th ch where the Author tells us that he never prospered aftewards in any thing but all his designs were frustrated his Captains slain his Armies defeated and lastly himself falls sick and dies a miserable death And which is most considerable as to the present business when all these Evils befell him his own conscience tells him that it was even for this that he had most Sacrilegiously pillaged and invaded God's House 1 Maccab 6. vers 12 13. Now I remember says he the Evils I did at Ierusalem how I took the Vessels of Gold and Silver I perceive therefore that for this cause these Evils are come upon me and behold I perish for grief in a strange land The Sinner's Conscience is for the most part the best Expositor of the mind of God under any Judgment or Affliction Take another notable instance in Nicanor who purposed and threatned to burn the Temple 1 Maccab. 7.35 and a curse lights upon him presently after His great Army is utterly ruined he himself slain in it and his head and right hand cut off and hung up before Ierusalem Where two things are remarkable in the Text. 1. That he himself was first slain a thing that does not usually befall a General of an Army 2. That the Iews prayed against him to God and desired God to destroy Nicanor for the injury done to his Sanctuary only naming no sin else And God ratify'd their Prayers by the judgment they brought down upon the head of him whom they prayed against God stopt his blasphemous Mouth and cut off his sacrilegious Hand and made them teach the world what it was for the most potent sinner under Heaven to threaten the Almighty God especially in his own House for so was the Temple But now lest some should puff at these instances as being such as were under a different Oeconomy of Religion in which God was more tender of the shell and ceremonious part of his Worship and consequently not directly pertinent to ours therefore to shew that all prophanation and invasion of things Sacred is an offence against the eternal Law of nature and not against any positive Institution after a time to Expire we need not go many Nations off nor many Ages back to see the Vengeance of God upon some Families raised upon the Ruines of Churches and enriched with the spoils of Sacrilege gilded with the name of Reformation And for the most part so unhappy have been the purchasers of Church-lands that the world is not now to seek for an argument from a long experience to convince it that though in such purchases Men have usually the cheapest Penny-worths yet they have not always the best bargains For the Holy thing has stuck fast to their sides like a fatal shaft and the Stone has cryed out of the Consecrated Walls they have lived within for a Judgment upon the head of the Sacrilegious intruder and Heaven has heard the cry and made good the curse So that when the Heir of a blasted family has rose up and promised fair and perhaps flourished for some time upon the stock of excellent parts and great favour yet at length a Cross event has certainly met and stopt him in the Career of his fortunes so that he has ever after withered and declined and in the end come to nothing or to that which is worse So certainly does that which some call blind Superstition take aim when it shoots a Curse at the Sacrilegious person But I shall not engage in the odious task of recounting the families which this sin has blasted with a Curse Only I shall give one Eminent instance in some persons who had Sacrilegiously procured the Demolishing of some places consecrated to Holy Uses And for this to shew the world that Papists can commit Sacrilege as freely as they can object it to Protestants it shall be in that great Cardinal and Minister of State Woolsey who obtained leave of Pope Clement the 7th to Demolish 40 Religious houses which he did by the service of Five men to whose conduct he committed the effecting of that business every one of which came to a sad and fatal end For the Pope himself was ever after an unfortunate Prince Rome being twice taken and sacked in his reign himself taken Prisoner and at length dying a miserable Death Woolsey as is known incurr'd a Praemunire forfeited his Honour Estate and Life which he ended some say by Poyson but certainly in great Calamity And for the Five Men employed by him two of them quarrelled one of which was slain and the other hang'd for it the third drown'd himself in a Well the fourth though Rich came at length to beg his Bread and the fifth was miserably Stabbed to death at Dublin in Ireland This was the Tragical end of a Knot of Sacrilegious persons from highest to lowest The consideration of which and the like passages one would think should make men keep their Fingers off from the Churches Patrimony though not out of Love to the Church which few men have yet at least out of Love to
was a means to bring him up in The AEgyptian Court then the School of all Arts and Policy and so to fit him for that great and arduous Imployment that God designed him to For see upon what little Hinges that great Affair turned For had either the Child been cast out or Pharaoh's Daughter come down to the River but an hour sooner or later or had that little Vessel not been cast by the Parents or carryed by the Water into that very place where it was in all likelyhood the Child must have undergone the common Lot of the other Hebrew Children and been either starved or drowned or however not advanced to such a peculiar height and happiness of Condition That Octavius Caesar should shift his Tent which he had never used to doe before just that very night that it hapned to be took by the Enemy was a mere Casualty yet such an one as preserved a Person who lived to establish a total Alteration of Government in the Imperial City of the World But we need not go far for a Prince preserved by as Strange a Series of little Contingencies as ever were managed by the Art of Providence to so great a purpose There was but an hair's breadth between him and certain Destruction for the space of many days For had the Rebel Forces gone one way rather than another or come but a little sooner to his hiding place or but mistrusted something which they passed over all which things might very easily have happened we had not seen this face of things at this day but Rebellion had been still Enthroned Perjury and Cruelty had Reigned Majesty had been proscribed Religion extinguish'd and both Church and State throughly Reformed and Ruined with Confusions Massacres and a Total Desolation On the contrary when Providence designs Judgment or Destruction to a Prince no body knows by what little unusual unregarded means the fatal blow shall reach him If Ahab be designed for Death though a Souldier in the Enemies Army draws a Bow at a venture yet the sure unerring directions of Providence shall carry it in a direct course to his heart and there lodge the Revenge of Heaven An old Woman shall cast down a Stone from a Wall and God shall send it to the Head of Abimelech and so Sacrifice a King in the very head of his Army How many warnings had Iulius Caesar of the fatal Ides of March whereupon sometimes he resolved not to go to the Senate and sometimes again he would go and when at length he did go in his very passage thither one put into his hand a Note of the whole Conspiracy against him together with all the Names of the Conspirators desiring him to read it forthwith and to remember the Giver of it as long as he lived But continual Salutes and Addresses entertaining him all the way kept him from saving so great a Life but with one glance of his Eye upon the Paper till he came to the fatal place where he was stabb'd and dyed with the very Means of preventing Death in his hand Henry the Second of France by a Splinter unhappily thrust into his Eye at a solemn Justing was dispatch'd and sent out of the world by a sad but very Accidental Death In a word God has many ways to reap down the Grandees of the Earth an Arrow a Bullet a Tile or Stone from an House is enough to do it And besides all these ways sometimes when he intends to bereave the world of a Prince or an Illustrious Person he may cast him upon a bold self-opinion'd Physician worse than his Distemper who shall Dose and Bleed and Kill him secundum artem and make a shift to cure him into his Grave In the last place we will consider this Directing influence of God with reference to private Persons and that as touching things of nearest concernment to them As 1. Their Lives 2. Their Health 3. Their Reputation 4. Their Friendships And 5. And lastly their Employments or Preferments And first for mens Lives Though these are things for which Nature knows no Price or Ransom yet I appeal to universal Experience whether they have not in many men hung oftentimes upon a very slender Thread and the distance between them and Death been very nice and the escape wonderfull There have been some who upon a slight and perhaps groundless occasion have gone out of a Ship or House and the Ship has sunk and the House has fell immediately after their departure He that in a great Wind suspecting the strength of his House betook himself to his Orchard and walking there was knockt on the Head by a Tree falling through the fury of a suddain gust wanted but the advance of one or two steps to have put him out of the way of that mortal Blow He that being subject to an Apoplex used still to carry his remedy about him but upon a time shifting his Cloaths and not taking that with him chanced upon that very day to be surprized with a Fit and to die in it certainly owed his Death to a mere Accident to a little inadvertency and failure of Memory But not to recount too many particulars May not every Souldier that comes alive out of the Battle pass for a living Monument of a benign Chance and an happy Providence For was he not in the nearest Neighbourhood to Death And might not the Bullet that perhaps rased his Cheek have as easily gone into his Head And the Sword that glanced upon his Arm with a little diversion have found the way to his Heart But the workings of Providence are marvellous and the methods secret and untraceable by which it disposes of the Lives of Men. In like manner for Mens Health it is no less wonderfull to consider to what strange Casualties many Sick Persons often-times owe their Recovery Perhaps an unusual Draught or Morsel or some Accidental violence of Motion has removed that Malady that for many years has baffled the Skill of all Physicians So that in effect he is the best Physician that has the best luck he prescribes but it is chance that Cures That Person that being provoked by excessive Pain thrust his Dagger into his Body and thereby instead of reaching his Vitals opened an Imposthume the unknown cause of all his pain and so Stabbed himself into perfect Health and Ease surely had great reason to acknowledge Chance for his Chirurgeon and Providence for the Guider of his Hand And then also for mens Reputation and that either in point of Wisdom or of Wit There is hardly any thing which for the most part falls under a greater Chance If a man succeeds in any attempt though undertook with never so much folly and rashness his success shall vouch him a Politician and good Luck shall pass for deep contrivance For give any one Fortune and he shall be thought a wise man in spite of his Heart nay and of his Head too On the contrary be a design never
from God who is Truth it self and with whom no shadow of Falshood can dwell He that telleth Lyes says David in Psalm 101.7 shall not tarry in my Sight and if not in the Sight of a poor Mortal man who could sometimes lye himself how much less in the Presence of the Infinite and All-knowing God A Wise and Good Prince or Governour will not vouchsafe a Lyar the Countenance of his Eye and much less the Privilege of his Ear. The Spirit of God seems to write this upon the very Gates of Heaven and to state the Condition of Men's Entrance into Glory chiefly upon their Veracity In Psalm 15.1 Who shall ascend into thy Holy Hill says the Psalmist To which it is answered in vers 2. He that worketh Righteousness and that speaketh the Truth from his Heart And on the other side how Emphatically is Hell described in the Two last Chapters of the Revelation by being the great Receptacle and Mansion-house of Lyars whom we shall find there ranged with the vilest and most detestable of all Sinners appointed to have their Portion in that Horrid place Revel 21.8 The Unbelieving and the Abominable and Murderers and Whoremongers and Sorcerers and Idolaters and all Lyars shall have their part in the Lake which burns with Fire and Brimstone And in Revel 22.15 Without are Dogs and Sorcerers c. and whosoever loveth and maketh a Lye Now let those consider this whose Tongue and Heart hold no Correspondence Who look upon it as a Piece of Art and Wisdom and the Master-piece of Conversation to over-reach and deceive and make a Prey of a credulous and well-meaning Honesty What do such Persons think Are Dogs Whoremongers and Sorcerers such desirable Company to take up with for ever Will the Burning Lake be found so tolerable Or will there be any one to drop Refreshment upon the false Tongue when it shall be tormented in those Flames Or do they think that God is a Lyar like themselves and that no such Things shall ever come to pass but that all these fiery Threatnings shall vanish into Smoak and this dreadfull Sentence blow off without Execution Few certainly can lye to their own Hearts so far as to imagine this But Hell is and must be granted to be the Deceiver's Portion not only by the Judgment of God but of his own Conscience too And comparing the Malignity of his Sin with the Nature of the Punishment allotted for him all that can be said of a Lyar lodged in the very Nethermost Hell is this That if the Vengeance of God could prepare any Place or Condition worse than Hell for Sinners Hell it self would be too good for him And now to summ up all in short I have shewn what a Lye is and wherein the Nature of Falshood does consist that it is a Thing absolutely and intrinsecally Evil that it is an Act of Injustice and a Violation of our Neighbour's Right And that the Vileness of its Nature is equalled by the Malignity of its Effects It being this That first brought Sin into the World and is since the Cause of all those Miseries and Calamities that disturb it and further that it tends utterly to dissolve and overthrow Society which is the greatest Temporal Blessing and Support of Mankind and which is yet worst of all that it has a strange and particular Efficacy above all other Sins to indispose the Heart to Religion And lastly That it is as dreadfull in its Punishments as it has been pernicious in its Effects For as much as it deprives a Man of all Credit and Belief and consequently of all Capacity of being usefull in any Station or Condition of Life whatsoever and next that it draws upon him the Just and Universal Hatred and Abhorrence of all Men here and finally subjects him to the Wrath of God and Eternal Damnation hereafter And now if none of all these Considerations can recommend and endear Truth to the Words and Practices of Men and work upon their Double Hearts so far as to convince and make them sensible of the Baseness of the Sin and Greatness of the Guilt that Fraud and Falshood leaves upon the Soul Let them Lye and Cheat on till they receive a fuller and more effectual Conviction of all these Things in that Place of Torment and Confusion prepared for the Devil and his Angels and all his Lying Retinue by the Decree and Sentence of that God who in his Threatnings as well as in his Promises will be True to his Word and cannot Lye To whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen FINIS BOOKS Newly printed for Tho. Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Paul's Church-Yard AThenae Oxonienses or an Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the Ancient and Famous University of Oxford from 1500 to the End of the Year 1690 Representing the Birth Fortune Preferments and Death of all those Authors and Prelates the great Accidents of their Lives the Fate and Character of their Writings The Work being so compleat that no Writer of Note of this Nation for near Two hundred years past is omitted fol. 2 Vol. Dr. Pocock on Ioel. With the rest of his Commentaries A Critical History of the Text and Versions of the New Testament wherein is firmly Establish'd the Truth of those Acts on which the Foundation of Christian Religion is laid By Father Simon of the Oratory Together with a Refutation of such Passages as seem contrary to the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England Memoirs of the Court of France by the late famous French Lady The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus the Roman Emperor Translated out of Greek into English with Notes by Dr. Casaubon To this Edition is added the Life of the said Emperor with an Account of Stoick Philosophy As also Remarks on the Meditations All newly written by the famous Monsieur and Madam Dacier The Works of the Learned or an Historical Account and Impartial Judgment of the Books newly Printed both Foreign and Domestick together with the State of Learning in the World Published Monthly by I. de la Crose a late Author of the Universal Bibliotheque This first Volume beginning in August last is compleated this present April with Indexes to the whole The Bishop of Chester's Charge to his Clergy at his Primary Visitation May 5. 1691. Five Sermons before the King and Queen by Dr. Meggot Dean of Winchestor Mr. Atterbury's Sermon before the Queen May 29. 1692. * In the Parliament 1653 it being put to the Vote whether they should support and encourage A godly and learned Ministery the latter word was rejected and the vote passed for a Godly and Faithful Ministery * A noted Independant Divine when Ol. Cromwel was sick of which sickness he dyed declared that God had Revealed to him that he should recover and live 30 years longer for that God had raised him up for a work which could not be done in less time But Oliver's Death being published two days after the said Divine publickly in Prayer expostulated with God the Defeat of his Prophecy in these words Lord thou hast lyed unto us yea thou hast lyed unto us * Very credibly reported to have been done in an Independant Congregation at Oxon. * Whensoever any Petition was put up to the Parliament in the year 1653. for the Taking away of Tythes the thanks of the House were still returned to them and that by the Name and Elogy of the well-affected Petitioners * U. C. A Colonel of the Army the perfidious cause of Penruddock 's Death and sometime after High-Sheriff of Oxfordshire openly and frequently affirmed the uselessness of the Vniversities and that three Colledges were sufficient to answer the occasions of the Nation for the breeding of men up to Learning so farr as it was either necessary or usefull * Cromwel a lively Copy of Jeroboam did so * Gaspar Streso Cromwell ☜ * Of which last see an Instance in the 13 Session of this Council In which it Decrees with a non obstante to Christ's express Institution of the Blessed Eucharist in both Kinds That the contrary Custom and Practice of receiving it only in one Kind ought to be accounted and observed as a Law and that if the Priest should Administer it otherwise he was to be Excommunicated * Colonel Axtell * He particularly mention'd those of Brooks and Calamy ☞