much as businesses of that nature would permit But her mother Alexandra touched to the quick to behold her self amongst so many spies she who was ever desirous to converse and live with all royall liberty resolved to play at double or quit to break the guyves of specious servitude or yield her neck to Herods sword if it should come to pass her calamity transported her into such extremity What doth she Cleopatra that Queen who had filled the world with her fame was then in Aegypt and naturally hated Herod as well for his barbarous disposition as for particular interests of her own person For she knew he much had entermedled in her affairs and given Mark Anthony counsel to forsake her yea to kill her This Tyrant was so accustomed to say Kill that he easily advised others to use the same medicine which was with him to his own maladies frequent It is a strange thing that Cleopatra one day passing through Judea he resolved to send her into the other world thinking therewith to gratifie Mark Anthony but was disswaded by his friends saying it was too audacious to attempt and able for ever to ruin his fortune The design was never published But Cleopatra had cause enough besides to hate Herod which much emboldened Alexandra to write to her in such like terms ALEXANDRA to the Queen CLEOPATRA Health Madame SInce God hath given you leave to be born the most Letter of Alexandra to Cleopatra accomplished Queen in all qualities it is fit your Greatness serve as a sanctuary for the innocent and an Altar for the miserable The wretched Alexandra who hath much innocency void of support and too many calamities without comfort casteth her self into the arms of your Majesty not to give her a scepter but to secure the life of her and her son the most precious pledge which remaineth of heavens benignity Your Majesty is not ignorant that fortune having made me the daughter and mother of a King Herod hath reduced me to the condition of a servant I am not ambitious to recount my sufferings which I had rather dissemble but whatsoever a slave can endure in a gally I bear in a Kingdom through the violence of a son in law who having stoln the diadem from my children would also deprive them of life We are perpetually among spies sharp knives and black apprehensions of death which would less hurt us if it were more sudden Stretch out a hand of assistance to the afflicted and afford us some petty nook in your Kingdom till the storm be over-blown and that we may see some sparkles of hope to glimmer in your affairs Glory thereby shall abide with you and with us everlasting gratitude Cleopatra having received these letters made a ready answer and invited her to hasten speedily into Aegypt with her son protesting she should esteem it an unspeakable glory to serve as a sanctuary and refuge for the affliction of such a Princess Resolution of departure is taken but the execution is a hard task The poor Io knows not how to withdraw Enterprise of Alexandra her self from this many-eyed Argus In the end as the wit of woman is inventive especially in matters that concern their proper interests she without discovering ought to any one no not to her daughter Mariamne fearing least her nature too mild should advise her rarher to rest in the lists of patience than to attempt ways so perilous she I say onely advising with her own passion in this business caused two beers to be made a matter of ill presage to put her self and son into thinking by this means to elude the diligence of the Guard and so to be carried to the sea where a ship attended her and by this way save her life in the power of death But by ill hap a servant of hers named Aesop who was one of those that were appointed to carry the beers going to visit one called Sabbion a friend to the house of Alexandra let some words fall of the intention of his Mistress as thinking to to have spoken to a faithful and secret friend of hers The perfidious Sabbion had no sooner wrung the worm out of this servants nose but he hasteth to open all to Herod supposing it was a very fit opportunity to work his reconciliation he having a long time been suspected and accounted to be of Alexandras faction Herod after he heard this news wanted not spies and centinels The poor Lady with her son is surprised upon the beers drawn out of the sepulcher of the dead to return to the living ashamed and disgraced that her Comedy was no better acted little considering that after her personated part had failed she could nothing at all pretend to life Herod notwithstanding whether he feared the great credit Cleopatra had or whether he would not wholy affright Alexandra thereby with the more facility to oppress her contained himself in the ordinary dissimulation of his own nature without speaking one sole word unto her Although very well in the face of this painted hypocrisie was seen that the clouds were gathered together to make a loud Thunder-crack raise an unresistable tempest The caytive after he had given so many deaths Pitiful death of young Aristobulus in the horrour and affrightment of arms would inflict one even as it were in sport upon a fair sommers day Being at dinner at the house of the miserable Alexandra feigning to have buried in deep oblivion all what was past saith that in favour of youth he this day would play the young man and invite the High-Priest Aristobulus his brother in law to play at tennis with him or some other like exercise The sides were made the elumination was enkindled The young Prince hot and eager played not long but he became all on a water as at that time happened to many other Lords and Gentlemen Behold they all run to the rivers which were near this place of pleasure where they dined Herod who knew the custom of Aristobulus and well foresaw he would not fail to cast himself into these cold baths suborneth base villains who under the shew of pastime should force him to drink more than he would All succeeded as this traiterous wretch had premeditated Aristobulus seeing the other in the water uncloathed himself quickly and bare them company There was no cause why he should swim sport and dally upon this element ever dangerous although less faithless than Herod The poor sacrifice skipped up and down not knowing the unhappiness which attended him But the accursed executioners remembred it well For spying their time in this fatal sport they smothered the poor High-priest under the waters in the eighteenth year of his age and the first of his High-priesthood This bright Sun which rose with such splendour and applause did set in the waves never to appear again but with horrid wanness of death on his discoloured visage Humane hopes where are you True dreams of Vanity and
perpetrated The tears of the disconsolate mother were not omitted in her absence Cleopatra made this whole Tragedie to be presented the combate was much enkindled and the battery was forcible Herod who wanted no eloquence in his own occasions replieth with a countenance very lowly and modest Prince and you Sirs who are of the Counsel I hold the Apologie of Herod full of craft scepter of Judea neither of Hircanus nor Alexandra never having had any purpose to flatter them for this end yea much less to fear them You know Most Illustrious Anthonie the Kingdom is in my hands I hold it of you from you all my greatness ariseth and in you all my hopes are concluded If you command I am at this present ready not onely to leave the scepter but my life also which never have I been desirous to preserve but for your service But it troubleth me the way of death being open to all the world the path of reputation which is more dear to me than life should be shut against my innocencie I am persecuted by women and much I wonder how the soul of Queen Cleopatra wholly celestial can nourish so much spleen against a King who never hath failed in any respect lawfully due to her merit For Alexandra it is not strange that she raise such a storm against me her fierce and haughty spirit hath always opposed my patience endeavoring by all means to disparage my government to pull a crown from me which a more puissant hand than her Ancestours hath placed on my head What apparence is there that being by the favour of the Romans a peaceable possessour of a Kingdom the which even by the consent of my adversaries I sought not so regular was my ambition I should attempt a horrible crime which cannot fall but into the mind of a monster No man will be wicked in chearfulness of heart the memorie of the recompence which man proposeth to himself ever beareth the torch before the crime To what purpose should I attempt upon the life of Aristobulus to settle my affairs They were already established your gracious favour most Noble Anthonie hath afforded me more than all their machinations can vanquish But I perpetually have kept back the bloud Royal from dignities What keeping back is it when I have cherished them in my own bosom as much as possible Every one knows Hircanus the prime man of this Royal family being held as a prisoner among the Parthians I bent all my spirits employed all my credit to have him set at libertie and to procure his return to Court where he now liveth in full tranquilitie enjoying all the priviledges of Royaltie but the carefull sollicitude of affairs It is known I have divided my crown and bed with his grand-child Mariamne making her both Queen of people and wife of a King I have given the High-Priesthood to her brother Aristobulus of my meer and free will not enforced by any constraint as being absolute in the mannage of my own affairs and if in ought I delayed him it was because the minority of his age ran not equal with my affections but in effect he hath been beheld High-Priest at eighteen years of age which is a favour very extraordinarie Alexandra his mother who maketh way to this business hath ever had all the libertie of my Court except the licence of ruining herself which she passionately pursueth For what reason had she to hide herself in a coffin and cause herself to be carried in the night as a dead bodie to steal from my Court and after she had wronged me in mine house to traduce me among strangers If she desired to make a voyage into Aegypt she needed to have spoken but one word it had been sufficient But she pleaseth herself in counterfeiting a false peril in a real safetie to thrust into the danger of life those who make her live in all reposed assurance I having discovered this practice did not let fall one word of bitterness against her desirous she should enjoy at her ease the sight of me as a spectacle of patience thinking all folly sufficiently punished with its own proper conscience Certain time after the death of this young Prince happened which draweth tears of compassion from me for I loved him and much it troubled me his mother perverted the sweetness of his exellent nature and cut more stuff out for his youth than he was able to stitch together He is dead not in my house but in the house of his mother dead by an accident which no man could prevent dead sporting in the water a faithless element where a thousand and a thousand have without any such purpose perished dead among the youth of the Court with whom daily be disported himself His own meer motion bare him into the water the bravery of his youth caused him to dally even in danger it self without any possibility to divert him and his own mishap hath drowned him It is to tie me to bard conditions if Alexandra will make me both accountable for the youthfull levities of her son as if I were his governour and of the frail inconstancy of elements as if I were Lord of them This pernicious spirit spake this with so much grace and probability that he gained many hearts So much force had eloquence even in the hands of iniquitie Behold him now on the shore out of peril remaining in Anthonie's Court in all liberty to attend the sentence of his justification In the mean time being as he was wise and liberal in all occasions by force of presents he purchased the hearts of the chief and made all the accusation of Cleopatra appear to be the passion of a woman ill advised Mark Anthony himself said to Cleopatra she did ill to intermeddle so much with forreign Kingdoms and that if she took this course she would raise enemies prejudicial to her estate That Herod being a King it was not fit to use him like a subject and that it would be her happiness rather to have him a friend than an enemie As these things were handled in Anthonie's Court the Queen Mariamne and her mother Alexandra ceased not to be observed by the sollicitous diligence of the mother and sister of Herod Joseph his uncle An act of great stupiditie in Joseph uncle of Herod played the Goaler and often visited Queen Mariamne sometime to treat some affairs with her sometime in the way of complement This man began to burn like a butterflie in the eyes of this incomparable beauty and much affected her although he saw himself far off from all manner of hope Notwithstanding he found some contentment to have fixed his affection in so eminent a place This passion made him foolish and full of babble having already rudeness enough of his own nature which made him utter strange extravagancies For one day there being occasion to speak of Herod's affection to Mariamne his wife Alexandra the mother mocked thereat in an exorbitant
have no other Gods but scepters no other Paradise than fruition of Empires His father Antiochus the Great had given him this lesson For he was an active Prince but more judicious than his son who never ceased to disturb his neighbour and covertly attempt the Kingdom of Aegypt by arms and subtilities until such time that the Romans clipped the wings of his ambition as well to stay the progression of his over-much power become formidable to the Empire as to punish him for the dangerous correspondences he held with Hannibal He was enforced by reason of some agreements and transactions of peace to send his son to Rome in hostage and that was this Antiochus we mention This young Prince who already had in his imagination He was delivered for an hostage to the Romaâ—â— designs of Empire mannaged this occasion and deriving his happiness out of the necessity of his fathers affairs learned therein all the extent of supream powers on earth and began to reflect on the Romans as gods of the whole world On the other side Scipio and all the other great Captains were forward to let the people behold this off-spring of the Asian Kings as a Lion enchained and finding him vain enough they spared not slight complements and court smokes but ever held in their own hands the highest point of authority and drew profit out of all affairs During his abode in Rome his father Antiochus the Prudence of the Romans Great overwhelmed under the burden of his ambition found the catastrophe of his pretensions in a tomb and his eldest son Seleveus succeeded him who had a short life and an unhappy reign At which time young Antiochus felt in himself a vehement itch of rule more powerfully than any of his Predecessours had done for soon understanding his brothers death who left him the kingdom of Asia and knowing Ambition of Antiochus his sister Cleopatra married to the King of Aegypt was a widow and the mother of onely one child of whom he hoped to be easily rid he ardently thirsted to joyn the two Empires and unite them under his power Now the Kingdom of Syria appertaining to this young Orphan the son of his sister he in the beginning entered thereinto with great modesty in the quality of a Tutour and Regent and not a King aforehand disposing the peoples minds by Attalus and Eumenes who did him good service in this pretension This wolf clothed in a lambs-skin thought to enter by the same ways into the Kingdom of Aegypt and wrote thus to his sister That it seemed the Gods had His craft thrown him among thorns at the time when Kings of his age walked not but on violets and roses That being absent out of the Kingdom he had received sad news of the death of his thrice-honoured father and immediately of the death of his well-beloved brother whose days he wished might have been lengthened with his own years But that nothing afflicted him so much as to see her a widow burdned with an infant whose hands were not so early fit to manage a scepter Behold therfore the cause why be now undertook the government of the Kingdom of Syria which was the possession of his Ancestours and whereunto she had right by the title of dower But otherwise though he were heavily surcharged with two Kingdoms he was no whit discouraged to share with her also in the cares of Aegypt since besides charitie towards his own the continual practice of affairs he had at Rome in the most knowing school of the world it had acquired him some dexteritie and experience in the sway of Kingdoms That he would make her reign in the affluence and pleasures of a flourishing Court and prostrate the whole world at her feet That she should onely be troubled to see their submission as the Gods behold earth from heaven and that he would be as faithfull a Regent as be hadever been a loving brother Cleopatra had been married to Ptolomeus Epiphanes and cast as a bait by the father to catch the Kingdom of Aegypt under hope conceived that having studied in his school she would beguil her husband and bring Nilus to Euphrates But she opening her eyes found Prudence of Cleopatra against the wiles of her brother her flesh was much nearer than the smock and ever upheld both her husband and son against her fathers plots She understood the heart of her brother to be desperately subtie and ambitious and seeing she could not possess Syria where he had strongly fortified himself she easily admitted this his imaginary title of Regency which she could no longer withhold But for so much as concerned Aegypt she made answer That she very humbly thanked him for the compassion he had of her widow-hood and that the Gods who afford the deepest roots to trees the most subject to winds would furnish her with sufficient courage to suffer so boisterous shocks As concerning the Kingdom of Syria his providence had prevented the good opinion she conceived of him being alreadie resolved to put the Regencie into his hands But as for Aegypt there was no necessitie be should rob himself in the freshnese of his youth of the pleasures so fairly acquired for him to undergo so many burden som charges in a forreign Countrey wherein he would not be honoured as were the Ptolemees That her people were somewhat jealous nor would confide in external power which might much discontent him in the sinceritie he pretended in the mannage of her affairs That she was assisted by a wise Councel with whose did she hoped to maintain her people in perfect peace and raise her son to the height of the happiness of his extraction and that it should ever be a singular comfort for her to be assured of the good affection be bare towards her estate and to correspond with him in an unfained intelligence Antiochus who found not his expectation in his sisters letters laid down the sheep-skin to put on the Lions and began to make open war by invading the Kingdom of Aegypt which was the cause Cleopatra instantly cast her self into the protection of the Romans although she nothing doubted but that her brother had thence sought support and credit But she on the other side knew they favoured justice and willingly undertook the causes of widows and orphans And verily the Senate of Rome either through the integritie Equity of the Senate of Rome to support widows of their manners or to ballance scepters which swayed under them and make none too great to the prejudice of their power inclined to the widows part and commanded Antiochus to retire out of Aegypt He who knew how to court men went about to gain Popilius Lenas deputed by the Senate to determine this affair requiring some delay to withdraw his forces leisurely of purpose to spend time for the renewing his plots A notable act of an Embassadour But the other a man resolute and not to be paid with words
To repress all the desires and concupiscences of flesh and if one have any feeling thereof not to give consent thereunto IV. Never to stay at all upon thoughts and imaginations of things dishonest but so soon as they present themselves to chase them away and extinguish them in your heart no otherwise than you should quench a burning hot iron in a fountain V. To mortifie your senses which are most commonly Eyes Oculi patellae luxuriae Isidor apud S. Bern. tom 1 serm de luxuria Salvian l. 3. de gubernat Oculi tui videbunt extranea cor tuum loquetur perversa Prov. 23. 3. the fore-runners of sin and above all to restrain your eyes which according to the opinion of S Isidore are as dishes wherein luxurie serveth up the viands of voluptuousness They are the windows the alurements the snares the conduits of love It buddeth in the eyes that it may at leasure blossome in the heart And therefore it is fit to stand upon your guard with so subtile and vigorous a sence which often filleth the soul with appetites and flames I do not say that one should look upon nothing and always live as if the soul were buried alive in the flesh but I affirm you must divert your sight from objects which dart a sting into a mind sensible of such penetrations As for the ears there is no doubt they may serve as handles for love and that it hath taken many that way An evil word hath fingers to incite the flesh He who heareth it and he that willingly speaketh it is not innocent before God Smelling blasteth chastitie and tast roughly assaulteth but kisses and unchast toucheâ— cut her throat VI. To flie idleness reading of love-books comedies stage-plays immodest pictures feasts private familiarities loose companie and all occasions of sin VII To have in detestation even the shadows of impuritie To speak to proclaim in every place the praises of chastitie and for this purpose to love penance mortification of the bodie labour rough and harsh apparel modestie even to the seeming somewhat wayward the Sacrament of the Eucharist the meditation of the four last things devotion towards the most blessed Virgin and all that may conduce to the maintenance of honestie VIII To remain firm in great and forcible temptations is verily the trophey of chastitie Since as Plato hath said the triumph of virtue is to have the power not the will to sin It was a notable act of Chastitie of Charls the 8. continencie in Charls the eigth ardently to love a maiden endowed with an exquisite beautie to have her at his dispose and yet to abstain for one sole word Lyps in monitis politic lib. 2. cap. 17. Exemplo 12. addit datos puellae 500. aureos which this poor creature spake to him brought even into his chamber For she by chance perceiving the picture of our Ladie cast her self at the Kings feet shewed him this image crying out with a face all bathed in tears Sir I beseech you for this Virgins sake preserve the honour of a silly maid At this word spoken for a young King enkindled with love and absolute in power to conquer the motions of lust is it not a matter that meriteth much applause IX To contemn great rewards and high advancements of fortune for the preservation of chastitie Johannes Moschus in prato A couragious Ladie As did that noble Lady of whom John Moschus speaketh who seeing her husband consume in perpetual prison for debt not able any way to relieve him was reduced to terms of extream and miserable want and besides pursued by a man of prime note with all sorts of allurements offers and accommodations which might shake and stagger an afflicted heart and enforce her to condescend to a sin which seemed to have necessity for a patroness she notwithstanding stood firm like a rock preferring chastitie poor and patient before a rich and delicate dishonour I could also nominate creatures as pure as strong adorned with most excellent natural parts more chaste more wise more fortunate than Lucrece who with as much industry as courage have refused powerful and passionate men that sought them with such excessive benefits as would have overwhelmed any inferiour chastitie But they not to commit one onely sin covered under the curtain of the night have despised treasures to guard another jewel in an earthen vessel who for this act deserve to be raised above the stars X. To withdraw the chastity of others from this sink with liberal alms great labour infinite incommodities As that worthy Hermit Abraham Abraham the Hermite did of whom Surius speaketh who loaden with years and merits went into a brothel-house in disguised habit to reduce a Niece of his that went astray as at this day many honest matrons worthy of eternal memory spare nothing to gain poor abused doves out of the faulcons tallons and dedicate them to Altars where soon after they work wonders in matter of virtue XI To suffer in your body great torments yea Hieron in vita Pauli Sabel l. 5. c. 6. death it self for the defence of chastity as many holy virgins have done As that youth reputed the son of a King of Nicomedia who fast tyed on a bed of flowers and wooed by a Courtizane with intention to corrupt him spit out his tongue like a dart of fire and bloud in the face of this she-wolf A tongue Lingua silet clamatque silens loquiturque pudorem sanguine quae pinxit sola pudicitiam A bold attempt of Didymus which in dumb eloquence speaketh to all posteritie and proclaimeth the honour of chastitie XII To expose your self to great sufferings for the preservation of others chastitie As that brave Didymus a young beardless Gentleman who beholding a poor Christian maid named Theodora thrown into a brothel caused her to escape by giving her the habit of a man and himself remained for pledge in the attires of a woman expecting the fury of executioners Ambr. lib. 2. de virgin Quasi adulter ingressus si vis Martyr â—grediar Vestimenta mutemus conveniunt mihi tua mea tibi sed utraque Christo Tua vestis me verum militem faciet mea te virginem Bené tu vestieris ego melius exuar who gave him the crown of Martyrdom Saint Ambrose makes him speak to the maid to this effect Sister I am come hither as an adulterer and if it please you I will go out a Martyr Let us change habits I pray you we are as I perceive both of one stature My apparrel very well fitteth you but yours will set much better upon me and both will agree in the service of Christ Jesus My attire shall make you a virgin and yours me a Martyr You shall be most fortunately clothed and I more happily despoiled It was so done Didymus was apprehended and Theodora understanding it run back like a lyoness amidst the swords to die with him The twenty
the comfort of posterity marriage is constituted for that end It is not enough to assist a mortal body in its infirmities but so much as one may mutually to manure a soul immortal you must between you share all your prosperities and adversities I say prosperities to moderate them and adversities to honour them you must mutually strive to lend a shoulder and if your burdens be weighty by the yoke of necessity sanctifie them by your patience You must think it is a blessing even from God to be chosen out to preserve a husband or a sick wife since this infirm creature is the Image of God and your proper flesh to whom you render duties which perhaps at this time seem thorns unto you but shall one day be crowns if you know how to make virtues of your necessities Be not discouraged through pusillanimity but do like the Dolphin who raiseth himself with much alacrity against the sea-waves during the tempest Understand you not the Holocaust must burn from evening till morning Burn in this fire of love and tribulation expecting to see glory in the day-break to crown your perseverance Though God allot you no issue yet no whit the less love your comfort God oftentimes suffereth barrenness of body to afford fruitfulness of virtues The thirty seventh SECTION Instructions for Widdows PErfect widdows are in the Church as the horizon of Marriage and Religion they participate of both conditions when they be in the world for the example of the world for the government of their children and family but they also have a share in the life of the Religious when they wholly dispose their hearts to God We sometimes see a bank of earth which keepeth two seas from intermixing but being taken away those two waters will pass along together and engulf themselves one within another O how often said you during the knot of marriage that if God once took away your husband you would wholly be for him Conjugal obligation and affairs of the world was your bank and your obstacle but now God hath taken it away dissolve your heart into his This is the passage where you are expected Here it is where proof shall be made of your constancy When you have deplored the death of your husband as a wife you must learn to bear it like a Saint It is a wretched virtue not to know what else to do than bewail the dead and be desirous to derive glory from the peevishness of your sorrow If we could draw aside the curtain of Heaven to see the state of souls already passed out of mortal bodies to the promised recompence of the faithful how much we should be ashamed and confounded at the weakness of our tears we should see this great Eternity seated in a chair of diamond all sparkling with stars and brightness holding a flaming mirrour in its hand at which time it would let us behold a goodly harmony of all the beatitudes these glorious souls now enjoy separated from the contagion of our mortality then wiping away the tears from our eyes it would say to us with a voice replenished with sweetness and majesty Why bewail you these kinred and friends who live better than ever in my bosom absorpt in a torrent of eternal felicities An hundred and an hundred-fold happy are the dead who depart in the favour of God! Behold them for the time to come discharged from labours Behold them freed of a thousand and a thousand cares fears pains passions maladies wants ignominies and all those evils which divide our miserable life Behold them folded within the arms of the Sovereign where they reap the good works they sowed on earth You are much troubled O widdow that this your spouse is at this present of the houshold of God an inhabitant of his mansion and a possessour of his glory Have you so many tears to lament miseries that you waste them in felicities as if it were a great unhappiness to pass from the servitude of the slave of the world to the liberty and joy of the children of God This is admirably well expressed in the 21. Chapter of Exodus where God at the going forth of Aegypt shewed himself to Moses Aaron Nabal Abiud and all the most eminent of this Nation having saphires for his foot-stool which are stones of a celestial colour whereupon a learned Commentary drawn from the Hebrew Interpreters most divinely answereth that God would say unto them You have laboured in Aegypt with much patience about morter and tyles and behold all your tyles turned into saphires into heavenly stones to build of them the foot-stool of your glory This is it which the most Blessed Eternity saith to us concerning the dead whom we deplore It is not fit any longer to take pains with tyles and morter businesses cares troublesom affairs of the present life are past there is not any thing but repose peace glory and felicitie Behold that which comforteth all solid and generous souls with lively fruitful and eternal consolations Will you have a singular resignation in the death of your kinred which may daily happen and fall out of necessity Behold Saint Lewis when news was brought him of the death of his mother Queen Blauncb he soon perceived by the countenance of the messengers who were the Archbishop of Tyre and his Confessour they were ready to tell him somewhat able to afflict the heart of man before they could open their mouthes Let us go saith he into my Oratory for it was the magazin where this great King took up arms to combate against worldly disasters and when they came thither speak now what have you to say Sir God who had a long time lent you your mother for the good of your person and Kingdom hath taken her out of the world for her own repose At these words S. Lewis fell upon his knees before the Altar and lifting up his hands to heaven said O my God I give thee thanks thou â—â—st afforded me my dear mother whilest it was thy will and that now according to thy good pleasure thou hast taken her to thee It is true I loved her above all the creatures of the world and she well deserved it but since thou hast bereaved me of her thy Name be for ever blessed Conclude your tears as he did but never the resolution of your widdow-hood It were to be wished a good vow might fix it with a nail of adamant but that should be done with discretion for all in woman being frail her tears can have no constancy You may have read in the history of the unhappy Politician the sorrow of Glaphyra the wife of Alexander son of Herod whom his father most cruelly put to death to satisfie his chimaeraes and suspitions Never woman more passionately resented the death of her husband her lamentations were yellings her tears torrents her words furies her countenance despair and life a little hell There was no light to be seen after the eclipse of
and they shall oppose you in the land of your abode Cruel father that thou art who quite dead and turned into ashes afflictest the Common-wealth by children ill instructed thou woundest and tearest Christianity Were it not justice thinkest thou to break up thy tomb and disturb thy ashes for having voluntarily bred a little viper for thy countrey to which thou art accountable for thy life And from hence it cometh to pass that fathers who have carried themselves so negligently and perfidiously in their childrens instruction are the first who drink down the poyson they mingled for others over-whelmed with toyls and miseries for the continual disorders of these extravagants O how often they make complaint like the Eagle in the Emblem of Julian when strucken by a mortal arrow partly framed out of her own wings she said Out alas wretched bird that I am must I breed feathers to serve as a swift chariot to the steel which transfixeth my body Must I bring forth children to give me the stroke of death What remedie then for this unhappiness which creeping into the bowels of the most flourishing Monarchies depopulates and deprives them of good subjects and furnisheth them with shadows of men What remedy but to observe three things in this matter First to give a good tincture of Religion to your children pious apprehensions of God and a filial fear of his judgements Secondly to manure them with arts suitable to their understanding and condition to settle them in the world upon some good employment lest having nought to do they become fit to act any evil Thirdly to accommodate them as much as possibly and reasonably may be with exteriour moveables called the blessings of fortune that necessity open not them the gate of iniquitie and then leave the rest to the providence of God whose eye is alwayes open over his work Behold the course most fit to be observed Pietie goeth foremost for as the eloquent Prelate of Cyrenes saith It Cynes ad Arcad is not onely the foundation of houses but of whole Monarchies Parents now adays seek to do quite contrary and set the cart before the horse they voluntarily imitate the stupidity of those Aegyptians who prepared Altars to a Reer-mouse for no other reason but that she is weak-sighted and is a friend of the night Now they preferred darkness before light by right of antiquity but these do much worse for putting Heaven and earth into one ballance they set an estimate upon terrene things to the villifying and confusion of celestial Nay there are mothers to be found so malicious as was one named Clotilda not the Saint but a mad woman who being put to her choice either to consent her sons should enter into a Monastery to become religious or resolve to see them loose their lives Kill kill said she I had rather behold them dead than Monks How many are there now adays who for a need would suffer their children to become Pages to Antichrist to make a fortune at the least would well endure to see them preferred to honour in the great Turks Court with ship-wrack of their Religion There are few Queen Blanches either in courage or worth who rather desired to behold her children in their grave than in sin They must now adays be either Caesars or nothing None fear to put them into infamous houses into scandalous places to give them most wicked Teachers to thrust them into snares and scandals under hope of some preferment Nay with how many travels and services crouchings and crimes do these miserable creatures purchase their chains All Non omnes curia admittet castra quos ad liborem pericula recipiant fastidiosè legunt bona mens omnibus patet Senec. Ep. 44. cannot find a fortune in Court Warfare picks out those with a kind of disdain whom it entertains for labours and hazards of life Onely virtue shuts not the gate against any yet it is daily despised Vnfortunate fathers and wretched mothers live on gall and tears rise and go to bed with gnawing care to set an ungratefull son on the top of fortunes wheel who quickly grows weary of them and after their deaths gluts himself with the delights they with so much industrie prepared for him mindless of those who obliged him Nay far otherwise he unfolds the riots of his unbridled youth even upon their tombs God grant this evil may pass no further and that the father and son do not one day reproach one another in the flames of hell that the one ministred matter of damnation and the other gave accomplishment William the learned Bishop of Guliel de Lugdun tract de avarit rubric 11. Lions relateth that a young Hermit retiring into a horrid wilderness to attend the exercise of penance saw his father and brother whom he had left in the world embroiled in ill causes at that time deceased and buried in everlasting fire who made hydeous complaints the son questioning his father as authour of his ruin by amassing unjust riches for him and the father answering the son was the source of all his calamities since to make him rich he had spent his miserable life in perpetual anxiety and now suffered eternal punishments in the other world for loving a disloyal son more than Almightie God Cursed blindness to buy tortures and gibbets with afflictions and crosses O fathers and mothers let your first care extend to those whom you begat to teach them virtue rather by your example than others instruction These young creatures are your shadows your ecchoes they turn and wind themselves easily to imitate those who gave them life and from whom they hope both wealth and honour Wo to the father and mother who make their children witnesses of their crimes and not content to be evil make their sin immortal in the immortality of their descent An infant though but two years old should be used with much regard as if it were an intelligence enchased in this little body It is a great sacriledge to impress the first tincture of vice on those who as yet rest in the innocency of baptism The good Eleazar being advised to dissemble his Religion to save his life or at least to make semblance of eating hogs-flesh beholding round about him many youths who expected the end of this combat pronounced these worthy words couched in S. Ambrose God forbid I should serve for an incentive Ambrose l. 2. de Jacob. Nequaquam contingat mihi ut sim senex incentivum ju venilis erroris qui esse debet forma salutaris instituti Adulterio delectatus aliqui◠Jovem respicit inde cupiditatis suae fomenta conquirit Julius Firm. de error profan to the vices of these young people who should rather be a pattern of wisdom God forbid I defile my gray hairs with this execration and that posterity may take notice I opened the gate to impiety by my example That is undoubted which Julius Firmicus spake Nothing hath
she had done in crime for she becometh very pale and was so confounded that she had not courage enough to speak one onely word Theodosius in an instant retireth like lightening and withdraweth into his Cabinet having his heart wholly drencht in gall and bitterness The poor Eudoxia on the other part poureth herself into tears without comfort as her misery seemed devoid of remedy Here was a rough trial which God sent to these innocent souls and yet we need not wonder since Saint Joseph as I have said one of the most perfect husbands which the earth ever bare gave too much scope to his suspition upon the chastity of her who was more pure than Angels Love jealousie anger and sorrow divided the heart of the Prince in the sad retirement of his Cabinet and drew strange sighâ— from him A silly maid said he come of nothing who was tossed in a storm as the tennis-ball of fortune without support without means without favour to have been preferred before such and so many Princesses who sought my alliance raised even to my bed by lawfull marriage to plant dishonour there to have been ennobled with a diadem and negligently to pollute it by her ingratitude and Paulinus whom I trusted as my self that he might satisfie his desires with all the greatness and beauties of my Empire for all was in his hands to proceed so far as to attempt the bed of his Master Where shall we hereafter find fidelity We must search for it among Tartars and Scythians for it is banished from Christianitie It is not well known who in these confusions suggested to the Emperour this wicked counsel to destroy Prince Paulinus The soul of Theodosius was too sweet to resolve on an act so tragical without others motion so likewise it is not credible it should proceed from Pulcheria who was in affairs more reserved and ever guided by the rule of conscience However it was the history saith the poor Paulinus who knew nothing of that which passed was cured of the gout the same night by a very rough and most bloudy phlebotomy for he was put to death without any form of process Other have written he was first banished into Cappadocia and there oppressed by the faction of his enemies O God what may not depraved love do since sincere amity cannot avoid suspition attended by an accident so strange Some have said nothing else followed but the sequestration of Paulinus and that should more pleasingly run from my pen which abhorreth bloud But as the Scripture speaking of David and other holy Kings hath not dissembled their faults I will not so paint Theodosius exteriourly that I cover this aspersion of too much credulity precipitation and revenge in this matter which proceeded even to bloud as the Chronicle of Alexandria assureth us It is a fearfull example to see a soul so mild by the disturbance of a passion and some pernicious counsel transported so far to teach Great-ones they cannot maturely enough consult in the like occasions The father of this Paulinus had been High-Steward in the Court of the Emperour Paulinus himself from his infancy had been bred with Theodosius participating in all his counsels and pleasures of youth he was grown so high that nothing but the hand of his Master could ruin him He lived in the reputation of a great man and his words were heard in Court like Oracles Yet notwithstanding behold him to satisfie jealousie miserably massacred and the glorious services he had done to the Crown recompenced with a direfull catastrophe It is unknown why the Divine Providence permitted the same It oftentimes holdeth the affairs of the world under the veil and silence but we must presume all which it permitteth is done with justice When the afflicted Empress understood the death of Paulinus so sudden and unexpected she well saw the Emperour was tainted with the venom of most cruel jealousie and that all her apologies would be fruitless The poor Ladie saw nothing about her but darkness fantasies and affrightments The clock which struck ever seemed to her the last moment of life yea and that in her opinion over-slow to end her miseries When her soul was able to surmount the storm she said to God with an affectionate heart Alas God of justice Strange affliction of Eudoxia and her words for I dare not implore thy mercies thou hast well touched me on that part which was most sensible in me Although I had seen my diadem thunder-strucken by thy hand fall into dust at my feet though thou hadst taken this creature from my side which thou hast afforded us as a pledge of our marriage though all infirmities and manners of death had conspired against me I doubted not always to have had courage enough to bear my self above wind and tempest But what light of spirit would not be eclipsed what temper of heart would not be lost in these dolorous afflictions Thou hast lifted me up as they do little children to the branches of a tree to make me fall down head-long and crush me with a ruin as ignominious as my fortune was eminent Were I now under the poor roof of the house from whence Vanity and inconstancy of worldly affairs thou drewest me I should be too happy You have exposed me to the mid-day light that I might not be unfortunate without making all the world witness of my wretchedness and disgaace And yet my God thou knowest my eyes have ever been chaste and that never any other love entered into my heart but that of a lawfull husband It is better to suffer in innocency than crime but it always is a thing worthy of compassion to behold chastity unworthily persecuted That poor innocent hath gone before me into the other world and hath served as a sacrifice for his Masters jealousie his services ought not to have been crowned with such a recompence It is my friendship as chaste as unhappy that hath betrayed him my sins are so great that I cannot do good but by doing ill My God expiate them by death and onely deliver me from the bands of dishonour Thus went the afflicted turtle mourning in the solitary retirement of her heart the nights were irksom to her so much was her sleep clogged with dreams and fantasies which with the more horrour represented her calamity and when the Sun arose to bring comfort in his rays to all creatures he found the eye-lids of this poor Princess all watered with tears which he could not drie up In the mean time the Court of Theodosius was in a sad silence It was not well known what tragedy was played The Emperour shewed a melancholy distracted spirit the Empress bare the image of her sorrow in her dejected countenance Pulcheria abode in a prudent dissimulation and an admirable advisedness The sudden death of Paulinus made it to be suspected there was some strange accident Every one discoursed according to his opinion At that instant Eudoxia was seen to be
coloured pretext Notwithstanding it cast most strong apprehensions into the soul of his Lady who too well knew the deportments of this Prince But considering this precious pledge of her husband held for an undoubted earnest-penny of his command she goeth and consecrateth all the difficulties which she conceived to the obedience towards her Lord. The poor Lady was no sooner arrived but was ravished and violated to satisfie the bruitish lust of a man more drunk with love than wine The Palace of a Christian Emperour which should be a Sanctuary for the chastity of Ladies is by an act black and villanous defiled The chaste turtle who would not survive her honour as soon as she returneth to her lodging exclaimeth against her husband with outragious words thinking he had consented to this disaster Go saith she to him ingratefull and unnatural man as thou are to prostitute the honour of thy wife to the bruitishness of a Prince abandoned by God and men dost thou not yet feel the executioners of thy conscience which reproach thee with thy crime Maximus much amazed at such words What is the matter or where have you been foolish woman saith he She shewing the ring Dost not thou yet acknowledge thy disloyaltie silly and perfidious man behold that which will accuse thee before God He as she began to unfold herself too soon found his own shame enjoyneth her to silence and dissimulation and hath no vein in him which tendeth not to vengeance Valentinian had a brave and valiant Captain who supported the whole Empire this was Aetius very lately adorned with the spoils of Attila whom he in a pitcht battel had vanquished Maximus thought he must ruinate this pillar to make the whole house to fall and therein was not deceived But being a man full of craft so dissembleth what was past concerning his wife as if it had never come to his knowledge onely he endeavoureth to gain the good opinion of a powerfull Eunuch named Heraclius who was the Emperours instrument and having already gotten him at his devotion suggesteth to him in great secret he had learned from a good hand that Aetius Lieutenant General of the Emperour was much puffed up with the victory he obtained against Attila and that he on all sides practised confederacies both within and without the Kingdom to make himself absolute Master of all that under the shadow of entertaining the French and Gothes in good correspondence with the Empire he purchased them for his own service with the Emperours revenues and that nothing remained for him but to set the Diadem upon his own head which quickly he would do were he not with all speed prevented Heraclius faileth not roundly to relate all this to his Master who was already stirred with jealousie towards Aetius seeing his fortune took so high a flight that it seemed to mount above wind and tempest Valentinian a hair-braind Prince perpetually drunk with lust and choller without any further inquisition sendeth for Aetius to the Palace and with enraged passion How saith he Traytour is it thou who undertakest to bereave me of the Crown and saying that taketh out a poinyard which he had in his bosom and killed him with his own hand An act both bold and barbarous The poor Aetius who had born the brunt of an Army of seven hundred thousand men who first confronted a man that shoke the pillars of all Empires who returned from the Gaules amply loaden with victorious Palms one of the most glorious Captains that ever was at that time shewed at Rome as a prodigy of valour fell dead as a sacrifice at the feet of his Master receiving by the just judgement of God that entertainment he before had given to Bonifacius the great Governour of Affrick Valentinian as if he had acted a Master-piece went presently to one of his wisest Counsellours to boast thereof asking of him if he had not well played his prize The other replieth Sacred Majesty if you had taken a hatchet with your right hand and cut off your left arm in stead of giving this accursed blow you had not done so ill And I believe you too soon will feel the loss you have received These words were not without effect for the death of Aetius being presently after divulged it put the souldiers into fury who loved him as a brave and valiant Captain under whose standard they had given so ample testimonies of their worth Two of the most hardy of them Ostias and Transtilas after they had massacred the Eunuch Heraclius assailed the person of the Emperour who was at that time in the field of Mars and desperately murdered him it being impossible to free himself from their hands God permitting this in revenge of the murder lately committed and so many adulteries wherewith this miserable Prince degenerating from the bloud of Theodosius was polluted Maximus who cast the stone and afterward withdrew his arm causing all this tragedy to be acted to his own advantage after the death of Valentinian as being most eminent obtained the Empire with little resistance and his wife during these enterprizes being dead perhaps through discontent for her own disaster seeketh the marriage of the Empress Eudoxia wife of Valentinian and daughter of our Athenais The poor Princess drenched in a deluge of sorrow for the death of the Emperour her husband shewed in the beginning to be deaf in this motion of marriage but as the spirits of women are mutable and soothed with glory in few days forgetting death she resolveth to live among the living and for accommodation of her affairs weddeth Maximus Behold him in a short time in the Throne and bed of his Master revenging himself of one wickedness by another much more execrable But vice in greatness hath ever a staggering foot Maximus was no sooner entred into the Palace but his head aked and the remorse of conscience distracted him His most trusty friends heard him sighing say he esteemed that ancient Damocles happy who was a King but the space of a dinner-while so much already was he disquieted with the Empire as if he had soreseen his own catastrophe It chanced one day this unhappy man familiarly discoursing with his new spouse let a word escape him which cost him his life for to give her a great token of his affection he confessed himself to have intermedled in the design of Valentinian his death not so much for the desire of the Empire as of her beauty Eudoxia was strucken with strange horrour at these words not supposing her first husband had been deprived of life and scepter by his practices and therefore resolving to be revenged she covereth her plot with dissimulation and bendeth all her powers to content his humour She saw how her mother had been used at Constantinople so that from thence probably she could expect no succour The fury of revenge transported her to an Wicked revenge of a woman act very hazardous which was to call Gensericus King of the
land of an enemy that the least disturbance should be given to Ecclesiasticks Behold you not here a life worthy of a French Cavalier Oh Nobilitie this man was not a petty Royster who makes boast to fight in a meadow but a souldier who during the wars with the English kept the field of battel three times thirty days together against those brave souldiers who would oppose him from whence he went out all sparkling with glory and wonders I would here willingly adde a Bertrand of Gueselin Count of Longuevil Constable of France whose life Monsieur Menard hath given us written by a pen of that ancient Age in old language you shall see a man who after he had solemnly dedicated in the offertory of a Mass his soul body and arms at the Altars fought six or seven times hand to hand exercised strange feats of battel and arms stood in the midst of combates bold and confident as in his chamber being otherwise furious strong and stout in the press You should see a man sage in counsels prompt in execution whom an enemy found near at hand when he thought him thirty leagues off A man in all things else free from fraud or dissimulation chearfull courteous obliging and liberal of his own employing his moveables and the jewels of his wife for relief of poor souldiers Then you may judge whether to be valiant you may live in the Court of a Christian Prince like a little Turk Where is your judgement and where your reason The fifth SECTION Against Duels I Do assure my self some will not forget to tell A condemnation of Rodomontadoes and Duels you that to be valiant men of the times you must be outragious in slanders in blasphemies in audacious words in duels challenges which are the mighty valours of this Age. Well then my souldier following this course you will learn to swear and blaspheme I speak not how great this crime is nor how much you render your â—â—ngue punishable in disposing it to this language of devils but I will say one thing which is very certain those which seek for glory out of vice have not alwayes been made eminently prosperous All you may doe in purchasing hell by these execrable oathes will bee to acquire the goodly qualities of a base clown And as concerning Duels I undoubtedly hold Authours of duels that if this infamous souldier who hath abused you were willing to speak the truth which his conscience will dictate to him he rather gives it you for an honest coverture of cowardice than for true valour The world is not so doltish as to measure courage by the model of Moors slaves and horse-boys who were the first executours of these but cheries How can you perswade us that a confused mass of these petty mutiners who have nothing else in their mouthes but these duels may be valiant men We are not so ignorant but that we well know courage never makes good alliance with servitude and effeminacy But the most part of this kind of men are servile spirits who submit to an infinite number of shamefull and tyrannical laws for a little smoak They are bodies withered with laziness who are Laziness many times entangled in their garters and stand in need to have rings for winter and summer to change according to the seasons They fear the lancet of Juvenal 1. l. 1 Satyr the Surgeon they crie out aloud for a sleight fever and will needs be tended like women in child-bed Imagine with your self what valour can be herein Were they beaten and stampt into powder in a morter a hundred of such like Rodomonts would not make up one half ounce of warlick fortitude But there is a little despair and rage which boyleth in a passionate heart to counterfeit virtue God forbid we should take chaff for gold hemlock for parsley or an Ape for a man We know valour by report of great Captains resteth in mature deliberation and coolness as in its true element When I behold one of these silly braggards who hasteneth to the field for a base fear of some shame or upon some liver-heat which tormenteth him I make as much reckoning of it as if I saw an angry hen Do you think Sichem was a couragious man for enduring to be circumcised for the love of Dinah My opinion is it was an act of much cowardice to permit himself to be cut with a razor in the most shamefull part of his body to please a silly female Jew who when it was done had great cause to turn this painfull sacrifice into scorn and laughter This poor Courtier to satisfie a wily wench for a foolish imagination of point of honour hasteneth to be cut in pieces in the field unhappy man he thinketh to marry Dinah and finds Proserpina he proposeth to himself a worldly glory that may rank him in the number of the valiant and meeteth a bloudy death which at one blow killeth body and soul Let me die if it be not the poorest thing to behold them in such adventures For if one did see them they would make those burst with laughing at their idleness who were willing to bemoan their misery I have drawn from this massacre such as were more amazed than a bridled goose and more ghastly than a dead man four days after his funeral taken from his sepulcher These silly creatures endured all this to make a wretched bruit run up and down in Paris that they were in the end beaten and had with so many cold sweats of deaths done that which their Lackeys who are somewhat more stupid would a hundred times with more willingness of heart have undertaken Behold you not who is worthy either of compassion or contempt Yet you flatter them with a pretext of courage which you enforce them to purchase at a costly rate When you applaud such actions and tell how brave a combate was performed behind the Charter-house and that both of them came thither with much resolution you are men guilty of bloud It should suffice you to have your judgements so dull in the estimation which ought to be made upon valour without rendering your tongues so tragical Their trembling swords would become very lazie to consummate the mysteries of furies if your words armed not despair to play out the rest of the game Perhaps you will say you know those who have fought duels who notwithstanding were valiant in Armies I deny not this I affirm not that a valiant man cannot fight a duel but I deny that he is valiant for fighting a duel David had been an adulterer and became a Saint but it is not for having been an adulterer that he was a Saint nor shall any one have the reputation of valour among understanding men for committing a crime For if this duel were ever an infallible mark of courage I demand wherefore have we seen those who have shewed themselves most importunate to provoke others to combat most fiery to hasten thither most
first repast with poison well prepared so to send him into the other world This man amazed at such a dreadfull command asked of the Emperour If he had so well resolved on this affair as to use a son of so great merit in this manner Yea saith he I have thought upon it and it is necessary he die for I must tell you it not being needfull to inform you further that besides the practise conceived by him his life is incompatible with mine The other supposed he had plotted some conspiracy upon the life and scepter of his father behold the cause why he hastened the blow and being already very familiar with poor Crispus he accosted him with great complements of honour and courtesie feigning to make him merry because indeed he then saw him in a very sad humour upon that which had passed between him and Fausta covering his thoughts as much as he might to preserve the honour of his wicked step-mother Hereupon an unhappy banquet was prepared for the innocent Death of Crispus which was the last of his life poison being traiterously given him there where he least expected it Verily this death which way soever we look is most lamentable The Tragedies which bemoan it with so much ornament as that of our Stephanius have much spirit in them but taking onely the thing in the simple nakedness of the fact it ministereth matter of compassion to hearts most obdurate A young Prince at that time the most absolute in the world beautifull as an Absalom valiant as an Alexander innocent as a Joseph at that time taken away when he was at the gates of the Empire which expected him and taken away by a death so hydeous and treacherous and by the commandment of his father who caused him to die as one incestuous not admitting him to speak nor permitting him to justifie himself nor affording leisure to know himself nor one small moment of time to prepare himself for death which is allowed to the most criminal He was silently involved in the extremity of unhappiness to shut up the mouth of innocency and open that of calumny to rail against his very ashes The generous soul ever prepared for this passage by the laws of Christianity which it had so devoutly embraced issued out of his chaste body to hasten to the crown of the Elect leaving incomparable sorrows behind it Alas what doth not a wicked affection a calumny a suspition an unbridled anger an inconsiderate word O you Great-ones will you never learn wisdom by the evils of others As soon as this news came to the Court the wicked The rage of Fausta turned into pitie Fausta well saw it was an effect of her treachery and lively representing before her own eyes this poor Prince whom she before had so much affected at that time so unworthily massacred in a beauty in an age wherein such as die are most pittied and in a goodness which would have given matter of compassion to Tigers and Lions all her passion and hatred was turned into an enraged sorrow which made her crie out and lament at the feet of her husband confessing she had slain the chaste Crispus by her detestable calumny that it was she who had sollicited Calumny discovered him to evil but had found him a Joseph endowed with an invincible chastity and had detested her sin as it well deserved whereupon excited with choler and fearing to be prevented she had proceeded to this dreadfull accusation and therefore was unworthy to live since she had slain the most innocent Prince of the world and stained his own father with his proper bloud Constantine amazed beyond description at so prodigious an accident had neither reply nor sense of a man so much wonder had rapt him from himself but when he saw his holy mother Helena who had so tenderly bred up the poor Crispus bewailing him with unconsolable tears and begging of the father at the least the body of her grand-child to wash it with the waters of her eyes and bury it with her hands saying the wicked beast had slain her Joseph he was pierced to the quick with compassion mingled with fury Then the poor sister of the deceased who seemed nought else but the shaddow of her brother coming also to dissolve her self wholly into tears near to her Grand-mother this spectacle the more enkindled the passion of the Emperour And thinking that Fausta well deserved death being convinced of such a mischief by her own confession he caused her to enter into the bath and so in an instant to be smothered with the vapour which was a punishment wherewith many times they put persons of quality to death Behold the issue of the hydeous loves of Fausta to Death of Fausta teach all Ladies that those passions which begin by complacencies soothings and curiosities very often end in horrible tragedies In the mean time the house of Constantine remained long drenched in a dead silence and all was very secretly carried so that none knowing what publickly to think of the death of Crispus and Fausta it gave occasion to many to affirm they died for some conspiracy We cannot here excuse Constantine of a violent anger a precipitation a proceeding too bloudy Howsoever he caused Crispus to die under a false belief of impurity which he thought was to be revenged and Fausta punished by way of justice Behold why this sin though it hath much mischief in it yet it hath not the determinate wickedness of the sin of David in the death of Urias because the one wrought with a manifest knowledge of his crime and the other proceeded therein with much ignorance and sense of justice Yet Constantine after these exorbitances was touched with great remorse which in the end put him actually on the profession of Christianity The eighth SECTION The calling of Constantine to Christianitie The progress of his Conversion and Baptism I Have always esteemed the saying of S. Paulinus Constant 19. which we before alledged very probable that the faith of S. Helena did not onely make Constantine a Christian but the first of Christian Princes This good mother without doubt gave him the first tincture of Christianity but being of an ambitious and warlike spirit who went along with the main stream of the world he was not so soon confirmed in the faith and integrity of religion Notwithstanding he began to have most lively apprehēsions for his conversion about the seventh year of his Empire which was the year of the defeat of Maxentius whilest he had this great war upon his hands his temporal necessities opening his eyes that he might have recourse to spiritual forces He then endeavoured as he afterward relateth Beginning of the conversion of the Emperour to meditate seriously within himself that there was some Divine Providence from Heaven which gave concussions to victories and Empires without which the counsels of men were cloudy their Armies weak and labours vain Afterward
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
I say O God how little is the world Is it for this we deceive we swear and make a divorce between God and us But admit we were not interessed in this action must we not rest on the law of God who maketh life and ordaineth death by the juridical power of his wisdom ever to be adored by our wills though little penetrable to understanding Will you I pronounce an excellent saying of Tertullian The world is the Vterus naturae An excellent coÌ„ceit drawn from the words of Tertullian belly of Nature and men are in it as children in the mothers womb the birth of men are the world 's child-bearings death its lying in and deliveries Would you not die to hinder the world from bringing forth and unburdening it self by the way the Sovereign Master hath appointed it We have seen Tyrants of all sorts some invented exquisite torments and tryals others forbade eating and drinking some to weep some caused children to be taken from the teat to strangle them and cut their throats as Pharaoh and Herod But never was there any amongst them who forbade women with child to be delivered The world hath for a long space been big with you and would not you have it to be delivered at the time God's counsels have ordained Were it a handsom thing think you to see an infant presently to have teeth and articulate speech and yet if it might be would stay in the mothers womb using no other reason but that there is warm being Judge now and take the even ballance if the world be the belly of nature if this good mother bare us the time Gods providence appointed if she now seek her deliverie that we may be born in the land of the living in a quite other climate another life another light are not we very simple to withstand it as little infants who crie when they issue out of bloud and ordure at the sight of day-light yet would not return thither from whence they came 4. Behold the Providence of God in that which Providence in the death of the vicious Boet. l. 4. de consol Cum supplicis carent inesâ— illis aliquid alteriuâ— mali ipsâ— impunitâ—s S. Eucher in paraenesi concerneth death in the generality of all men Let us see in this second point the like providence towards the wicked the vicious rich and proud Great-ones who spit against Heaven We must first establish a most undoubted maxim that there is nothing so unhappy as impunity of men abandoned to vice which is the cause the paternal providence of God arresteth them by the means of death dictating unto them an excellent lesson of their equality with other men Mortals circumvolve in life and death as Heaven on the pole artick and antartick from east to west the same day which lengtheneth our life in the morning shorteneth it in the evening and all Ages walk that way not any one being permitted to return back again Our fore-fathers passed on we pass and our posteritie follows us in the like course you may say they are waves of the sea where one wave drives another and in the end all come to break against a rock What a rock is death There are above five thousand years that it never ceaseth to crush the heads of so many mortals and yet we know it not I remember to this purpose a notable tradition of the Hebrews related by Masius upon Josuah to wit Masius in Josuah Notable action of Noah that Noah in the universal deluge which opened the flood-gates of Heaven to shake the columns of the world and bury the earth in waters in stead of gold silver and all sort of treasure carried the bones of Adam into the Ark and distributing them among his sons said Take children behold the most precious inheritance your father can leave you you shall share lands and seas as God shall appoint but suffer not your selves to be intangled in these vanities which are more brittle than glass more light than smoke and much swifter than the winds My children all glideth away here below and there is nothing which eternally subsisteth Time it self which made us devours and consumeth us Learn this lesson from these dumb Doctours the relicks of your grand-father which will serve you for a refuge in your adversities a bridle in your prosperities and a mirrour at all times Moreover I affirm death serves for a perfect lesson of justice to the wicked which they were never willing throughly to understand for it putteth into equality all that which hazard passion and iniquity had so ill divided into so many objects Birth maketh men equal since they receive nought else from their mothers womb but ignorance sin debility and nakedness but after they come out of the hands of the midwife some are put into purple and gold others into rags and russets some enter upon huge patrimonies where they stand in money up to the throat practise almost nothing else throughout their whole life but to get by rapine with one hand and profusely spend with the other Some live basely and miserably necessitous A brave spirit able to govern a large Common-wealth is set to cart by the condition of his poverty Another becomes a servant to a coxcomb who hath not the hundreth part of his capacity It is the great Comedie of the world played in sundry fashions for most secret reasons known to Divine Providence would you have it last to eternity See you not Comedians having played Kings and beggars on the stage return to their own habit unless they day and night desire to persist in the same sport And what disproportion is there if after every one have played his part in the world according to the measure of time prescribed him by Providence he resume his own habit I also adde it is a kind of happiness for the wicked to die quickly because it is unfit to act that long which is very ill done And since they so desperately use life it is expedient not being good it be short that shortness of time may render the malice of it less hurtfull If examples of their like who soon die make them apprehensive of the same way and how seasonably to prepare for death it is a singular blessing for them But if persisting in contempt they be punished it is God's goodness his justice be understood and that it commandeth even in hell 5. But if at this present you reflect on the death of the Just which you should desire I say God's Providence there brightly appeareth in three principal things which are cessation from travels and worldly miseries the sweet tranquility of departure and fruition of crowns and rewards promised First you must imagine what holy Job said That The sweetnes of the death of the just Iob 3. Qui expectant mortem quasi effodientes thesaurum Tert. de pallio Homo pellitus orbi quasi metallo datur this life is to the just as
whereof the poor have too much been frustrated to establish thy vanities and fatten thee in pleasures Where is thy liberality Where are thy alms toward miserable creatures who die in affliction in the streets Observe justice and take example by my disasters Husband it is thy wife so beloved that speaks to thee saying Ah my dearest friends where is the faith plighted in the face of the Church Where are the faithful loves which should have no limit but eternity Death no sooner absented me from thy eyes but forgetfulness drew me out of thy heart I complain not thou livest happy and fortunate in thy new affections for I am in a condition wherein I can neither envy nor malice any but I complain that not onely after my death the children which are pledges of our love were distastful to thee but thou hast wholly lost the memory of one who was so precious to thee and whom thou as a Christian oughrest to love beyond a tomb Open yet once unto her the bowels of thy charity and comfort by thy alms and good works a soul which must expect that help from thee or some other The seventeenth EXAMPLE upon the seventeenth MAXIM Apparition of Souls in Purgatorie HIstories tell us the apparation of souls in Purgatory are so frequent that he who would keep an account may as soon number the stars in the sky or leaves on the trees But as it is not fit to be too credulous in all may be said thereupon so a man must be very impudent to deny all is spoken of it and to oppose as well the authority of so many great personages as the memory of all Ages He who believes nothing above nature will not believe a God of nature How many extraordinary things are there the experience whereof teacheth us the effects and of which God hideth the reasons from us The Philosopher Democritus disputing with Solinus Polyhistor the Sages of his time concerning the secret power of nature held commonly in his hand the stone called cathocita which insensibly sticketh to such as touch it and they being unable to give a reason of it he inferred there were many secrets which are rather to humble our spirits than to satisfie our curiosity Who Jul. Scal. A Porta Caâ—eraâ— can tell why the theamede which is a kind of adamant draweth iron on one side and repelleth it on the other Why do the forked branches of the nut-tree turn towards mines of gold and silver Why do bees often die in the hives after the death of the Master of the family unless they be else-where transported Why doth a dead body cast forth bloud in the presence of the murderer Why do certain fountains in the current of their waters and in their colour carry presages of seasons as that of Blomuza which waxeth red when the countrey is menaced with war Why have so many noble families Diâ—â—arus Petrus Albinus certain signs which never fail to happen when some one of the family is to die The commerce of the living with spirits of the dead is a matter very extraordinarie but not impossible to the Father of spirits who holdeth total nature between his hands Peter of Clugny surnamed the Venerable and esteemed in his time as the oracle of France was a man who proceeded in these affairs with much consideration not countenancing any thing either frivolous or light Behold the cause wherefore I willingly make use of his authority He telleth that in a village of Spain named the Star there was a man of quality called Peter of Engelbert much esteemed in the world for his excellent parts and abundant riches Notwithstanding the spirit of God having made him understand the vanity of all humane things being now far stepped into years he went into a Monastery of the Order of Clugny there the more piously to pass the remnant of his dayes as it is said the best incense cometh from old trees He often spake amongst the holy Fryers of a vision which he saw when he as yet was in the world and which he acknowledged to be no small motive to work his conversion This bruit came to the ears of Venerable Peter who was his General and who for the affairs of his Order was then gone into Spain Behold the cause why he never admitting any discourses to be entertained if they were not well verified took the pains to go into a little Monastery of Nazare where Engelbert was to question him upon it in the presence of the Bishops of Oleron and Osma conjuring him in the virtue of holy obedience to tell him punctually the truth touching the vision he had seen whilest he led a secular life This man being very grave and very circumspect in all he said spake the words which the Authour of the historie hath couched in his proper terms In the time that Alphonsus the younger heir of the great Alphonsus warred in Castile against certain factious dis-united from his obedience he made an Edict that every family in his Kingdom should be bound to furnish him with a souldier which was the cause that for obedience to the Kings commands I sent into his army one of my houshold-servants named Sancius The wars being ended and the troups discharged he returned to my house where having some time so journed he was seized by a sickness which in few dayes took him away into the other world We performed the obsequies usually observed towards the dead and four moneths were already past we hearing nought at all of the state of his soul when behold upon a winters night being in my bed throughly awake I perceived a man who stirring up the ashes of my hearth opened the burning coals which made him the more easily to be seen Although I found my self much terrified with the sight of this ghost God gave me courage to ask him who he was and for what purpose he came thither to lay my hearth abroad But he in a very low voice answered Master fear nothing I am your poor servant Sancius I go into Castile in the company of many souldiers to expiate my sins in the same place where I committed them I stoutly replied If the commandment of God call you thither to what purpose come you hither Sir saith he take it not amiss for it is not without the Divine permission I am in a state not desperate and wherein I may be helped by you if you bear any good will towards me Hereupon I required what his necessity was and what succour he expected from me You know Master said he that a little before my death you sent me into a place where ordinarily men are not sanctified Liberty ill example youth and temerity all conspire against the soul of a poor souldier who hath no government I committed many out-rages during the late war robbing and pillaging even to the goods of the Church for which I am at this present grievously tormented But good Master if you loved me
veins and fill the most innocent pleasures of our life with bitter sorrows what have I more to do with you My children shall be what God will They shall be but too rich when they have virtue for their portion and but too high when they shall see a true contempt of the world under their feeet God forbid that I should go about any worldly throne upon the holy Lambs bloud or that I should talk of honours when there is mention made of the holy Cross O Jesus thou father of all true glories thou shalt from henceforth be my onely crown All greatness where thou art not shall to me be onely baseness I will mount up to thee by the stairs of humility since by those thou camest down to me I will kiss the paths of Mount Calvary which thou hast sprinkled with thy precious bloud esteem the Cross above all worldly things since thou hast consecrated it by thy cruel pains and brought us forth upon that dolorous bed to the day of thy eternity The Gospel upon Thursday the second week in Lent out of S. Luke 16. Of the rich Glutton and poor Lazarus Tâ—e was a certain rich man and he was clothed wâ—th purple and silk and he fared every day magnifically And there was a certain begger called Lazarus that lay at his gate full of sores desiring to be filled of the crums that fell from the rich mans table but the dogs also came and licked his sores And it came to pass that the begger died and was carried of the Angel into Abraham's bosom And the rich man also died and he was buried in hell and lifting up his eyes when he was in torments he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom And he crying said Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger into water for to cool my tongue because I am tormented in this flame And Abraham said to him Son remember that thou didst receive good things in thy life time and Lazarus likewise evil but now he is comforted and thou tormented And besides all these things between us and you there is fixed a great Chaos that they which will pass from hence to you may not neither go from thence hither And he said Then father I beseech thee that thou wouldest send him unto my fathers house for I have five brethren for to testifie unto them lest they also come into this place of torments And Abraham said to him They have Moses and the Prophets let them hear them But he said No father Abraham but if some man shall go from the dead to them they will do penance And be said to him If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither if one shall rise again from the dead will they believe Moralities 1. A Rich man and a poor meet in this world the one loaden with treasures the other with ulcers They both meet in the other world the one in a gulf of fire the other in Abyss of delights Their ends are as different as their lives were contrary to teach us that he which shall consider rightly the end of all worldly sins and vanities will have in horrour the desire of them And as there is nothing for which goodly poor men may not hope so is there nothing which wicked rich men should not fear He that is proud of riches is proud of his burdens and chains but if he unload them upon the poor he will be eased of his pain and secured in his way 2. The life of man is a marvellous Comedie wherein the greatest part of our actions are plaid under a curtain which the Divine Providence draws over them to cover us It concealed poor Lazarus and kept him in obscurity like the fish which we never see till it be dead But Jesus draws the curtain and makes himself the historian of this good poor man shewing us the state of his soul of his body of his life and death He makes him appear in Abrahams bosom as within the temple of rest and happiness and makes him known to the rich man as to the treasurer of hells riches Are we not unworthy the name which we carry when we despise the poor and hate poverty as the greatest misery since the Son of God having once consecrated it upon the throne of his manger made it serve for his spouse during life and his bride-maid at the time of his death 3. This rich glutton dreamed and at the end of his dream found himself buried in hell All those pomps of his life were scattered in an instant as so many nocturnal illusions and his heart filled with eternal grief and torment His first misery is a sudden unexpected and hydeous change from a huge sea of delicacies into an insufferable gulf of fire where he doth acknowledge that one of the greatest vexations in misery is to have been happy Another disaster which afflicts him is to see Lazarus in Abrahams bosom to teach us that the damned are tormented by Paradise even to the very lowest part of hell and and that the most grievous of their torments is they can never forget their loss of God So saith Theophylact that Adam was placed over against the terrestrial Paradise from whence he was banished that in his very punishment he might see the happiness he had lost by his soul fault Now you must adde to the rest of his sufferings the great Chaos which like a diamond wall is between hell and Paradise together with the privation of all comfort those losses without remedy that wheel of eternity where death lasteth for ever and the end begins again without ceasing and the torments can never fail or diminish 4. Do good with those goods which God hath given you and suffer them not to make you wicked but employ your riches by the hands of virtue If gold be a child of the Sun why do you hide him from his father God chose the bosom of rich Abraham to be the Paradise of poor Lazarus So may you make the needy feel happiness by your bounty your riches shall raise you up when they are trodden under feet The Prophet saith you must sow in the field of Alms if you desire to reap in the mouth of Mercy Aspirations O God of Justice I tremble at the terrour of thy judgements Great fortunes of the world full of honour and riches are fair trees oft-times the more ready for the ax Their weight makes them apt to fall and prove the more unhappy fuel for eternal flames O Jesus father of the poor and King of the rich I most humbly beseech thee never give my heart in prey to covetousness which by loading me with land may make me forget Heaven I know that death must consume me to the very bones and I shall then possess nothing but what I have given for thee Must I then live in this world like a Griffin to hoard up much gold and
And if we must needs forsake this miserable body we then desire to leave it by some gentle and easie death This maketh us plainly see the generosity of our Saviour who being Master of life and death and having it in his power to chuse that manner of death which would be least hydeous being of it self full enough of horrour yet nevertheless to conform himself to the will of his heavenly Father and to confound our delicacies he would needs leave his life by the most dolorous and ignominious which was to be found among all the deaths of the whole world The Cross among the Gentiles was a punishment for slaves and the most desperate persons of the whole world The Cross amongst the Hebrews was accursed It was the ordinary curse which the most uncapable and most malicious mouthes did pronounce against their greatest enemies The death of a crucified man was the most continual languishing and tearing of a soul from the body with most excessive violence and agony And yet the Eternal Wisdom chose this kind of punishment and drank all the sorrows of a cup so bitter He should have died upon some Trophey and breathed out his last amongst flowers and left his soul in a moment and if he must needs have felt death to have had the least sense of it that might be But he would trie the rigour of all greatest sufferings he would fall to the very bottom of dishonour and having ever spared from himself all the pleasures of this life to make his death compleat he would spare none of those infinite dolours The devout Simon of Cassia asketh our Saviour going toward Mount Calvarie saying O Lord whither go you with the extream weight of this dry and barren piece of wood Whither do you carry it and why Where do you mean to set it Upon mount Calvary That place is most wild stony how will you plant it Who shall water it Jesus answers I bear upon my shoulders a piece of wood which must conquer him who must make a far greater conquest by the same piece of wood I carry it to mount Calvarie to plant it by my death and water it with my bloud This wood which I bear must bear me to bear the salvation of all the world and to draw all after me And then O faithfull soul wilt not thou suffer some confusion at thine own delicacies to be so fearfull of death by an ordinary disease in a doun-bed amongst such necessary services such favourable helps consolations and kindnesses of friends so sensible of thy condition We bemoan and complain our selves of heat cold distaste of disquiet of grief Let us allow some of this to Nature yet must it be confest that we lament our selves very much because we have never known how we should lament a Jesus Christ crucified Let us die as it shall please the Divine Providence If death come when we are old it is a haven If in youth it is a direct benefit antedated If by sickness it is the nature of our bodies If by external violence it is yet always the decree of Heaven It is no matter how many deaths there are we are sure there can be but one for us 2. Consider further the second condition of a good death which consists in the forsaking of all creatures and you shall find it most punctually observed by our Saviour at the time of his death Ferrara a great Divine who hath written a book of the hidden Word toucheth twelve things abandoned by our Saviour 1. His apparrel leaving himself naked 2. The marks of his dignitie 3. The Colledge of his Apostles 4. The sweetness of all comfort 5. His own proper will 6. The authority of virtues 7. The power of Angels 8. The perfect joys of his soul 9. The proper clarity of his body 10. The honors due to him 11. His own skin 12. All his bloud Now do but consider his abandoning the principal of those things how bitter it was First the abandoning of nearest and most faithfull friends is able to afflict any heart Behold him forsaken by all his so well-beloved Disciples of whom he had made choice amongst all mortal men to be the depositaries of his doctrine of his life of his bloud If Judas be at the mystery of his Passion it is to betray him If S. Peter be there assisting it is to deny him If his sorrowfull mother stand at the foot of the Cross it is to increase the grief of her Son and after he had been so ill handled by his cruel executioners to crucifie him again by the hands of Love The couragious Mother to triumph over her self by a magnanimous constancy was present at the execution of her dear Son She fixed her eyes upon all his wounds to engrave them deep in her heart She opened her soul wide to receive that sharp piercing sword with which she was threatened by that venerable old Simeon at her Purification And Jesus who saw her so afflicted for his sake felt himself doubly crucified upon the wood of the Cross and the heart of his dear Mother We know it by experience that when we love one tenderly his afflictions and disgraces will trouble us more than our own because he living in us by an affectionate life we live in him by a life of reason and election Jesus lived and reposed in the heart of his blessed Mother as upon a Throne of love and as within a Paradise of his most holy delights This heart was before as a bed covered with flowers But this same heart on the day of his Passion became like a scaffold hanged with mourning whereupon our Saviour entered to be tormented and crucified upon the cross of love which was the Cross of his Mother This admirable Merchant who descended from Heaven to accomplish the business of all Ages who took upon him our miseries to give us felicities was plunged within a sea of bloud and in this so precious shipwrack there remained one onely inestimable pearl which was his divine Mother and yet he abandons her and gives her into the hand of his Disciple After he had forsaken those nearest to him see what he does with his body Jesus did so abandon it a little before his death that not being content onely to deliver it as a prey to sorrow but he suffered it to be exposed naked to the view of the world And amongst his sharpest dolours after he had been refused the drink which they gave to malefactours to strengthen them in their torments he took for himself vinegar and gall O what a spectacle was it to see a body torn in pieces which rested it self upon its own wounds which was dying every moment but could not die because that life distilled by drops What Martyr did ever endure in a body so sensible and delicate having an imagination so lively and in such piercing dolours mixt with so few comforts And what Martyr did suffer for all the sins of the
whatsoever Honour had stuffed in so many Trophies I see in Castriot a certain object greater then Leonidas and Themistocles I see Pyrrhus I see Alexander and if his Enemies have been more stout then the Macedonians his Valour ought not for that to seem the lesse He was a Souldier as soon as he was born a Man Nature pleased to engrave a Sword upon his Body at the same time as she inspired Courage into his Heart That Stature so proper that Countenance so filled with Majesty those Limbs so strong and so Robustuous those Eyes that mingle the Rainbow with the Lightning those hands that seem to have been made for nothing but to bear the Thunder those Feet that move not one onely step that savours not of a King have told betimes that which fame hath afterward related to all ages Little Eaglet that begannest in thy most innocent years to play with Lightning thou oughtest not to have been so valiant or thou oughtest to have had a more happy Father Shall we say that fortune was unjust in that it prepared chains for this young virtue when she should have planted Laurels Let us rather say that Providence was very wise in that she found out matter for this great Heart that would have consumed it self in its own flames if it had not met with some obstacles to resist it It was meet that this Hercules should beginne to strangle Serpents from his Cradle It was meet that he should be bred in the middle of his enemies to Combate from his Infancy with that which he was to abate in his riper age His Father John Castriot who had little strength and much misery was constrained to give him for an Hostage to Amurath the Turk to be brought up at his Gate Moses now is in Pharohs house and Constantine in Dioclesians but the Path is here more dangerous because it leadeth to the ruine of Salvation and of Honour His proud Master that loves him with a Love worse then all the Hatred in the world would fit him for himself and for his infamous pleasures He aims at the one by the Circumcision that is imprinted on his flesh by an unhappy violence he pursues the other by shamefull courtings which are to the Gallant child farre bitterer then Death He had as 't is reported courage enough to take the sword in hand against him that Pursued him with nothing but with flowers He drew blood from him when nothing could be expected of him but Tears and put himself in danger of experimenting the horriblest Torments that the Cruelty of those inhumane people could invent rather then to deliver voluntarily his Soul to sinne and his Body to dishonour His cruell friend was astonished at so brave a Resolution and turned the furies that he had prepared for his Innocence into the admiration of his Valour The Seraglio Imposes on him the name of Scanderbeg that is the same as Alexander which he took by a good omen to fill up therewith the whole capacity of his brave exploits He was educated in all the exercises of Warre in the Academy of the Turks where he succeded with so much force Art Liking and Approbation that every one carried him in his eyes every one looked on him as a singular prop of Mahomets Empire But he bore alwayes Jesus in his heart he alwayes thought on the means that he might find to break his chain he felt in the bottome of his most generous soul flames that burned him incessantly with the zeal he had to raise again the levelled Altars of the Christians and to destroy the estate of the Ottomans Amurath saw some sparkles of it flying in his conversation although he endeavoured to cover his design with a great prudence The Master began to fear the Slave and was affraid to nourish in his Court a Lyon that might be able to shew him one day his Teeth He endeavoured to destroy him in various encountres making the Excesse of his courage contribute to the Hazard of his Person A resolute Scythian came to Amurath's Court challenging the boldest to fight all Naked with a Poniard in the inclosure of a perillous Circle where of necessity one must Dye or Conquer That man had carryed away already many bloody Palms and put so much confidence in his strength that they were according to his speech but the sacrifices of Death that dared to attend the Thunder of his Arm. Every one trembled for fear when as the valiant Castriot undertook him and putting his Thrust aside with one hand killed him with the other with the acclamations of joy of all those that envy hindred not from applauding Valour This Combat having not succeeded well for Amurath he raises at another time a Persian Cavalier that kept a stirre to fight on Horse-back with a Lance. He was a man accomplished in that Trade who with much chearfulnesse of heart transported himself into Cities and Provinces where he promised himself that he should find Adversaries to exercise his Arms and increase his Reputation He curvetted up and down in the List proudly Plum'd and his flaming Arms made him appear that day as the great Constellation of Orion amidst the lesser Starres A David was needfull for this Goliah our young Alexander assaults him falls upon him as an Eagle handles him very roughly and at length laid him on the sand where he vomited out his soul and bloud doing a sad homage to valour by a just punishment of his rashnesse But Amurath that played the part of Saul failed not to find out some new occasions to Exercise his David He gave him all the most hazardous Employments of the warre wherein he had still so good successe that he changed all the Subjects of his Ruine into Trophies and returned Crowned with Laurels even out of the Bottome of Abysses and out of the throat of Lyons The perfidious Sultan entertained him with good words but handled him with bad deeds He promised him to restore him his estates after his Father's Death but John Castriot's last hour made it appear that if his words were full of artifice his promises were but wind Scanderbeg impatient to stay for that which should never come payes himself by his own hands and seizes himself of his Kingdome of Albania playing the crafty fellow by a Countre-Craft The Alarm of it is in the Court and all Amuraths Passions tend to nothing but Revenge Haly Bassa is sent with an Army of Fourty thousand men to dispatch the Businesse But all his Troops are cut in pieces and he had nothing more honourable in his Expedition then that he was conquered by the brave Castriot Feria and Mustapha pursue the same design with new Forces that experiment the same fortune What shall we say more of Scanderbeg's Greatnesse Amurath besecches the Turban is humbled that visage of the Tyrant that was the same as that of Cruelty it self is mollified and takes the Lineaments of a supplyant after it had born during his whole
Princes ears with such like words and to breed a distrust in him of Saint John in such a manner as that he consented that he should be apprehended and put in prison under colour as Josephus saith that he went about to change the peoples minds and to embroil the State This detaining of a man so holy and so renowned made a great noyse through all Judea but the wicked woman had this maxime That one ought to take ones pleasure to content nature and little to trouble ones self at the opinions of the world below nor at the complaints of honest men judging that all mouthes ought to be stopped by the rigour of punishments and that she should be innocent when no body durst any more find fault with her actions She slept not one good sleep with her Herod as long as Saint John was yet alive but fearing alwayes either that her pretended husband whom she thought light enough might be softned with compassion to release him or that the people that held him for a Saint might break open the prisons to take him thence she resolved to see the end of him to give all liberty to her unbridled passions She watches the opportunity of Herods birth-day on which he was accustomed to make feasts and to intertein the principall Officers of his Kingdome This crafty woman tampered with all the wills of those that had any power over his spirit for this design and seeing that her daughter was a powerfull instrument to move that effeminate Prince and that he was extraordinarily pleased to see her dance conjured her to employ all her genius and all her industry all the baits allurements and gentilesses that she had in dancing to gain the Kings heart and that if she saw him very freely merry and on terms to gratifie her with some great advantage she should take heed of asking any thing but the head of John and that he was necessarily to fall if she would not see her mother perish and all her fortunes overthrown The daughter obeyed and fits her self even to perfection to please the Princes eyes she enters into the banqueting house richly deck'd and makes use of a dance not vulgar whereat he was ravished and all the Guests that were perhaps hired by Herodias to commend her made a wonderfull recitall of her perfections There was nothing now remaining but to give her the recompence of her pains This daughter of iniquity and not of nature sayes Chrysologus seeing that every one applauded her and that the King that was no longer his own man would honour her with some great present which he would remit to her own choyse even as far as to give her the moity of his Kingdome if she would have desired it made a bloudy request following the instructions of her wicked mother and required that instantly S. Johns head should be given her in a plate Herod felt his heart pricked with a repentance piercing enough but because he had sworn in presence of the Nobles of his Kingdomes to deny nothing that she should ask would not discontent her but gives command to the Master of his House to go to the prison and to cut off S. Johns head to put it in the hands of this wanton wench As soon as the word was pronounced her mother was not quiet till she saw the execution of it to Prison they run every one thought that it had been for some grace since that it was upon the nick of the feast of the Nativity of the King but they quickly saw an effect quite contrary to that thought when S. John was called for and told that he must resolve to dye What think we did this divine forerunner do at this last moment that remained to him of so innocent a life but render thanks to God that made him dye a Martyr for the truth after he had inlightned his eyes with the visible presence of the Incarnate Word which permitted him not to have any thing left in this world to be desired He exhorted his disciples to range themselves about our Saviour who was the Way the Life and the Truth He prayed for his persecutours and for the easing of the miseries of his poor people afterward having a relish of the first contentments of his felicity by the tranquility of his spirit he yielded his neck to the hangman His body was honourably buried by his disciples and his head brought in a plate to that cruell feast put into the hands of that danceresse who presented it to her mother and the mother according to S. Jerome made a play-game of it pricking the tongue with the needle of her hair All that one can speak is below the horrour of its spectacle sayes S. Ambrose The head of S. John of the Prime man of the world that had shut up the Law that had opened the Gospel the head of a Prophet of an Angell is outrageously taken off and delivered for the salary of a danceresse The soberest of men is massacreed in a feast of drunkards and the chastest by the artifice of a prostitute He is condemned on an occasion and on a time in which he would not even have been absolved as abhorring all that proceeded from intemperance O how dangerous is it then to offend a woman that hath renounced her honour Herod gave her an homicide for a kisse The hangmen wash their hands when they are ready to sit down at table but these unhappy women pollute theirs in the banquet with a Prophets bloud The righteous slain by adulterers the innocent by the guilty the true judge by criminall souls This banquet that should have been the source of life brings an edict of death Cruelty is mingled with delights and pleasure with funerals This horrible plate is carried through all the table for the satiating of those unhumane eyes and the bloud that drops yet from his veins falls upon the pavement to be licked up with the ordures of that infamous supper Look upon it Herod look upon a deed that was worthy of none but thy Cruelty stretch out thine hand put thy fingers in the wound that thou hast made that they may be again bedewed with a bloud so sacred Drink cruell man drink that river which thou seest glide to quench thy thirst Look upon those dead eyes that accuse thy wickednesse and which thou dost wound again with the aspect of thy filthy pleasures Alas they are shut not so much by the necessity of death as by the horrour of thy luxury The vengeance of God delayed not long to fall upon those perverse souls that had committed so enourmous a crime Arethas King of the Arabians resenting the affront that had been given to his daughter by those Adulterers enters in arms upon the lands of Herod who bestirrs himself but weakly to resist him Pleasures held him so fast chained that he had not the boldnesse to go to his frontiers in person to oppose his adversary but contented himself with sending a
when the Sun obtained the middle part of Virgo or Astraea for he was to govern the world with the moderation of Laws He ascended with Lyra being to make a harmony and consort of publick tranquillity And if Scorpio did at the same time shew forth his sting he threatned the Sarazens and promised the Idumean Palms to him that should be born so often dignified by the Valour of his Ancestours The heavenly habitations rejoyced at his birth and the whole world welcomed the new-born Babe with joy Now no man thought himself miserable at this happy birth now no man thought himself happy whom that birth did not make so Upon that day France wiped away all the foot of Warre and shined clearly with refulgent ensignes of Peace We had that day as many prosperities as bone-fires and as many bone-fires as there are starres O Lewis beloved of God whom he seemeth to have regenerated in his sonne that very moneth wherein he was born O Anne late indeed the mother of a sonne yet alwayes a fortunate mother in bringing forth a sonne not onely to her self nor so much to her self as to all France He hath much of his Father and much of his Mother and by this very confusion he maketh the image of them both more gratefull and more amiable This new Isaac will make thee laugh O France and whom thou canst scarce hear speaking hereafter thou shalt see comforting How many chains will those tender hands burst asunder How many prisons will they open How many obscurities will those little eyes enlighten How many monsters will the feet of this Infant subdue and trample on Be silent ye waves be silent ye tempests and rages of the sea at the beck of such a gentle Prince and restore unto the world that serenrty whereof you have deprived it Ye heavenly Powers lend him long unto the earth and whom you have made so healthfull to the Nation make him also lasting Ye Fates keep off your hands and touch not this child but to assist him Let him transcend the years and actions of his Ancestours and being born mortall may he apprehend nothing but what is immortall May he love and desire to be beloved ever fearing to be feared Let the oppressed find him a deliverer may the unjust feel him an avenger may his enemies know him to be of a warlike spirit and may his Subjects attest him to be of a peaceable mind This Nativity ravisheth all my senses which I foretell shall be the beginning of an eternall Peace unto us Look down from above O Lewis upon such a sonne Look upon him all ye Christian Kings as your little Nephew give rest to wearied things let arms be silent at the command of so great a Prince so potent an Oratour nor let the tumults of Warre rock this royall cradle To you again Great Princes I wholly turn my self by whatsoever is dear I ask by whatsoever is holy I beseech you give peace to them that beg it or must beg without it give tranquillity to the world sighing under so many feverish miseries Make it appear unto us that you chose rather to be the Pacificatours of the world then the Subverters of your own Kingdomes There is a story how in that fatall War between the English and the French continued with lasting contentions and horrible slaughters a pious Anachoret instigated thereunto by God came unto the Courts of the two Princes that he might compose these ferall discords between them But being slighted in the English Court and negligently repulsed this despised but not despicable Augur pronounced many direfull accidents that should befall that Nation But travelling to Charles of France and finding him to be a prince of a gentle wit and inclined to conditions of Peace he foretold that the Kingdome being recovered he should have the Dolphin to be his successour who as he was the child of many hearty desires so he should prove the instrument of many joyfull enterprises The prophecy is inpartpart fulfilled with a prosperous event so tenderly God loves the sons of Peace accumulated with affluence of all good things Whoe're he be let him beware that shall resist and strive against the peaceable wishes of all men some grievous hand will fall upon him and his from heaven he shall meet with unhappy events in all his undertakings his life shall be cer-tainly troublesome his death doubtfull Best and greatest Princes consider and think with your selves that what losse soever can be pretended to happen by this league of Peace whatsoever can detract from your Honour or your Empire is recompenced unto you in the most fortunate advantages of the whole Chri-stian world This is rich indeed this is magnificent this truly Royal and to be propagated to the memory of all Ages Remember that you are Christians and govern Christians be you propitious like Gods unto men if you desire that God should be propitious unto you Whatsoever you enjoy of life is slippery and uncertain and your Dignities are full of frailty it is your Justice that hath reference to your Felicity and it is your Virtue that links you to Eternity There is a great and conspicuous Tribunall that expects you there sits a Judge cloathed with purestlight to summon you unto whom the most secret things are revealed whom the most involved and disguised actions cannot deceive no can he be overcome by perversities Before him must appear the souls of Kings devested of body fortunes Empires and be they just or unjust they must be examined by a most clear light There you shall hear the Edicts of the supreme Deity and the King of kings thundering in your ears the groans of the oppressed shall cry against you the tears of the poor shall speak against you the tutelary Gods will plead for their Altars which you have broken down and all the heavenly Militia will rise together against the contumacious Endeavour ye pious and alwayes invincible Princes that those things which have been committed in prejudice of your wills by the uncontroulable licence of War may be corrected by your Equity that they may leave no aspersion upon your Reignes no stain upon Reputations no blot upon your Persons Bring to passe that Justice and Peace may meet in mutuall embracements let them be carried with triumphall pomp thorow your Kingdomes and thorow your Cities let them be born upon the shoulders of the whole world unto fixed and eternall seat that it perpetually may be lawfull for us to worship and reverence them at the monuments of your goodnesse and the pledges of our felicity Pax super Israel Dei. FINIS AN ALPHABETICALL TABLE Setting down the most observable Matters contained in the two last TOMES of the HOLY COURT ABiathar the high Priest deprived of his dignities by a violent action 152 The wisdome of Abigail 142 The insolence of Abner 144 He treateth with David 145 His death ibid. Absolon out of favour 147 His reconciliation by means of Joab ibid. Absolons
Divine Love ib Qualities of Divine Love by which we may know whether it inhabiteth a soul 26 Pliantnesse Liberality and Patience three principall marks of Love ibid. Twelve effects of Love ibid. Three orders of true Lovers in the world ib. Nine degrees of Seraphical Love for the conterplative ib. That it is good to be honestly Loved 38 We most ardently Love the things we most lose 58 The scandalous of the Emperour Lotharius and Valdrada 109 The Love of David and Jonathan 140 Excellent loyaltie of a Ladie 8 Lysias his speech before the raising of the siege of Hierusalem 203 Lysias is taken and slain by the souldiers ibid. M THe gallant resolution of Maccabeus who with a handfull of men gave battell to a great army wherein being over powered he lost not his honour but his life 204 Some Men are in the world as dislocated bones in the body 52 Man terrible above all terribles 72 Man as he is the most miserable of all creatures so he is the most Mercifull 98 Man hath no greater evil then himself ibid. An observation of Bernardine concerning Marriage 35 Mattathias the father of Judas Machabeus opposeth the tyranny of Antiochus 197 He refuseth to offer incense to Idols ibid. His courage for Religion 198 His glorious death ibid. Utility of Melancholy 55 A notable example of Meroven to divert youth from Marriage 106 The first Mervell in the life of S. Lewis is the joyning of the wisdome of State with the Gospell 177 The second is of the union of Humility and Greatnesse 179 The third is his devotion and courage ibid. Incomparable Mildnesse of Lewis the sonne of Charlemaign 120 Mildnesse of the first men 99 The beauty and utility of Mildnesse 100 Sin and Folly the chief evils of the Mind 58 Remedies for Minds full of scruple 56 Moderation of the Kings of France 117 Great Moderation in S. King Robert 119 Mordecai his excellent personage 187 His entertainment in the Court of Ahashuerus ib. He discovereth the treason which was plotted against Ahashuerus ib. Moses flooted in the river of Nile in a cradle of bull-rushes 227 His education 228 He killeth an Egyptian 229 He withdraweth into the countrey of Midian ib He talketh with God ibid. He dyeth having first seen the land of promise from mount Nebo 234 Gods judgement on wicked Murray 300 N NAaman the Assyrian commanded by Elisha to wash seven times in the river Jordan 257 His leprosie stayes upon Gehezi 258 Naboth unjustly condemned and slain 251 Nathan and Bathsheba's advice 151 Nature necessarily brings with it its sympathies and antipathies 46 Nebuchadonozar his dream 242 He worshippeth Daniel 241 He erecteth a statue of gold of sixty cubits high 243 He commandeth all his nobles to do homage to it ib. He commandeth the three children that disobeyed his command therein to be cast into the fornace 244 His second dream and the interpretation by Daniel ibid. His misfortune is bewailed by the whole Court 245 He is again found out and reinvested in his throne ib. The birth and education of Nero. 271 The perfidiousnesse of his mother ibid. His cruelty towards Britanicus 272 The love of his mother did degenerate to misprision ibid. His present to his mother ibid. His horrible attempt upon his mother ibid. The amazement of Nero. 273 Nero continueth his cruelties ibid. He falls in love with Poppea and doth estrange himself from his wife Octavia 274 Nero grows worse and worse 284 The conspiracy against him is detected ibid. The image of Nice-ones 49 Treason against the Duke of Norfolk and his ruine 299 The horrible Catastrophe of the Duke of Norfolk 300 O FLight from Occasions is the most assured bulwark for chastity 18 Octavia calumniated by Poppea 274 Ozias Prince of the people in the presence of Joachim appeaseth the people of Bethulia 182 P THe over-fond love of Parents to their children is chastised in them 272 The exercise of Patience what it is 37 Necessitie forceth Patience 58 S. Paul tender in holy affections 8 He came to Rome 279 He is falsly accused ibid. His conversation with Peter ib. He preacheth the Gospel ib. He is threatned and persecuted 280 He is condemned to the whip but diverted that punishment ib. He is committed to the hands of Felix ibid. He appears before the Tribunal of Felix ibid. Drusilla comes to hear him ib. S. Paul appeals to Rome 281 The young Agrippa king of Judea with his sister Bernice assist at the judgement of S. Paul ib. Festus is touched with his words ibid. He is imbarqued for Rome ibid. He arrives there and treateth with the Jews ibid. S. Paul is undoubtedly known by Seneca ibid. His Oration to the Senate of Rome 282 The effect of his Oration ibid. The paralel betwixt S. Paul and Seneca 283 The grace of Jesus and the Crosse are the two principles of S. Paul ibid. His perfection and high knowledge 284 He leaveth Rome ibid. The politick counsell of Pharaoh 227 He dreameth 222 He fails in his purposes 228 Marks of reprobation in Pharaoh 230 The plagues of Egypt ibid. An excellent conceit of Plato concerning terrestriall love 222 An excellent conceit of Platonists  The secrets of the Divine Policy of God 238 The birth and education of Cardinall Pool 313 His love of solitude ibid. His travels and return to England ibid. The combat in his spirit 314 He took part with God ibid. He is made Cardinall ib. He is considered on to be made Pope 315 He retireth again into solitude ibid. He travels to the reducement of England to the antient faith 317 His speech to the States 318 Princes the workmanship of God 132 What the wisdome of a Prince should be 133 Princes should not give too much authority to their subjects 144 Whether learning be fitting for Princes 153 That learning is fitting for Princes defended ibid. The favour of Princes is very uncertain 219 Procopius his extravagant fables of Justinian and Theodora disproved 168 The secrets of Providence 164 The great Providence of God in Josephs entring and negotiating in Egypt 218 R REason remedieth all humane actions 57 The love of Reputation is a strong spur 81 The wicked Revenge of an Abbot and of John Proclytas against the French 119 Rigour misbecometh persons Ecclesiasticall 99 The causes of differences of Rigour ibid. Elogy of the city of Rome 79 The estate of Rome and court of Nero when Paul came to it 271 The Practise of Romulus 131 The end o◠Royaltie 131 Royalty a glorious servitude 132 Royalty a mervellous profession ibid. S THe Essence and Image of Sadnesse 54 Four kinds of Sadnesse 55 The remedies against Sadnesse 57 The three Sadnesses of our Blessed Saviour 60 Samuel from his infancy was conversant in the Tabernacle 235 His zeal and other rare qualities 236 His speech to the people ibid. His wisdome in concluding a peace with the Philistims ibid. He dieth 240 The widow of Sarepta's oyl and meal fails not during the
their Colours and that it was enough if they did but shew themselves to conquer The Rebels tormented with the affrightments of their conscience and which had not such entertainment as they were promised first were put into disorder after to flight and then to a rout It seemed that on the one part there were men that came to kill and on the other sheep that came to be slain As soon as they were mingled the one amongst the other the sword on the one side made great Massacres on the other the falls and tumblings headlong carried them away in such manner that there remained twenty thousand upon the place Absolon taken with a great astonishment is left by all the world and betaking himself to flight gets The death of Absolon up upon a Mule It hapned that passing through a Forrest his head was catched and wreathed within the branches of a Tree insomuch that his carryer having left him he remained hanging between heaven and earth where he made a very fitting amends both to the justice of God and the goodnesse of his Father Joab had notice thereof who neverthelesse although David had forbidden it stroke him through with three Darts and when as yet he seemed to have life ten young souldiers of the Troups of Joab ran to make an end of him he feared so much that if he should return into favour and authority lest he should take vengeance upon him because he would not follow his party The body was interred in a pit under a great heap of stones for to convince the vanity of him which had caused a stately monument to be built for himself which he called Absolons hand Behold an horrible end of an evil sonne and a rebellious subject which is sufficient to make posterity afraid throughout the revolution of all ages While all this was doing David inclosed in a little Town expected the event of the battell and when as the Posts brought him the news of the Victory he shewed not so much rejoycing as fear asking every moment in what estate his sonne Absolon was which caused that divers durst not bring him the news of his death seeing the trouble of his mind At last Cushi uttered the word and said That they should desire Absolon's end to all the Kings enemies He understood well what he would say and was pierced with so violent a grief that he could not be comforted losing all courage and crying every moment Absolon my sonne my sonne Absolon Oh that this favour had been done for me that I might have dyed for thee Every one cast down his eyes for pitty and the whole victory was turned into sorrow the Palms and Laurels were changed into Cypresse Joab alwayes bold and insolent towards his Master Joabs insolency instead of receiving reproches for his fault casts them upon David and thinks that the means to justifie himself was to speak the more stoutly He enters into the Chamber of his King and reproves him sharply saying to him That he would put to confusion all his good servants that had that day saved his life his house and all his estate That he was of a strange nature and seemed to have been made for nothing but to hate those that loved him and to love those that hated him That it was very clear that he bore no good affection to his Captains and good Souldiers and if they all had perished to save the life of one rebellious sonne he would have been very well satisfied Further he swore to him by the living God that if he did not rise and go forth to see and entertein those that returned from the battell that there should not remain one man onely with him before the morning which would prove a greater displeasure to him then ever he received in all his life He pressed him so vehemently that the King without daring to answer him one word rose up and did all that he would have him This great grief diminished by little and little and the rejoycings of those that came on every side to carry him back to Jerusalem in Triumph gave him no leasure to think upon his losse He endeavoured to draw to him again all those that had separated themselves pardoning all the world with an unspeakable meeknesse being ready even to give Joabs place to Davids mildenesse very great Amasa that was chief Captain for Absolon But Joab quickly hindred this and kild with his own hand him that they had purposed for his successour After that he began to pursue one Sheba a Captain of the Rebels who was retyred into Abela with some remainder of the mutinous and as he was about to besiege it and destroy the City for to take him a woman of discretion and great in credit amongst her people which had made composition with Joab caused him to be slain and threw his head over the walls to put an end to this whole bloodie warre After this re-establishment of his Estate David The last acts of Davids life reigned about eleven years in full peace in continuall exercises of Piety of Devotion of Justice and caused a generall Assembly of the States of his Realme where he made his sonne Solomon which he had chosen to be confirmed and encouraged him to build that great Temple which should be the marvell of the World whereof he shewed him the plat-form the beautifying and the orders in the Idea Two things do a little astonish those which do seek an exact sanctity in this Prince the first that he dyed having unto the last hour a maid of rare beauty by him and the other that he recommended to his son Solomon punishments and deaths by his Testament But there are that answer to those that may be offended with these actions That God hath permitted this to make us the better to relish and admire the perfections of his Evangelicall law whereof the Word Incarnate was made the Law-giver and bringet above all the excellencies of the presents and virtues of the Mosaicall law And that one ought not to expect from David the chastity of a Saint Lewis nor of a Casimire but that one ought to measure things according to the manner of the time according to the law and custome Neverthelesse I should rather say that the plurality of women was not an offence seeing that it was approved of God so that it caused not a weakning of the vigour of the spirits and mortifying their divine functions by too much commerce with the flesh David sinned not in causing the Shunamite to lye besides him seeing that she was in the place of a spouse and approched unto him not for the pleasure which his great age had totally extinguished but for the entertainment of his Royall person Lastly there are other actions that do set forth his virtue besides this which is more worthy of excuse then blame And forasmuch as he ordained by his testament the death of Joab and of Shimei this doth something
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