Empire and affections of Leo his father-in-law much esteemed this young man who arrived to maturity of age served him most couragiously in brave expeditions of war against the Gepides and Bulgarians sworn enemies of the Empire This occasion whereof we speak being offered Theodorick flyeth like a Merlin to his prey and leaving the Court of Constantinople came into Italy attended by gallant troups to decide the matter of Empire and life with Odoacer He being full of fire handled his adversary very roughly and defeated him in three battails making him forsake the field and inforcing him to immure himself in Ravenna where he besieged him for the space of three years resolved either to loose his head in Italy or encircle it with a Crown at Rome The father Theodomire being already deceased his mother the fair Aureliana who had reigned in affections entertained an insatiable desire to command over the most important part of the world and being then in the field she spared not to excite the souldiers and advance a spur of fire very far into the heart of her son whereupon it is recounted that Odoacer after so long a siege being reduced to an extream scarcity of victuals and seeing he could not any longer subsist resolved to seek in the hazard of arms the remedy which he could not find in his languishment He espied a time when the assailants tired out with so long a resistance seemed now to relent so that by the benefit of a fair night he made a sally with his whole army composed of people hungry as wolfs and resolved to conquer or die in this last battel Their sally was so furious and unexpected that Theodorick who was otherwise a great Captain seeing the astonishment and disorder of his souldiers betook himself timely to flight when this Aureliana his mother moved with an ardent ambition which gave her courage above her sex came before him and taking him by the hand had confidence to say My Son whither go you You must of two things do one either fight or return into the womb of your mother You have as far as I can perceive the enemy at your back and fear on your forehead turn your head against the one and you shall chase away the other If you persist in this flight I will rather make a wall of my body to stay you than render my self a confederate of such an obloquie It is a strange thing that the words of a woman were stronger than the sound of trumpets arms flight and the black apprehensions of death This young Prince changing his fear into a generous shame speedily rallyeth the troups that were best resolved and hasteneth to fall upon his enemy with such violence that his souldiers seemed so many flying Dragons who handled their matter so well that the valiant Odoacer notwithstanding his best endeavour was constrained to retire into Ravenna Some time after seeing his enemy was invincible he caused him to be sought unto for peace on such condition that they should between them divide the Kingdom of Italy to which Theodorick whether that he was wearied out with so long a war or that he hoped the more easily to joyn the skin of the fox to that of the Lion willingly consented to this counterfeit peace The agreement signed he entered into Ravenna and these Princes who were both very brave souldiers embraced before the face of two armies mutually preventing each other with all manner of courtesie But oh good God! what cement was ever found able enough to entertain ambition and amity in one constant state and what world hath at any time been wide enough to lodge too ambitious men without a quarrel Their conversation too frequent first sowed contempts and insolencies among souldiers of different Nations afterward jealousie crept into the hearts of the Captains and distrust into the souls of the Sovereigns who beheld and observed one another as expecting who should first begin Theodorick whether he sought for some pretext which ever is soon enough found out to colour the greatest mischiefs or whether he understood of a design intended on the part of his enemy imagined the earth was not large enough to give elbow-room to his ambition whilest Odoacer shared the Throne with him that there was but one sun necessary in heaven and one King in a Countrey that he could not endure a Crown made crescent-wise but that it was very fit he should furnish out the roundness of its circle and for the rest that man would soonest be King who first prevented his adversary Hereupon he resolved on a horrible assassinate for feigning all friendship and affection he invited Odoacer to a magnificent feast which he had prepared for him to be the last of his life It is a great matter that there must be a bait always to surprize men and birds and that the greatest disasters ordinarily happen in the sports and banquets when sensuality predominateth and reason is eclypsed This miserable Procopius saith that Theodorick took pretext and treacherously slew him at a banquet King of the Heruli made it well appear by his over-much confidence that he had not so much mischief in him as was afterward imputed to his ashes for he very joyfully went to this banquet accompanied with his son and all the principal of his Kingdom and walked along with great alacrity having no other intention but to make war against dishes and nothing less than at that time to entertain purposes of bloud and murder The resolution notwithstanding is taken to make them all pass by the dint of swords in a place the most delightful where pleasures seem to make men as it were newly born They entered into a great Sigonius l 5. Occidentali de Imperio in fine hall most magnificently furnished and sat down at the table there was no speech in the beginning but of mirth the spirit disbanded thinketh on nothing but objects of pleasure when instantly the signal was given and the Goths threw swords purposely out to offend the most sober patience of the Heruli They answered again what choller and wine suggested Theodorick stood up and taking his sword So an ancient manuscript observeth it found in a Library at Rome slew Odoacer with his own hand the rest fell upon his son and the Princes of the Kingdom Never was there seen banquet of Centaures and Lapithes more unfortunately expressed Tables and men were overwhelmed wine ran mixt with bloud the dreadful cries of the dying made those tremble who were far enough out of danger and gave matter of pity even to hang-men yet for all this not a man was spared the bodies mangled and bloudy were cast one upon another and the poor souls issued forth in the midst of massacres and surfets to yeild an account in the Court-hall of Heaven What horrours of the abyss and furies of Divels see you here I would know whether there be any beast in the world that had heaped together in one
away but with a rod of silver so much this mischievous avarice this feaver of the heart this voluntarily frenzie hath prevailed upon the spirits of these times And were the maids in this case such as they should be seeing the covetousness of men they would rather resolve to take God for a husband in the state of virginity than yield their bodies and riches up to a husband who seeks after nothing less than themselves S. Hierom relateth an excellent passage of Martia daughter of the great Cato who said that among so many Gallants as made love to her there was not any fit for a husband Say the like maidens avaunt mercenary husbands who have the fever of money marry them to the mines of Peru and not to virtuous maids The second evil I observe is riot which now adays wasteth body and goods and becomes more insatiable than hell It is asked why avarice swayeth in marriages and wherefore husbands are so greedy of portion because indeed they stand in need of it to entertain the bravery and vanity of their wives apparel It is a prodigious thing to what height this folly is mounted Lawyers are much troubled to reckon up all the attires and trinkets of women what pain shall then the husband suffer to buy them O woman what makes thee so passionately to desire these gauderies Thy first mother whose garments were cut out by the hands of God was contented to be clothed with skins and now seas must be sailed over and the bounds of elements broken to seek out dressings for thee Miserable that thou art who inordinately deckest thy self and for an ill purpose Kowest thou not thy garment is to thy body as the plaister to the wound or any ivy leaf to stop a cautery S. Isodore said before sin Adam and Eve were clothed with light O precious attire The Sun will have no other mantle than his own rays nor the rose any other robe than her scarlet because nature hath sufficiently adorned them So man had he continued within the limits of original justice would not have wished any garment but innocency Sin is come which hath by reflection impressed an ugly scarre both on soul and body and needs must gold and silk be sought out to involve it A man in former Ages was seen who having feet of wood shod them with golden pantofles O miserable and ridiculous vanity Woman doth the like to cover her wretched body which one of these days must putrifie and which hath received the wound of sin and death All the most exquisite beauties of nature must be drawn together yea marry if it could afford any comfort and ease to the body but you shall many times behold a young gentle-woman groan as at a torture under the weight of her garments yet she for all this will have and adore her own punishment The great Chancellour of England and glorious Martyr Thomas Moore was he not pleasantly disposed when he said to one who complained of heat Ah silly creature what wonder is it thou carriest upon thee meadows vine-yards mills mansions and Islands in the value of Jewels how canst thou possibly be cool This was the cause why Tertullian complained Tertul. de habitu muliebri Brevissimis loculis patrimonium grande praefertur uno lino sâ—stertium inseritur saltus insulas tenera cervix fert graciles aurium cutes ealendarium expendunt before him A little Cabinet makes shew of a large patrimony Twenty three thousand Crowns are disbursed for one rope of pearls A womans neck puts on woods and Islands and her ears which are so curious waste ample revenues But the matter most to be lamented is that it often happens the servile and unfortunate husband buys all this bravery at the charge of the poor and if any perhaps wring these gorgeous garments there will be some danger the bloud of the poor may distil from it The third disorder is the discord which proceedeth from the ill government of men from the obstinacy of women and jealousie of both And verily we may affirm the sleight vanities of wives are much more tollerable than the disorders of men It is no ordinary folly but rather a rage and madness to see a poor woman full of children groan under the heavy burden of a houshold charge upon her hand daily fading and withering away like a plant without juice or moysture to live on gall and tears and in the mean time a disloyal husband to consume in excess of diet and game the instruments of Satan that substance God gave him for the entertainment of his family O ungratefull and unnatural wretch who to give way to thy passion tramplest under-foot the commandments of God and honour of marriage This money which thy cruel hand so profusely scatters in game if thou wouldst well understand is the bloud of this poor creature which was so charily to thee recommended It is the sweat of her parents labours they are her proper entrails which thou piece-meal tearest in this fatal dicing-house I do not say thou art a homicide there is some difference between thee and a murderer The murderer in an instant taketh away life and bodily pain both together but thou who livest in perpetual riots thou drawest the vital parts from this afflicted turtle one after another which thou oughtest to love as thy self Thou cuttest the throat of thy family of thy poor and unhappy children who are thine own bloud which thou shouldest fervently affect hadst thou not renounced nature and entertained the heart of a bruit beast for that of a man what say I a beasts heart the Lamiaes Lamiae nudaverunt mammas lactaverunt catulos fuos filia populi mei crudelis sicut struthio in desertâ— Hier. Thren Si quis suorum maximè domesticorum curam non habet fidem negavit est infideli deterior 1 Tim. 5. have bared their breasts they have given suck to their young and there is not any but the daughter of my people who is cruel as the Ostrich of the desert Knowest thou to whom S. Paul compares such a man to a Cannibal to a Barbarian No he tells thee he is worse than an Infidel If any one neglect his own and namely his domesticks he hath renounced faith and is become worse than a Pagan On the other side the obstinacy of woman is a horse hard in the mouth head-strong untractable and I can no longer wonder said one that she was made of a bone since many times her head is so hard which brings infinite trouble on a family The Ancients dressing up the statues of the Moon in humane shape set on her shoulders the head of the Sun to shew a virtuous wife should have no other will nor other intentions nor glory than the will intentions and glory of her husband if they be reasonable It is the doctrine of S. Paul to the Ephesians Mulieres â—iris suis subdite sint sicut Domino quoniam vir caput
loosing soul Empire and salvation to pursue a phantasm He roared like thunder in the clouds on the theater of humane things and then past away leaving nothing behind but storms dirt and morter at which time thy good servant Boetius walking in the ways which thou prescribedst him is mounted to the glory of the elect leaving here behind him the precious memory of his name to all posterity THE LADIE TO LADIES LADIES I Should do an injury to sanctity even in the HOLY COURT if having undertaken to speak of piety of Great-ones in these Treatises I should pass Ladies under silence who in all times have contributed to the glory of Christianity so much force beyond their sex as virtues above nature God hath employed them in the great affairs of all Ages since the Word which from all eternity acknowledged but one Father in Heaven hath been pleased to acknowledge in later times one mother upon earth and that he who is able to cloath the meadows with the enamel of flowers and Heaven with the beauty of lights took flesh and bloud of a Virgin to make himself a garment and frame to himself a body And as the chaste womb of a woman served him for a lodging at his first enterance into the world so when he would issue out amongst so many horrours punishments and images of death when stones were rent asunder for grief under his feet and Heaven distended it self with sorrow over his head women were also found near to the Cross as witnesses of his last words and survivers of his bloud Here O Ladies are eternal alliances which you have contracted with devotion and he who would bereave you the sweetness of its repose should banish you from your own houses So many men as stir up quarrels seem now adays to have no other profession but to kill and die upon credit Those who are conversant with books waste themselves in the pleasing tortures of the mind Others who are involved in the turmoils of publick affairs oftentimes gain nought else but smoak and noise But when I behold you under the title of the Devout Sex which is given you by the Church I find your blessing is in the dew of Heaven and that you resemble Bees which are born in honey or rather those birds of the fortunate Islands nourished with perfumes Believe me those of your sex who have not true piety had they a world of greatness and beauties and were it that all the riches of this world had rendered it self tributary to their intemperance would be no more esteemed before God than the flower of grass or scum of earth But such as take the way of holy and solid virtues enter into a life wholly Angelical which forgetting sex and natural imperfections furnisheth it self with the most perfect idaeaes of the Divinity Behold hereof a model which I present unto you in this Treatise where after I have observed rather by speculation than practice some blemishes which might varnish the lustre of so many celestial beauties I reduce the piety of Ladies into such bright splendour of day-light that it were to have no eyes not to admire the merit thereof I have been willing to make this service suitable to my habit and not unworthy of your considerations thereunto invited by Ladies who have happily allied virtue to the most eminent qualities of the Kingdom and who might serve me for a model were they in a much better Age than my self If God who hath inspired me with these contemplations grant your performance I shall have the Crown of my vows and you that of your perfections THE LADIE The first SECTION That the HOLY COURT cannot subsist without the virtue of Ladies and of their Pietie in the advancement of Christianitie BEhold where I purpose to shut up this Work of the HOLY COURT which I have brought thus far with labour enough And since God after those great Works of the Creation reposed so soon as he had made woman he thereby shews me an example to give some rest to my pen when I shall have represented unto you the perfections of a Lady such as I would wish her to serve as an ornament for Christianity and a model of virtue Yet Reader I must needs tell you I feared this haven whereunto I saw my self arrive of necessity as well for that I learned of the great Martyr S. Justin Justin ad Zenam SerenuÌ„ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that a singular discretion must be had to treat with women and that he doth very much who can love their virtues without danger besides being naturally disposed to brevity I somewhat doubted lest they might insensibly communicate by my discourse some touches of those great delays which they use in attiring themselves and verily I see there are many things may be said both of the one side and other But as it is an act somewhat uncivil to run inconsiderately into invectives against the sex so it is an unworthy servitude of mind to be too obsequious to them and tender vices incorrigible by a false presumption of virtues I am much bound to my profession that it sequestereth me from these two rocks where so many vessels suffer shipwrack If I must blame you I will do as he who slew the serpent not touching the body of his son twined up in his folds I will strike vice without Aâ—on of Creet slandering the sex and if they must be praised I look on them as the idaeaes of Plato which have nothing in them common with matter I begin to verifie my first proposition and say the good life of women is a piece so necessary for Christianity that it cannot be cut off without introducing a notable disorder and this I say because there are many uncollected spirits in the world who make it their glory to act all against the hair to oppose the most sound opinions to give the lie to nature and do that in the world which Momus did in fables Sometimes they set themselves to censure the State and find somewhat to say of military matters treasures laws and offices sometimes they frame Common-wealths of Plato in their emptie brains and constitute new forms of government which never will have being but in their chymaeraes When they have touched upon the Purple and Diadem they busie themselves to controle God upon the master-pieces of nature and among other things that he hath done ill to create a woman Cato the Censor said in his time That if the world Si mundus absque mulieribus esset conversatio nostra non esset absque Diis were without women the conversation of men would not be exempt from the company of Gods And a Doctor of the Jews yielding a reason why the Eternal Word had so long time deferred its Incarnation said nothing else but that the world was then replenished with bad women and that four thousand years were not able to furnish out one good one to serve as an instrument
the resentment of injuries Necessitie of salvation since prayer and sacrifice essential parts of our salvation cannot subsist without the pardon of our neighbour And pursuing this precept we have a tradition from the Hebrews which saith He who being entreated to pardon after warning given before competent witnesses if he shewed himself inexorable was surnamed as with a title of infamy the Sinner and held as one excommunicate as a rotten member and cut off from the society of the faithfull I likewise say necessity of salvation since according to S. Augustine without this virtue all devotion is but August super Joan. homil 10. Quid prodest quia credis blasphemas Adoras illum in capite blasphemas in corpore c. hypocrisie all religion blasphemy all faith infidelity To what purpose is it saith this Prelate to believe and blaspheme to adore God in his head and blaspheme him in his members God loveth his body which is his Church if you dissever your self from his body he will not for all that forsake his own members Hear you not the head which speaketh to you from heaven saying O Man it is in vain thou honourest me hating thy neighbour If any one whilst he is giving thee low obeysance with his head tread on thy foot thou wouldst in midst of all his complement cry out Sir you hurt me What is there either more powerfull or persuasive The horrour and confusion of revenge than these reasons Yet notwithstanding among so many lightnings and thunders which encompass us on every side there are to be found infinite many black souls in the world which practise hatred some in secret some in publick make vaunts to eternize their revenge in the everlastingness of their punishments What a horrour is it to see a man who besought and entreated with all earnestness to pardon a brother who hath offended him answereth with disdain furious and intolerable he will never agree nor hold correspondence with him no more than with a Turk or Moor Ah Barbarian Shut up that mouth unhappy creature and never open it at least never open it before the wounds of Christ which bleed against thee Thou wilt embrace no other friendship with thy brother but such as may be found between Turks and Moors Lyer that thou art seek yet out words more out-ragious to express the gall of thy passion For if thou knowest it not Turks and Moors retain the amities and sense of man whereof thou art despoiled Turks even in the general desolation of Moors entertained them into their Countreys and afforded them helps which thou hast denied thy flesh and bloud If that seem worthy of thee take a turbant and become a Turk But when thou hast put it on yet shalt thou find laws which will oblige thee to love a man The Turks have their Behiram a feast wherein they pardon all injuries and wilt thou turn Turk to retain an injury Out of God's Church out of the society of men out of nature bloudy monster as thou art Where wilt thou any longer find place in the world when thou once hast pulled down the Altars of clemency That also which is spoken in choller and hasty precipitation might seem pardonable in repentance were it not there are some who in cold bloud foster suits and immortal pertinacities and which is worst many times in publick shewing a fair face in secret they transfix the heart of a poor man like unto witches they rip up the bowels of wife and children to satisfie a revenge Barbarous man eat rather eat the miserable heart than pierce it perpetually with thy infernal bodkins I would in the rest be silent if there were not women who being infirm in all things get diabolical strength for revenge What may we say of a creature of this sex who being very slightly offended by another of the same sex whilst she advised by her Confessour disposed her self to all duties of satisfaction the other looked on her with a Gorgons eye and foaming with anger spitefully reviled her with bloudy words so that nothing now remained but to take her by the hair and drag her on the floar which violence reproved by other she repeated the burden of the old ballad That she wished her not ill but would never see her again Inhumane and furious creature a Maegera not a woman what mouth will you hereafter bring to the Altars which you seem to honour Have you any other than that by you polluted with this poisonous choller What heart remains in you for God Is there any part of it not steeped in gall What expect you at the hower of death and in the instant of your souls separation but that God repeat unto you your own words I wish thee no ill I will not put thee upon the wheel nor the rack I have neither rasors nor flames to torment thee but thou never shalt see my face Wilt thou then cherish quarrels maintain sides spread rumours either true or false secretly undermine the fortune of men and make thy self as inexorable to reconciliation as thou art inflexible to reason Lord have mercy on us Semper jurgia quaerit malus Angelus autem crudelis mittetur contra eum Proverb 6. a cruel Angel will be sent against thee an ill suit commenced a ruinous business a tedious sickness a loss of goods a confusion of understanding and then shalt thou see whether fire being in the four corners of thy house thou still retainest the itch of revenge But you generous souls march on by union to the chief of unities and think the onely revenge is well to be revenged on your self If as I have shewed pardon be possible glorious and necessarie why foment we our curiosities to enflame our feavours Let us take away these silly humane respects this slender pride which often broodeth under silken devotions and which is the cause that God is daily beheld and adored upon both the knees by those who will not see nor speak to any that have committed some slight indiscretion whilst feigning to honour God the Master with lips the servant within the heart is strangled Say O Christian say to thy self Am I more powerfull Goodly considerations to pacific the mind in my small family than God in the universe He daily endureth so many injuries not threatening mortals with his thunders what am I who have ears so tender Many have forgiven their deaths and I cannot pardon a cold countenance a silly word a slender negligence Is it a child is it a young man hath offended age excuseth him is it a woman sex a stranger liberty a friend familiarity He hath offended he hath displeased Vid. de I thee once and how many other times hath he done thee good offices But this is not the first time so much the better shall we bear what we already have suffered Custome of injuries is a good Mistress of patience He is a friend he did what he would
the day of its own brightness to consider how Providence guarding her dear Pool as the apple of her eye did reserve him for a time which made him the true Peace-maker of that nation For this effect it came to pass that Henry the Eighth The Estate of England having reigned eighteen years in schism leading a life profuse in luxury ravenous in avarice impious in Sacriledge cruel in massacres covered over with ordures bloud and Infamy did fall sick of a languishing disease which gave him the leisure to have some thoughts on the other world It is true that the affrighting images of his Crimes The death of Henry the Eighth and the shades of the dead which seemed to besiege his bed and perpetually to trouble his repose did bring many pangs and remorses to him Insomuch that having called some Bishops to his assistance he testified a desire to reconcile himself unto the Church and sought after the means thereof But they who before were terrified with the fury of his actions which were more than barbarous fearing that he spoke not that but onely to sound them and that he would not seal to their Counsels which they should suggest unto him peradventure with the effusion of their bloud did gently advise him without shewing him the indeavours and the effects of true repentance and without declaring to him the satisfactions which he ought to God and to his Neighbours for the enormities of so many Crimes He was content to erect the Church of the Cardeleirs and commanded that Mass should there be publickly celebrated which was performed to the great joy of the Catholicks which yet remained in that horrible Havock To this Church he annexed an Hospital and some other appurtenances and left for all a thousand Crowns of yearly Revenue As he perceived that his life began to abandon him he demanded the Communion which he received making a show as if he would rise himself but the Bishop told him that his weakness did excuse him from that Ceremony he made answer That if he should prostrate himself on the Earth to receive so Divine a Majesty he should not humble himself according to his duty He by his Will ordained that his Son Edward who was born of Jane Seimer should succeed him and in the case of death that Marie the Daughter of Queen Katharine should be the inheritress of the Crown and if that she should fail that his Daughter Elizabeth although a Bastard should fill her place and possess the Kingdom On the approches of death he called for wine and those who were next unto his bed did conceive that he oftentimes did repeat the word Monks and that he said as in despair I have lost all This is that which most truly can be affirmed of him for it is a very bad sign to behold a man to die in the honour of his Royal dignity and by a peaceable death who had torn in pieces JESUS CHRIST who had divided the Church into schisms who of the six Queens that he espoused had killed four of them who had massacred two Cardinals three Archbishops eighteen Bishops twelve great Earls Priests and Religious Men without number and of his people without end who had robbed all the Churches of his Kingdom destroyed the Divine worship oppressed a million of innocents and in one word who had assasinated mercy it self Howsoever he wanted not flatterers who presumed to say and write that his wisdom had given a good order to his affairs and that he happily departed this world not considering what S. dustine doth affirm That all the penitencies of those who have lived in great disorders and who onely do convert themselves at the end of their life being pressed to it by the extreamity of their disease ought to be extreamly suspected because they do not forsake their sins but their sins do forsake them It was observed indeed that at his death this King did testifie a repentance of his savage and inordinate life but we cannot observe the great and exemplary satisfactions which were due to the expiation of so many abominable sins King Antiochus made submissions of another nature and ordered notable restitutions to recompense the dammages which he had caused to the people of the Jews nevertheless he was rejected of God by reason of his bloudy life and the Gates of the Temple of mercy were shut against him for all eternity The foundation of a small Hospital which Henry caused at his death was not sufficient to recompense the injuries of so many Churches which he had pillaged nor of so much goods of his Subjects as he had forced from them seeing we know by the words of the wise man That to make a benefit Eccles 34. of the substance of the poor is to sacrifice a Son before the eyes of his Father He had by his Testament ordained many tutors to The Reign of Edward His Uncle Seimer spoileth all his Son who were able to have made as many Tyrants but Seimer Uncle by the mothers side to the deceased King gaining the favour of the principal of the Lords of the realm whom he had corrupted with mony and great presents did cause himself to be proclaimed Protector and Regent He took a great possession on little Edward the Son of Henry heir to the Crown whom he brought up in schism and Heresie against the intentions of his Father This furious man immediately began his Regency with so much insolence that he almost made the reign of Henry the Eight to be forgotten he fomented the poison which he had conceived under him he did use the Catholicks most unworthily and did cut off the head of his own Brother by a jealousy of women But as he had made himself insupportable so it came to pass that the affairs of war which he had enterprized against the French did fall out unfortunately for him Dudley one of the chiefest of the Lords drawing a party to him did accuse him of Treason and caused his head to be cut off on the same Scaffold where before he had taken off the head of his own Brother This death was followed with great fears and horrible commotions for the Regency which presently after was extinguished by the death of the young King Edward This poor Prince was rather plucked with pincers The Qualities and death of King Edward from his mothers womb than born and he could not come into the world without giving death to her who conceived him He was said to have none of the comeliest bodies He spake seven languages at fifteen years of age and in his discourse did testifie a rare knowledge of all those sciences which were most worthy of a King It seemeth that death did advance it self to ravish his spirit from his body which did awake too early and was too foreward for his age for he died in his sixteen year having not had the time throughly to understand himself and to see by what course
to the same port It is that which maketh Kings to reign 1. Reg. 25. 29. and giveth them officers as members of their state and by this means frameth the Court of Great-ones But if after it hath so made and composed them as of the flower and choise of men it should abandon them in the tempest without pole-star without rudder without Pilot were not this with notable deformitie to fail in one of the prime pieces of its work-manship Judge your self For the second reason it is most evident that to further this impossibilitie of devotion in the course of Courtiers lives is to cast them through despair of all virtues which cannot subsist without piety into the libertie of all vices which they will hold not as extravagant fallies of frailtie but as the form of a necessary portion of their profession And as the rank they hold maketh them transcend other men who willingly tie themselves to the manners and affections of those on whom they see their fortunes depend that would be as it were by a necessary law to precipitate mankind into the gulf of corruption To conclude for the third reason this proposition is manifestly contradicted by an infinit number of examples of so many Kings and Princes of so many worthy Lords and Ladies who living in the Ocean of the world as the mother pearls by the dew of heaven have preserved and do yet still preserve themselves for ever in admirable puritie and in such heroick virtues that they cannot gain so much wonder on earth but they shall find in heaven much more recompence This is it which I intend to produce in this Treatise of the Holy Court after I have informed the mind with good and lively reasons which as I hope by the grace of the holy Spirit of God shall make all persons of quality to behold they do infinit wrong to take the splendour of their condition for a veil of their impieties and imperfections Virtue is a marvellous work woman who can make Mercury of any wood yea should the difficultie be great the victorie would be more glorious but all the easieness thereof is in their own hands and the obligations they have to tend to perfection are no less important than those of Hermits as I intend shall appear in the process of this discourse The first MOTIVE Of the obligation which secular men and especially persons of qualitie have to perfection grounded upon the name of Christian. A Great abuse is crept into the minds of secular persons who hold vice in predominance and virtue under controle It is in that they esteem Christian perfection as a bird out of their reach and a qualitie dis-proportionable to their estate As for my self saith one of these I have made provision of virtue according to my quality I pretend not to be a S. Francis nor to be rapt as a S. Paul to the third heaven I find there is no life but with the living and to hold time by the fore-lock while I can Let our pleasures take that scope which nature presenteth to them were we as wicked as Judas if we have the faith of S. Peter the mercy of God pardoneth all An impertinent discourse as I will hereafter declare On the other side there are women who chatter and say I will not be a S. Teresa it is not my intention to be canonized I love better to see my diamonds in my life glitter on my fingers than to carrie themafter my death on my statues I better love a little perfume whilst I yet breath air than all the Arabian odours after my death I will have no extasies nor raptures It is enough for me to wallow in the world I may as well go to Paradise by land as by water Such words are very impure in the mouth of a Christian nay so prejudicial to eternal salvation that through the liberty of speaking too much they take away all hope of doing well For pursuing the tender effeminacy of that spirit they take the measure of virtue very short and disproportionable their intentions being infirm the works are likewise the more feeble not squarely answering the model of knowledge from whence proceedeth a general corruption I affirm not all Christians ought to embrace the perfection of S. Francis and of S. Teresa No. There are some whom the Divine providence will direct by other aims But I say that every Christian is obliged to level at perfection and if he hath any other intention he is in danger to loose himself eternally A bold saying but it is the sentence of S. Austine You should always be displeased with your Aug. Serm. 11 of the Apostle Semper tibi displiceat quod es si viâ— pervenire ad id quod non es Si dixeris sufficit periisti A notable speech of S. Augustine self for that which you are if you desire to attain to that which you are not and if you chance to say it is enough you are undone And who are you that dare limit the gifts of God And who are you that say I will have but such or such degree of graces I satisfie my self with such a sanctity I have proceeded far enough in a spiritual life let us set up our staff here What wickedness is this Is not this to imitate that barbarous and senseless King who cast chains into the sea to tie the Ocean in fetters God hath given us a Xerxes heart of a larger latitude than the heavens which he will replenish with himself and you will straiten it like a snail to lodge him in narrow bounds whom the whole world cannot comprehend Judge if this proceeding be not very unreasonable and if you yet doubt weight two or three reasons which you shall find very forcible and by them you will conclude with me you have no less obligation to be perfect than the most retired Hermit that ever lived in the most horrid wilderness of Egypt The first reason I propose to underprop this assertion is drawn from the nature and essence of perfection At what mark think you should one aim to arrive to this scope If I should say will you be perfect bury your self alive in a sack put a halter about your neck go roast your self in the scorching beams of the Sun go roal your self in snow and thorns this would make you admire your hair stand an end and bloud congeal in your veins But if one tell you God Perfection engrafted upon love hath as it were engrafted perfection with his own hands upon the sweetest stock in the world what cause have you of refusal Now so it is as I say There is nothing so easie as to love the whole nature of the world is powred and dissolved into love there is nothing so worthy to be beloved as an object which incloseth in the extent thereof all beauties and bounties imaginable which are the strongest attractives of amity yea it forceth our affections with a sweet
vagabonds and loytering rogues furnitures for a gibbet then judge you if it be not a madness to say you desire in all things to separate your selves far from the multitude to enworthy and distinguish your Nobilitie and yet in this one action alone you lessen and vilifie your courage even to the condition of the most captive and abominable creatures of the earth You will say That is true but a man cannot refuse a duel when he is urged Why Because shame Great want of generositie in duels and ignominie always attend say you on these denials See you not by this answer you give arms against your self and freely confess that a duel is not an action of courage For to lay apart the ordinances of the Church take but the laws of Aristotle Ethic. c. 8. a worldly man as your self and more than you doth not he most pertinently demonstrate in his Ethicks that it is not an action of valour when a souldier is valiant while his Captain hath set the enemie on one side and a river on the other to enforce him to fight or because a Sergeant of a band is ready to transfix the veins of his back with a halbard if he retire Virtue which is not virtue but for avoidance of dishonour is true pusillanimitie under the veil of false courage I then demand of you who more tyrannically assaulteth a man either the Sergeant of a band who thrusteth a sword into his reins or the point of honour which possesseth his brains Without all doubt you will agree with me that there is no tyrannie comparable to that of this mad duel which is called Point of honour And in the mean space because forsooth this goodly Sergeant of a band enforceth you and beareth you forward upon the hips with the helve of a halbard you must hasten to a duel you must go to precipitate your self into the throat of hell whereas otherwise were it not for the shame of the world you would not stir a foot Behold a brave act of courage What then shall we answer to those who provoke you That which conscience permitteth and Doctour Bannes adviseth that you seek not dens nor caverns that you go into every place with your head erected and if they shall be so temerarious as to assault you they may find you upon that defence which the law of nature permitteth Behold a good answer for a Doctour but the world is not paid in such coyn Answer them as the wisest among worldlings Augustus Caesar to Mark Anthony who challenging him in single combat he caused in plain terms to be said unto him that when the dispair of the success of his affairs should reduce him to the furious rage of hating his life yet he would find out other ways to die much more honest than by this butcherly frenzie Yea but this is an answer of a coward This coward in the mean time established the prime Empire of the world struggling by strength of arm against a torrent both of arms and opinions which hindered his passage constraining the whole world to yield obedience to his valour and he that challenged him with all his magnanimitie and courage died in the arms of a woman rage and effeminacie sharing the rest of his life as well as the triumph of his death Behold you not a goodly courage Howsoever the matter stands in refusing of a duel the dishonour of the world cannot be eschewed What is the world A mass of mad men If you have sworn to please them by sacrificing your bloud your life with the damnation of your soul are you not then the most miserable slave that ever was fettered in the guives of a rigorous servitude Are you not a soul prodigiously servile so far off are you from having one sole point of courage We then must go out of the world Leave it if you cannot live without the damnation of your soul be gone break the chains immediately But I am too much bound it is fit the goat brouse where he is fastened What counsel shall one give you You can neither go nor stay Resolve then to live in the world trampling under your feet the opinion of the world subjecting the laws of the earth to the Empire of Heaven and then fear not but you shall have courage enough The eighth REASON Proceeding from education ONe of the greatest benefits which man can receive Force of education at Gods hands is the favourable blessing of good education It is it which pollisheth and purifieth nature as one would do a precious stone wholly defiled with earth and filthy ordure it is it which maketh men become Angels and without it the goodliest and best natures would perpetually dwell in brutishness The Historie of A wolf-child Germanie telleth us that heretofore a child was taken in the forrests which was presented to Henrie Landgrave of Hassia From four years old he had been bred among wolves the wolves taught him to go on four feet as a bruit beast he went a forraging with the wolves he divided the prey with the wolves he slept amongst the wolves to be the more warm to conclude he wholly became wolf When he came to be made tractable and tame they were enforced to tie his hands to staves to teach him to go as men do yet did he break all to return to the condition of a wolf so powerful is the force and tyrannie of education Another sucking the milk of a sow took a singular pleasure to wallow in the dirt and lambs nourished with goats milk retain the roughness of hair Hereupon judge O you Noblemen what obligation you have to the Divine Majesty and what motive to tread the paths of perfection since ordinarily as I intend here to prove you meet with all those things which may conduce to the happiness of good education How many spirits think you are there in Defect in education the world that for want of education remain as diamonds buried in a dung-hill which if once you unearth and free from rust and putrefaction will set the sun before your eyes Behold an infant blessed with a beautiful bodie a fair spirit but yet born with a yoak on his neck the yoak of povertie and servitude Misery of want The condition of his birth hath shut him in a cage what means then I pray hath he to work wonders As soon as ever he beginneth to open his eyes he beholdeth himself to be born in a house hanged round about with cobwebs he beholdeth his father and mother to groan under the burden of a needy life his brothers and sisters to roul the same stone There is no question made of civil education instruction or knowledge bread must be sought for so much sollicitude must be had onely to live as bruit beasts that no leisure will be found to think how to live like a man and admit it were thought on there are no books in this poor cottage but rotten
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
rich Tell me was it not an honour to King Agathocles who from being the son of a potter raised his fortune to a Throne was it not I say an honour to mingle on his cup-boards earthen vessels with his rich pieces of gold and silver plate that he might not bely his birth Nay so far was he from blushing or from being ashamed at it that he made boast and trophey of it What then would he have done by his poor father if he set such a value upon the mean implements of his cottage And thou wholly Christian as thou art canst not behold without confusion of thy countenance what a great Captain a great King a great States-man sought to proclaim to all the world Contempt of the person of fathers entreth sometimes so far into their souls as it hath transported them into horrible and tragick acts Never have I read any thing upon this subject with more amazement than that mentioned in Justine of a certain African named Cartallus who was by the peoples consent raised to an eminent degree of dignity and casually upon some solemn embassage sent into a place where his father with many other was banished He looking on himself at that time like a peacock gloriously furnished out with the rich ornaments of his employment thought it was not suitable to his honour to admit that his father should so much as see him The unfortunate father became so enraged with this refusal and pride of his son that instantly he raised a sedition and mustering together a tumultuary Army of exiles he fell upon his son although a Magistrate took him condemned him to death presently prepared a high gibbet and attired as he was in gold scarlet with a crown on his head caused him to be fastened to this fatal tree for a strange spectacle What fury of despised nature is this and what butchery Let us pass on to the third tribute obedience which as an Ancient said is the mother of felicities It is the first band of families and chief foundation of Monarchies S. Gregory Nyssen hath a notable observation saying that Moses of set purpose caused the Hebrews to wear ear-rings giving them thereby to understand their beauty and grace was in the ear to wit in obedience and verily in Exodus the people Exod. 32. Tollite inaures filiarum vestrarum auribus asserte ad me Filius noster iste protervus contamax est monitis mostris audire contemnit comessationibus vacat luxuriâ atque convitiis Lapidibus eum obruet populus morietur Deuter. 21. a Aelian var hist lib. 1. beginning to revolt their ear-rings were taken from them as from men unworthy of this priviledge That which is expressed in Deuteronomie is much more bloudy and terrible where the father and mother are permitted to bring forth a disobedient and refractary son in publick and upon their own deposition to cause him to be stoned to death by the people It seems this Law was well understood by a silly Pesant a Mardonian by Nation named Rachones a who being the father of seven sons perceived the youngest of them played the little libertine and unbridled colt What doth he to bring him back into the stable First he endeavoured to cure him with fair words and reasons but finding him to reject all manner of good counsel he bound his hands behind him carried him before a Magistrate accused him and requires he may be proceeded against as a delinquent against nature The Judges who would not discontent this incensed father nor hazard the life of this young man sent them both to the King who at that time was Artaxerxes The good man went thither resolved to seek his sons death where pleading before the King with much servour and forcible reasons Artaxerxes stood amazed at his courage But how can you my friend said he endure to see your son die before your face He being a gardiner as willingly said he as I would pull away leaves from a ranck lettice and not hurt the root The King perceiving this resolution and zeal of justice in the poor man of a gardiner made him a Judge and severely threatened his son with death if his carriage were not better See young man behold wicked son who disobeyest thy father and mother not in a slight matter or of little importance but in such as concerns thy life safety and reputation see what thou maist expect from the justice of God since that of men hath so much severity in this point You dare dispense with your selves in the Laws of piety and Religion not shewing even on festival days any more feeling of God than a beast doth this seem tolerable you haunt the company of buffons wicked and wretched creatures which wast the means that are not yours weaken your body violate your reputation and defile your soul and is not this a crime You make resolutions and frame chymaeraes without advise either of father or mother you bring them into debt you treat clandestine marriages you thrust those alive unto their graves who gave you life and can you think the vengeance of God will ever have leaden feet Faithless and bruitish as you are how many fathers for far less faults have inflicted severities on their children dreadful even to those who read them Marcus Scaurus in the Roman history sent this message to his son who fled with the rest of his Army defeated by the Cimbrians Son you are born of a father who knows either to vanquish or die rather send me your bones than return alive after the death of your honour A father could not endure the flight of a son which was very excusable in a general defeat because it seemed to cast some blemish upon his family and you who surcharge your house with reproach and confusion would you escape unpunished Another father Aulus Fulvius understanding his son had rancked himself in the faction of Catiline a wicked wretch who supported and debaushed all the youth of Rome caused him to be taken in the place and condemned to death and this young man begging pardon with all manner of suppliant intreaties had no other answer but Son I begat you to make war upon Catiline in your Countries quarrel not in Catilines cause to assayl your mother And who can but wonder at another Torquatus that had a son in great employments of the Empire flourishing in honour age and reputation who being accused by the Embassadours of Macedonia to have ill carried himself in their Province when he had it in charge this father with the Senats permission would himself be Judge in the sons cause heard the accusers two whole days together confronted witnesses gave his son full scope to defend himself and to produce all that he could for his justification in the end on the third day he pronounced sentence It having sufficiently been proved unto me that my son Syllanus hath ill acquitted his charge and taken money from the allies of
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
monsters and hydeous sights He tried all sorrs of festival entertainments dancings and delights to divert this ill but it still augmented in such sort that he was enforced to abandon all the affairs of his Kingdom though he had been very eager and ardent in this employment and became in the beginning thereof doltish and dull not knowing what he did For often in the time of dinner he spake to his servants and commanded them to call the Queen as if she had been yet living they slipped aside without making answer and the whole Court was drenched in terrour and silence In the end not being able any longer to endure the walls of his Palace as if they had upbraided him with his cruelty he ran into the forrests like a mad man where he got a strange maladie of the mind and so horrible a frenzie that the Physitians were to seek saying freely it was a blow from Heaven God who yet reserved him for greater calamities would not at that time take away his life The wicked mother Alexandra who so outragiously had complained of her daughter upon the scaffold instantly died tasting the bitterness of death and loosing her glory Last of all followeth a plague which took away even many of Herod's Counsellers and all that was nothing but the scourge of Heaven in avengement of this death so deplorable and never sufficiently lamented Mariamne of her chaste wedlock left two sons to The sons of Mariamne bred at Rome Herod Alexander and Aristobulus who were very young able to suffer much in time to come but as then incapable of feeling their own miseries Herod to take from them the sense of this cruel tragedy and to raise them likewise by the degrees of good education to the glory of his scepter happily puts them aside and sends them to Rome to be bred in the Court of Augustus Caesar held at that time the Academie of Kings and prime school of the world Some years being passed he had a desire to make a voyage into Italie to salute Caesar and by that opportunity see his children whom he found excellently trained and so accomplished that he purposed with the good leave of Caesar to carry them back into Judea which he did These young Princes returning into Jerusalem with Herod ravished all the people with admiration They were of a gallant presence straight active quick-spirited couragious in the exercise of arms well-spoken affable as lovely as the person of the Father was odious Men looked on them as one would upon the two stars of Castor and Pollux after a storm they replenished all with alacrity and seemed already to win all hearts to approve their titles to the Crown Those notwithstanding who retained the memory of the usage of poor Mariamne their mother could not abstain from tears Pheroras brother of Herod and Salome his sister Calumnie is plotted against them who both had dipped their fingers in the bloud of the innocent Queen entered into affrightments and apprehensions unspeakable seeing the bloud they had shed should one day sway over their heads Wherefore they began silently to calumniate them and caused by trusty instruments many bruits to pass into the ears of Herod which intimated That the Princes his sons in consideration of their mothers wrong had a great aversion from the father and that they never seriously would affect him Herod who as yet in the heat of his affection and could never be satisfied with beholding them gave no credit to this calumny But rather seeing them now upon the confines of maturity sought to match them highly plotting for Alexander the daughter of Archelaus King of Cappadocia named Glaphyra which was assented unto and for Aristobulus he caused him to marry the daughter of Salome his cozen germain so plaistering over the domestick enmities which ever after found many factions Alexander and Aristobulus conversed together with great freedom and uttered whatsoever they had upon their hearts speaking of the death of their mother in such manner that they shewed a great resentment thereof Pheroras and Salome close-biting and watchfull ceased not to provoke them to speech and whatsoever they said either through vanity or sleight disposition to anger or in the liberty of secrecy was instantly by a third person related to the ears of Herod The subtile Salome holding still a power upon her married daughter who was a simple creature put her upon the rack to tell her all that her husband and her brother in law had spoken in the privacy of their mutual conversation She then recounted the words these poor Princes had through simplicity and bravery spoken to wit that Aristobulus vaunted himself The Kingdom belonged to the children of Mariamne as to the line of the true Queen as for Herods other sons who were spread abroad in very great number for he had nine or ten wives that he might make Registers of them in some petty Towns and that they should do well to learn to write and read She added that Alexander said in boasting he was a better man than his father notwithstanding that conversing with him and seeing him of a jealous humour he restrained himself as in a scabbard and durst not discover himself for fear he should give him some suspition of his power That hunting or walking with Herod he did as it were bow and contract himself together that he might not appear taller than his father that if he were to shoot in a bow he purposely made himself unskilfull thereby to take all occasion of envie from him It was a notable act of wisdom to do it but a great folly of youth to breath out many words as innocently spoken as treacherously interpreted and above all an infinite simplicity to commit their secrets to a woman whose heart is as fit to keep what it ought to conceal as a sive to hold water When Pheroras and Salome had a long time filled the ears of Herod with these trifling reports seeing the suspition began to take footing in his mind and that the affection of a father cooled towards his children they struck the iron while it was hot and wished him seriously to take heed of his sons for they spake big and had boldly said That all those who were embrewed in their mothers bloud should not carry the punishment into the other world for verily as they were vexed upon the remembrance of the dead such like words had escaped them Herod was much amazed at this liberty and thought he must repress their boldness by some counterpoize What doth he To humble the hearts of these Princes The young Antipater son of Herod exalted he selecteth among his children one called Antipater his son by Doris nothing noble and who had shamefully been hunted out of the Court he putteth this his son in the turning of a hand upon the top of the wheel not that he had a purpose to raise him but to use him to counterballance the children of Mariamne reputing him
he passed in continual apprehensions thornie affairs perilous voyages sinister distrusts frosty fears of death barbarous cruelties remorses of conscience the forerunners of hell leaving besides a short and unfortunate posterity Behold his Picture and Elogie HERODES ASCALONITA HERODES ASCALONITA VULTU FERUS ANIMO BARBARUS LUTO ET SANGUINE MACERATUS A QUO NIHIL AD SUMMAM CRUDELITATEM PRAETER DEICIDIUM ABFUIT DEICIDIO VOLUNTAS NON DEFUIT VULPINA FRAUDE REGNUM JUDEAE INVASIT AN. MUNDI TER MILLESSIMO NONGENTESSIMO SEXAGESSIMO QUINTO REGNAVIT IRAE SERVUS JURIS DOMINUS FORTUNA FOELIX CYCLOPAEA VITA INFOELICISSIMUS DESIIT CAELESTI PLAGA FERALIS MORBI ANNO REGNI TRICESSIMO SEPTIMO VITAE FERME SEPTUAGESSIMO CHRISTI OCTAVO Vpon the Picture of HEROD A man no whit with civil grace indu'd Of visage hydeous of manners rude A monster made of massacres and bloud That boldly God Heav'n Natures laws withstood Ill words within no certain limits fall But who once mentions Herod speaketh all BY the carriage of this Court one may see whither vice transporteth great fortunes In the person of Aristobulus and Hircanus you behold that the canker is to a body less dangerous than the discord of brothers to a state In the person of Antipater a friend for advantage who seeketh to fish in a troubled water in the end fisheth his fill but is drowned in the act to teach you there is no policie so great as to be an honest man and that he who prepareth snares for another diggeth his own grave In the person of Pompey an Aribitratour who worketh his own ends under the colour of justice who buildeth his ambition on the ruins of state in the end the earth which faileth him for his conquests denieth him a sepulchre He found no more Countries to conquer and scarcely had he six foot of earth to make him a tomb In that of Hircanus too much credulity too much facility to please others humours too much pusillanimity in the government of Justice which head-long threw him into a life as miserable as his death was cruel and bloudy In that of Anthonie a passionate Judge who turneth with all winds and suffereth himself to be carried along by the stronger without consideration of Justice In that of Joseph and Sohemus that it is perilous to treat with women though free from ill purpose and much more dangerous to reveal a secret which who will safely keep must make his heart a sepulchre for it In that of young Aristobulus how the most beautifull hopes are storm-beaten in the bud and that you must walk upon the prosperitie of the world as on ice that it must be handled like glass fearing always they break not in the lustre of their brightness In that of Alexandra a boundless ambition designs without effect afflictions devoid of consolations torments without patience and a death without deserts and all this because she gave not a good temper of virtue to her soul In that of the sons of Mariamne innocency perfecuted and a little vanity of tongue desperately revenged In that of yong Antipater policy deceived the cloud of humane hopes cracked punishment and revenge ever attending an offender In the person of Herod an enraged ambition which giveth motion to all his crimes a double soul crafty cautelous politick mischievous bloudy barbarous savage and withal in the best of his tricks benummed doltish dall thinking to make a fortune to the prejudice of religion and conscience A goodly fortune to make himself great and live in the hatred of all the world in the remorses of a Cyclopean conscience a thousand times aday to call upon death not being able to die and in the end to die in a body leaprous stinking louzey and death to tear his soul from him with scabs stench and lice to make it survive its torments in an eternity of flames See you not here fair fruits of humane wisdom impiety and atheism In that of Mariamne a soul raised above the highest sphere of true greatness a soul truly royal holy religious courteous mercifull wise affable and endowed with an incomparable patience who as an Eagle strong of wing and courage soaring above the storms of the world maketh her self Mistress of tempests and thunders which for that they had served as an exercise of her constancy and perpetual battels for her life shall through all Ages attend the immortality of her glory THE FIFTH BOOK Fortunate Pietie WE have hitherto beheld a Court which rather resembleth Polyphemus cave than a Kings Palace to teach Great-ones there is no bruitishness so savage wherinto ingratitude towards God and vice doth not precipitate a forsaken soul Let us now see that as unbridled passions are of power to make a hell of a Princes Court so the practice of piety and other virtues make it a true Paradise Behold the Court of Theodosius the Younger a Prince who seemed to be born for nothing else but to allye the scepter to virtues and manifest what royal greatness can do guided by the rules of pietie It is no small miracle to behold a holy King If Ring of God God affected the curiositie of wearing a ring as well in effect as the Scripture attributeth it to him in allegorie the most agreeable characters he would engrave therein were the names of good Kings who are his most lively representations as those who wed together power and goodness two inseparable pieces of God but very incompatible in the life of man such are the corruptions of this Age. Some live in Four sorts of life the world transported with the torrents thereof and that is weakness Others flie the world and in flying oft-times carry it along with them and this is an illusion Others separate themselves as well in body as affection and this is prudence But few are found who bearing the world on their shoulders through necessity do tread it under-foot by contempt of vanities That is it which this great Prince hath done whose Court we here describe for being seated among people he built a desert in his heart and in a vast Ocean of affairs he lived as fishes which keep silence within the loud noise of waves and preserve their plump substance fresh in the brackish waters I go not about to place Theodosius the Younger in the rank of the bravest and most heroick spirits you hereafter shall see others more couragious and warlick but I purposely have selected this history drawn from the Chronicle of Alexandria Zonaras Zozomen Raderius and others to teach certain vain-glorious people who make no account but of those trifling spirits fierce mutinous and unquiet stampt with the coyn of impiety how much they miss of their reckoning seeing this Emperour with the sole arms of piety and modesty carried himself in a very long and most prosperous reign amidst horrible tempests which seemed ready to rend the world and other rash Princes who made shew to swallow earth and seas were drowned in a glass
she had seen in his picture which commonly was painted with the horns of a bull on his fore-head it was not in my opinion his fair eyes nor goodly nose which made him sought after for he was one of the most deformed creatures of the world Yet he notwithstanding was reputed a great Captain and a puissant King This blind Princess so breathed the air of ambition that though he were wholly Pagan and hydeous she no whit was affrighted for verily her passion was so much enkindled that she secretly dispatched one of her Eunuches with express letters beseeching Attila he would demand her in marriage of the Emperour her brother and she should account it a great honour to be his wife This Scythian entered into a much greater estimation of his own worth than ever beholding himself sued unto by a Romane Ladie of noble extraction and thereupon grew so eager that he immediately addresseth an Embassadour to the Emperour Valentinian to require his sister of him in marriage and the moity of his Kingdom otherwise he was not gone back so far but he would return with his Army to enforce his obedience All the world was now strucken with terrour when by good chance he saw himself for some pressing occasions engaged to return into his Countrey where all these lightenings were quickly turned into a shower of bloud After he had sweat under harness like another Hannibal who in the end of his conquests was bruitishly besotted in the bosom of a Capuan Ladie this haughty King of Hunnes as soon as he came into his Countrey wholly engulphed himself in wine and love Besides a great rabble of creatures which he had to satisfie his lust he became in his old days passionately enamoured of a gentlewoman named Hildecon whom he married with sports feasts and excessive alacrity That evening after he had freely drunk according to his custom he retired into his nuptial chamber with his new spouse and the next morning was found dead in his bed floating in a river of bloud who had drawn bloud from all the veins of the world Some said it was an eruption of bloud which Death of Attila choaked him but others thought Hildecon lead thereunto one knoweth not by what spirit nor by whom sollicited handled her pretended husband as Judith did Holofernes Behold how God punisheth the proud A despicable dwarf who commanded over 700000. men who forraged every where environed as with a brazen wall who boasted in the lightenings of his puissant arms who razed Cities all smoking in bloud and flames who wasted Provinces who destroyed Empires who would not tread but on Crowns and Scepters behold him the very night of his nuptials full of drink massacred by a woman having not so much as the honour to die by the hand of a man The same night that Attila yielded up the ghost in his own bloud our Saviour appeared in a dream to the good Emperour Martianus and shewing him a great bowe all shivered in pieces saith Martianus behold the bowe of Attila which I have broken thou hast no further cause to fear thy Empire Thus you see how God fighteth for the pious even while they sleep This scourge being so fortunately diverted Martianus and Pulcheria attended with all their power to the consolation and ornament of the universal Church under the direction of the great Pope Saint Leo whom their Majesties most punctually obeyed At that time were seen the reliques to march in triumph into Constantinople of the good Patriarch Flavianus massacred by the practices of hereticks at that time the exiled Bishops were with honour re-established in their seats At that time the Councel of Chalcedon was celebrated where the Emperour Martianus though wholly a souldier made an Oration first in Latin for the honour of the Romane Church then in Greek his natural language At that time heresie was fully condemned and impudence surcharged with confusion At that time an infinite number of goodly Canons were confirmed by the Councel and strongly maintained by the authority of the Emperour At that time justice was fixed in the height of perfection Briefly at that time the whole world was infinitely comforted by the good order and liberalities of this holy Court It was an admirable Empire and a happy marriage and nothing could be desired more in this match but immortality But the holy Virgin Pulcheria being about fifty years of age not so much loaden with years as merits wearied out with continual travel and care which she had endured almost fourty years in the mannage of affairs found her repose in exchange of the Court of Constantinople for that of Paradise She died in a most pure virginity which she carefully had preserved all her life time leaving the poor for her heirs who were her delight after she had built in her own life time five Churches and among the rest one to the honour of the most Blessed Virgin Marie which surpasseth all the other in magnificence besides many hospitals and sepulchres for pilgrimes Torches made of aromatick wood cast out their odoriferous exhalations when they are almost wasted and the virtuous Pulcheria made all the good odours of her life evaporate in the last instant of her death She who had lived as the Bee in the tastfull sweetness of purity died as the Phenix in the Palms not of Arabia but of conquests which she had obtained over the enemies of our nature We have here annexed her Picture and Elogie AVGVSTA AEL PVLCHERIA PULCHERIA FLA. THEODOSII JUNIORIS SOROR AUGUSTA VIRGO ET CONJUX AUGUSTORUM FILIA SOROR NEPTIS UXOR PROPUGNATRIX PONTIFICUM MAGISTRA IMPERATORVM CVSTOS FIDEI MVNIMEN ORTHODOXORVM ECCLESIAE ET IMPERII DECVS NOVA HELENA NOVVM ORBIS MIRACVLVM ANNO CHRISTI CLIII AETATIS LV. IMPERII XXXIX AD COELESTEM AVLAM PROFICISCITVR Upon the picture of PULCHERIA A Golden Virgin in an iron Age Who trampled under foot infernal rage A barren wife a fruitfull maid unstain'd That all the world within her heart contain'd Mother of people Mistress over Kings brings And who 'twixt Church and Law firm union She in herself bright Scepters did behold Joyn'd to the Cross Altars to Crowns of gold The married life unto virginitie And glorious greatness to humilitie If virtue were a substance to be seen Well might we here suppose this happy Queen Should lend her body that it outward may Resplendent lustre to the world display GReat-ones may here behold the shortest way to the Temple of Honour is to pass by that of Virtue Never woman was more honoured in her life never woman more glorious in her death That great Pope S. Leo S. Cyril and all the excellent men both of the East and West have employed their pens in her honour So magnificent and noble acclamations were made to her in Councels that nothing would be wished more glorious A little before her death in the Councel of Chalcedon they cried out Long live the Empress most Sacred Long live
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
the deluge which after it had born the whole world in the bowels thereof amongst so many storms and fatal convulsions of universal nature reposed on the mountains of Armenia So S. Monica when she so long time had carried in her entrails and heart a spirit as great as this universe among so many tears and dolours so soon as she was delivered of this painful burden went to take her rest on the mountains of Sion A little before her death beholding Heaven from a high window which opened on a garden she seemed there already to mark out her lodging so much she witnessed resentment and extasie towards her son Augustine who at that time made this admirable colloquie with her couched by him afterward in his Confessions The conclusion was that she said unto him My son I have now no more obligations to the world you have discharged all the promises of Heaven to me and I have consummated all the hopes I might have on earth seeing you a Catholick and which is more resolved to perfection of the life you have embraced When it shall please God to call me I am like fruit ripe and falling that holdeth on nothing Soon after she betook her to her bed being surprized with a feaver which she presently felt to be the messenger of her last hour Behold the cause why she being fortified with arms and assistances necessary for this combat took leave of Augustine and his brother there present affectionately entreating them to remember her soul at the Altar onely meditating on Heaven and neglecting the thought of the land of Africa which she had seemed at other times to desire for the sepulcher of her body And as her other son said unto her Madame my mother we as yet are not there we hope to close your eyes in our own countrey and burie you in the tomb of your husband this holy woman seeing this man would still tie her to the present life and divert her from cogitation of death which to her was most sweet beheld him with a severe eye and then turning her self towards her son Augustine Hearken saith she what he saith as if we absent from Africa must needs be further from God She often cast her dying eyes towards this son who was her precious conquest and who in her sickness served her with most particular assistances affirming that Augustine had ever been a good son towards her and though he had cost her many sorrows he never had forgotten the respect due to a mother Verily there was a great sympathie between the soul of such a mother and such a son which was infinitely augmented after this happy conversion and therefore we must give to nature that which belongs to it The child Adeodatus seeing his Grand-mother in the last agony as possessing the affections of his father threw out pitifull out-cries in which he could not be pacified And S. Augustine who endeavoured to comfort them all upon so happy a death withheld his tears for a time by violence but needs must he in the end give passage to plaints so reasonable The Saint died as a Phenix among Palms and they having rendered the last duties to her pursued the way begun directly for Africk Behold how the conversion of S. Augustine passed and though many cooperated therein yet next unto God S. Ambrose hath ever been reputed the principal Agent and for that cause his great disciple said of him (b) (b) (b) Aug. contra Julianum Pelagianum l. 1. c. 6. Excellens Dei dispensator quâ—m veneror ut patrem in Christo enim Jesu per Evangelium ipse me genuit eo Christi ministerio lavacrum Regenerationis accepi Ambrose is the excellent steward of the great father of the family whom I reverence as my true father for he hath begotten me in Jesus Christ by the virtue of the Gospel and God hath been pleased to make use of his service to regenerate me by Baptism Whilest stars and elements shall continue it will be an immortal glory to the Bishop Ambrose to have given the Church a S. Augustine of whom Volusianus spake one word worth a thousand (c) (c) (c) Volusian Epist 2. Vir est totius gloriae capax Augustinus In aliis sacerdotibus absque detrimento cultus divini toleratur inscitia at cum ad Antistitem Augustinum venitur Legi deest quicquid ab eo contigerit ignorari Augustine is a man capable of all the glorie of the world There is much difference between him and other Bishops The ignorance of one Church-man alone prejudiceth not Religion but when we come to Bishop Augustine if he be ignorant of any thing it is not he but the law which is defective because this man is as knowing as the law it self The eleventh SECTION The affairs of S. Ambrose with the Empeperours Valentinian the father and Gratian the son LEt us leave the particulars of the life of S. Ambrose to pursue our principal design which is to represent it in the great and couragious actions he enterprized with the Monarchs of the world Let us not behold this Eagle beating his wings in the lower region of the ayr but consider him among lightenings tempests and whirl-winds how he plays with thunder-claps and ever hath his eye where the day breaketh The state of Christianitie stood then in need of a The state of Christendom brave Prelate to establish it in the Court of Great-ones The memory of Jâ—lian the Apostata who endeavoured with all his power to restore Idols was yet very fresh it being not above ten years past since he died and yet lived in the minds of many Pagans of eminent quality who had strong desires to pursue his purpose On the other side the Arians who saw themselves so mightily supported by the Emperour Constans made a great party and incessantly embroyled the affairs of Religion Jovinian a most Catholick Emperour who succeeded Julian passed away as a lightening in a reign of seven moneths After him Valentinian swayed the Empire who had in truth good relishes of Religion but withal a warlick spirit and who to entertain himself in so great a diversitie of humours and sects whereon he saw this Empire to be built much propended to petty accommodations which for some time appeased the evil but took not away the root He made associate of the Empire his brother Valens who being a very good Catholick in the beginning of his reign suffered himself to be deceived by an Arian woman and did afterward exercise black cruelties against the faithfull till such time as defeated by the Goths and wounded in an encounter he was burnt alive by his enemies in a shepherds cottage whereunto he was retired so rendering up his soul in the bloud and flames where with he had filled the Church of God The association of this wicked brother caused much disorder in the affairs of Christendom and often slackened the good resolutions of Valentinian by coldness and
young-ones upon the nest All which the Empress Justina could do was speedily to save her self with her sons and daughters to set sayl on the sea and pass to Thessalonica a Citie of Greece much renowned were it but in S. Pauls Epistles Maximus finding no resistance flowed like a torrent over the fair fields of Italie and made furious havock though to take away the blemish of the bloud of the Emperour Gratian and to gain the reputation of a good Prince he shewed in the end some moderation It is verily a miracle of God that he having been treated with by S. Ambrose with so much liberty as we have said before holding still the bloudy sword in the ruins of Italie in a time when he might have done any thing which his passion dictated he so bridled himself that he not onely abstained from wronging the holy Prelate but for his sake used the whole Territory of Milan with the more humanity It seemed the Citie of Milan under the influences of its Pastour had the virtue of those sacred forrests which tamed wolves It tied up the throat of a ravenous wolf and made him court his prey Yet though she were without peril she was not void of fear seeing so many armed troups round about her and smelling the smoak of those fires which wasted her neighbours Then was the time when the admirable Bishop acted things likewise worthy of his person For all the Citizens wavering and almost ready to leave the Citie desolate to save their lives he by his eloquence and authority held them back so well that he seemed to have enchained them This scourge saith he proceedeth Ambros serm 99. Prudence and Charity of S. Ambrose from our disorders let us cease to sin and God will give over to afflict us It is a folly to flie from your countrey If you desire to be safe flie from your sins The arms of Maximus will have no power over bulwarks of sanctity Besides as it is said he is bad who is good for none but himself the charitable Prelate not content to consolate and confirm his own but seeing that all Italie was filled with extream miseries not onely spent all the means which he had to comfort them but employed therein the very gold and silver vessels of the Church for which cause the Arians sought occasion to calumniate him disposing themselves to condemn virtues since they could find no vice to lay hold on The holy man answered that which he afterward couched in his offices It is the effect of a most ardent Offic. lib. 1. cap. 18. charity to compassionate the miseries of our neighbours and to aid them according to our power yea above our power I rather choose herein to be accused of prodigality than inhumanity there is no fault more pardonable than that of bounty It is a strange thing to find men so cruel as to be troubled when they see a man redeemed from death an honest woman delivered from the violence of Barbarians which is worse than death or poor forsaken infants drawn from the contagion of Idols which they are forced to adore with menaces of death Let our enemies murmure as long as they please but I more affect to keep souls for God than to treasure up gold Whilest all this passed in Italie Theodosius came to Enterview of Theodosius Justina visit Justina and her children at Thessalonica who failed not to present all their complaints and solicite him to undertake the war against Maximus But he therein at first shewed himself very cold insomuch that not to disguise the truth partly touched in Zosimus although Theodosius was a very great Captain as one who arrived to the Empire by his own merit notwithstanding seeing his fortune now at the height he was pleased to tast the repose and delights of the Court under the shadow of his own palms and not contest again with any man fearing the hazard of wars and the slippery foot of felicitie Moreover Maximus who defied the force of all the world played the fawning dog before him and sent express Embassadours to draw him to some agreement This so wrought that when the offended Empress sounded an alarm Theodosius endeavoured to pacifie her with fair promises and good hopes saying Nothing must be precipitated that Maximus would become dutifull that it was better to give him some bone to gnaw on peaceably than enkindle a war which would never be extinguished but with rivers of humane bloud But the Ladie infinitely vexed pursued this affair with all extremity and was much displeased to see that he who held all his advancement from her husband her self and her children shewed some remisness in so urgent a necessity She bethought her self of an excellent stratagem which was to enflame the war with the fire of love The Emperour Theodosius had lost his wife Placilla and was much enclined to a second marriage Justina who heretofore had enjoyed the short tyranny of beauty making two Emperours Maxentius and Valentinian the Elder tributary thereunto was no longer in season to afford that which might very easily win Theodosius but she had a daughter named Galla then in the flower of her age and a perfect image of the mother she determined to pierce this man by the arrow of the eye of this Princess which was most easily done for she took her along with her to dissolve this heart of ice and casting her self at his feet humbly besought him by the service he heretofore had vowed to the house of great Valentinian by the ruin of her orphans and by the bloud of poor deceased Gratian whom he had associated in Empire to take the matter in hand In the same proportion as she uttered those words with great fervour the daughter composed her self to weep with a good grace and even as tears in such persons have a strong spur in them Theodosius beholding her felt the wound of Turnus when he beheld Lavinia in the like case He quickly took the Empress and her daughter up promising all assistance and from that time plainly discovering that he was powerfully touched He also failed not in few days to require Galla in marriage which the mother promised him as soon as she had irrevocably engaged him in the war she pretended The marriage was hastily enough solemnized and from the festival hall they passed into the field of Mars Maximus who saw Theodosius entertained his Embassadours with words not giving them any absolute answer much doubted the affair and bent his whole force upon defence He did all which humane prudence may that hath not the eyes of God He set his Goodman the furtherer of all his treacheries to sea commanding him to guard the Archi-pelagus with a great fleet On the other part he gave commission to his brother Marcellinus to keep passage of the Alps with a strong Army He himself with the most resolved troups descended into Sclavonia to prevent his enemy Theodosius advertised of all
this after he had most particularly invoked the assistance of the God of hosts he put himself on the way to cast the lot of the worlds Empire Never was there a more prosperous war It seemed the Angels of Heaven led the Emperour by the hand and that the bloud of Gratian so traiterously shed raised Furies in the Camp of Maximus The encounter of the two Armies was at Sissia where those of the contrary party accounted themselves strong having the river for bulwark which separated them from approches terrible to their treachery But the brave souldiers of Theodosius nothing amazed although already much wearied and all dusty with the long journey they had taken laying hold of occasion by the forelock speedily passed the river and furiously charged the enemy These wicked men were so astonished to see themselves surprized by such an action of courage that so soon as they had taken a view of them they turned their backs Maximus hardy for a black Overthrow of Maximus mischief and remiss in a field of battel shamefully abandoned his Army instantly the earth was covered with bodies the river filled with bloud and good success reserved a part to the clemency of the victour Theodosius pursued his fortune and grapling with Marcellinus who was no abler man than his brother defeated him returning now very fresh from the victory he bare away in the first battel And as at the same time he had notice that Maximus was retired into Aquileia he who desired to cut away the root of war went thither with his army to besiege it The justice of God fought powerfully against this Cain and the time was come in which with his bloud he must wash the spots of his crime God who in punishments holdeth some conformity with the sin would that as this miserable creature had stirred the military men against his Prince he should be betrayed by the same souldiers in whom he had all his hopes reposed It is a strange thing that these people abhorring the wickedness of this man took seized and shamefully despoiled him of the very habiliments and marks of Emperour which he had arrogated to himself then tying and binding him like a Galley-slave they presented him to Theodosius It was the greatest extremity of unhappiness which might befal him to say that in stead of measuring with his dead body the place he should have defended living with his sword in hand he was used as a King disarrayed to let him be seen by all the world as a spectacle of infamy Theodosius beholding him so humbled had some pitie of him and reproching him with his treachery demanded who caused him to enterprize this tragedy He being a coward and a flatterer answered in so humble terms that he discovered to have had this belief that his design no whit displeased his Majesty in other things excusing himself with great submission and making it appear he was a true lover of life He never had so good an opinion of his wickedness as to hope for an ordinary death yet seeing the Emperour changed colour and spake to him in a sweeter tone he was in some hope to obtain life when the enraged souldiers haled him and tore him in pieces His death Inter innumeras manus fertur ad mortem Pacatus or as others have written delivered him to the hangman who cut off his head At the same time Theodosius dispatched Count Arbogastus to seize on his son who was a young child as yet bred under the wing of his mother whom Maximus caused to be called the Victorius and had already declared him Caesar when suddenly he was taken and massacred to accompany his father The Good man his Admiral understanding the general discomfiture of affairs voluntarily drowned himself preventing the hand of a hangman which would not have failed him but all the water in the sea was not sufficient to wash away the stain of his Masters bloud from his soul since the eternal flames never can free it Behold the issue of Maximus after the rapine of four or five years Behold to what the designs of the wicked tend who under pretext of Religion seek the advancement of their temporal affairs Behold to what hypocrisies and goodly humane policies which make use of God as a mask for their wickedness are finally reduced Behold a stroke of thunder which hath left nothing on earth behind it but noise and stench O bestial and bewitched men who having so good lessons of the justice of God written with the bloud and sweat of so many miserable Sacrifices pursue still the ranks to be companions of the like misfortune S. Ambrose is much glorified for treating with this man who deceived so many others as with one excommunicate unwilling to be so much as saluted by him who vowed so many services at his feet and freely fore-telling the misery should befall him if he appeased not the celestial vengeance with a sincere repentance The seventeenth SECTION The affliction of S. Ambrose upon the death of Valentinian WHosoever hath said that Scepters are made of glass Crowns of perfumed thorns and the ways of great men are all of ice bordered with precipices hath said no less than truth It is verily a thing most strange that the golden seelings of Palaces tremble over crowned heads and that in the heat of feasts the hand of Heaven visibly on the walls figureth the sentence of their death In the mean time we desperately love the vanities of the world nothing is thought on but to set our foot on mens throats that we may the more eminently be seen to draw the bloud of this universe out of its veins to cement up the ruins and tie our selves to a miserable world which daily falleth apieces even in our own hands The poor Valentinian was restored to the Throne by Theodosius after the death of Maximus and had onely past three or four years in peacefull tranquilitie disposing himself to good according to the latitude of his own heart and giving way to be wholly governed by the Counsels of Saint Ambrose whom he heretofore had persecuted When behold him taken away at the age of one and twenty years by a horrible treason which did as it were mingle his bloud with that of his brother Gratian. The good Prince passed into France being then at Vienna near Lions accompanied by the Count Arbogastus Arbogastus a French-man by Nation who had lived till then in singular good reputation for he was a man of worth having a well-composed body a quick spirit a generous behaviour and much practice in the exercise of arms which had so dignified him that he held the prime place in the Empire to the which he had rendered good services He was very well beloved by the souldiers for besides his excellent parts he bare an irreconciliable hatred to avarice and appeared so little curious to enrich himself that being so great a Captain as he was he would be Master of no
Foix General of the Army come daily to visit him and that these men in a Citie of conquest spake of paying for all they had taken The good hostess waited on him as on an Angel of Heaven so much honour and virtue saw she to shine in him When he was cured and that he spake of dislodging to be present at the battel of Ravenna where his General passionately desired him the Ladie who accounted her self as his prisoner with her husband and children considering if her guest would rigorously use her he might draw ten or twelve thousand crowns from her resolved to give him a present and coming into his chamber with a servant of hers who carried a little steel box she presently threw her self at his feet but he readily raised her up again not suffering she should speak one word till she was seated by him at which time she made this speech well observed by the Secretary of Bayard SIR The favour which God hath afforded me in the taking of this Citie by sending you into this house which is wholly yours hath not been less than the preservation of the life of my husband mine own and that of my daughters with their honour which they ought to esteem more precious than life Besides your people have lived with such temper here in my house that being not able to complain of any injurie I have cause for ever to commend their modestie Sir I am not so ignorant of the condition whereunto the misery of war hath reduced us as not very well to see that my husband my self and children are your prisoners and that all the goods in the house are at your discretion to be disposed of to your liking But knowing the nobleness of your heart which is incomparable I am come most humbly to beseech you to take pitie on your poor captives and to use us according to your accustomed liberalitie Behold a poor present which we offer intreating it may be acceptable In speaking this she took the box out of the hands of her servant and opened it before the good Captain who saw it to be full of fair Duckets at which he smiled replying Madame how many Duckets are there in this box The poor woman who thought this smile proceeded from some discontentment answered There are in it but two thousand five hundred but if you be not satisfied we will find more Nay Madame replied the Captain I can well assure you that should you give me a hundred thousand crowns you could not do me so much good as you have done in the courteous entertainment I have here received In what place soever I shall remain while God gives me life you shall have a Gentleman ready at your command As for your Duckets I will none I render you thanks take them up again I have ever more esteemed people of honour than crowns and think not but I go as well satisfied from you as if this Citie were at your disposition and you thereof have made me a present She again prostrateth her self on her knees and the Captain lifting her up answered No Sir I should think my self for ever the most unhappy woman of the world if you accept not this present which is nothing in comparison of the infinite obligations I ow to your worth Well saith he since you give it with so good a will I accept it for your sake but cause your daughters to come hither for I will bid them fare well These good creatures had charitably assisted him during the time of his infirmity in the presence of their mother many times touching the lute whereon they played very well for his recreation They fell at his feet and the eldest made a short speech in her mother language to thank him for the preservation of their honour The Captain heard it as it were weeping for the sweetness and humility he therein observed and then said Ladies you do that which I ought to do which is to give you thanks for the many good helps you have afforded me for which I find my self infinitely obliged You know men of my profession are not readily furnished with handsom tokens to present fair maidens withal But behold your good Ladie mother hath given me two thousand five hundred Duckets take each of you a thousand as my gift for so I am resolved it shall be Then turning to his Hostess Madame saith he I will take these five hundred to my self to distribute them among poor religious women who have been ransacked and I recommend the charge thereof to you for you better than any other understand where there is necessity At this time the Ladie touched to the quick with so great a piety spake these words couched in the History in ancient language O flower of Chivalrie to whom no other may be compared our blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who for sinners suffered death and passion both here in this world and in the other reward you The Gentleman of the house who at that time heard the courtesie of his guest came to thank him with bended knee making offer of his person and his whole estate The young Gentlewomen who were skilfull at the needle made him a present of two bracelets woven with threed of gold and silver and a purse of crimson sattyn very richly wrought He very graciously receiving them Behold saith he I have more than ten thousand crowns and instantly he put the bracelets on his arms and the purse in his pocket assuring them whilest these gifts lasted he would wear them for their sakes Thereupon he mounted on horsback accompanied with his true friend the Lord D'Aubigny and about two or three thousand men the Lady of the house the daughters and the whole family as bitterly deploring his departure as if they should have been put to the sword I demād of you if the stars were to descend from heavē whether they might find more love and respect Where be these silly fencers who are as commets of fire and bloud to bear murder pestilence and poison into houses who make the pillars of buildings to tremble with the force of blasphemies who load whole families with injuries wounds and scars who pill and ravage like Harpies fed with humane bloud Should they do nothing else all their life but heap up mountains of gold and silver they could not arrive to the least part of the contentment which this good Captain enjoyed who sought no other recompence from his great actions but the satisfaction of his conscience and the glory to have done well Thus is it O Noblemen that hearts are gained to make a crown of immortality Thus is Heaven obliged and earth tributary to virtues The seventh SECTION Against sensual love and impuritie I May well say that among all the qualities of a Nobleman there is not any hath a sweeter odour than temperance which represseth the voluptuous pleasures of the body Let no man flatter you in the passion of love as if
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
of pretious things received from the love of subjects The river which glideth along said he though it do no other spoil still worketh out its channel so companies of souldiers which pass through towns and villages though military discipline be there observed fail not to bring thither with them much damage and therefore it was his pleasure the places should be recompenced which had been overcharged For the same reason he appointed fifteen hundred crowns of alms to be delivered to the venerable Bishop S Severinus to distribute them among the peasants which he knew had been vexed with the harbouring of certain warlick companies Verily as it is no smal temerity in particular men who have neither any charge nor knowledge of affairs to argue great men upon tributes and the husbanding of their treasures so would it be a neglect to conceal from them upon occasions the moderation they ought to use herein since it is so exactly recommended by the law of God and published in all histories If a stranger raised from the bottom of barbarism shewed himself so Religious in matters of subsidies towards men whom his arms had newly made tributary Princes and Lords of Christendom have good cause to consider what they ow to a people which is given them as to Fathers and Protectours of the publick There is no doubt but the exorbitancies committed in such like affairs are most important charges of conscience which much clog a soul in the agonies of death and in the dreadful judgement of Almighty God There is also to be seen an Edict of the same Prince where having understood that in the payment of taxes the rich made the heaviest part of the burden to fall upon the shoulders of the meaner and that the undertakers of this business ill behaved themselves therein he detesteth all these abuses as injuries done to his own person and gave full liberty to those who had been wronged to complain to him that such order might be taken as he should judge reasonable This manner of proceeding made him so beloved that other Princes having passed away like dreams of one night he reigned thirty years in a most supereminent degree of respect which those even of the religion contrary to his own bare him The third Maxim given him by Boetius was to make himself most exact in the exercise of justice because it is the basis of thrones and the spirit which animateth all government and he so deeply impressed this in his heart that the desire he had to render every one what was his was changed in him to a most ardent thirst and a continual hunger He selected out the most untainted and uncorrupted Governours he could find and spake these words unto them related by Cassiodorus Use the matters so that Judges of Provinces may be very careful in the observation of laws that Tribunals spare not to thunder out sentences against ill manners that theeves may fear the gates of your Palaces that the a dulterer may tremble before a chast Officer that the forger may feel horrour at the voice of a Herauld and that all crimes may be banished from our territory That no man oppress the poor that persecutours be apprehended and pursued as disturbers of publick repose You shall make a general peace when you have beaten down the authours of mischiefs which are committed Let Cassioder ra◠l. 22 Mihipropria cura dilapsi est postquam generalem coepicogitare custodiam Opto mei◠benè sed quod possit esse commune Captains contain their souldiers in all manner of discipline in such sort that the labourer the merchant the sailer and the artificer may understand arms are not made but for their defence I will not likewise that my nearest allies be pardoned in any case of justice since I have taken the Common-wealth into my charge I have despoiled my self of my proper interests I wish well to mine but in the generality Pursuing the maxims I will recount an admirable passage which he used among others to make his justice remarkable A Roman Lady left widow by Manuscriptum P. Sirmundi Joannes Magnus Laurentius Venetus the death of her husband had lost a son born of this marriage who was secretly stoln from her and in servitude bred up in another Province This child grown up a young man received notice from a good hand that he was of free extraction and son of a Ladie whose name was given him her aboad and all circumstances which caused him to undertake a voyage to Rome with intention to make himself known unto her He came directly to his mother who was much perplexed with certain love-affairs having betrothed her self to a man who often promised her marriage yet never accomplished it This lover then absent and detained by urgent affairs very far from Rome the Ladie had the space of about thirtie days free wherein she kept this young man in her house acknowledging him and particularly avowing him for her son throughly convinced by evident tokens so that then her charitie was so great towards him that she ceased not to weep for joy in the recovery of her loss The thirtie days expired the Lover returned and seeing this guest newly come to her house demandeth of the Lady what man he was and from whence he came She freely answered he was her son He whether moved by jealousie thinking this might be but a colour or that pretēding the marriage of the widow he would not have a charge of children plainly told her if she sent not away this found child from her lodging never should she have any share in his affection The unhappy creature surprized with love to serve his passion renounceth her own entrals and readily banisheth from her house this son over whom she had so many tears The young man seeing himself as between the hammer and the anvil in so great a necessitie of his affairs hasteneth to require justice of the King who most willingly heard him and commanded the Lady should be brought before him to be confronted by him She stoutly denied all the pretensions of this young man saying He was an impostor and ungrateful who not contenting himself to have received the charities of a poor creature in her house needs would challenge the inheritance of children The son on the other side wept bitterly and gave assurance she had acknowledged him for her own very lively represēting all the proofs which passion and interest put into his mouth The King sounded all passages to enter into the heart of the Lady and asked her whether she were not resolved to marry again She answered if she met with a man suitable to her she would do what God should inspire her The King replied Behold him here since you have lodged this guest thirtie days in your house and have acknowledged him so freely what is the cause why you may not marry him The Lady answered He had not any means which ever is necessary for houshold expence
of the bosom thereof as a man treacherous and put into the hands of the Guard to lead him to Pavia the place of his imprisonment He was not suffered to speak with his father-in-law Symmachus for all those who were honoured with his friendship are sequestred scarcely had he the means to give the last adieu to his wife Rusticiana who seeing her husband suddenly fallen from so eminent a dignitie into such disaster could not contain from saying unto him with scalding tears Syr is this then it which your innocencie hath deserved If the King be resolved to put you to death why suffereth he still a piece of your self to live which hath ever been so dear unto you I have courage enough to follow you either in exile imprisonment or death But Boetius replied again in few words that he might not any further increase her grief Madam the hour is not yet come trouble not your self to see me suffer for justice It is a title of honour which God hath reserved for his children The education which you have derived from your good father and the instructions you have received from me give me occasion to hope you will bear this accident with a Christian resolution My daughter it is not fit that our tears which fall from so much a higher place as we have been bred in greatness may shew any dejection in the estimation of men Support your self a little under your burthen and open your heart to the consolations of heaven since those of earth are mingled with so much acerbities Then turning to his children all dissolved into tears My children saith he God hereafter will become your father Make provision of great virtues which have ever been the inheritance of our house for all other blessings are but dust and wind This is the lesson which God giveth you in the change of my fortune Comfort your good mother by the dutie of faithfull obedience and live in hope Perhaps you shall see me again if it please God sooner than you imagine These words were arrows that pierced these faithfull hearts with most just resentments of nature which could not quickly end notwithstanding all the lenitives that might be applied The sixth SECTION The imprisonment of Boetius THe great changes of fortune which suddenly happen have this property in them that they strike our souls as waves not foreseen and give us the blow before we have leisure to understand our selves The poor Boetius seeing himself between four walls sequestered from the Citie which had served as a theater of glory for all his house taken away from the love of his own bereft of his library and all the most precious accommodations of life shut up as a victim destined for a bloudy sacrifice found himself in the beginning surprized with an over-whelming sadness as he hath left expressed in writing He bewailed with broken sighs his innocency unworthily handled he traced in his thoughts the marks of his former fortune he cast his eyes upon his forsaken family which seemed to him in the Lions throat he called into memory the unworthiness of his accusers who had been heard against him the ingratitude of the Senate that had condemned him for being faithfull unto them the cruelty with which this sentence was executed the wrack of his means the loss of his reputation and all the black horrours which a man declared criminal of treason figureth to himself In this abyss of disturbances he was displeased as Eâ—eu cur durs miseros a verteriâ— Ã â—e Et stentes oculis claudere saeâ—â— negas Lib. 1. Metr 1. it were with death which layeth hold on so many young men that desire nothing but to live and deigned not so much as to shut up his eyes which he perpetually moistened with his tears Hereupon we may see that the most couragious spirits in these accidents so strange and unexpected ever pay some tribute to the natural passions of men But likewise on the other side we shall observe the power which a well rectified judgement hath over it self when we behold it to dissipate all the troubles and agitations of the heart by the vivacity of reason and use of precepts of wisdom which he most exactly practised in this his captivity We have also the book of his Consolation composed in this prison which is verily in the judgement of learned men one of the most excellent pieces of work that may be framed on this subject where he introduceth Philosophie who visiting and awakening him from this dead sleep of sadness What Boetius saith she are you be then whom I have fed with my milk whom I have cherished with so good nutriments and bred up until you arrived to the strength of mans estate Verily I have given you arms which would strengthen you against all the strokes of fortune were it not that you have forsaken them Know you me no longer From whence proceedeth this silence Tell me is it out of shame or stupidity I had rather it were derived from a just bashfulness but as far as I can perceive you are become wholly senseless Will you say nothing to me Ah poor man he is not absolutely lost but so near as I can guess he hath a Lethargie a common disease with those who suffer themselves to be transported with illusions of the mind He hath forgot himself but he will recover when he shall know me Let us onely wipe his eyes surcharged with terrestrial humours and covered with a thick cloud of the world This done Boetius came to himself and framed an admirable Dialogue with this Queen of spirits to which I remit the Reader contenting my self to observe here the principal arguments which served him for his Consolation to the end we may learn with him in our afflictions to fix our resolution on the will of God and suck honey from the rock as the Scripture speaketh The first reason proposed to him by this Wisdom Lib. 1. pros 6. Maximus somes salutis vera de mundi gubernatione sententia descended from Heaven was to ask of him what opinion he had of the Providence of God and whether he thought the world moved by chance or were governed by reason God forbid saith Boetius that Iever come to this degree of folly as to think that all here below is casually done I know God ruleth in the world as in an house built by his own hands and that nothing happeneth in the affairs of men but either by his command or permission Thereupon Philosophie crieth out Just God! it is verily marvellous that a man who hath such an understanding of the Divine Providence can be sick of the disease wherewith I see you surprized My friend you entered into the world as into a list or circle whereof this Providence hath made the circuit with his own hands It is fit you Lib. 1. pros 1. alibi patiently suffer all that which happeneth to you within these limits as an ordinance
strong sally and willed him freely to answer one word upon which he would ground the whole proceeding to wit Whether he were not a Roman Catholick That is it Sir saith the Prince which I avow which I publish which I protest For verily it is a crime which maketh the Judges become pale and the offenders laugh The accusation whereof is a vow all great souls should profess and the pain is a felicitie which Martyrs have bought with their bloud I wish to die a hundred times if it might be done for the glorie of that goodly title so far is it too little with one mouth to confess the praises of God Command if you please that my bodie be hewed and cut in pieces for the profession of the Catholick faith and then I shall have as many mouthes as wounds to praise my Saviour and all those wounds shall be as gates of bloud to give passage to my soul to the place where it is expected by so good companie The father said thereupon he was become a fool and that no man hated life but he who had ill employed it The son replied The misuse had been in heresie of which he repented him And at that instant the Guard received commandment to re-convey him to prison where he was so comforted with the visitations of God that finding with much difficulty means to send a Letter to his dear Indegondis he wrote to her in this manner The sixteenth SECTION The Letter of Hermingildus to his dear wife Indegondis and his generous resolution MY holy Mistress from whom I have received the faith and true knowledge of God I write these lines unto you clothed with sackcloth and loaden with fetters in the bottom of a dark dungeon for the defence of that Religion which you have taught me If I did not know by experience the invincible force of your heart and the resolution you practise in affairs which concern the service of God I had concealed my estate from you that I might not contristrate objects sensible to nature But most dear wife you have a forehead too noble to blush at the disgrace of the Crucifix and a courage too well fortified to refuse taking part in the liveris of the Saviour of the world I protest upon mine honour ' I could never perswade my self there might be contentment to suffer that which I tolerate when your innocent mouth preached unto me the reward of suffering wherewith your bodie bad heretofore been gloriously covered But since my imprisonment I have felt consolations of God so tastfull that I cannot think it possible to relish in the world any other antipasts of Paradise You are not ignorant that my life and conversation which hath been so long time plunged in errour and vanitie deserved not these benefits but your most pure hands which you so often have lifted up before Altars for my salvation have obtained that for me which much transcended my merit and all my hopes The King my father hath been pleased to hear me and I have pleaded my cause in fetters with so great assistance from the Heavenly goodness that I justified my self in all charges objected against me and have put the matter into such a condition that I am no further accused as a thief and homicide but as a Catholick I speedily expect my sentence and do not think I am put into the state wherein I am to save my life but I undoubtedly believe this will be the last Letter you shall receive from my hand I earnestly beseech your loyal heart that as in this action which shall close up my days I intend to do nothing unworthie of you so on your part act nothing unworthie of me betraying the happiness of my death with tears which would be little honourable to the condition whereunto God hath called me I put into the hands of the Divine Providence both you and your little Hermingildus the onely pledge of our holy loves Be couragious my dearest love and after my death take the way of Constantinople to render your self at the Palace of the Emperour Tiberius who is a good Prince and most Catholick I recommend unto you my poor soul as for the bodie let that become of it which shall please my father If the alteration of times and affairs bring you back into Spain there to bold the rank you deserve my ashes will likewise rejoyce at the odour of your virtues I hope my death shall not be unprofitable and that God will make use of it for the good of the Kingdom You know how many times I have heard you say that you would have bought the salvation thereof with your bloud you have already in it employed one part it is my turn to perform the rest upon a scaffold For in what place soever you are I promise my self to be most particularly assisted by your holy prayers The good Princess received this Letter with the news of his death as we will presently tell you but in this space of time Râ—caredus the younger brother of Hermingildus extreamly afflicted that having been a mediatour of this counterfeit peace he saw it end in so deplorable a Tragedie hasteneth to cast himself at the feet of his father beseeching him with infinite abundance of tears and lamentations either to give him the stroke of death with his own hand or save the life of his brother The father replied He was a furious fellow and a traitour to his fortune and that be ought to suffer justice to be done which would give him a Crown That his brother well discovered himself an enemie to his father and the State since he would not for his sake renounce onely so much as a fantasie Religion that he was onely questioned upon this point and that if be could perswade him to reason he was readie to save his life Recaredus prepared himself strongly to gain him and asketh leave to go to the Prison which was allowed him The young Prince seeing his brother covered with sackcloth and bowed under fetters was so amazed at this spectacle that he stood a long time mute as a statue but in the end breaking silence with a deep sigh Ab brother saith he it is I who have betrayed you it is I who have covered you with this fatal sackcloth I who have bound and fettered you with these cruel chains made for ignominious slaves not for your innocencie Brother behold my poynard which I present you revenge your self upon my guiltie head I have been culpable enough in that I have produced from a good intention so bad effects Hermingildus beholding him with a peacefull eye answered Brother why do you afflict your self Fall well do I know your innocencie What innocencie replied the other if unadvisedly I be the cause of your death by my disasterous Embassage But good brother since you are reduced to this extremitie I beseech you forgo the name of Catholick or if that seem unworthie of your constancie dissemble for some time and
can any longer be a husband That she married him to live and to give life to others by love not to cut her own throat and her childrens through wickedness That a man who renounceth honour can no more pretend to nature To conclude that it is wealth which maketh men and that it was no dishonour to marrie a servant who is the favourite of a mightie King We came not into the world to be masters of fortune but to yield to its Empire What content can there be to walk up and down Towns and Cities like a beggers following a husband the object of the worlds laughter and reserve all is left of his miserable bodie to swords and flames So much were her ears beaten with such like discourses She yieldoth that through a most unspeakable cowardice she forsook her religion and husband to marry this servant who seemed noble enough since he had the golden fleece The King seeing she had yielded added for full accomplishment of inhumanity that Suenes should remain in his own house as a slave to his wise and servant Behold here the extremity of all worldly miseries Yield thy self up said one poor Suenes Admirable constancie sâ—est thou not that of so many palaces and such treasures there is not left for thee so much as a house covered with stubble of so many children none to call thee father Is it not time to forsake thy faith since she who slept by thy sides hath left thee Wert thou amongst the chains of Lestrigons and Tartars thou mightst breath a more wholesom air But to behold thy self a slave to thy servant in thine own house and to have perpetually before thee the infidelity of a disloyal wife for object how is it possible but to overthrow the most stable constancie in the world But Suenes assembling together all the forces of his heart said O faithless and perfidious discourses All is taken from me but they cannot take away Jesus Christ I follow him in libertie and bondage in prosperitie and adversitie in life and death whilest one small threed of life remains in my heart one silly spark of breath upon my lips I will combat against the gates of hell and all the laws of impietie O the power of the spirit of God! O divorce from flesh and bloud O spectacle worthy to be beheld by angels over the gates of heaven with admiration A man to die in so many indignities such punishments such deaths without dying without complaint growing wan or speaking any one word unworthy the lips of a Christian What is it to be a puissant but to brave all the powers of earth and hell What is it to be rich but to place all your treasures in the heart of God II. MAXIM Of the Essence of GOD. THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That it is fit to obey Nature all other Divinitie being most unknown That nothing is so known as God although not acknowledged through our ingratitude ACynick Philospher heretofore sought for a man with a candle at noon-day and now adays the wicked seek God in a clear and full light and when they have found him become blind by their own lights in that they see not him who is not to be known but in the quality of a Judge punishing their offences Out alas what is man without God Tertullian speaking of the countrey about the Euxine Tertul. advers Marcion l. 1. cap. 1. Excellent description of Tertullian sea saith It is a Region separated from the commerce of men as well by the providence of Nature as the reproach of its bruitishness It is peopled by most savage Nations which inhabit if we may say so a wandering cart that serves them for house a habitation which though perpetually in motion is less inconstant than their manners Their abode is uncertain their life wholly savage their luxury promiscuous and indifferent for all sorts of objects They make no scruple to serve in the flesh of their parents in a feast with beeff and mutton and think the death of such cursed who die when they no longer are fit to be eaten Sex softeneth not women in this countrey for they sear off their dugs being young and make a distaff serve for a launce being otherwise so fervent in battel that they had much rather fight than marry The Climate and elements are as rigid as their manners The day is never bright the sun never smileth nor is the skie any thing but a continued cloud The whole year is a winter and the wind ever North. Ice robs them of rivers and if they have liquor the fire affords it The mountains are still covered with ice and snow All is cold in this countrey but vice which ever burneth Yet I must tell you saith he there is not any thing amongst these wonders more prodigious than wicked Marcion For where shall we find a monster more odious or a man in nature more senseless than him who did not acknowledge the Divinitie and will have the causes and sublime reasons given him of the Essence of God which never were nor shall be for then there would be somewhat above God The Emperour Tiberius having conceived some Humano arbitratu divinitâ—s pensitatur nisi homini Deus placuerit Deus non erit Tertul. Apol. c. 5. Nec quicquam refert Deum neges an asseras Arno. l. 1. good opinion of Divinitie in the Person of our Saviour was willing to rank him in the number of other gods but it was not executed because it must pass by decree of the Senate and God who is all that which he is by nature regarded not the judgement of men to authorize his Divinitie You were as good deny God saith Arnobius as to make the truth of his Essence depend upon the weakness of humane reason 1. I ask of you whether there be any thing in the world more present with us and more familiarly known than our self our substance our life our being It seemeth say you it is the most certain of our knowledges Now if I shew the science we have of God is better known to us than our selves God is far stronger more undoubted and invincible than the knowledge we have of our self I necessarily convince the ignorance of the Divinitie is stupid ungratefull and punishable with all the rigours of eternal justice I pray tell me what so certain knowledge can you have of your self Have you it by the knowledge of History which is a reasonable knowledge by revelation which is extraordinary by prophesie which is mysterious by faith which is infallible I do not see you alledge any of these for confirmation of your own being You have no proofs say you more certain than your senses which you know notwithstanding to be bruitish deceivers and deceived in so many objects You hear your self speak you smell your self you touch your self and for that you affirm you are although you have not any knowledge of the better part of
inexplicable excellencies Yet say we all we can of him we affirm he never is so well esteemed as when we account him wholy incomprehensible He not onely environeth the world with his presence but beareth it within his arms and bosom He formeth it in his Idae's he accommodateth it in his dispose he penetrateth it by his virtue maintaineth it by his wisdom and establisheth it by his power He is without yet not excluded from it he is within yet not contained he is under yet not drenched he is above yet not advanced He confirmeth scepters and crowns he raiseth Cities Provinces and Monarchies he erecteth States he circumscribeth laws he directeth virtues he enlighteneth stars in heaven he engraveth the beauty of flowers in the meadows and travelleth throughout all nature without taking pains ever present yet always unseen ever in action yet always in repose ever searching yet not needing any thing ever loving yet never burning ever amassing yet never penurious ever giving yet never losing any thing drawning to himself yet hath nothing without himself Good God what say we when we say GOD. Yet thou ô sinner thou yet wilt lift an armed haÌ„d against thy Lord against a God Omnipotent who notwithstanding will not appear potent towards thee but to do thee good Blind and insensible fugitive from the sovereign Essence in the region of nothing and whither wilt thou go not to find the reproches of thy crimes A caytife pleasure a wreched gain a satisfaction of vengeance dissolute company take God out of thy heart to resign thee as a prey to thy passions Thou wilt adore the favours of men that are like the rain-bow in heaven and which having made ostent of so many splendours and varied paintings leave us nothing but water and morter Thou wilt build fortunes upon a foundation of quick-silver upon a frail reed upon a man who beareth all the figures of vanity Thou wilt seek for Paradise in the Capitol as said Tertullian Thou wouldst find sovereign Coelum in Capitolio quaeriin aversi ab ipso Deo coelo Apol. c. 4. Isaiah 30. 3. Decalvare tondere super filios deliciarum tuarum Mich. 1. beatitude in the Courts of great men and perpetually estranged from heaven the living God thou graspest nothing but Chimaeraes of honour and feeble images of content The strength of Pharao saith the Prophet Isaiah shall be thy confusion and the confidence thou hast in the shadow of Aegypt shall be the reproach of thy countenance Shouldst thou not now forsake all thy superfluities Oughst not thou to wear sack-cloth and carry ashes of penance having buried the children of thy delights loves and vanities which so far transported thee into the forgetfulness of eternal blessings If God be the Essence of essences why dost thou please thy self with making so many nothings by committing sins without number infidelities without consideration and ingratitudes void of shame If God be a Spirit why holdest thou thy self perpetually fixed to carnal pleasures which flatter to strangle thee Look on worldly ambitions and thou shalt see them bordered with precipices Reflect on delights and thou shalt find them strewed all-over with thoms View the ways of sin and thou there shalt observe nothing but remorse Ought not we at this time to resolve upon consideration of the greatness and goodness of God to bear a reverence and an eternal love towards him a reverence by faithfully keeping all his laws and commandments and holding his will more dear than the apple of our eyes a love by dayly offering our selves if it were possible a hundred times for him in as many Sacrifices as our soul hath thoughts and body members My God make me from henceforth to enter into the bottom of my soul and to silence all these troublesom creatures all these inordinate passions which so often bereave me of the honour of thy sight Appease their storms and surges that I may silently speak to thee and enter with thee into the great abyss of delights which thou reservest for souls the most purified that there I may be rapt in contemplation of thy bounties may be absorpt in consideration of thy beauties and may wholly dive into thy heart by sacred ardours of thy love The third EXAMPLE upon the third Drawn from Josephus 18. book of his antiquities and S. Luke Act. 11. MAXIM Of the weakness of man and inconstancy of humane things AGRIPPA WHo saith Man says all vanity He is a wretched Arist creature affirms that Ancient whom fortune tosseth as a tennis-ball whom misery and envy poize in a ballance whom time despoyleth death takes away and of whom inconstancy makes Bernard l. 2. de consider c. 9. Fragili corpore mente sterili cui infirmites corporis fatuitus cordis cumulatur traduce sortis a continual metamorphosis He entereth into the world by the gate of sin with a body as frail as his spirit is barren weakness of mortal members and stupidity of heart are given him as a portion of his birth and a necessity of his condition If you as yet be not perswaded of this verity and more esteem to confide in the world and to frame to your self an arm of straw than to seek support from him who sustaineth with three fingers of his power the whole globe of the earth King Agrippa of whom S. Luke maketh mention in the Acts of Apostles and Josephus in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities is able to give you a fair lesson of it You have heard in the History of Herod how this Agrippa grand-child of Herod unnatural Prince put his two sons to death lawful children by the chast Mariamne This Agrippa of whom I speak son of the youngest named Aristobulus came into the world with great priviledges of nature dexterous courteous amiable pleasing born to court and entertain the favour of the world Judaea was a Theater too streight for his great Spirit he burnt with impatience to be seen in the Court of Tyberius Caesar where his mother was already become gracious with one of the greatest Princesses of the Empire Antonia mother of the great Germanicus and the Emperour Claudius It was no hard matter for him to satisfie his desire For behold him presently at the Court of Rome where he closely adhered to the person of Drusus the Emperour Tyberius his son honoured by all the world as successour of the Empire Agrippa â—o well knew how to gain this great Amities of great men barren Prince by the sweet charms of his conversation that he could not live without him but as Tyberius was a frugal man suffering his son not to fall into any excess so Drusus was full of free affection towards his favourite the effects whereof were yet very slender In such sort that Agrippa entertaining correspondence with the son of so great an Emperor more pleasing than profitable for him dayly consumed as the butter-flys in the flames of this greatness so profuse was his
bodies of his servants and Nilus overflowing with the bloud of his French himself surprized and taken by his enemies and led into the Sultan's Tent among clamours out-cries infernal countenāces of Sarazens and all the images of death able to overwhelm a soul of the strongest temper notwithstanding though his heart were steeped as a sponge in a sea of dolours and compassion ever making use of reason he entered into the Barbarians pavillion not at all changing colour and as if he had returned from his walk in the garden of his palace he asked his pages for his book of prayers and taking it disposed himself to pay the usual tribute of his oraisons in a profound tranquility of mind which I conceive to be very rare since there needeth oftentimes but the loss of a trifle to stay devotion which is not yet arrived to the point of solidity But if you therein seek for a perfect humility consider what passed in the Councel of Lyons and see how he laboured to depose the Emperour Frederick the second who was ruined in reputation in the opinion of almost all the world Other Princes who have not always their hands so innocent but that they readily invade the goods of others when some religious pretext is offered them would have been very ambitious to be enstalled in his place whom they meant to despoil but the universal consent of great men judged this throne could not be worthily supplied but by this great King yet he notwithstanding declined it as a wise Pilot would a rock and thought better to choose the extremity of all evils of the world among Sarazens than to mount to the Empire by such ways But that which is most considerable in the matter we handle may be observed in his valour never weakened by his great devotion for he was one of the most couragious Princes in a cold temperature with reason that was then under Heaven It was courage which taking him from the sweet tranquility of a life wholly religious caused him to leave a Kingdom replenished with peace contentment and delights to go to a land of Sarazens live in all incommodities imaginable to nature It was courage which caused him so many times to expose his royal and valiant person not onely to the toyls of a desperate voyage but to the strokes also of most hazardous battels witness when at his arrival in Aegypt the coast being all beset with Sarazens very resolute to hinder the passage of his ship he threw himself first of all from the ship into the water where he was plunged up to the shoulders with his target about his neck and sword in hand as a true spectacle of magnanimity to all his Army which encouraged by the example came to the land as the King had commanded The greatness of the sun is measured by a small shadow on the earth and there many times needeth but very few words to illustrate a great virtue So many excellent pens have written upon his brave acts and made them so well known to all the world that it were to bring light into day to go about to mention them If some say He is to be a pattern for Kings and Divers Ladies excellent in piety Lords Ladies who should manure devotion as an inheritance for their sex shall never want great lights and worthy instructions if they will consider those who being more near to our Age should make the more impression upon their manners If we speak of the endeavour of prayer look upon See the reverend Father Hilarion of Costa Barbe Zopoly Queen of Polonia who continuing days and nights in prayer all covered over with fackcloth affixed good success to the standards of the King her husband and for him gained battels If account be made of the chastity of maidens and sequestration from worldly conversation reflect on Beatrix du Bois who being one of the most beautifull creatures of her time and seeing the innocent flames of her eyes too easily enkindled love in the hearts of those who had access to her put her self upon so rough a pennance for others sin that she was fourty years without being seen or to have seen any man in the face If you speak of modesty let wanton Courtiers behold Antonietta de Bourbon wife of Claudius first Duke of Guize who after the death of her husband was clothed in serge and went continually amongst the poor with her waiting-women to teach them the practise of alms If charity be magnified toward persons necessitous cast your eye upon Anne of Austria Queen of Poland who accustoming to serve twelve poor people every munday the very same day she yielded her soul up to God when she had scarcely so much left as a little breath on her lips asked she might once more wait on the poor at dinner and that death might close her eyes when she opened her hands to charity If the instruction of children be much esteemed fix your thoughts upon Anne of Hungarie mother of eleven daughters and admire her in the midst of her little company as the old Hen-Nightingale giving tunes and proportions of the harmony of all virtues and so breeding these young creatures that they all prospered well with excellent and worthy parts If you delight in the government of a family which is one of the chiefest praises of married women take direction from Margaret Dutchess of Alencon who governed the whole family with so much wisdom that order which is the beauty of the world found there all its measures and that if the domestick servants of other Lords and Ladies are known by their liveries she caused hers to be known by their modestie If you desire austerities look with reverence on the hair-cloth and nails of Charlotte de Bourbon the Kings great Grand-mother and behold with admiration Frances de Batarnay who during a widow-hood of three-score years was twenty of them without ever coming into bed If you praise chast widows who can pass without an Elogie Elizabeth widow of Charls the ninth who in a flourishing youth being much courted by all the great Monarchs of the world answered That having been the widow of a Charls of France she had concluded all worldly magnificencies and that nothing more remained for her but to have Jesus Christ for a spouse And verily she spent the rest of her days in a conversation wholly Angelical amongst religious women whom she had founded If constancy in the death of kinred have place let the lesson be hearkened unto which Magdalen wife of Gaston de Foix gave who having seen the death of a husband whom she loved above all the world and afterward of an onely son remaining the total support of her house made her courage to be as much admired among the dead as her love was esteemed among the living And what stile would not be tired in so great a multitude of holy and solid devotions and who can but think the choise becometh hard by
shamefull they always carry along with them the confusion misery and ruin of those who embrace them Who diggeth a pit saith the Wise-man Qui sodit foveam incidet in eam qui voloit lapidem revolvetur â—d eum Prov. 26. 27. shall fall into it and the stone shall return back on his head who threw it The reputation of honesty is so necessary in the mannage of affairs that such as lost integrity of manners sought to retain the bark to cherish a renown amongst men swoln up with smoke and imposture A deceiver fears nothing so much as to be discovered and to lay open the face of designs which he closely worketh for the ruin of others Judge now how hard a matter it is to practise at this present in the world with such proceedings in an Age most vigilant and where little children are almost grown wise What a trouble is it to hide Troubles miseries of dissimulation your jugling in a Court where are so many Argus eyes who perpetually watch upon all actions If one be surprized before the act he must expect to be flouted even by foot-boys and used like one who cannot hit upon it to be wicked although this trade be very easie and who having sold his conscience to devils knows not how to evict payment unless he plead it in hell But if a man some one time come to the point of what he projected which he can hardly keep from breaking through the ears of others they who are deceived seldom wanting eloquence either in themselves or their own ashes were they dead to decrie treachery yet must he hereafter for one trick of craft loose reputation and credit two pillars of discretion All the world will avoid you as a rock or a monster what ever you do you have but one heart and one tongue to invent and tell lies but you shall raise a thousand against you by it For all those who know you practise this trade and that you make it your endeavour to deceive will bend all their sinews and strength to entrap you in the same snares you laid for other in such sort that you shall become a prey aimed at if it were possible by all the world Where have we ever seen a deceiver to prosper in Dreadfull events of deceivers all his enterprizes to the very end You may as well number the waves of the sea and leaves of trees as recount the lamentable and tragical events of all these common cheaters who never had the power to avoid God's vengeance The pernicious Machiavel who taught the art to deceive produceth the example of an infamous Prince whose impostures succeeded so ill that by mistaking he drank the poison prepared by himself for another in a banquet and ended his detestable life Is not this man abandoned by religion wit and reason to seek to perswade treachery with so weak examples If he will work this way let us oppose both against him and the like experience of passed Ages to set as it is said the Sun in full splendour before their eyes The eleventh EXAMPLE upon the eleventh MAXIM Of Craft VIce many times hath a shop near unto Virtue as said Origen and deceives Merchants under colour of selling good commodities Craft readily counterfeiteth wisdom and some there are also who make the wise to pass for subtile But there is so much difference between them as between glass and diamond Craft is a false prudence which maketh use of subtilities against right and justice but true wisdom though it be subtile is never crafty For it pretends nothing at all against equity and good conscience If you desire to know wary wisdom and to distinguish The wittie conceit of Theodora Zonaras in Theophilo it from craft look upon what the Emperess Theodora did one of the worthiest women of her Age. She was married to the Emperour Theophilus an Heretick and a capital enemy to the honour of Images which he forbade to be kept or esteemed upon pain of death Notwithstanding this pious Princess who maintained Religion in the Empire what she might and sweetened with much wisdom the wild humours of her husband spared not to have in private pictures and holy Images affording them singular veneration It happened one day that Dender the Emperour's fool who played this part at Court rather through natural blockishness than dissimulation came as he was roaming up and down into the Emperesse's chamber and found her reverencing those Images He failed not in dinner-while to give the Emperour notice of it at which time he used to entertain him with a thousand merriments saying aloud He found Manna so he called the Emperess with her babies and that she was suddenly surprized with it Theophilus presently doubted it was Images his wife honoured and at the rising from the Table he sought her out all foaming with anger and asked where those puppets were she adored in the presence of Dender Truly we must consess devout women have sometimes a marvellous dexterity to excuse a business for she suddenly hit upon a handsom evasion which freed her from the importunity of her husband For in stead of seeming troubled and overtaken she smiled very sweetly having therein an excellent grace Behold Sir saith she verily one of the prettiest knacks happened in your Court of a long time This fool Dender who still doth somewhat worthy his name came into my chamber as I stood before my looking-glass with my women and confusedly saw our faces represented in the glass he thought they were images so subtile wittied he is Is not this an excellent jest Then causing the fool to be taken by the arm they set him before the looking-glass saying How now Dender are not these thy habits The Emperour was so surprized with the wittie conceit of a discreet Princess that he believed she had reason and all the matter was instantly turned into laughter I term not this example a piece of craft but a prudence Stratagem of Chares Polyenus l. 2. as the stratagem of a Captain called Chares who enjoyning his souldiers some labour upon his fortifications and seeing they undertook it coldly because they feared to marre their garments which were handsome enough he presently commanded every one should uncloth and take the apparrel of his fellow That done and all the souldiers being perswaded their cassocks would not be spared by those who put them on they wrought in good earnest and very quickly performed the task imposed upon them This ought to be stiled with the name of wisdom rather than any other title But if we observe what passeth in the world we shall find there are two sorts of crafts Some are politick addresses and subtilities which proceed not fully to injustice but which notwithstanding aim at interest at reputation and glory by ways not sincere So there are men who resemble those houses which Baro. de astutiâ Craft of the world have goodly gates and most magnificent stair-cases
summons you shall have from the will of God It is not perfection not to care for life through impatience nor to have an ear not deaf to death through faintness of courage This resignation was most excellent and very admirable in our Ladie for two reasons First the great knowledge she had of beatitude Secondly the ineffable love she bare to her Son For I leave you to think if our desires follow the first rays of our knowledges and if we be so much the more earnest after a good as we are the better informed of its merit what impatience Patience of our Lady to endure life must our Ladie needs have of life since she received a science of beatitude strong powerful and resplendent above all other creatures God giving her leave to see in Calvarie the abyss of his glories in the depth of his dolours It is no wonder we so very easily affect life seeing we are as the little children of a King bred in the house of a shepheard as the gloss upon Daniel reporteth touching the education of Nebuchadnezzar We know not what a scepter Kingdom or crown is in this great meaness of a life base and terrestrial But had we talked onely one quarter of an hour with a blessed soul and discoursed of the state of the other life our hearts would wholly dissolve into desires Which makes me say It was an act of a most heroical resolution in the blessed Virgin in those great knowledges she had of Paradise to have continued so many years in this life and if you consider the most ardent love she bare her Son who was the adamant of all loves you shall find the holy Virgin who had born all the glory of Paradise in her womb more merited in this resignation she made to see her self separated the space of thirty years both from Paradise and her Son than all the Martyrs did in resigning themselves to deaths strange bloudy and hydeous There is nothing comparable to the martyrdom of Martyrdom of love love It is an exhalation in a cloud It is a fire in a myne a torrent shut up in ditches a night of separation lasteth Ages and all waxeth old for it but its desires Now this holy Mother to be thirty years upon the cross of love without repining without complaint or disturbance peaceably expecting the stroke of her hour what virtue and how far are we from it So now adays throughout the world you see nothing Worldly irresolutions of death Boet. Carm. 1. Eheu cur dura miseros averteris aure Et stentes oculos claudere saeva negos but mourners who are loth to live or faint-hearted that would never die Some crie out Come to me O sluggish death thou hast forgotten me what do I here I am but a living death and an unprofitable burden to the earth Ah death hast thou ears of brass and diamond for me alone Canst thou not shut up mine eyes which I daily drown in my tears Much otherwise when we see one die young fresh flourishing in honour wealth health prosperity we crie out upon death as if it were cruel and malicious To take saith one this young betrothed this poor maid this husband intended this excellent man who so well played the Rhodomont to lay hold of one so necessarie for the publick in the flower of his age Why took it not away this cripple this beggar who hath not wherewith to live Why took it not away this other who daily dies yet cannot die once O our manners O dainty conceits O fit language Were it not some little humane respect we would take Gods Providence by the throat Whom do we contend withal The indifferency we daily see in the death of men where as soon the young is taken as the old the happie as the miserable the Emperour as the porter is one of the greatest signs of Gods Providence to be admired Why then complain we that God maketh us to leave life when he pleaseth It is not a punishment but a wholesom doctrine by which we learn the power of the Divine Wisdom First when we entered into life our advise was not required whether we would be born in such or such an Age such a day such a year such an hour so when we must be gone from hence there is no reason to ask our counsel Let us onely yield up this last loan and not murmure against the father of the family Let us not say this man should go before and this after Who knows them better than God You complain this miserable creature lives so long how know you whether he accomplish the years of his purgatory How know you whether God suffers him to become a spectacle unto you of his patience Why gnash you your teeth for anger that this man rich that man fortunate and that other so qualified is taken hence in his flourishing youth How know you the misadventures and shipwracks which attended him had he still continued in the world You say he was necessary why God will shew there is not any thing necessary in the world but himself Vnâ— aâ—ulso non deficit alter aureus Poor eyes of a bat which see nothing but darkness you would give eyes to Argus and light to the Sun If you desire to take part in the prudence of the just handle the matter so that for the first sign of a good death you be ever indifferent to live or die accordding to our Ladies example Daily expect death stand perpetually on your guard Do as the brave bird the Grecians call Onocratalus which is so well practised Instinct of the Onocratalus Constancy of faith to expect the Hawk to grapple with her that even when sleep shuts up her eyes she sleepeth with her beak exalted as if she would contend with her adversary Know we are continually among rocks and dangers that there needs but one hour to get all or loose all that the day of Judgement comes with the pace of a thief and that we must be ready to receive it and resolute to combat with death to gain immortalitie Hold this concluding sentence of Tertul. Idol c. 2. Hos inter scopulos velisicata spiritu Dei fides navigat tuta si cauta secura si attonita Caeterúm ineluctabile excussis profundum inexplicabile impactis naufragium irrespirabile â— devoratis hypocriphium Second quality of good death Philo l. 3. de vita Mosis in fine Notable speech of Philo of Moses his state 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tertullian as an Oracle Amongst the rocks and shelves of this sea called life Christian faith passeth on breaking the waves filling the sails with Gods spirit ever assured yet ever distrustful and perpetually fearless yet still carefull of the future As for the rest it sees under its feet an abyss not to be passed by swimming and inexplicable ship wrack for those who are drenched a gulf which suffocates all such as it once swalloweth The second
with so much profusion that she could not endure to lodge but in chambers full of delicious perfumes of the East she would not wash her self but in the dew of Heaven which must be preserved for her with much skill Her garments were so pompous that nothing remainned but to seek for new stuffs in Heaven for she had exhausted the treasures of earth Her viands so dainty that all the mouthes of Kings tasted none so exquisite nor would she touch her meat but with golden forks and precious stones God to punish this cursed superfluity cast her on a bed and assailed her with a maladie so hydeous so stinking and frightfull that all her nearest kin were enforced to abandon her none staying about her but a poor old woman already throughly accustomed to stench and death yet could not this proud creature part with her infamous body but with sorrow She was of those souls that Plato calleth Phylosemates which tie themselves to flesh as much as they can and after death would gladly still walk round about their flesh to find a passage into it again Know you what is to be done to die well Cut off in good time the three chains which straightly bind foolish and sensual souls For the first passage that The way how to be well provided for death concerneth earthly goods seasonably dispose of your temporal Entangle not your hands for so short a time as you are to live in great affairs perilous and uncertain which will perplex you all your life and throw you down to death Do not like evil travellers who stay to reckon and contend with their hostess when it is already fair day-light and that the guid wrangles and sweareth at them Digest your little business that you may leave no trouble in your family after death Make a Will clear and perspicuous which draweth not suits after it Preserve your self carefully from imitating that wicked man who caused all his gold and silver to be melted into one mass to set his heirs together by the ears who killed one another sprinkling the apple of discord and the object of their avarice with their bloud Say to your self I brought nothing into the world nor will carry any thing away no not the desire of it Behold one part of my goods which must be restored to such and such these are true debts that must necessarily be discharged Behold another for pious legacies Another for alms to persons needy and indigent another for my servants male and female and my poor friends who have faithfully served me They have wasted their bodies and lives to contribute all they might to my will there is no reason I should forget them Nay I desire mine enemies have some part in my will As for my children and heirs the main shall go to them they will be rich enough if they be virtuous enough Behold how the temporal should be disposed And for so much as concerneth kinred give the benediction of God to your children and all your family leave worthy examples of contempt of the world of humility of patience of charity procure a full reconciliation with your enemies entertain your friends with sage discourses which may shew you gladly accept Gods visitations that you die full of resolutions to prepare them a place and that you expect from their charity prayers and satisfactions for your negligence and remisness If needs some small tribute must be paid to nature in two or three drops of tears it is tolerable But take away these whyning countenances these petty furies these mercenary weepers who weep not knowing why nor for what they mourn As for that which toucheth the state of your body it would be a goodly thing for you to be wail it after you have had so many troubles in it Go out of it like a Tennant from a ruinous house go from it as from a prison of earth and morter Go out of it as on the sea from a rotten leaky ship to leap on the shore and care not much what will become of it after death so it be on holy land Souls well mortified speak not of flesh considering the state of sin but with horrour Yea we find in the bequests of one of the sons of S. Lewis Count of Alencon these words I will Modesty of a son of S. Lewis the Tomb that shall cover my stinking flesh exceed not the charge of fiftie livres and that which encloseth my evil heart pass not thirty livres Behold how the son of one of the greatest Kings in the world speaketh of his body and would you idolatrize yours Lastly for the third condition of a good death it The third quality of a good death must have union with God whereof our Lady giveth us a perfect example For it being well verified by Theologie that there are three unions supernatural and as it were wholly ineffable the first whereof is the sacred knot of the most holy Trinitie which tieth three persons in one same Essence the second is the tie of the Word with humane nature which subsisteth by the hypostasis of the same Word and the third the intimate conjunction of a Son-God with a Mother-Virgin I affirm the Virgin being a pure creature cannot equal either the union of the Trinity or the hypostatical union yet notwithstanding hath the highest place of all created unions as she who was united to God when she lived in the world in the most sublime and sacred manner the spirits of the most exalted Seraphins might imagine which was most divinely expressed by S. Bernard She entered into a deep abyss of divine Profundissimam divinae sapientiae penetravit abyssum quantum sine personali unione creatur◠conditio patitur luci illi inaccesibili videatur immersa D. Bernard serm in signum magnum Mater mea quà m appellatis foelicem inde foelix quia verbum Dei custodit non quia in illa Verbum caro factum est c. Aug. tract 10 in Joan. wisdom so that she was united to light inaccessible so much as a creature might be permitted not arriving to the personal union of God But saying this I not onely speak of the union she had in quality of the Mother of God being one same flesh and one same substance with her Son but of the union of contemplation devotion and submission to the will of God which alone was the center of her felicity as witnesseth S. Augustine My Mother whom you call happie hath all her happiness not so much because the Word was made man in her as for that she kept the word of God who made her and who afterward allied himself to humane nature in her womb as he would say Our Lady was more happy to have conceived God in her heart and continually kept spiritual union with him than to have once brought him forth according to flesh We cannot arrive at this sublime union of the Mother of God but howsoever at least in the last
wholly acquired to death sighing after a young Gentleman then absent and not daring fully to manifest her passion In the end death took away the spoils of her life with her pretences The father and mother bewailed her with inconsolable tears furnishing out very honourable obsequies And whereas she most ardently affected her dressings and little cabinet they buried with her all whatsoever she held most precious Six moneths were now past since her burial when the Gentleman she loved named Machates arriving at Trayls came to lodge in the house of his friend her father The spirit of the maid which was of the condition of those whom Plato called body-lovers retaining still the affections with which she went out of her bodie appeared one evening to this Machates with words of affection embraces and dalliances which plainly discovered it was a damned spirit and an instrument of the divel that tormented the one to burn the other The young man at the first was much affrighted with these proceedings notwithstanding becoming tractable by little and little he soon made this specter very familiar It happened during this time that an old servant sent by her Mistress to see what their guest did found Philenion sitting neer unto him with the same countenance and the same garments she ware in her life time whereat much amazed she ran to the father and the mother to tell them their daughter was alive They sharply reprehended her for a distracted and wicked woman as going about again to open their wound which still bled The servant justified her self and answered she had not lost her wits nor spake ought but truth Hereupon she so enkindled the curiositie of her Mistress that she secretly conveyed her self by night into the chamber yet perceived nothing at all able to resolve her The next day being vehemently excited with the curiositie of knowing what to believe of this apparition she threw her self at the feet of Machates and conjured him to tell her the name of the young maid who conversed with him The Gentleman in the beginning was much surprized and sought evasions to divert her but in conclusion either through compassion of the mother whom he saw in the posture of a suppliant or by vanity of his passion which easily unloosned his tongue he confessed he was married to Philenion that it was a business accomplished by the will of the Gods wherein nothing must be altered and speaking this he drew forth a little casket wherein he shewed her a gold ring her daughter had given him with a piece of linnen she ware about her neck protesting she was his wife so much was he seduced by the subtile practizes of the evil spirit The mother having acknowledged the tokens of the deceased fell down with astonishment and coming again to her self she a thousand times kissed one while the ring another while the linnen moistning them with her tears and moving the whole family to sorrow which ran to see this spectacle Then again embracing Machates she signified it would be an infinite favour from heaven to have him for a son in law but that she entreated as a courtesie one comfort he could not deny an afflicted mother which was once again to see her daughter whom she accounted dead The other promised to give her all satisfaction and as Phelenion came secretly according to custom to converse with him he closely sent his lackey to the mother who advertised her husband of it and both of them came into Machates his chamber where they surprized their daughter at which they were so rapt that being not able to utter a word they cast themselves about her neck straightly embracing and with tears bedewing her which fell from their eyes But the daughter with a sad and dejected countenance fetching a deep sigh out of her breast Alas saith she loving father and mother your curiosity will cost you dear for you will lament me the second time Thereupon she fell down dead leaving a horrible stinck in the chamber which filled the whole house with terrour groans and out-cries in such sort that the neighbours came in upon the noise and consequently the whole Citie ran thither to behold the corps The magistrates wondering at an accident so frightfull deputed some Cittizens neerest of kin to open the tomb where the body of Philenion could not be found but a cup a ring she had received from this Gentleman The carrion lying in the fathers chamber was by decree of the Senate thrown on the dunghil the Citie purged and as for Machates he was so overwhelmed with shame and confusion that he slew himself with his own hands Behold what an Authour recounteth onely illuminated by the light of nature who wrote this historie after he had been a spectatour of it of purpose to send a man immediately to the Emperour Hadrian to make a recital thereof unto him as he saith in a letter he directed to a friend of his I might have many things to say upon all circumstances which are not repugnant to that which Ecclesiastical Authours relate concerning other apparitions of the damned But I will not exceed the laws of Historians and it is enough for me here to let you see the belief of the Ancients and the punishment of God upon souls resigned to sin XVIII MAXIM Of Purgatorie THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That death is the remedy of all evils and that the soul separated from the body hath no more to suffer That the soul which hath not in this Ne dogmata de Pâ—râ—atorio pro saâ—â ecclesiae doctrinâ nobis obtrudant Pontificii cavendum est world satisfied Gods justice must pass in the other life through Purgatorie HAve you well considered in Genesis an Genes 2. Angel of fire who with a flaming sword keepeth the gate of terrestrial Paradise placed as an usher of the enterance into the delicious hall which prepared by God to entertain the first man of the world after it had been the theater of his glorie became the scaffold of his punishments Procopius Purgatorie compared to the Cherubins fiery sword observeth that poor Adam at the time of his banishment was placed just over against this Cherubin and that this centinel of the God of hosts no sooner lifted up his curtelaxe but he made a terrour and icie horrour creep into his bones and in that proportion the sparkles flew from the sword of justice fears and affrightments invaded the heart of this offender who being a murderer of his race before he was a progenitour had brought forth a thousand deaths by the sole bite of an apple Alas if the miserable Adam was so astonished at the steel of the Cherubin which dazled his eyes what ought our representments to be what our apprehensions when we think on the flames of purgatory enkindled by the breath of the love and wrath of God So many souls lie there now plunged having heretofore conversed amongst us in mortal abode and we
the General in this siege that she disposed his heart to what she pleased In such sort that going forth in the fear and confusion of all the people she returned with peace and assurance of quiet which made them all to come out to receive her at the Citie gates with loud acclamations some throwing flowers other Crowns and all rendering thanks to her as their Sovereign Preserveress She apprehended so much joy therewith that in the very instant she expired in her honours at the Citie gate and in stead of being carried to the throne was brought to her tomb with the infinite sorrow of all her countrey I leave you to think if humane comforts have such force what will the great joy of God be for these unheard-of spectacles these continual triumphs and inexhaustible sources Must we not say we should there every moment leave our souls in the height of pleasure were not the happiness of it conjoyned to immortality XX. MAXIM Of RESURRECTION THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That we must not deny our bodies the benefit of time since they must perish That we must use our bodies as the Temples of God since they must rise again WE may truly say there is not any mysterie The resurrection proved more than any other mysterie in all our faith which God hath pleased to teach and prove unto us more effectually than the resurrection For it being sufficiently averred that our salvation consisteth in the knowledge of three principal Articles which are that of the Trinity of the incarnation with its extension made to the Sacrament of the Altar and of the Resurrection although they be all of like necessity yet it seems God disposing himself more to our ends than his own hath more abundantly explaned himself in this last mysterie which most concerneth our peculiar profit It is very true that for the doctrine of the Trinity the Incarnation and the Sacrament of the Altar he was contented to give us some figures of them in the old Testament not fully shewing the effects but for the Resurrection he was pleased to establish it even before his coming into the world really and actually by raising many dead by the merits of Elias and Elizeus as we learn in the history of Kings It is well enough known that having afforded to the Ancients very obscure knowledges of the Trinity and Incarnation for the Resurrection alone he made the law of nature the Mosaical the order of the world the form of Common-wealths and the Evangelical law to speak so intelligibly that he could speak nothing more perspicuously In the law of nature I understand the chief Secretary Scio quod Redemptor meus vivit in novissimâ— die de terra resurrecturus sum c. Job 19. of the world Job who crieth out on the dunghil I know my Redeemer liveth and that at the last day of the world I must rise again from the earth and shall see God in mine own flesh that I shall see my self in person and that my eyes shall behold him and no other this hope I keep as a pledge in my bosom A man who lived about three thousand years ago before all books all Doctours and all schools to speak in so clear terms so pressing so peremptory is it not a prodigie In the Mosaical law besides formal passages in the Ecce ego aperiam tumulos vestros educam vos de sepulchris vestris Ezech. 33. Macch. 2. Math. 22. D. Tho. art 1. ad 2. supplem q. 75. prophet Ezechiel I will open your tombs and will take you from your sepulchers besides the generous confession of the Macchabees we have in the Pentateuch a passage alledged for proof of the resurrection by the Son of God himself which for this purpose ought to be held as an argument necessary and invincible It is so many times said The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob Now he is not the God of the dead but of the living and therefore needs must these Patriarchs beliving not onely in the immortality of their souls for the soul makes not a man entire but in future resurrection In the order of the world we have the new birth Tertul. l. de Resur c. 12. and 13. Greg. Mag. 14. mor. c. 10. Cyril Catech. 18. Macar hom 5. de Resur Nil Ora. 2. de Pasca Theod. serm de Provid of stars dayes seasons planets of birds who make a perpetual image of the Resurrection in the world on which the holy Fathers enlarge with much eloquence In the form of Common-wealths and policie of the universe we observe the great care all Nations the most barbarous have had of the burial of bodies not to have been but through an instinct and estimation of the resurrection Which the chiefmen in Gentilism have publickly and notably professed And although they had very weak knowledge of other mysteries of our faith and spake of it with much obscurity in the point of resurrection they unfolded themselves most distinctly and expresly Mercurius Trismegistus in the first chapter of Pymander assureth us of the resurrection of bodies as a thing infallible The great Athenagoras sheweth it was the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato the two first lights of Philosophy And verily we have also the writings of Plato which witness the wicked shall be judged and condemned to hell in bodie and soul a passage alledged by S. Justine in the tenth of his Common-wealth and which is more this singular man to win us to this belief hath couched a very notable axiom in his Phedon where he saith that all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato in Phaedon Plin. l. 7. c. 55. which is living in the world comes from some thing dead Democritus who was as Hippocrates affirmeth one of the wisest men in the world wished the bodies of the dead should be honourably used in respect of resurrection which Pliny could not dissemble Phocyllides said the same in verses written as with the rayes of the Sun Nay if we would consult with the tombs of the dead we shall find there hath not been any but some wicked and irregular spirits who have renounced the blessings of the other life as by publick profession causing it to be engraven on their tombs So did Sardanapalus the most infamous of men whose epitaph Aristotle having read said It was more fit for a hog than a King So did that wretched woman of Bress whose monument is yet to be seen in antiquities causing to be set over her ashes That after the death of her husband Vixi ultra â—â—tam nihil credidi Nihil unquam pâ—ccavit nisi quod mortua â—st Brisson formul she had been neither widdow nor wife and that her house served onely for a snare to loves Otherwise that during life she never believed any thing but life So did one Julia who caused also to be inscribed over her bones That she had lived seven and twenty years without committing any
eat them soon enough as if all this should say unto us What do we so long in the world since all things that must serve our use last so little Gold and silver continue long but last very little in our hands and though one keep them as well as he can they keep not ever one Master If there be creatures which live much longer they flie from us as Harts Crows and Swans you might say they are ashamed to participate in our frailty Great-ones of the earth have in all times done what they could with a purpose to prolong their days so naturally are we desirous of the state of Resurrection but they have many times abridged them seeking to lengthen them Garcias telleth us that a King of Zeilam having learned the adamant had the virtue to preserve life would neither eat nor drink but in a dish which he caused to be made of adamant through a strange giddiness of spirit but he failed not to find death in these imaginary vessels of immortality We make a great matter of it to see men very old they are beheld with admiration But if some desire to come to their age there is not any would have the miseries and troubles of it This Phlegon of whom we now speak who had been one of the most curious Authours of his Age made a book of long liv'd men wherein he confesseth he hath exactly looked into the Registers of the Roman Empire there to find old men and women of an hundred years and scarcely could he meet with a sufficient number of them to fill up a whole leaf of paper But if he would take the number of such as died before fifty which the Ancients called the exterminating death he had filled many huge volumes Pompey took pleasure at the dedication of Bâ—ro in historia vitae mortis his Theater to see a Comedianess act named Galeria Capiola who reckoned ninety nine years since her first enterance into a Theater It was a goodly play of life in a woman who danced on the brink of her grave But how many such like have there been people go into the tomb as drops of water into the sea not thinking on it Nay do but observe all which is Sovereign you will find among all the Emperours which were through so many ages there is not one to be found who attained to the age of a hundred years and four alone arrived to four-score or much thereabouts Gordian the elder came to this point but scarcely had he tasted of Empire but was over whelmed with a violent death Valerian at the age of seventy six years was taken by Sapor King of Persia and lived seven years in a shamefull captivity his enemy making use of his back as a foot-stool when he would mount on horse-back He was at first much greater in the estimation of men than he deserved and every one would have thought him worthy of Empire had he not been Emperour Anastasius a man of little worth and less courage who had more superstition than religion arrived to the age of four-score and eight years when he was blasted with lightening from heaven Justinim reckoned four-score and three which made him wax white in a vehement desire of glorie although being some-what contemptible in his person he was fortunate in Captains They speak of a King called Arganthon who heretofore reigned in Spain the space of four-score years and lived an hundred and fourty But this is rather in fables than authentical histories Of so many Popes as have been since S. Peter not any one hath possessed the See twenty five years scarcely find you four or five four-score years of age John the two and twentieth an unquiet and treasure-heaping spirit was about ninety years when death took off his triple Crown So many had Gregory the twelfth who was created before the schism but his papacy was as short as his life was long Paul the third attained to one above four-scor and was otherwise a man as peaceable of spirit as prudent in counsel Paul the fourth severe imperious and eloquent came to four-score and three Gregory the thirteenth lived as many a Prelate wise courteous prudent liberal who lived too little a while for the Churches good for which he could not end but too soon If we speak of the blessed S. John S. Luke S. Polycarp S. Denys S. Paul the Hermit S. Anthony S. Romuald so many other religious men they lived long And it seems there are many things in religion which further long life as contemplation of things Divine joys not sensual noble hopes wholesome fears sweet sadness repose sobriety and regularity in the order of all actions But all this is little in comparison of the Divine state wherein bodies shall not onely never end but live eternally impassible as Angels subtile as rayes of light quick as thought and bright as stars Conclusion of the MAXIMS by an advice against Libertinism where all men are exhorted to zeal of true Religion and the love of things eternal Of the obscurity and persecution of TRUTH INcredulity is an immortal disease which hath reigned from the beginning of the world and which will never end but with the worlds dissolution Dreams and lies are many times believed because they insinuate themselves into the heart by charms but truth which will never bely her self hath much ado to make her self understood and if she be once known she is beloved when she smiles and feared when she frowneth There are four things have ever been much unknown Four things much unknown in the world time wind terrestrial Paradise and truth Time is a marvellous creature which perpetually passeth over our heads which numbereth all our steps which measureth all our actions which inseparably runs along with our life and we have much business to know it as well in its nature as progression It is a very strange thing that there are such as promise themselves to reckon up the years of the world as of an old man of three-score and yet we know by the experience of so many ages it is a great labyrinth wherein we still begin never to end It was for this cause the Ancients placed the figures Hadrianus Junius of Trytons on high Towrs with tails crookedly winding to represent unto us the intrication of the foulds and compasses of time And for this also Isa 6. Hieron in Isa in the Prophet Esai the Seraphins covered the face and feet of God with their wings to teach us faith S. Hierome that we are very ignorant in things done before the world and in those which shall happen to Non est vestrum nosse tempora momenta quae Pater posuit in sua potestate Actor 1. the end of it If we on the other side consider the wind we cannot but sufficiently understand the commodities and discommodities of it which have made the wise to doubt whether it were expedient there should be
apparencies O my God my Jesus make me keep the Law of thy love and nothing else It is a yoke which brings with it more honour than burden It is a yoke which hath wings but no heaviness Make me serve thee O my Master since thou beholdest the services of all the Angels under thy feet Make me imitate thee O my Redeemer since thou art the original of all perfections make me suffer for thee O King of the afflicted and that I may not know what it is to suffer by knowing what it is to love The Gospel upon Thursday the third week in Lent S. Luke 4. Jesus cured the Feaver of Simons Mother in Law ANd Jesus rising up out of the Synagogue entered into Simons house and Simons wives mother was holden with a great Feaver and they besought him for her And standing over her he commanded the Feaver and it left her And incontinent rising she ministred to them And when the Sun was down all that had diseased of sundry maladies brought them to him But he imposing hands upon every one cured them And Devils went out from many crying and saying that thou art the Son of God And rebuking them he suffered them not to speak that they knew he was Christ And when it was day going forth he went into a desart place and the multitudes sought him and came even unto him and they held him that he should not depart from them To whom he said That to other Cities also must I Evangelize the Kingdom of God because therefore I was sent And he was preaching in the Synagogues of Galilee Moralities 1. A Soul within a sick body is a Princess that dwels in a ruinous house Health is the best of all temporal goods without which all honours are as the beams of an eclipsed sun Riches are unpleasing and all pleasures are languishing All joy of the heart subsists naturally in the health of the body But yet it is true that the most healthfull persons are not always the most holy What profit is there in that health which serves for a provocation to sin for an inticement to worldly pleasure and a gate to death The best souls are never better nor stronger than when their bodies are sick their diseases are too hard for their mortal bodies but their courage is invincible It is a great knowledge to understand our own infirmities Prosperity keeps us from the view of them but adversity shews them to us We should hardly know what death is if so many diseases did not teach us every day that we are mortal Semiramis the proudest of all Queens had made a law whereby she was to be adored in stead of all the gods but being humbled by a great sickness she acknowledged her self to be but a woman 2. All the Apostles pray for this holy woman which was sick but she herself asked nothing nor did complain of any thing She leaves all to God who is onely Master of life and death She knew that he which gives his benefits with such bounty hath the wisdom to chuse those which are most fit for us How do we know whether we desiring to be delivered from a sickness do not ask of God to take away a gift which is very necessary to our salvation That malady or affliction which makes us distaste worldly pleasures gives us a disposition to taste the joyes of heaven 3. How many sick persons in the heat of a Feaver promise much and when they are well again perform nothing That body which carried all the marks of death in the face is no sooner grown strong by health which rejoyceth the heart and fils the veins with bloud but it becomes a slave to sin The gifts of God being abused serve for nothing but to make it wicked and so the soul is killed by recovery of the flesh But this pious woman is no sooner on foot but she serves the Authour of life and employes all those limbs which Jesus cured of the Feaver to prepare some provisions to refresh him He that will not use the treasures of heaven with acknowledgement deserveth never to keep them When a man is recovered from a great sickness as his body is renewed by health so on the other side he should renew his spirit by virtue The body saith Saint Maximus is the bed of the soul where it sleeps too easily in continual health and forgets it self in many things But a good round sickness doth not onely move but turn over this bed which maketh the soul awake to think on her salvation and make a total conversion Aspirations O Word Incarnate all Feavours and Devils flie before the beams of thy redoubted face Must nothing but the heat of thy passions always resist thy powers and bounties To what maladies and indispositions am I subject I have more diseases in my soul then limbs in my body My weakness bends under thy scourges and yet my sins continue still unmoveable Stay O benign Lord stay thy self near me Cast upon my dull and heavy eyes one beam from those thine eyes which make all storms clear and all disasters happie Command that my weakness leave me and that I may arise to perform my services due to thy greatness as I will for ever ow my salvation to thine infinite power and bounty The Gospel upon Friday the third week in Lent S. John 4. Of the Samatitan woman at Jacobs Well neer Sichar HE cometh therefore into a Citie of Samaria which is called Sichar beside the Mannor that Jacob gave to Joseph his son And there was there the fountain of Jacob. Jesus therefore wearied of his journey sate so upon the fountain It was about the sixth hour There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water Jesus saith to her Give me to drink for his Disciples were gone into the Citie to buy meats therefore that Samaritan woman saith to him How dost thou being a Jew ask of me to drink which am a Samaritan woman for the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritanes Jesus answered and said to her If thou didst know the gift of God and vvho he is that saith unto thee Give me to drink thou perhâ—ps wouldst have asked of him and he would have given thee living vvater The woman saith to him Sir neither hast thou wherein to draw and the well is deep whence hast thou the living vvater Art thou greater than our father Jacob vvho gave us the well anâ— himself drank of it and his children and his cattel Jesus answered and said to her Every one that drinketh of this vvater shall thirst again but he that shall drink of the vvater that I will give him shall not thirst for ever but the vvater that I will give him shall become unto him a fountain of vvater springing up unto life everlasting The vvoman saith to him Lord give me this vvater that I may not thirst nor come hither to draw Jesus said to her Go call thy husband and come hither The
and to execute all the decrees of his divine Providence as our chiefest helps to obtain perfection Aspirations OBeauteous garden of Olives which from henceforth shalt be the most delicious object of my heart I will lose my self in thy walks I will be lost with God that I may never be lost I will breathe onely thy air since it is made noble by the sighs of my dear Master I will gather thy flowers since Jesus hath marked them with his bloud I will wash my self in those fountains since they are sanctified by the sweat of my Jesus I will have no other joy but the sorrow of the Son of God nor any other will but his O my sweet Saviour Master and teacher of all humane kind wilt thou be abridged of thine own will which was so reasonable and pure to give me an example of mortifying my passions and shall I before thy face retain any wicked or disordinate appetites Is it possible I should desire to be Lord of my self who am so bad a Master when I see the Authour of all goodness separate himself from himself onely to make me and all mankind partakers of his merits Of the apprehension of JESUS IN that obscure and dolorous night wherein our Saviour was apprehended three sorts of darkness were cast upon the Jews upon Judas and upon Saint Peter A darkness of obduration upon the hearts of the Jews a darkness of ingratefull malignity upon Judas and a darkness of infirmity upon Saint Peter Was there ever any blindness like that of the Jews who sought for the shining Sun with lighted torches without knowing him by so many beams of power which shined from him They are strucken down with the voice of the Son of God as with lightening and they rise again upon the earth to arm themselves against Heaven They bind his hands to take away the use of his forces but they could not stop the course of his bounties To shew that he is totally good he is good and charitable even amongst his merciless executioners and he lost all he had saving his Godhead onely to gain patience When S. Peter stroke the high Priests servant the patience of our Lord Jesus received the blow and had no patience till he was healed If goodness did shew forth any one beam in the garden modesty sent forth another in the house of Anuas when his face was strucken by a servile hand his mouth opened it self as a Temple from whence nothing came but sweetness and light The God of Truth speaketh to Caiaphas and they spit upon his brightness and cover that face which must discover Heaven for us The mirrour of Angels is tarnisht with the spittle of infernal mouthes and wounded by most sacrilegious hands without any disturbance of his constancy That was invincible by his virtue as the willfulness of the Jews stood immoveable by their obduration There are souls which after they have filled the earth with crimes expect no cure of their diseases but by the hell of the reprobate 2. The second darkness appeareth by the black passion of Judas who falls down into hell with his eyes open and after he had sold his soul sold Jesus and both all he had and all he was to buy an infamous halter to hang himself A soul become passionate with wanton love with ambition or avarice is banished into it self as into a direct hell and delivered to her own passions as to the Furies The Poet Hydra had but seven heads but the spirit of Avarice S. Iohn Climacus saith hath ten thousand The conversation of Jesus which was so full of infinite attractions could never win the spirit of Iudas when it was once bewitched with covetousness The tinkling of silver kept him from rightly understanding Iesus He makes use of the most holy things to betray Holiness it self He employes the kiss of peace to begin war He carries poison in his heart and honey in his mouth he puts on the spirit of Iesus to betray him This shews us plainly that covetous and traiterous persons are farthest from God and nearest to the devils 3. The third power of darkness appeared in the infirmity of S. Peter who after so many protestations of fidelity for fear of death renounced the Authour of life One of the Ancients said The greatest frailty of Humanity was that the wisest men were not infallibly wise at all times And all men are astonished to see that the greatest spirits being left to themselves become barren and suffer eclipses which give examples to the wisest and terrour to all the world God hath suffered the fall of S. Peter to make us have in horrour all presumption of our own forces and to teach us that over-great assurance is oftentimes mother of an approching danger Besides it seemeth he would by this example consecrate the virtue of repentance in this fault of him whom he chose to be head of his Church to make us see that there is no dignity so high nor holiness so eminent which doth not ow Tribute to the mercy of God Aspirations Upon S. Peters tears IT is most true saith S. Peter that a proud felicity hath alwayes reeling feet Thou which didst defie the gates of hell hast yielded thy self to the voice of a simple woman All those conquests which thou didst promise to thy self are become the tropheys of so weak a hand Return to the combat and since she hath triumphed over thee do thou at least triumph over thy self Alas I am afraid even to behold the place of my fall and the weak snares of a simple woman appear to me as boisterous chains Yet what can he fear who is resolute to die If thou find death amongst these massacres thou shouldst rather embrace than decline it For what can it do but make thee companion of life it self Our soul is yet too foul to be a sacrifice for God let us first wash it with tears I fell down before the fire and I will rise by water I have walked upon the sea to come to Jesus and I will now return to him by the way of my tears I will speak now onely by my tears since I have lately talked so wickedly with my mouth Since that which should open to speak Oracles for the Church hath been employed to commit foul treason since we have nothing left free to us but sighs and groans let us make use of the last liberty which is left us and when all is spent return to the mercy of Jesus which all the sins of the world can never evacuate I will from henceforth be a perpetual example to the Church by my fall and rising again from death for the comfort of sinners and the fault of one night shall be lamented by me alll the days of my life Moralities upon the Pretorian or Judgement-Hall 1. IN the passion of our Saviour all things are divine and it seemeth they go as high as they could be raised by that Sovereign power joyned with
fearfull maladie 135 His notorious cruelty even in his extreamest sickness ibid. His miserable death ibid. Hermingildus his retreat and conversion 325 His father's letter to him and his to his father 326 He is wickedly betrayed by Goizintha 328 His letter to his wife and his undaunted resolution 330 His death 331 His young son Hermingildus died not long after 332 A notable Observation upon the habit of a High-Priest 93 Hilarion of Costa a reverend Father 388 Hippocrates his desire how to cure the itch of ambition 56 House of the Moth. 25 House of Swallows ibid. A notable Doctrine of Hugo 61 Humility defined 468 Humiliation of Death 350 State of Humilitie 18 All the world teacheth us the lesson of Humilitie 56 The kingdom of Hypocrisie 11 Reasons against Hypocrisie ibid. Baseness of Hypocrisie ibid. Hypocrisie confuted in the great School of the world 42 Hypocrisie condemned by the Law of Heaven ibid. Deformity of Hypocrisie ibid. I JAcques de Vitry his pretty Observation 39 Idleness the business of some Great men 44 Abuse of an Idolatrous spirit 13 Jesus one and the same for Nobles and Plebeians 3 Excellent qualities of Jesus Christ 376 He is the Concurrence of all perfections ibid. Three Excellencies of Jesus in which all other are included ibid. His Sanctity Wisdom and Power 377 Practice of the love of Jesus reduced to three heads ibid. Miracles of the person of Jesus 442 Jesus entereth into his glory by his merit ibid. Suspension of actual glory in the body of our Saviour Jesus ibid. Imitation of Jesus Christ the abridgement of Wisdom 3 Images of Emperours how much reverenced 13 Impietie hath its misery 36 Impietie condemned in the Tribunal of Nature 420 Impietie chastised 451 Against Toleration of Impietie 452 Impuritie of life ariseth from three sources 85 Reasons against Inconstancie 40 Inconstancie of men 236 Indegondis transporteth the Catholick Faith into Spain 323 The persecutions of Indegondis 324 By her mediation there is a Treaty of peace between Levigildus and his son 327 The glory and greatness of that man who knows how to suffer Injuries 40 Observation of Isaiah 30. 8 406 Belief of Judgement most general 430 Judea in what condition before Herod came to the Crown 89 The causes of the corruption of Julian 373 The School of Julian ibid. How he became depraved 374 He is a Christian for policie and an Infidel in soul ibid. Prowess of Julian among the Gauls ibid. His subtility to invade the Empire ibid. His Embassage ibid. His remarkable punishment ibid. He had ill success with the qualities that Machiavel furnished him with 260 Jupiter painting goats in the Clouds what it meaneth 14 Justina an Arian requireth a Church in Milan 206 Justice and Mercy the two Arms of God 22 Necessity of Justice with its acts 89 Justice without favour very remarkable ibid. Justice of Belizarius and Aurelianus 226 Justice defined 468 K KNowledge of good and evil doth make the sin more foul 23 Knowledge of ones self very hard 69 No certain Knowledge of four things 440 L LAcedaemonians practice 381 LAdies excellent in pietie 388 Sordid Liberalitie of Emmanuel Comenus 91 Ignorance and bruitishness of Libertines 449 Arrogancy of Libertinism 450 The Table of Philo of the manners of Libertines ibid. Punishment of God upon Libertines ibid. Evil of a sleight Lie 145 Lying the key of vice 469 A Life led by opinion is ridiculous 8 Condition of this Life well described 65 Man must lead a Pilgrims Life in this world 72 Our Life is a Musick-book 84 Four sorts of Life 137 Opinion of the other Life 403 Life and Death the two poles of the World ibid. Divers kinds of Life ibid. Life was given to Cain for a punishment 414 Disturbances of Life 435 Divers wayes of humane Life according to Saint Gregorie ibid. The choice of conditions of Life is hazardous ibid. Miseries of this present Life 436 Of the Lilie with six leaves 72 Divers kinds of Love 228 229 Love turned into rage 244 The baseness of Love 375 Love of invisible things most penetrating ibid. Worldly Lovers being converted are the most servent in the Love of God illustrated by a comparison 379 Excellency of Love 399 Division of Love ibid. There is a possibility in man to love his enemies ibid. Effects of the Love of enemies in the Law of Nature 400 Loyalty of a wife to her husband 352 Lust ruineth Empires 154 Lust is a fire that burneth the garment of the soul 182 Luxurie the sin of the heel 195 Lycinius his condition 242 His end 242 Lycurgus his greatness 3 M MAgnanimitie 468 MAn a Stage-player upon the Theatre of the world 12 Three sorts of Man in every man 61 Character of the carnal and spiritual Man ibid. Of the nature and dignity of man what he hath been what he is and what he shall be 64 Man hath more non-essence than essence 350 Mans ingratitude towards God 346 Mutability of men ibid. Miseries of an indebted man 352 It is dangerous to disoblige pious and learned Men. 379 Diversitie of Men. 413 Monument of the Empress Marie 418 Five notable things in the mystery of the Mass 74 Mass a sacrifice ibid. Instructions for the Married 96 Mariamne's accusation and pitifull death 124 Martianus of whom a marvellous accident 150 His good success ibid. A great Massacre at Thessalonica 214 Maxims very dangerous used by Hereticks 183 Maxentius acteth a strange Tragedie 240 He is defeated by Constantine 241 Maximian the Baloon of Fortune 239 A remarkable speech of Maximus 79 Maximus overthrown and put to death 209 210 Meditation its definition 75 Necessity and easiness of Meditation ibid. What you must understand to Meditate well ibid. Practice and Form of Meditation consisteth in six-things 76 Seven ways to dilate ones self in Meditating in abundance upon sundry thoughts ibid. Modestie important 87 Modestie of a son of S. Lewis 418 Modestie defined 468 The actions of Modestie ibid. Marvellous contempt of money 227 Monica the mother of S. Augustine her qualities 193 Her death 198 A singular saying of Sir Thomas Moor. 90 Mother of Macchabees persecuted 348 N NAtures evils 355 NAtures voice 370 Nature delighteth in contrarieties 412 Nature the price of time 43 Nebucadnezzar nursed by a Goat 16 Nero his folly 12 Notable action of Noah 414 Nobility the first gift of God 4 Nobility not tied to bloud ibid. Against such as betray their Nobility 5 Nobility of Noah wherein ibid. Nobility of Eleazar and his excellent speech ibid. Priviledges of Nobility 8 Noble-men why ill educated 16 Nobility very much corrupted 17 Noble-mens particular obligation 20 Noble-men examples of great importance in the world 21 Noble-men appeal from the sentence of Labour 51 Disorders in corrupt Nobility 218 219 Novelty in Religion dangerous 31 Novelty ever suspected by the Wise 32 O OAths of Magistrates 90 OBedience defined 468 The qualities of an Officer 272 Onocratalus his instinct 417 Souls in the torrent of Opinion 37
Velocitas cogitationum animi celeritas ingeniâ— varictas multiformes illis notaâ— imprimâ—t Plin. l. 7 cap. 12. thoughts divers inflexions of the heart tastes distastes which thrust on one another as the waves of the sea They likewise thereunto adde that they very easily are turmoiled with suspicions jealousies and distrusts the least matters offend them and many once displeased are irreconcileable And which is more that the most part of them have narrow hearts and hands nor open enough to help their good friends at a need they being ordinarily much tyed to the interest of their family so that there are many who love not so much for love as for gain Reasons for the modest love of women Amor magis lentitur cum prodit eum indigentia August l. 10. de Trin. c. 12 S. Thom. 1. 2 q 25. This may well happen in certain humours but there are some grievous spirits who do not so easily receive the impressions of these ill qualities and who persevere till death in an unshaken constancy of affection And verily it seemeth that contrary to what hath been spoken nature more favoureth them therein because Love as saith S. Thomas after S. Augustine appears best in indigence and those love most fervently and powerfully who besides other attractives see themselves bound unto it by some kind of necessity Now the inclination which a woman hath towards man is as it were necessary For it is more easie for a man to be without a woman having regard to spirituall and temporall assistances as Sacraments and Physick then for a woman to be without a man Adam was for a while all alone in Paradise in a vaste world but God permitted not that Eve should be there alone one moment for this solitude would have gone hard with her to see so many living creatures and in so divers kinds and not meet with one to bear her resemblance This being so one may with reason say that as we love things necessary with more endeavour and stability so women are tyed with the more indissoluble chains in virtuous inclinations But not to speak of this motive which proceeding from a meer motion of nature cannot be the most generous we find men who rest upon Indifferency and seek nothing but to content their own senses and to idolatrize themselves but women very rarely stay upon neutrality needs they must love or hate there is no third condition for them and since according to the Philosopher it is fit to judge of Contraries by proportion we will truly say that if they be susceptible of the impressions of hatred above all may be said so are they likewise capable of noble Amities They think themselves more engaged in honour to entertain them when they have begun fearing to be disparaged by the multitude of wandring and flitting affections Adde also to this that they are more tender then men and that softnesse of temperature is to love as the air to the ray of the Sun seeing the affections more easily penetrate where they find dispositions which have already prepared a way for them Lastly as they commonly are more devout and religious then men so they observe virtuous Amities with respect and entertain them out of conscience and especially such as are grounded on piety which is the thing that most powerfully predominateth over their heart I speak this in respect of those who are very virtuous but as we find few rare virtues and strong amities accompanied with all necessary circumstances are not so frequent in their sex It seemeth also that the Examples we derive as well from Nature as Civil life insensibly lead us to the proof of that which we propose Among living creatures the Females are the more Bodin Theatri natur l. 3. sect 6. sharp and ardent as well in their affection as in their anger the cuttle-fish takes revenge on that which striketh her male but the male flyeth if his female catch a blow as Aristotle hath observed in the ninth book of his living Creatures I well remember the Antients studiously reckoned up the pairs of friends which they had observed throughout all Ages and that Lucian Luc. Toxatis in his Toxaris hath strange examples of amity between men as of him who left his whole family in a fire to carry out his dearest friend on his shoulders and of another who gave his own eyes for the ransome of him whom he most tenderly affected But who likewise would in particular decipher the notable acts of love which many wives have witnessed to their husbands should find wherewith to be moved to admiration and to settle his constancy If we talk of preserving a widdow-hood inaccessible to second wedlocks Rare amitieâ— of women Valer. Max. l. 4 c. 6. how many may we find of them even in Gentilisme who after the death of their dear husbands have said what the antient Valeria did My husband is dead to others but not to me If we speak of suffering great toils of body Queen Hipsicrates followed King Mithridates her husband as one of his bravest Captains gallautly corvetting a horse and galloping through snows and wildernesses not to be separated from him If we discourse of banishment and ignominies Sulpitia brake up doors and locks to run Idem lib. 6. cap. 7. maugre her mother after her exiled husband among the proscripts of the Triumvirat If imprisonments be Lipsii exem politica put into the list of account Eponia was nine years shut up with her husband in the hollow cavern of a Tomb. If you regard maladies a daughter of Spain daily Rhod. Santius histor Hispan p. 1. cap. 4. Scard lib. 3. hist Paravinae with her tongue licked the envenomed wound of King Edward of England her dear husband If you look on the terrible of terribles death Blaunch the Italian Lady scorning the flatteries of the Tyrant Actolin who passionately woed her captive though she were escaping out of the hands of souldiers she went to breathe out her life upon the tomb of him to whom she first of all had given her heart and affections Yea I much more admire those who willingly have deprived themselves of all riches greatnesse yea even of the presence of their husbands whom they dearly loved to procure them liberty wealth and honour Cedrenus Cedren in Epirom hist p. 596. observeth in his history that Constantine the ninth exercising tyranny as well in matter of love as within his Empire caused the Roman Argyropylus to be sought out and commanded him to repudiate his wife whom he had lawfully married to take his daughter on condition that he would make him Cesar and associate him with himself in his dignity but if he condescended not to his will he threatned to pull out his eyes and to make him all the dayes of his life miserable The Excellent loyalty of a Lady Lady who was present seeing her husband involved in all the perplexities that might be and
de concent l. 38. I were created to live free from all worldly contrarieties I who commit so many fins on the other part will to day do an act of virtue in honour of my Master and in despite of passion Let us go to heaven by love since we cannot go thither by sufferings This is the true gate by which we enter into the sanctuary eternally to enjoy the sight of the inaccessible beauties of the holy and regall Trinity Hear you not the God of peace who saith to us If thou O unhappy soul wilt still persist in Hatred I pronounce unto thee the six punishments of Cain Banishment from the sight of God fear stupidity of mind the life of a beast the malediction of the earth and as Procopius addeth persecuting Angels armed with swords of fire who shall pursue thee like spectres and spirits in all places and shall make themselves visible and dreadfull to thee at the last day of thy life Behold here deservedly thy inheritance since being mortall thou makest thy enemies immortall and dost still persecute the afflicted widow and her children who are become orphans after the death of a husband and a father whom thou hatest The strongest enmities oft-times are appeased at the sight of a dead body and a tomb which we find exemplified in Josephus for Alexander was extremely hated by the Jews as having reigned over them with a rod of Iron But when death had closed up his eyes and that the Queen his wife most sorrowfully presented Joseph l. 3. c. 23. A notable example to appease hatred her self accompanied by two young children and exposed the body of her husband saying aloud Sirs I am not ignorant that my husband hath most unworthily used you but see to what death hath brought him if you be not satisfied tear his body in pieces and satisfie your own revenge but pardon a deplorable widow and her little innocent orphans who implore your mercy The most salvage spirits were so softned by this act that all their hatred turned into pity yet you Barbarian still persist to hate a man after his death to persecute him in a part of himself to tear him in pieces in his living members O good God if you renounce not this revenge you will be used like Cain as an enemy of mankind and a hang-man of Nature O flame O love O God! As thou art dispersed throughout us by love so banish all these cursed Hatreds of Hell and make us love all in thy goodnesse to possesse all in thy fruition § 6 Of the profit may be drawn from Hatred and the course we must hold to be freed from the Danger of being Hated THere now remains to consider here what profit may be derived from hatred and with what Oeconomy Utility of hatred it may be husbanded to render it in some sort profitable and in case it be hurtfull to prevent its assaults and sweeten its acerbities If the industry of men found out the way to make preservitives out of the most dangerous poysons why should it be impossible for us to make some notable utilities to arise out of a passion which seems not to be created but for the dammage and ruine of all things yet it is certain that Nature which never is idle in its productions hath given it us for a great good For it may serve love well rectified in its pretentions it furnisheth it with centinels and light-horse to hinder that which opposeth its inclination and to ruine all contrarieties banded against its contentments How often would Nature throw it self out of stupidity into uncertain dangers and most certain mischiefs were it not that naturall a version did awaken it did avert it from its misery and insensibly shew it the place of repose Is it not a wholesome Hatred to hate Pride Ryot Ambition and all ill Habits Is it not a reasonable Hatred discreetly to fly from maladies crosses incommodities which hurt the body and nothing advantage the mind This passion which in the beginning seemed so hideous teacheth us all this When it is well managed it conspireth against others by an according Discord to the lovely Harmony of totall Nature One may say there is happinesse and advantage to hate many things but what profit can one find in passive Hatred which makes a man many times to be hated and ill wished without cause or any demerit To that I answer with Saint Ambrose that it is That it is good to be honestly loved good to avoid such a kind of Hatred that it is fit to make ones self to be beloved with all honour by good men and to gain as much as possible the good opinion of all the world thereby to render glory to God as Rivers carry their tribute to the Ocean A publick Bonum est testimonium habere de multorum dilectione hinc nascitur fides ut committere se tuo affectul non vereatut alienus quem charum advertit pluribus Ambr. l. 2. offic c. 7. Means to gain the good will of the publick person who is in the employments and commerce of the great world may have all the treasures of the Indies and all the dignities of old Rome but if he have not the love and good-will of men I account him most indigent and poor Thence it is that confidence taketh beginning without which there is no fortune maketh any notable progression nor affair which can have such successe as might be expected It is infinitely profitable for great men that they may divert the Hatred of the people to have innocency of life greatnesse without contempt of inferiours revenues without injustice riches without avarice pleasures without ryot liberty without tyranny and splendour without rapine All the rich who live in the society of men as Pikes called the tyrants of rivers in the company of other fishes to ruine devour and fatten themselves with the bloud of the commons are ordinarily most odious but as there is a certain fish which Elians History calleth the Adonis of the Sea because Adonis an admirable fish Aelian l. 9. c. 16. de animal it liveth so innocently that it toucheth no living thing strictly preserving peace with all the off-spring of the sea which is the cause it is beloved and courted as the true darling of waters so we find in the world men of honour and estate who came to eminent fortunes by pure and innocent wayes wherein they demeaned themselves with much maturity sweetnesse and affability which put them into the possession of the good opinion of all the world But those who are hated ought diligently and carefully to consider from whence this hatred proceedeth and by what wayes it is fomented that fit remedies may thereunto be applyed There is a hatred which cometh from equals another How hatred is to be diverted from inferiours a third from great ones and sometimes from powerfull and subtile women which is little to be feared That which proceedeth
be for our advantage There are who escape out of prison by fire others who are faln into precipices very gently and have in the bottome found their liberty others to whom poysons are turned into nutriment others to whom blows of a sword have broken impostumes so true it is that the seeds of good hap are sometimes hidden under the apparances of ill Besides this give your self the leisure to find out the To take things at the worst whole latitude of the evill which strikes you Take if you think good all things at the worst and handle your self as an enemy yet you shall find that this evil is not so bad as it is said that many have gone that way before you and that if God permit it he will give you strength to bear it The fear it self which is the worst of our evils is not so great a torment since it affordeth us precaution industry and fit means and suggesteth us wayes to fear no more If you never have experienced evil you have much to complain that you so little have been a man and if you have some experience of the time past it will much serve you to sweeten the apprehension of the evils to come Vanquish your own conceits as much as you can and pray them not to present unto you under so hideous a mask those pains which women and children have many times laughed at If you in the beginning feel any horrour and the first rebellions of nature lose not courage for Fiducia pallens Statius Theb. Rodericus Toletanus rerum Hisp l. 5. c. 23. all that since the Poet painted Boldnesse with a pale visage We have often seen great Captains as Garcias to quake in the beginning of dangerous battels because their flesh as they said laid hold of their courage and carried the imagination into the most hideous perils Lastly be it how it will be you shall find the remedy of your fears in the presence of that which you fear since there are some who in the irresolution of some affair do endure a thousand evils and so soon as the determination thereof succeedeth though to their prejudice they fell themselves much more lightned Many prisoners who stand on thorns in prison expecting the issue of their triall go very resolute to execution seeing it is better to die once then to live still in the apprehension of death David shook with fear Reg 2. 12. wept and fasted lay on the ground for the sicknesse of his young son But after the death was denounced him he rose up from the earth changed his habit washed and perfumed himself then having worshipped in the house of God he asked for his dinner and first of all comforted Bathsheba upon this accident whereat his houshold-servants were amazed But he taught them we must not afflict our selves for those things whereof there is no remedy I conclude with the last kind of fear which comes from things very extraordinary as are Comets Armies of fire Prodigies in the Heavens and the Air Thunders Lightnings Monsters Inundations Fires Earthquakes Spirits Spectres Devils and Hell Good God! what terrour is there in this miserable life since besides these which are so ordinary with us we must expect other from places so high and so low But howsoever we notwithstanding do find courages which surmount them with the assistance of God although it do not ordinarily happen without some impressions of fear otherwise we must be far engaged in stupidity Comets Eclipses flying fires and so many other Meteors do not now-a-dayes so much affright since we have discovered the causes which is a powerfull proof that ignorance in many occasions makes up a great part of our torments Pericles strook Stratagem of Pericles Polyaenus l. 3. a fire-steel in an assembly of his Captains and Souldiers who were astonished at a thunder and lightning happened in the instant of a battel shewing that what the heavens did was that he was doing before their eyes which marvellously satisfied them Superstition makes a thousand fantasies to be feared whereat we might laugh with a little wisdome The Euseb l. 1. de praeparat Evang. c. 7. Egyptians were half dead when the figure of a huge dragon which sometimes of the year was shewed them did not seem to look well on them and the Romans fell in their Courage when the Cocks which governed their battels did not feed to their liking Hecataeus Hecataeus apud Cunaeum l. 2. de Rep. Hebraeorum an antient Historian telleth that Alexanders whole army stood still to look on a bird from whence the Augur went about to derive some presage which being seen by a Jew named Mosellan he drew an arrow out of his quiver and kill'd it mocking at the Grecians who expected their destiny from a creature which so little knew its own As we laugh at this present at these fopperies so we should entertain with scorn so many dreams and superstitious observations which trouble them enough who make account of them Wild beasts inundation of rivers productions of mountains big with flames sulphur and stonas are other causes of terrour nor hath there ever been seen any more hideous then that which happened these late years in Italy in the last fiering of Mount Vesuvius The burning of Vesuvius in the year 1631. Julius Recupitus which is excellently described by F. Julius Recupitus Then it there can be nothing seen more able to excite terrour unlesse in an instant the bottome of Hell were laid open and all the hideous aspects of the torments of the damned Yet it is a strange thing how among waves of fire which ran on all sides clouds of Ashes which appeared like vast mountains continuall Earthquakes countrebuffs of Hillocks and of houses of Abysses of Gulphs and of Chaoses there were people to be found who yet thought upon their purses and took the way towards their houses to lay hold of their slender substances which makes us see that there is nothing so horrid where the soul of man returned to it self findeth not some leisure to breathe The monsters of the Roman Amphitheatre which in the beginning made the most hardy to quake were in the end despised by women who were hired to combat with them Things not seen which it seems should most trouble the mind because they are most hidden are also in some sort surmounted since we read how that many great Anchorets lay in Church-yards infested with ghosts and spectres and about solitudes in forrests and wildernesses the most retired in the midst of so many illusions of evill spirits as it is written in the Acts of Saint Anthony S. Hilarion and S. Macarius There is nothing but the day of Judgement Hell and the punishments of the damned we should reasonably fear and not out of visionary scruples to free us from all fear § 4. That the Contemplation of the power and Bounty of God ought to take away all our fears BUt if these reason
of devils to draw life drop after drop out of a miserable body But not speaking at this present of these extremities of Cruelty which arise out of Hell it is evident that the Hardnesse of heart and the harshnesse of a nature devoid of Compassion is a monster in humane nature All great souls have I know not what tincture of good nesse which rendreth them pliant to the afflictions of such as suffer It is a feeling which God hath poured into the masse of mankind and which he would have communicated by the prime men of the world to all posterity The tradition of the Hebrews holdeth that the Mildnesse of the first men Patriarch Noah recommendeth mildnesse even among beasts accounting it a capitall crime to tear off a member of a living beast And the most sage common-wealths Fab. Quintilian l 5. cap. 9. have walked in the same wayes since that of Athens condemned to death a young child who took delight to prick out the eyes of crows and having made them blind let them fly for his pastime It judged this heart was base and bloudy and practised its first apprentiship of crueltie upon birds to exercise it one day upon men The Carthaginians publickly condemned Plin. l. 8. c. 16. a very industrious Citizen for no other cause but for having made a lion tractable supposing that a man who had so great conversation among wild beasts would lose all he had humane in him and put on the manners of a tyrant What can those answer to this call of Nature who are ashamed to compassionate their neighbours seeing pity extends it self even to beasts They fear that by shewing compassion it may be thought their courage thereby is greatly effeminate and see not that to seem valiant they cease to be men Conquerours have wept over their Laurels as yet Compassion of great courages all verdant blaming the just rigour of their arms albeit they could not hate the glory Marcellus desired to quench the coals of the city Syracusa with his tears Titus seeing the city of Jerusalem all covered with dead bodies found his heart much softned therewith protesting it was an act of Heaven and not an effect of his own disposition There is some touch of Divinity in good natures and God hath alwayes been pleased that they who nearest approach to him should be the most humane The first Images of the Saviour of the world were ordinarily painted in the form of a Lamb and it was likewise a Lamb of God which represented him in Great Constantine's Font and which poured forth the water of Baptism to shew us that the fountains of his Bounty ran throughout the whole Church The holy Ghost hath never been seen Concil 6. in Teul can 82 Damasus in Pontifieibus qui est potius Anastafius Bibliothecarius in the form of an Eagle or of a Hawk but of a Dove to stamp on our manners the impressions of his bounty It is an insupportable thing when there is observed even among those who approach nearest to Altars and who consecrate the Lamb of God in their hands some to be of imperious spirits and wills inflexible who torment poor subjects and make them groan under Non dominantes in Cleris sed forma facti◠gregis ex animo 1 Pet. 5. 3. their Commands They resemble Semiramis who on her Banners bare a Dove which in its beak held a bloudy sword as meaning to say that under a vvomans face she had the courage and stem violence of tyrants So their name theircharacter and degree testifieth Revertamur ad populum nostrum à facie gladii columbae Hier. 46. 16 nought but mildnesse but their manners are full of rigour and acerbity which wound hearts even to bloud This happeneth to many out of a certain stupidity in such sort that it seems they entering into office at that instant drink of the water of forgetfulnesse which Rigour misbecometh persons Ecclesiasticall Its causes and differences in them blotteth out the memory of all they were to become that which they ought never to be They forget their inferiours are men who put their precious liberty to wit a good inestimable into their hands as a pledge and that they must very skilfully handle them there being not a creature in all nature more tender or more sensible then the King of creatures They consider not that the power of one man over another is a thing which is alwayes somewhat suspected by nature on what side soever it come and that it must be practised insensibly so that the flesh be rather cast into a slumber then irritated To others it comes from a most refined pride which being under the subjection of a superiour kept it self close in the interiour of the soul a serpent enchanted and fast asleep but so soon as he sees himself armed with a sword of authority he cuts with both edges not sparing any one as if the great mystery of making a dignity valuable were to encompasse it with all the ensignes of terrour Some are not Porta in Chao of a bad nature and do resemble the sea which is not by nature salt but the sunne stirreth up unto it vapours cold dry and terrestriall which being burnt by heat spread themselves on the superficies of the water and cause saltnesse so these lights of authority which environ a man raise smokes in him which being not wel tempered by prudence leave a bitter impression on manners communicating some haughtinesse to words and conversation It is gotten in others by a long assiduity of superiority which is the cause that beholding themselves perpetually with a head of gold and a breast of silver they consider not that being in some sort like to Nabuchodonozors statue they yet have feet of clay Others come thereunto by an indiscreet zeal and out of small experience of humane things who are no sooner raised unto some degree but they talk of reformation of correction of chastisements and to see them you would say they were so many Archimedes who seek for a place out of the world to set foot in of purpose to turn the world to psie-turvey Their power is not alwayes answerable to their purpose which makes them sad and dejected in their courage causing them to fall back to the other extremity from whence it cometh that they are one while harsh and another time gentle and by inequality in their manners thrust all into disorder That is it which Saint Gregory the great observed Gregor M. in epist ola ad Utbicum in Abbot Vrbicus saying that his Monastery was in distemper because he made himself unequall one while flattering some and another while reprehending the rest with immeasurable anger Lastly there are others who have a very good conscience and whose manners are rigid and they be not imprudent but they have such a desire to frame the whole world to their humour that out of the assiduity of their admonitions
these Motives and the felicity of others who have gloriously surmounted them And to add a pleasing variety to this last piece I will conclude with many short and remarkable Examples suited to those four mentioned Passions THE DISASTERS OF SUCH As have yielded to the Passion OF LOVE AND The Glory of Souls which have overcome it 1. LEt us begin with that Passion which is the Source of the rest and which in all times hath caused trouble among men to give a ground to our discourse The children of great Clodoveus became not so soon tractable to the severity of Christian manners but suffered themselves very often to be transported with very violent exorbitancies and particularly with unlawful loves which caused ill example in their house and great disorder throughout their Kingdome Gregory of Tours l. 4. Gregory of Tours observeth fordid and shamefull affections in the person of King Caribert grand-child of Clodoveus which cast an Eclipse upon the lights of the Diademe of this great King and could never be rooted out but by patience by prayers and by the effects of the puissant hand of God Queen Ingobergua who knew the humours of her The plot of Queen Ingobergna to cure her husbands passion succeedeth ill out of too much affectation husband to be addicted to inconsiderate love and who was jealous enough of her bed took not among her attendant Ladies those nymphs of the Court which are full of attractives and deserve admiration but purposely chose out base and despicable wayters thinking it was a singular remedy against the Kings malady She had at that time in her Court and service two daughters of a Clothworker the eldest of which was called Marcovessa and the youngest Mirefleur Caribert whose love was more lustfull then ambitious became desperately in love and courted them to the prejudice of his honour and wedlock which wounded the soul of the Queen with a very sensible arrow seeing the havock this passion made in the mind of this Monarch Jealousie suggesteth her a trick which seemed sufficient to divert him from his infamous servitude if this passion might be cured by another and that a jealous woman did not irritate the wounds of love by its proper remedies She calleth the Father of her two servants commanded him secretly to practise his trade in some corner of the Court whither she very cunningly brought his Majesty to make him see the base extraction of his Mistresses and to throw shame confusion upon him But he who at distance saw this wile coming towards him and the solemn preparation of it was displeased saying that if nothing were wanting but nobility to render these maids worthy of his love he would sufficiently ennoble them by his person and that it onely belonged to him to raise inferiour things by loving them and as great ones will rather be flattered in their passions then censured instantly he made a shamefull divorce with the Queen contrary to laws both divine and humane to take to wife the younger of these sisters which was Mirefleur But love which being of its nature a slave faiâ—eth not to be disdainfull quickly put a distaste of her unto him to make him look after the elder who seemed the more modest and wear a religious habit whether desirous to enflame love by this pretext which ordinarily is eagre to pursue all it can least obtein or whether she did it to give lesse advantage and suspicion to the jealous spirit of Queen Ingobergua The fire of Concupiscence which spareth not to enflame Linsey-wolsey as well as Satin continually blowed by the wind of ambition which promised this creature a giddy Fancy of a Crown burnt so strongly that this spirit which had more cunning then beauty caused so much madnesse to creep into the heart of this miserable king that he resolved to marry her which he did qualifying a prodigious whoredome with the title of wedlock The Queen was ready to dy and addresseth her complaints to God and men The Bishops who were assembled in the Councell of Tours in favour of her made Canons against incestuous marriages but the Canons at that time were not strong enough against the arrows of love S. German Bishop of Paris sent forth thunders of excommunication but passion armed with authority made no more account of them then of flying fires which are quenched in their birth God thereto put his hand by the prayers of the Church and took away this religious woman by a horrible and sudden death which affrighted the King and he in the end conceived shame and sorrow for his fault deriving his salvation out of necessity since he could not gain it from the glory of his refistance That which remained him of life was short and miserable and his passion having rendred him contemptible to his own subjects he quickly left Crown and Scepter to pay a tribute to his Tombe 2. Another kind of sottish love appeared in the government Gregory of Tours l. 5. of young Meraveus which I will here relate as being able to minister matter of terrour to youth which takes liberty in clandestine marriages King Chilperic his father happened to bear away the bloody spoil of his brother Sigebert who had been traiterously murthered by the subtile practises of Fredegond when he was come to the Eve of his triumph The famous Brunhault widow of the deceased King as yet very young was become a party of this miserable booty and saw her pretious liberty enthralled in the hands of her brother in law and sister who was born for vengeance and exercised in massacres Her fortune represented nothing unto her but a thousand images of terrour and the cruelty of her adversaries made her apprehend all that which notable mischievous wickednesse can do when it hath the sword of power in hand Yet her bloud was spared to consume her with languors sentence of her Captivity was pronounced by giving her the City of Roan for prison A trusty man A notable example of Merouevs to dievrt youth from licentious mariages was sought for to execute this Commission and the King cast his eye on his son Meroveus a young Prince of a nature sweet and facile endowed wiht excellent parts which made him to be beloved and beheld as a rising star by all the eyes of France This was to put fire too near to stubble not considering that the calme of such natures is ordinarily the most turmoiled with storms of love So soon as Brunhault who according to the relation of S. Gregory of Torus was a very beautyfull and well spoken Princesse began to unciel her eyes which had hitherto been drenched in a deluge of tears she appeared to Meroveus as a blushing Morn which raiseth the more fair after a shower and the arrow of love sharpned by compassion made such flames to sparkle in his heart that he was enforced to quench them with his bloud He saw himself the captive of his fair prisoner
feet praying him to forget what was past yet he caused his processe to be made in Parliament upon accusations which did more manifest the Passion of the King then any crime in the life of the Count. Notwithstanding the close practise was so great that he was condemned to death and although Lewis terrified by his own Conscience and the generall opinion would not have it to proceed any further yet he confined him to the Bastile where he had spent the rest of his dayes if he had not found means to save himself But whom would he spare who put away and deprived of Office his best servants for having hindered him during his sicknesse to come near unto a Window out of the care they had of his health This passion was a Devil in the heart of this Prince which made him odious to many and filled his whole life with disturbance and acerbity 10. A revengefull spirit spares nothing to please it Aymonius l. 5. c. 39. self and oft-times openeth precipices to fill them with death and ruine It is a strange thing that one sole Wicked revenge of an Abbot and of John Prochytas against the French Abbot of Saint German de Prez named Gaulin had almost ruined the whole Kingdome of France for having been bereaved of an Abbacy He many years revolved his revenge and after the death of Lewis le Begue under whom he had received the injury which he proposed to himself he went to Lewis the German whom he enflamed with so much cunning to the conquest of the Kingdome of France that he set a huge army on foot to surprize the heir of the Crown in the Confusion of his Affairs and the trouble was so great that needs must Lorraigne be cut off from the Kingdome of France to give it to this Conquerour So did John Prochytas the Sicilian who having been deprived of his estate by Charles of Anjou conceived a mortall enmity against the French which made him contrive that bloudy Tragedy of Sicilian Vespres This unfortunate man disguising himself in the habit of a Franciscan went to Peter of Arragon to shew him the means how to invade Sicily and seeing that he and his wife Queen Constance bent all their endeavour thereto he ceased not to stir up the Countrey where he had much credit and used so many engines that in the end he caused one of the most horrible massactes which was ever projected On an Easter-day in the time of Vespres the French had all their throats cut throughout the Island of Sicily No age sex condition nobility nor religious were spared The black spirit of the Abysle drew men from the Altar to runne to the sword which they indifferently thrust into the bosome of their guests nor were so many cryes and lamentations nor such images of death flying before their eyes able to wound their hearts with one sole touch of compassion which useth to move the most unnaturall Rage blown by the breath of the most cruell furies of Hell made them to open the bellies of women and to dig into their entrails to tear thence little Infants conceived of French bloud It caused the most secret sanctuaries of nature to be violated to put those to death who had not as yet the first taste of life Shall we not then say that the passion of revenge which hath taken root in a soul half damned is the most fatall instrument that Hell can invent to overthrow the Empire of Christianity 11. All these accidents well considered are sufficient to moderate the passions which make so much noyse among mankind But let us consider before we go off this stage that Anger and Revenge are not creatures invincible to Courtiers who yet retein som Character of Christianity Robert one of the greatest Kings that ever ware the Crown of France saw his two sonnes bandied against Glaber him when provoked by the practises of the Queen Great moderation in Saint King Robert their mother who ceased not to insult over them they ran to the field with some tumultuary troops and began to exercise acts of hostility which made them very guilty The father incensed by their rebellion and forcibly urged by the sting of the mothers revenge speedily prepares an army and entreth into Burgundy to surprise and chastise them Thereupon William Abbot of S. Benigne of Dion goeth to him and shews that these disorders were an effect of the divine Providence which we should rather appease by penance then irritate by anger that if his Majesty would call to mind he should find that his youth was not exempt from errours committed by the inconsideration of age and the practise of evil counsels that he ought not to revenge with sword and fire that which he had suffered in his own person and that as he would not any should enterprise upon his hereditary possession so it was fit not to meddle with that which was Gods who had reserved vengeance to himself This speech had such power that the good King was instantly appeased caused his children to come embraced them with paternall affection and received them into favour tying their reconciliation with an indissoluble knot What can one answer to the mildnesse of a King accompanied with so much power and wisdome but confesse that pardon is not a thing impossible since this great Prince upon the words of a religious man layes down arms and dissipateth all his anger as waves break at the foot of rocks 12. We must confesse that Regality was never Helgandus in vita Roberti Regis seen allyed to a spirit more mild and peaceable and that his actions should rather be matter of admiration then example He pardoned twelve murtherers who had a purpose to attempt upon his life after he had caused them to confesse and communicate saying it was not reasonable to condemn those whom the Church had absolved and to afflict death upon such as had received the bread of life But what would not he have done who surprising a rogue which had cut away half of his cloke furred with Ermins said mildely to him Save thy self and leave the rest for another who may have need of it 13. This mildnesse is very like to that of Henry the First afterward King of England who seeing his Fathers body to be stayed in open street upon the instant of his obsequies and this by a mean Citizen who complained the soil of the land where the dead which was William the Conquerour was to be interred was his Ancestours inheritance he was nothing at all moved but presently commanded his Treasurer to satisfie the Creditour and to prosecute the pomp of his Funerals 14. Lewis the Eleventh did a King-like act towards Generous act of Lewis the Eleventh the ashes of the fair Agnes who had possessed the heart of his father Charls the Seventh and had persecuted him the son in her life-time At her death she gave threescore thousand crowns for a foundation to
habit of penance with which he was put into the hands of the Guard and a few dayes after led along in Lotharius his train All Histories mourn in the horrour of this narration and there is not any who in his thoughts condemns not the Authours of this attempt But this good King being re established by the endeavour of his best Subjects did never pursue his injuries witnessing in all occasions an extream facility to be reconciled to his children and when afterward he was upon the point of death he rallyed together all he had of life spirits and strength to forgive them asked of God that he would not take vengeance upon their crimes This was to fulfil the whole law and to do at the Court all that which the most perfectly religious can perform in a Cloister 18. I will yet tell you for a conclusion that there are certain industries which they who are near great ones may use to appease their Anger and to divert the pernicious effects by some delay which is the best Counsellour Argentre this furious passion can have This is to be seen in the course that Bavalon took Addresse of Bavalon to appease that anger of the Duke of Brittaign with the Duke of Brittaigne The Prince being offended with the Count of Clisson Constable of France resolved to take him in a snare and undo him To compasse this enterprise he made a great feast whereto he invited all the principall Lords of Brittaigne courting Clisson with incomparable courtesie After all he let him see his Castle of Lermine where leading him from story to story and from chamber to chamber he brought him to the chief Turret praying him to consider the fortifications to reform the defects whilst he spake a word to Seigneur Laval brother in law to Clisson He no sooner entred in but he saw himself arrested by the Guard and put into irons with commandment given to Mounsieur Bavalon Captain of the Castle to throw him the next night in a sack into the water Bavalon who perceived his Master was very quick and thought that night might give him better counsel resolved to do nothing In the mean time solitude and darknesse having recollected the Dukes spirits together which had all day been scattered by the tempest of passion he found his heart infinitely ballanced between the satisfaction of revenge and the apprehension of inevitable dangers which would wait on it imagining the shadow of the Constable already drowned as he thought would draw fire bloud and havock upon his desolated Countrey The hideous visions which already pitched battell in his distempered brain the displayed Ensignes and Armies heaped together from all parts drew deep sighs from him which were observed by the gentlemen of his chamber Bavalon about break of day comes into his chamber and being asked concerning the secret execution of his command he answered It is done loth to open any more untill he could clearly look into his masters mind The Duke upon this word beginneth his sobbs again with beating his hands which testified great despair in him But he insisting and many times demanding whether Clisson were drowned The Captain replyed He was and that he about mid-night had buried the body fearing it might be discovered Then began the Prince afresh to curse and to abhorre his own anger which had transported him to this out-rage and said Would to God Bavalon I had believed thee when thou didst counsel me to do nothing or that thou hadst not believed me when I so passionately commanded thee His trusty servant seeing he spake in good earnest and that it was time to declare himself assured him Clisson was alive and that he had deferred his commandment out of this consideration that if he persisted in the same mind he should alwayes have means enough to execute him The Duke rapt with this prudence embraced him and gave him a thousand florins for finding out so excellent a remedy for his Passion Observations upon ENVY Which draweth along with it Iealousie Hatred and Sadnesse WE enter into black and Saturnian Passions which are Envie Jealousie Fear Sadnesse and Despair wherein we shall observe a venemous malignity which replenisheth the heart with plagues the life with furies and the world with Tragedies I will begin this order with two Court-Monks who in their time made a great noyse one of which being born for cruelty and bred in massacres his life was a continuall crime and his memory a perpetually execration But the other profiting by the experience of his evils Lamentable envy and enmity of Ebroin against S. Leger opened himself a way unto glory and drew upon him the blessings of posterity Under the reign of Clotharius the third Ebroin governed the State in the quality of the Major of the Palace who was of a spirit ambitious cruell and subtle valuing nothing above his own ends and placing conscience under all things in the world He entred into this charge like a Fox and swayed therein like a Lion doing nought else but roar against some and devour others there being no power able enough to bend his pride as if there were not riches enough in all the world to satisfie his avarice God who often-times suffereth not things violent to be long-lasting gave an end to his tyranny by the death of his Master whose reign was short and life most obscure He left two sons the eldest of which bare the name of Childeric and the youngest was called Thierry Ebroin seeing himself like creeping Ivie which seeks a pillar for support not to stand fair in Childerics mind whether this Prince were too clear sighted to discover his jugglings or whether under the reign of his Father he had otherwise used him then his condition deserved it made him arrogantly to adhere to Thierries faction thinking he had power and credit enough to make an alteration both in nature and State-affairs He then raiseth a controversie in a matter which was sufficiently decided by birth and assembleth the Estates to deliberate upon it where there were so many creatures whom he accounted to be obliged to follow his liking that the palm of so doubtfull a battell seemed to him already absolutely gained There was then in France one Leger a man of great birth of an excellent spirit of an eminent virtue accompanied with grace of body and other parts which made him fit for the Court. His Uncle who was a great Prelate had very nobly bred him giving him admittance into the Palace and his affairs but the sweetnesse of his nature not born for much trouble made him addict himself to the Church and become a religious man but was afterward taken out of his Monastery to be Bishop of Autun His degree and merit then obliged him to be present at this Assembly where it was treated of making a new King and seeing Ebroin insolently supported the younger to the prejudice of Nature and the laws of the Kingdome he undertook to
all the miserable betook themselves unto him unto the number of 400. men which entrenched themselves in a fortresse going forth every day for to rob to maintain themselves thereby In the midst of all these misfortunes the good Prince kept alwayes in his heart a true love of his countrey and knowing that the Philistims had laid siege before Keilah he failed not to go to help it and to deliver it although this ungratefull city was intened to deliver him to Saul if he had enclosed himself therein the which he would not do having consulted with the Oracle of God but retired himself to the desert of Ziph whither Jonathan that The visit of Jonathan secret and and very profitable to David burned with a great desire to see him came to find him secretly and they were for some time together with unspeakable expansions of heart This good friend comforted him and assured him that he should be King after his father and for himself he would be content to be his second which sufficiently witnessed the wonderfull modesty of this Prince and the incomparable love that he bore to David But the Ziphims men for the time that would provide for their own safety sent their deputies to Saul to advertise him that David was retired into their quarters and if it pleased him to follow him they would deliver him into his hands At the which Saul was exceeding joyful and entred the chase to entrap him compassing him on every side and hunting him like a poor deer chased by men and dogs with great out cries The danger was very manifest and David in great hazard to be taken had it not been for a happy message it may be procured by Jonathan that advertised Saul that the Philistims had taken the field and made great waste upon his lands at which he returned to bring remedy thereto deferring his former design till another occasion In the mean while David ran from desert to desert The rudenesse of Nabal towards David with his troops and was hardly able to live which made him have recourse to Nabal a rich man and that had great means entreating him for some courtesie for to maintain his people which had used him with very great respect defending his house his flocks and all his family against the spoilings of robbers This Nabal that was clownish and covetous answered the deputies of David that he knew not the son of Jesse but that he was not ignorant that there were evil servants enough which were fled from their masters and that he was not in case to take the bread from his hired servants for to give it to high-way men This word being told to David incensed him so much that he was going to set upon his house for to rob and sack it But Abagail the The wisdome of Abigail his wife wife of Nabal better behaved and wiser without busying her self to discourse with her husband that was a fool and drunk caused presently mules to be loaden with provision necessary for the men of war and went to meet David to whom she spake with so great wisdome comelinesse and humility that she turned away the tempest and stayed the swords already drawn out of the scabbards for to make a great slaughter in her house David admiring the wisdom and goodnesse of this spirit of the woman married her after the death of her husband It is so true that a good deed bestowed on a high A good deed done to a great one afflicted is of much value person in time of his affliction and when he hath most leasure to consider it is a seed-sowing which in its time brings forth and bears fruits of blessednesse After that Saul had driven back the Philistims he returns to the pursuit of David accompanied with three thousand men with a purpose to take him although he should hide himself under ground or should fly through the air And indeed he crept up rocks unaccessible David furiously pursued by Saul which were not frequented by any but by wild goats and as he passed that way he entred into a cave for some naturall necessity where David was hid with a small number of his faithfullest servants which failed not to tell him that this was the hand of God which had this day delivered his deadly enemy into his hands and that he should not now lose time but to cut him off quickly whilst that he gave him so fair play and this would be the means to end all those bitternesses wherewith his life was filled by the rage of this barbarous Persecutour This was a strong temptation to a man so violently His generousnesse in pardoning his enemy very admirable persecuted and whose life was sought by so many outrages Neverthelesse David stopping all those motions of revenge resolved in his heart by a strong inspiration of God never to lay his hands upon him which was consecrated King and contenting himself with cutting off the skirts of his coat he went out of the cave after Saul and crying with a loud voice he worshipped him prostrate on the earth holding in his hand the piece of his casock and saying to him Behold my Lord my Father and my King the innocence of my hands and do not believe them any more which filled you with suspicions of poor David you cannot be ignorant at this time that God hath put you into my power and that I could have handled you ill by taking away your life have saved mine own But God hath kept me by his holy grace from this thought and hath preserved you from all evil I never yet had any intent to hurt your Majesty having alwayes reverenced and served it as your most humble servant and subject whiles that you cease not to pesecute me and to torment my poor life with a thousand afflictions Alas my Lord what is it that you desire Against whom are you come forth with so great furniture of Arms and Horses against a poor dead Dog a miserable little beast I beseech the living God to judge between us two and to make you to know the goodnesse of my cause One may avouch that great and glorious actions The greatnesse and benefit of clemency of Clemency do never hurt Princes but that often they do place or keep the Crown upon their heads God and Men concurring to favour that goodnesse that approches so near to the highest Saul was so amazed with this action that he ran to him and embraced him weeping and said to him This is a sure sign O David which I acknowledge at the present and whereby I know for certain that you must reign after me so great a goodnesse not being able to be rewarded but by an Empire I do pray and conjure you onely to have pity on my poor children after my death and not to revenge your injuries upon them hereupon he swore to him to deal with him afterwards peaceably But as this spirit was unequall
them with all the inventions of their Nation for to surprize him there was one that would gain him to her another that would keep him another that would draw him from one sin to another even unto the bottome of hell It is farre more easie to become a fool with a woman then to make her wise he had endeavoured perhaps to covert them to his Religion but they perverted him and drew him to theirs He took their loves and afterward He is perverted in Religion their behaviour and at last their Superstition Every one of these women would bring her God into esteem and thought not her self to have any credit in her love if she did not make her false Deity to partake thereof they made such Gods as had no honester Title then the sinnes of debauched women As soon as he had made an Idol for one he must do the like for another all there went by the Emulation of their brains weak in reason and ardent in their passions They reckon about six Temples built round about Jerusalem to the Gods of six principall Nations But it was not sufficient to make these Gods they must be adored and presented with Sacrifices and Incense to content his Loves And he did not all this in shews onely nor dissimulation but his heart as the Scripture saith was wholly turned aside from the true God and fell as S. Austin saith into the depth of the gulf of Idolatry What might the admirers of his great Temple have said or rather the true worshippers of the great God What discourse might so many Kings and Queens have held that had had in so high esteem the wisdome of Solomon The report of his Loves and his Superstitions ran throughout all Kingdomes as a story unheard of which caused laughter enough to wicked ones as tears to good people and astonishment to the whole world How art thou faln from heaven O fair starre of the The dissipation of his estate morning Thou faithfull fore-runner of the King of Lamps which wert adorned with the purest and most innocent flames of the firmament who hath made thee to become a coal and who could bury thy lights in a dung-hill This lamentable King lost that great wisdome that made him esteemed over the whole world and became stupid leaving the care of all the affairs of his Kingdome All those great riches were exhausted and cast as it were into the gulf of Luxury He began to over-charge his people to maintain his infamous pleasures which made all their minds revolt against him The Prophets and Priests could not relish with him by reason of his changing Religion All the understanding Nobility did abhorre him seeing him so plunged in his filth The Commons desired nothing but to shake off the yoke that they could no longer bear God raised him up Rebellions on every side which prepared themselves â—â— overthrow his Empire But no man took it so much to heart as Jeroboam an able and subtil man whom he had advanced and employed in gatheâ—â—ng his Tributes for him It was he to whom he Prophet Ahaziah gave ten pieces of his garmeâ—t fore-telling him that he should reign over to Tribes of Israel and that was the cause that the King would have put him to death but he fled â—nto Egypt and returned under weak Rehoboam thâ— successour of Solomon who despising the counsels of the Antients that exhorted him to give his people content trusted to that of the young ones without brains which perswaded him to hold his own and that the people would not be brought under but by rigour Which made him to be forsaken by ten Tribes at once which cast themselves into the arms of Jeroboam who made a change of Religion and State in Samaria without ever being able either himself or his successours to bring them unto obedience again See here how Kingdomes change their Masters for the sins of lasciviousnesse impiety and oppressions of the people which are then greatly to be feared when despair hath brought them to fear nothing One may ask for a conclusion what became The estate of Solomon in the other world of this wise Solomon Whether he died in his sinne or whether he repented Whether he were saved or damned This is a Common place that hath exercised many excellent pens which have handled this subject curiously and eloquently I love not to do things done already I shall say onely that we may alwayes take the most favourable opinions which can with any likelihood defend themselves in favour of the safety of great persons There are some number of the holy Fathers which speak very openly thereof and perswade themselves that he repented S. Jerome upon the Prophet Ezekiel saith That although the founder of this great Temple sinned yet he was converted to God by a true repentance and for proof hereof he alledges the Book of the Proverbs in the four and twentieth Chapter that saith Novissimè ego egi poenitentiam respexi ut eligerem disciplinam that is At the last I repented and looked back that I might chuse instruction Although these words are not found in our Bible as he also draws them from the Septuagint and to uphold his opinion he will have Solomon to have written the Book of the Proverbs after his fall which is very hard to verifie And elsewhere also the same Authour upon the first Chapter of Ecclesiastes saith That this Book is the repentance of Solomon according to the Hebrews S. Ambrose in the second book of the Apology of David Chap. 3. puts Samson David and Solomon in the number of sinners converted Erraverunt tamen ut homines sed peccata sua tanquam justi agnoverunt Behold here that which is most formall without collecting many ambiguous passages S. Gregory the Great in the second book of his Morals Chap. 2. S. Prosper S. Eucherius Prosp lib. 2. de praedict cap. 27. Solomon clatus in senio fornicatus animo corpore Domiuo ipsum deserente malè obiit and amongst the Modern Tostat Bellarmine and Maldonat condemne him Tertullian Augustine Cyril of Alexandria Gregory Nyssen Isidore Bernard Chrysostome and Rupert leave this question doubtfull and undecided And to say truly this is all which can be said modestly and humanely and also the truestin a matter where there is nothing more certain then incertainty For to say that he hath composed the Book of Ecclesiastes after that he was deprived of his Kingdome and of all the Vanities is a story of the Rabbins which are little to be believed further also this Book is properly a Dialogue of divers men that dispute one against the other and bring forth good and bad sentences although the Authour of the Book doth take the good part To say that which Bonaventure saith That not one of the sacred Authours was damned if it be true the reason is because they lived well and not because they have written well For the kingdome of God saith
servant for she had some good work in her heart for the safety of her Countrey and intreated that it might be recommended to the prayers of the whole Assembly without curiously inquiring what it was that God would do by her means Ozias answered her that she might go in peace and that he prayed that her action might succeed to the good of the universall people Here perhaps may some men be astonished that a woman should take the boldnesse to go and advise the Magistrates and the Priests and the severer sort of censurers will say that by right Judith should have been sent home to her distaffe They will alledge that the Jews give every day thanks to God in their Prayers for that he had not made them be born Women Antiently they were placed in the Churches on the North side from whence the Scripture makes all the evil of the world to come Chrysologus hath also said that woman was the Way of Death the Title of the Sepulchre and the Gate of Hell But this ought to be understood of those that follow the steps of the first of Women and not the wayes of the chief of Virgins Those who abandon themselves to luxury to vanity and to dissolute pleasures are no way fit for great affairs being too delicate for labour and too ambitious of honour But many others that have taken pains in the regulating of their passions have rendred great services to Kingdomes and Common-wealths Rome had never been Rome without the Sabine women The people of the North by the report of Tacitus have been governed in their Warres and in their Polities by women professing that they perceived in them a certain prophetick and divine spirit Plato in his Common-wealth hath judged them capable of Offices their souls being of the same species or kind as men's Wherefore then should we think it strange that God made use of a virtuous woman to counsel men and to deliver her countrey Before she undertook that great work she was a long time prostrated before God in her Oratory with sackcloth upon her back and ashes upon her head saying with an amorous heart My God the God of my Fathers to whom nothing is impossible look down now upon the camp of the Assyrians with that eye of lightnings and of thunders that thou heretofore didst cast upon the army of Egyptians when they were buried in the bottom of the Sea Let the same happen to those here that trust in their chariots of warre in their spears and in their swords and know not that thou art the God of heaven that breakest in pieces the mighty Powers of the earth with one sole look of thine eyes lift up that same arm that hath made it self renown'd from all antiquity by so many wonders and tread under-foot all their strength by thine for ever dreadfull forces Suffer them not to violate thy Temple and to sack the House where thy Name is from all time invoked Cause this barbarous Collonel who promises himself our spoils to be taken by me through the snares of his eyes that his own Coutel-ax may divide his soul and body Strike him with the grace that thy blessing shall make to flow upon my lips and with the cloquence that it shall give to my speeches animate my heart and stiffen my arm to make that great blow that shall be thine and carry away an eternall honour for having pulled down that Colossus by a woman's hand Thy strength is not in the multitude of souldiers nor in the valour of Cavaliers It is not those proud warriours that ought to expect the succour of thy arm but it is the Prayer of the humble that gains thy heart and draws thy forces to their protection God of the heavens creatour of the waters and the God of all nature hear thy poor servant that presumes nothing but from thy mercy Remember thy Covenant give counsel to my heart words to my mouth and strength to my hands for the defence of thy House and that all the Nations of the habitable world may know that there is not any other God but thee Such were the Arms and Engines of this excellent woman such was the confidence she had in the God of hosts After this Prayer she rises from her Oratory comes down from her chamber and calls her maid to dresse her She puts off the sackcloth she washes her self she perfumes her self and quitting the mourning habit which she wore in her widow-hood she puts on her gayest cloathing The tresses of her long hairs are combed out with a delicate hand and her head covered with a stately tyre her handsome body appeared a little taller by the favour of her patins she hangs on her pendants at her ears she puts on her bracelets her chain of pearls her rings certain jewels made in form of flower-de-Lis's and all her richest ornaments It seemed that God took a pleasure that day to render her fairer then ever she had been and that all the graces smiled in her countenance because she had adorned her self through virtue and not through wantonnesse She caused her meat and drink to be carried by her maid fearing to pollute her body with the viands of the Infidels and instantly she went out of her house and betook her self to the city gate where she found Ozias the Prince together with the Priests that were ravished with the lustre of her heavenly beauty Yet no body curiously enquired whither she was going but were contented to wish that God would make her designs succesfull that she might be one day the honour of Jerusalem and that her name might be put in the rank of those great and holy souls that had rendred to God most renowned services She departs out of the city calling again upon the name of God and reciting some prayers with her servant As she went down the mountain upon the break of day the souldiers having perceived her failed not to run to her and seeing her so excellently beautifull were at first dazled in their eyes more by the splendour of her visage then by the first rayes of the day that then was upon its birth They inform themselves of her countrey of her journey and of her intentions whereto she answered that she was of Bethulia and that she had that day forsaken that miserable city that was obstinate in its misery and that for having resisted the triumphant legions of the Assyrians deserved to be destroyed by the thunder-bolts of heaven and earth That she would have no share in their crime no more then in their disastres and that her desire was to present her self to Holophernes to reveal to him the secrets of the city and to teach him the means how to take it without losing any of his men These men were ravished at the hearing of these discourses and assured her that she had taken an excellent course to live in quiet and in honour and that she would be very welcome to their master of whom
to go to the conquest of an Empire accompanied onely with eight persons He failed not upon the way to write to the Senate of Rome making great excuses for his so sudden a departure renewing the offers of his services and the oaths of his fidelity with a protestation that he went not to trouble his Nephew but to oppose Lysias that was an insolent fellow and would bring under the subjection of his tyranny both the King and Kingdome he forgat not to charge him with the murder of Octavius a Roman Embassadour that had been newly slain adding that he would become the revenger of so cowardly a treachery The Romans seemed neither to be astonished nor angry at his going but attended the succsse of his affairs to make him answer He quickly got as farre as the city of Tyre and sent secretly Diodorus into Antioch to hear the reports and sound the spirits of men which he found very much disposed to a change Whereupon Demetrius declar'd himself and took the Diadem with a generall applause of the Tyrians that made a great faction for him Lysias with his Eupator found himself much surprised at the news and deliberated a long time whether he should go out of that narrow passage to meet and fight with him or intrench himself in the city of Antioch or expect him with sure footing This last advice seemed the more secure but it was lesse glorious suddenly to shut himself up upon the first brute of a sedition and as a fearfull creature to run into his hole to hide himself It was represented to him That the sovereign remedy against those tumults was to flie speedily to them whereas delay would serve for nothing but to augment the boldnesse of the insolent that ordinarily they were very much amated when they were set upon with vigour before their conspiracy was settled that many that were yet but half engaged would retire from them at the least rumour that the Majesty of Kings bore something of great and sacred that astonished the Rebels In fine that it appertained to the dignity of so high a Prince and to the prudence of a Minister of State to endure nothing base but to put themselves suddenly into the field to defend their honour and their Kingdome which are two things whose losse is irrecoverable Those that desired most the ruine of Lysias were the first to flatter him concerning Courage and Generosity wishing nothing more then to see him in the field This made him go out of Antioch to go meet Demetrius But he that had seen himself so well accompanied in prosperity found himself almost all alone in danger for he was betrayed and sold by his own souldiers who seized upon the young King and him to deliver them to Demetrius who was yet in a great uncertainty of successe and said to those that had elected him Companions I am your work and the question of my life of your honour of your goods and of all that a mortall man can fear or hope for is this day to be decided If ye persist in the good will ye bear to me I esteem my self sufficiently and sufficiently rich The Sceptre is nothing to me in comparison of the approbation of your judgements and of your choice which ought now to be verified by your courage and by your arms We march under the favour of the Gods of the Roman Empire against a tyrant that hath possessed himself of that young Prince and of the Crown to assassinate the one and rob the other It is time either to defend Justice by our bloud or to conquer the Empire by our sweat As he was upon these discourses the news came wholly to him that Lysias had been apprehended with his pupil by the consent of all the Legions and they were to be brought to him prisoners This grand word gave him joy mingled with some doubt which made him meditate how he should use his fortune He shewed that he had a very great sense of the honour that had been bestowed upon him but he desired not to see Lysias nor his Nephew as the Scripture assure us whether it was that his heart was mollified with some tendernesse by the compassion of his bloud or whether it was a wile of a Politician who would not seem to do that which he procured to be done that he might have lesse blame in that action and that he might the more easily justifie himself to the Roman Senate about the death of the young King The souldiers finished that which he had begun slew Lysias and laid their bloudy hands upon the person of poor Eupator without having any regard either to the innocency of his life or to the tendernesse of his age or to the character that he bore so true it is that ambition is filled with a contageous venome that spares nothing for the satiating of it self Demetrius saw himself King by a generall consent of all the orders of the Realm and had no more any thing to sear unlesse it was from the Romans the disstributers of Empires and of Glories And therefore he employed all his cares to appease them by great submissions and reasons that made them plainly see that it was more for the interest of their State to preserve then to destroy him He sent them for this purpose a solemne Embassage with great presents and and above all a Crown of an high price for a mark that he submitted his Royall dignity to their discretion Further yet to testifie how he embraced their loves and their revenges he caused Leptines and Isocrates the Gramarian to be put in chains that were accused to have had an hand in the murdering of Octavius their Embassadour and sent them away to Rome to receive the sentence of the Senate The Roman relished well all those references and confirmed the new King in his pretensions upon the protestations that he made that he was not stained with his Nephews bloud whom he said to have been taken away by the misfortune of a Sedition raised against him without having any means to save himself and if he had not made a search after the crime he excused himself by the generality of the culpable as being a thing ordinary enough that sins that have an infinite multitude of complices have not any punishment He was no sooner upon the Throne but he saw himself involved by mishap in a warre against the Maccabees Alcimus that was a disloyall Jew and a traitour to his Nation pricked forward by the ambition of the Pontificate and jealous even to rage of the great progresses of Judas failed not to prepossesse the spirit of the King who was a man of an easie belief to make black his adversary by most horrible calumnies and to interest all the Kingdomes of Syria to his ruine This forger of warres and battles obtain'd all that he did desire by detestable artifices and caused armies to go to the ruine and desolation of his Countrey Judas Maccabeus upon
at the party that was made against him withdrew himself to the K. of Parthia to desire assistance of him where it hapned that by the calumny of his enemies he was clapt up in an honourable prison as if he had come to make an attempt upon the Kingdome of his neighbour His spirit that was alwayes wanton made love even in that captivity and debauched a daughter of that King his host whom he was constrained to wed although he was already married and when he had stoln out of prison he was caught and brought back again to this new wife Tryphon knowing what had befaln him caused his Pupil to be murdered by an execrable cruelty feigning that he had been taken away by a naturall death and took the Diadem professing himself to be the revenger of the Tyrant and the lawfull King of Syria After some time the liberty of the young Demetrius was mediated but his wife Cleopatra that had a crafty and proud spirit vext with the inconstant loves of her husband and wearied with his loosenesse raised up against him puissant enemies that massacred him and some are of opinion that she her self was one of the complices of that attempt and that Demetrius his brother whom she married afterwards was not innocent of it My pen hath horrour at these bloudy tragedies and passes over them as upon burning coals Antiochus Sidetes seeing himself on his brothers Throne eagerly pursued Tryphon and besieged him in the city of Dora where finding himself extremely straightned and out of all hopes of succour he killed himself with his own hand and yet could not deface by his bloud the villanous stain of perfidiousnesse that remained upon him by the death of the young King The Conquerour perceiving himself above his businesses saw that the Maccabees in the troubles of Syria possessed by so many Kings had made great progresses would represse them and made warre against Simon that succeeded his brother Jonathan and who was afterward assassinated at a banquet by Ptolomy his son-in-law The King as 't is thought upholding by his favour that cruel basenesse two of his sonnes were involved in the misery of the father and the murderers were already dispatched to adde to them John Hircan son of the same Simon But he having had intelligence of that first design stood upon his guard and governed Judea the space of more then thirty years with much prudence and happinesse out-living a long time that last Antiochus that was stoned to death as he was going to pillage the Temple of Mannaea Hyrcan had for Successour his son Aristobulus who took the Diadem and resumed the name of King among the Jews after a long discontinuation which hapned an hundred years before the Nativity of our Lord. Those of his race failed not to continue the Regall Dignity in their house till that Hyrcan which was so cruelly spoiled and mafsacred by Herod as I have said in the history of Mariamne Behold how the virtue of Judas Maccabeus extended it self through many Ages and without thinking of it put the Crown upon the head of those that were of his family and of his name God recompencing his Zeal and Justice beyond the fourth generation I have endeavoured to make in this discourse a little abridgement of that which is contained in the two books of Maccabees and relate it to you my Reader in a streight line and a method clear enough hoping that you will have content and edification to see the Justice of God reign over so many crowned heads who ceases not to punish the wicked and to render to the good safety and glory for a recompence of their virtue GODFREY of Bovillon GEORGE CASTRIOT GEORGE CASTRIOT OR SCANDERBERG GODFREY OF BOVILLON IT was not the voyce of a man but an Oracle of the holy Spirit that Pope Vrban the second pronounced when he gave to the Crofier for a Devise God will have it so This speech was the soul of all the Intentions of Godfrey of Bovillon It was the But of all his Actions God never made the prodigious effects of his power more visibly appear then in the conduct of this most Illustrious Personage It was a Captain formed in his Bosome and instructed by his hand that was to break the chains of the Christians and to pull down the pride of the Sultans So many other Expeditions were almost all splitted but this of Godfrey bore a God would have it so and nothing resisted its Good hap Many men torment themselves all their life-time in great designs that are as the Dragons the Chimera's and armed men that our fancy shapes upon the body of a Cloud The wind drives them the divers postures confound them the Asspects change them and all that we behold with admiration in the Heavens falls in water upon our head and makes morter under our feet How many Princes have made great preparations both of Men and Elephants of Horses and of Ships of Arms and Ammunitions out of a design to make great Conquests and all this hath vanished for want of a God will have it so There are certain impressions in great affairs which are never found without the favours of heaven One God will have it so will make us sail in the Sea upon an Hurdle or upon a Tortoise-shell one God will not have it so will drown us in a well Rigged Ship It was a God wills it that seized in an instant the spirit of the most excellent Cavaliers of Europe to undertake a voyage into the Holy Land It was a God wills it that made them followed by innumerable multitudes of Mortals But it was also a God wills it that made them cast their eyes upon Godfrey of Bovillon as upon the most valiant the most happy and the most able to pluck Jerusalem out of the hands of Saladine The King of the Bees appears not more visible in the middle of his swarm then this great Captain appeared amongst an infinite number of Cavaliers assembled to revenge the holy Sepulchre There was not one onely ray of the eyes that beheld him that did not expresse some favour to his Merit he had as many Approvers as Spectatours and every man signed him his Commissions even by his silence That illustrious blood of the Heroes that ran in his veins that advantageous Stature that raised him the head above so many Millions of men that face that Majesty had chosen for her throne that tongue that carried insensible chains to captivate mens hearts that comelinesse of the forehead that was at once modest and bold that valour that was painted on all his limbs that courage that kindled a delightfull fire in his eyes All the Virtues that seemed to march about his Person and in fine that finger of God that had imprnited on him the Character of Conquerour made him be chosen as the first Moover of that wonderfull design There was nothing but his Modesty that opposed the desires of all the World and that would
Darius the Mede who knowing the Prophecy of Daniel and the freedome with which he had spoken to the King esteemed him for it and retain'd him at the Court in the quality which his Predecessour had given him a night before his death When he saw himself established in favour again he forgat not God his heart being alwayes animated with a zeal to his Religion and when he saw his King inclining to the Superstition of the Countrey his heart was much grieved at it and he endeavours to cleanse him from his errours seeing him to be of a disposition too simple and credulous to the prejudice of the truth Amongst these false Deities Bel was adored with an exquisite and sumptuous worship in as much as there were offered to him every day out of the Kings house twelve baskets of meal forty sheep and six great measures of wine and it was believed that that Idol did eat up all the offerings The King that loved Daniel so much as to make him dine sometimes at his own table desired that he would accommodate himself to the Laws of the Countrey and that he would expresse some affection to the service of that great Bell that was adored universally by all the Nation But this wise Courtier answered him freely that he would never worship any but the true living God Darius replyed That there was nothing required to be adored but to live Bel was truly the living God because he did cat and drink well and cost much to feed him Daniel smiling answered that it was a great simplicity to think that that Idol did eat up all that was offered him every day Whereupon the King was moved with a curiosity to know how all this went and having caused the ordinary viands to be offered at Bels altar carefully saw all the doors of the Temple shut and put Guards before them that no body might enter in Daniel before he went out thence with the King caused abundance of Ashes to be sown there hoping by this means to discover the Imposture The morrow after the King caused the doors to be opened that had remained fast shut with his own seal and when as he entred in he saw that all the victuals had been taken away he cryed out that Bel was a great God and that it must needs be acknowledged that he did eat excellently well seeing nothing of all those offerings was remaining But Daniel instantly made him see upon the ashes the steps of those that had entered whereat he was astonished and called for all the Priests of that Idol to whom he shewed their cheat and pressed them so eagerly that they discovered certain little doors under the Altar through which they entred to the number of threescore and ten besides women and little children to devour the sacrifice The King was ashamed at the simplicity of his belief this shame passed into wrath and wrath proceeded as far as bloud causing him to put to death all the Impostours Furthermore in the same place there was a Dragon which was yet worshiped by that superstitious people which Daniel after he had obteined the permission of the King killed by making a masse composed of pitch of grease and of hair which he made him swallow and with it choake himself This made a great commotion amongst the people that said that the King was become a Jew causing his Priests to be murthered and killing the Dragon that there was now nothing remaining but to strangle all the sense of the Antient Religion In such a manner that behold a great tempest is raised against Daniel which in the opinion of all the world threatned him with an inevitable death The Grandees of the realm endeavour to ruine him by all ways and considering that he was exact and irreprochable in his office they resolve to ensnare him in matter of Religion Under colour of gratifying the King they beseech him to make an edict That whosoever should desire any thing of the Gods or of men for the space of thirty dayes except of the King should be cast into the Lions-den which the King granted them not knowing what their malice plotted against the innocence of his Prophet and Officer of State He was watched on all sides and retired himself from the King to diminish the jealousie that men had of him for the favours he received from him All his consolation was in Prayer and in those amiable discourses which he had with God and therefore he was afflicted as much as can be expressed seeing that the King his Master let himself be perswaded to make an edict so outrageous against the honour of God as to forbid to pray unto him Yet this hindered not him from continuing his oraisons lifting up thrice a day his weeping eyes on that side whereon the Temple of Jerusalem was built and sighing in the presence of his great Master with the ardours of an heart that evaporated it self â—ll in Love The Nobles that were every day at his door falled not to surprise him and to accuse him that he had transgressed the Edict which he acknowledged freely Complaints of it were suddenly made to his Majesty whose heart was wounded for the affection that he bare to Daniel and he laboured even till the Sun set to save him neverthelesse seeing himself pressed violently by his Edict and the vehemence which the Nobles used that it should be observed he abandoned the innocent to their fury against his will This defiles the conscience of many great men who are evil-doers of their disposition and yet for all that commit great evils through the complacency that they give to the violent humours of those that are about them He had some hope that Daniel would escape and that the God which he adored would save him and therefore he made no resistance by arms but delivered him into their hands to be cast into that horrible den of the Lions that had been kept hungry on purpose that he might be the sooner devoured But O God of wonders what Prodigie is here The Lions worship their prey Daniel is visited in that Cave by a Prophet come in an instant from Judea by the Ministry of an Angel that brought him his dinner The beasts change their Nature and Nature forces her Laws for the respect of a servant of God The King that had lain down without his supper and had not slept all night for the fear that he had for his poor Daniel runs early in the morning to the Lions-den which he had caused to be shut up with a great stone put upon the mouth of it and stampt with his own Seal and there cryes out with a lamentable voyce asking of Daniel whether he were yet alive who made him see how the God that he adored had delivered him and preserved him from all evill Whereat he was so ravished that he began to look upon him as an heavenly man caused his accusers to be apprehended to be exposed to the same Lions
dinner of Locusts and wild Honey retired in his Cabben then at the fight of the pomps and pleasures of the King of Galilee But God that is the Master of Kings and the Directour of Hermites hath thus disposed of him and willed that he should dye at Court after he had so long a time lived in the wildernesse It is not certainly known what occasion drove him to it whether he went thither by zeal or whether he was sent for by design or whether he was forced by violence Some think that the miseries of his countrey afflicted under the government of a dissolute Prince affecting him with a great Compassion He went out of the desert of his own accord to admonish the king of his duty Since that all those that came neer him and that were obliged to speak to him were mute partly by a servitude fatall to all those that are tyed to the hopes of the world and partly also being seized with fear by reason of the power and cruelty of a womans spirit that possessed Herod Others as Josephus have written that the Prince hearing every day of the great concourse of all sorts of people that went to the wildernesse to see Saint John was afraid lest under colour of piety this might make some change of State Tyrants love not men endowed with an extraordinary virtue and that have not learnt the trade of flattering their voyce is the Cock that frights those cruell Lyons their life is a flash of Lightning that dazles their Eyes their actions are as many Convictions of their Iniquity And therefore this Authour saith that without other form of processe Herod caused him to be apprehended to prevent him and break off those assemblies that were made about him Yet it is probable and more consonant to the Scripture which assures us that this Prince bare some respect to John and heard him and did many things according to his advice that he proceeded not against him at first with so much violence But the cunning Fox as he was according to the judgement that the Eternall Truth made of him seeing that Saint John was in an high esteem for holinesse and in great credit amongst the people strived to winne him and to draw him to him to make himself be reputed for a good Prince that cherished honest men and to maintain by this means his authority that was already rottering and little rooted in the true Maximes of a good Government It was thus that Dionysius the Tyrant made use of the Philosophers not for any affection that he bare them but to appropriate them to the bad intentions that he had in State and to give them some colour by the expresse or interpreted approbation of those personages that were in reputation for their wisdome But Herod did ill choose his man this was not a Court-flatterer a Tool for all Trades a Shoe for all Feet but a stiffe and austere man to whom a whole World would not have given the least temptation to do any thing against his conscience It would be a superfluous thing to enlarge ones self at length upon the rare qualities of Saint John who having been many times highly commended by the Creatour of Virtues and the Distributour of true praises who hath preferred him above the greatest of the world seems to have dryed up by his abundance the Elogies of the most eloquent Let us content our selves to say that there are abundance of excellencies in him enough to make all chaires speak and all pens write even to the end of the world He was born of the blood of Aaron the brother of Moses the first ornament of the Priesthood and the great Conductour of the People He came out of a barren Womb which he rendered fruitfull above all fecundities of the earth His birth was declared miraculously by the voyce of an Archangell He was sanctified almost as soon as conceived and virtue appropriated him to her self before that nature had brought him to the Light He was a worshipper of the word when he was yet in the bowels of his mother and received the first rayes of the everlasting day before that his eye was open to the brightnesse of the Sun Reason was advanced to him by a wonder altogether extraordinary He hath had this honour to know first after the Virgin Mary the news of that high mystery of the Incarnation and of the Redemption of the world Of all the Nativities of so many children of Adam the Church celebrates none but that of John who hath this common with our Saviour and his most holy Mother who by a speciall priviledge honoured his birth by her actuall presence So that he saw his first day under the aspect of the Mother of the Universe His name was given him by an Archangell a name of grace and favour that shewed he was placed in the ranke of the dearest delights of Heaven and the tongue of his dumb Father tyed by an heavenly virtue was loosed by its power that it might pronounce that fair name He was exempted from grievous sins and as many Divines hold even from veniall He consecrated his retirement in the Desert almost as soon as he entered into the world Farthermore he was a Prophet and more then a Prophet a Virgin a Doctour a forerunner of the Son of God the Trumpet of Repentance the Authour of a Baptisme that ushered in that which regenerates us all whereof Jesus was pleased to receive the sprinckling In fine he was the Horizon of the Gospel and the Law and the first that shewed with the finger the Lamb of God and the Kingdome of Heaven But let us make no reckoning of what I have alleaged but let us say onely that which the word hath said of him That he was not a Reed to bow at every wind nor a man that could be allured by the delicacies of the Court He spake there as a Prophet he conversed there as an Angell and at last dyed there as a Martyr The time furnished him with an occasion about which he could not speak without making much noyse and he could not hold his peace without betraying his Conscience That Herod Antipas which we are to speak of here was the sonne of the great Herod the Murtherer of the Innocents and of a Samaritan woman who after the death of his Father forasmuch as the Legitimate issue of Mariamne had been unworthily murthered to make way for unjust heirs had for his part of the Kingdome of Judea Galilee which he held in quality of a Tetrarch He was a Prince of a small courage addicted to his pleasures lascivious and loose that endeavoured to preserve himself by poor shifts having nothing stout nor warlike in his person He had a brother named Philip which held another parcell of that Kingdome of Judea dismembred and little enough considerable the Romans having possessed themselves of the best part of it after they had deposed Archelaus that had reigned as Successour of his
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
was wished him on the birth of his son did make answer that there needed not such acclamations for nothing could be born from him and Agrippina but what should be pernicious to the Empire Not long after this unfortunate man did die consumed with diseases that attended his filthy life and left behind him his son three years of age who saw his mother banished and being destitute of means was brought up in the house of his Aunt Lepida under the discipline of a dancer and a barber who did corrupt his spirit with the first impressions of vice which from his birth he was too much disposed to receive The times changing his mother returned into favour and by her charms prevailed upon the spirit of the Emperour Claudius the successour of Caligula a simple and The perfidiousnesse of his mother a stupid man who espoused this dangerous woman who afterwards poisoned him by a potion and so placed her own son on the Throne of the Cesars And although the Astrologians had fore-told her that he should be Emperour and withall the murderer of his mother she made nothing of it and thought it no hard bargain to buy the Empire with her own bloud saying Let him reign and let him kill me By the artifice of this wicked woman Nero was saluted Emperour in the seventeenth year of his age with a marvellous applause and in the publick acclamations honoured with all great Names and specious Titles all which he received saving onely that of Father of his Countrey saying He was too young to have so many children He was very tractable in his youth upright gentle discreet well-spoken and demean'd himself for the first five years very worthily under the conduct of Seneca But when he approached to the one and twentieth year of his age the ingredients of vice which with his birth he brought into the world the base education in his infancy the heat of his youth the delights of the Court and which is the greatest of all temptations the Power to do all did weigh down the Philosophy and the Instructions of Seneca who proved by experience That there is nothing more difficult then to perswade those to virtue whom too much Power had put in the possession of all vices His deboistnesse began by the ill examples which he learned in his infancy which were altogether unbeseeming his person he became a Tumbler a Puppet-player a Comedian a Waggoner a Songster and a Minstrel not for Recreation but to make a publick Profession of it to dispute with the Masters of those Faculties and to abandon all the affairs of Peace and Warre to be vacant to those exercises insomuch that he made it more to out-act a Comedian on the stage then to gain a Battle in the field He was also a night-walker and gave and sometimes received many sore blows which did not permit him to passe unknown From hence he laid himself open to most extravagant profusenesse insomuch that he gave to Tumblers the patrimonies of Consuls and made the funeralls of some inconsiderable men to equall the Magnificence of the Obsequies of Kings he never did wear the most gorgeous garments longer then one day He did build his Palaces with so much cost as if he would dispend on them onely all the wealth of Rome When he travelled he would be followed with a thousand caroaches and his mules were all shod with silver He made his halls after the form of the firmament where the vault being of gold intermingled with azure and illuminated with counterfeit starres did roul continually over his head and rained on him showers of flowers and waters of a most exquisite smell There would he dine from noon till midnight in the riot of execrable services He had a touch in his tender age of the vices of wantonnesse luxury avarice and cruelty but being in the beginning it was with some shame concealed in private But in the end he took off that mask by an open and inordinate dissolutenesse which knew no restraint He was of belief that there was not one chaste person in the world and took great pleasures in those who did repeat their filthinesse to him There was never man more abandoned to all manner of uncleannesse without distinction of kindred sex time place or man-hood There was not one part in all his body that was not sacrificed to dishonesty his polluted spirit made him invent those abominations which are not to be indured by chaste ears and with which I will not defile my paper The excesse of his insolencies did at last render him odious to those who were most near unto him and when they gently told him of his extravagancies he would leap into a fury and made a crime of their virtue who did best advise him He filled up the apprenticeship of his enormities with the death of Britannicus a young Prince the sonne of the Emperour His cruelty towards Britannicus Claudius and brother to his wife Octavia in which he imployed the most famous Sorceresse of Rome named Locusta who prepared the poyson and made an assay of it before him on a sucking pig who died immediately now finding it for his turn caused it to be served to his brother as he dined at the table with him The malignity of the poyson was so piercing that in an hour after he fell dead at the feet of his mother and his sister who were both present at this tragick spectacle Nero to excuse himself said That it was the effect of a great sicknesse to which he had been subject from his cradle and that they ought to be of comfort But the Princesses concealing their imagination for fear of provoking his rage did manifestly perceive that he sowed those seeds of his murder which he would afterwards continue in his Family It is almost impossible to believe the tender affection The love to his mother degenerated to misprision with which he prosecuted his mother Agrippina He sometimes did give to the souldiers that did guard his body for their word The good Mother He could not live without her He did put into her hands the most delicate interests of all his Affairs and desired that all things should stoop to her Authority The mother also did indeavour by all possible artifices to tie her self unto his person even unto the using of Charms for it is most certain that she gave him the skin of a serpent inclosed in a bracelet of gold which he carried ordinarily about him and afterwards in despite did lay it by and did look for it not long before his death but could not find it The endearments of this Agrippina were too fond and her kisses more hot then belonged to a mother Seneca was amazed at the horrour of it and to Seneca by a lesse evil diverts a greater avoid a greater evil he procured a young maiden named Acta who otherwise was a slave that came from Asia but very beautifull to serve as a
commandment Wealth and Honour were always on her side Delight and Joy seemed onely to be ordained for her Whatsoever she undertook did thrive all her thoughts were prosperous the earth and the sea did obey her the winds and the tempests did follow her Standards Some would affirm that this is no marvel at all but onely the effect of a cunning and politick Councel composed of the sons of darkness who are more proper to inherit the felicities of this world than the children of the light But we must consider that this is the common condition both of the good and the evil to find out the cause in which the Understanding of man doth lose it self David curiously endeavouring to discover the reason in the beginning did conceive himself to be a Philosopher but in the end acknowledged that the consideration thereof did make him to become a Beast The Astrologers do affirm that Elizabeth came into the world under the Sign of Virgo which doth promise Empires and Honours and that the Queen of Scotland was born under Sagitarius which doth threaten women with affliction and a bloudy Death The Machivilians do maintain that she should accommodate her self to the Religion of her Countrey and that in the opposing of that torrent she ruined her affairs The Politicians do impute it to the easiness of her gentle Nature Others do blame the counsel which she entertained to marry her own Subjects And some have looked upon her as Jobs false friends did look on him and reported him to lye on the dung-hill for his sions But having thoroughly considered on it I do observe that in these two Queens God would represent the two Cities of Sion and Babylon the two wayes of the just and the unjust and the estate of this present world and of the world to come He hath given to Elizabeth the bread of dogs to reserve for Mary the Manna of Angels In one he hath recompensed some moral virtues with temporal blessings to make the other to enter into the possession of eternal happiness Elizabeth did reign why so did Athalia Elizabeth did presecute the Prophets why so did Jezabel Elizabeth hath obtained Victories why so did Thomyris the Queen of the Scythians She hath lived in honour and delight and so did Semiramis She died a natural death being full of years so died the Herods and Tyberius but following the track that she did walk in what shall we collect of her end but as of that which Job speaketh concerning the Tomb of the wicked They pass away their life in delights and descend in a moment unto hell Now God being pleased to raise Marie above all the greatness of this earth and to renew in her the fruits of his Cross did permit that in the Age wherein she lived there should be the most outragious and bloudy persecution that was ever raised against the Church He was pleased by the secret counsel of his The great secret of the Divine Providence Providence that there should be persons of all sorts which should extol the Effects of his Passion And there being already entered so many Prelates Doctours Confessours Judges Merchants Labourers and Artisans he would now have Kings and Queens to enter also Her Husband Francis the Second although a most just and innocent Prince had already took part in this conflict of suffering Souls His life being shortened as it is thought by the fury of the Hugonots who did not cease to persecute him It was now requisite that his dear Spouse should undertake the mystery of the Cross also And as she had a most couragious soul so God did put her in the front of the most violent persecutions to suffer the greatest torments and to obtain the richest Crowns The Prophet saith That man is made as a piece of Elizabeth's hatred to the Queen of Scotland Imbroidery which doth not manifest it self in the lives of the just for God doth use them as the Imbroiderer doth his stuffs of Velvet and of Satin he takes them in pieces to make habilements for the beautifiing of his Temple 12. Elizabeth being now transported into Vengeance and carried away by violent Counsels is resolved to put Mary to death It is most certain that she passionately desired the death of this Queen well understanding that her life was most apposite to her most delicate interests She could not be ignorant that Mary Stuart had right to the Crown of England and that she usurped it she could not be ignorant that in a General Assembly of the States of England she was declared to be a Bastard as being derived from a marriage made consummated against all laws both Divine and humane She observed that her Throne did not subsit but by the Faction of Heresie and as her Crown was first established by disorder so according to her policie it must be cemented by bloud She could not deny but that the Queen of Scotland had a Title to the Crown which insensibly might fall on the head of the Prisoner and then that in a moment she might change the whole face of the State She observed her to be a Queen of a vast spirit of an unshaken faith and of an excellent virtue who had received the Unction of the Realm of Scotland and who was Queen Dowager of the Kingdom of France supported by the Pope reverenced throughout all Christendom and regarded by the Catholicks as a sacred stock from which new branches of Religion should spring which no Ax of persecution could cut down The Hereticks in England who feared her as one that would punish their offences and destroy their Fortunes which they had builded on the ruins of Religion had not a more earnest desire than to see her out of the world All things conspired to overthrow this poor Princess and nothing remained but to give a colour to so bold a murder It so fell out that in the last years of her afflicting imprisonment a conspiracy was plotted against the Estate and the life of Elizabeth as Cambden doth recite it Ballard an English Priest who had more zeal to his Religion than discretion to mannage his enterprize considered with himself how this woman had usurped a Scepter which did not appertain unto her How she had overthrown all the principles of the ancient Religion How she had kept in prison an innocent Queen for the space of twenty years using her with all manner of indignity how she continually practised new butcheries by the effusion of the bloud of the Catholicks he conceived it would be a work of Justice to procure her death who held our purses in her hand and our liberty in a chain But I will not approve of those bloudy Counsels which do provide a Remedy far worse than the disease and infinitely do trouble the Estate of Christendom Nevertheless he drew unto him many that were of his opinion who did offer and devote themselves to give this fatal blow The chiefest amongst them was
against me In the third place I require that my servants who have attended on me with great fidelitie during so many afflictions may have free leave to retire where they please and enjoy those small Legacies which in my last Will my povertie hath bequeathed to them I conjure You Madam by the Bloud of Jesus Christ by the nearness of our consanguinitie by the Memorie of Henrie the Seventh our common Father and by the title of a Queen which I carrie to my Grave not to denie me these reasonable Demands but by one word under Your hand to grant me an assurance of them and I shall die as I have lived Your most affectionate Sister and Prisoner QUEEN MARY It is uncertain whether this Letter came to the hands of Elizabeth because no Answer can be found unto it whether it were that those next unto her did conceal it from her or whether through the hardness of her heart she did dissemble it In the mean time King James employed himself for The vain endeavour to delay her death the Deliverance of his Mother the Ambassadours from France Monsieur de la Mote Aigron and Monsieur del Aubispene were commanded thither upon that and other occasions and Monsieur de Belieurs did there also carry himself with great wisdom courage and fidelity as may appear by his grave Remonstrance which is to be read in the History of France Howsoever the Arrest of Death was suspended for there moneths until such time that the clamours of the Lutherans and Puritans did cause the Thunder to fall down upon that hand which desired nothing more than to strike home the blow The more advised did remonstrate unto her That it was without example to commit a Ladie the Queen of France and Scotland and the nearest Kinswoman she had in the world into the hands of a Hang-man A Queen which was not her prisoner of War but her Guest whom she had called and invited into her Kingdom and sent unto her assurances of her fidelitie That she ought to consider that what was done proceeded from her Secretaries and not from her And if that after twenty years imprisonment she should have consented to be taken from it by force it did not deserve to be punished with Death That if she should cause her to die it would open a wound from whence there would issue such abundance of bloud that many Ages could not stanch it That Italie France and Spain and all the Christian Kingdoms of the world would be offended at it and that she should bring upon her Kingdom the Arms of Christendom who would be glad of that pretence to invade her Kingdom That it would be a most remarkable affront to her Son James and all his Race who could not but be mindfull of it That it would incense the Spirits of her Kingdom and render them unreconcileable to her And in the end that it was to be feared that Heaven would arm it self against so bloudy a Design That she should use the miserable and especially a Queen who came into her Countrey for protection with more Reverence That she should hazard much in her death but could lose nothing by her life seeing she had so many Guards Prisons Bars and Walls to secure her if she had an intent to enterprize against the State But the insolent Ministers did incessantly crie out That she must put an end to her Imprisonment by putting an end unto her Life That the Queen ought to remember that she had usurped her Titles and her Name and sometimes caused her self to be proclaimed Queen of England and of Scotland and that Sovereigns never pardoned those who did so far intrench upon their Authority That the life of Elizabeth and Mary were incompatible That the onely means to take away all pretences from the Catholicks was to cut off this Root which would make all their hopes to perish That King James was instructed in their Religion and would rather look after the advancement of his own State than take vengeance for the Death of his Mother That forreign Princes were too much perplexed with the difficulties of their own Affairs and took care rather to defend their own than to invade her Kingdom That her Cousin the Duke of Guise was in a bad condition in France and that Henrie the Third would be very carefull how he did espouse her quarrels And if other Princes were so hardy to undertake it they were to understand that England had a deep ditch about it That Queen Elizabeth was mortal and if she should die there was not that calamitie to be conceived which both Religion and the State would not suffer under the reign of Marie in the revenge of her Imprisonment and other injuries she had received That she could not but remember that great personages did write things well done on the sand but did engrave their Discontents in brass The Preachers made it to be a work of Religion with their absurd Allegations out of the Bible which they did corrupt to their bloudy meaning And the Lawyers as ignorant as the Ministers were absurd did produce some Histories for the punishment of Kings which were altogether impertinent But there needed not so much labour to perswade a Woman who had in her so much vanity as once in her life to make a Princess head to fly upon a Scaffold and who did not remember that in the Reign of Queen Mary being her self accused of offending the Estate and expecting her sentence of death she did so much fear the Axes of the Hang-men in England that she was resolved to petition to her Sister to send for an Executioner to France to cut off her head Now was the Commandment given for her death and it was signified to the poor Victim who for a long time was prepared for this Sacrifice Some passionate writers do indeavour to divert this Crime from the reputation of Elizabeth taking their ground on a Letter which she wrote to the Queen of Scotland in which by a shamefull perfidiousness she doth write That her spirit was tormented with an incomparable Sorrow by reason of the lamentable Event which was arrived against her will and that she had not a soul so base as either by terrour to fear to do what was just or by cowardice to denie it after it was done But who doth not see that this is to mock and to Elizabeth entirely culpable of the death of Queen Mary traduce the Story and the belief of mankind Davison her Secretary who mannaged this sad affair as the true instrument of her malice doth express in his Attestation reported in the most faithfull Memorials of England by Cambden that after the departure of the French Ambassadour sent to prevent the Execution she commanded him to shew the Instrument for putting the Queen of Scotland to death which being done she most readily signed it with her own hand and commanded him to see it sealed with the Great Seal and
to tell the Governour of Egypt that they had yet another brother Whereupon they informed him that he himself had inquired particularly about the state of all the family and that they had no list to lye not being able to Divine that he would demand that child The necessitie of food and the love of a father combated at the same time in that afflicted heart and he knew not what to resolve on His sons seeing him a little stagger urge him eagerly as one does those that are slow and fearfull when one would wrest any thing from them Reuben offers him his two little sonnes in hostage and would have him kill them if he brings not back to him his Benjamin Judah engages himself for him upon his head and life The battery was too strong for him not to yield he orders them therefore to take some of the best fruits of their Land to make presents to that great Lord of Egypt and to carry their money double to restore that which had been put into their sacks lest it should have happened by an over sight and also to take their little brother seeing that such was the necessity When they came to a departure he felt great convulsions and said to them go then in an happy hour I pray my God the God Almighty which hath never yet forsaken me that he would render that great Governour of Egypt favourable to you and that you may quickly bring back that poor prisoner and my little Benjamin which I put now into your hands upon the promises which you have made to which I call heaven to witnesse Know furthermore that I am deprived of all my children and that I shall be as in the Grave till such time as the happy news of your return shall give me a Refurrection This being said they put themselves on the way arrive at Egypt and present themselves suddenly to their brother who perceived that Benjamin was there whereat he was wonderfully pleased and commanded his Steward to make ready a dinner because he would eat with those strangers They are brought into the house with much courtesie yet as an evil conscience is ever fearfull they perswade themselves that it is to put them in Prison and to keep them in servitude by reason of that money which they had found in their sacks They addresse themselves to the Cash-keeper of the house very much scared and beseech him to hear them they relate to him with great sincerity all that had happened to them protesting that that came not by their fault and offering all that they thought they were indebted to him The other made answer with great affability that he had received of them good money that he held himself satisfied and that if they had found any in their sacks it was their good luck and the God of their fathers that had a mind to gratifie them He gave them notice that they were to dine that day with their Lord who would suddenly return from his affairs to set himself at Table They order in the mean time their present and their brother Simeon is released who embraces them with a joy which was as the fore-runner of a greater They are made to wash and repose themselves and meat is also given to their Mules And when all this was dispatched Joseph enters to go to dinner they prostrate themselves before him with a profound reverence and offer him their presents He receives them with great courtesie and asks of them at first sight how their good Father did and whether he was yet alive To which they answered that God of his goodnesse had preserved to them that which they held most dear and that he was in a very good condition Then he fixt his eyes upon his brother Benjamin and said unto them Is this then your little brother of whom you have made mention to me To which they answer that they had brought him with them to obey his commands and to justifie the sincerity of their proceedings His heart was ravished at him and turning himself towards him My child sayes he to him I pray God to give your his holy Graces and to keep you in his protection Upon this speech he felt his heart very much moved and ran into his Closet not being able any longer to hold his tears and wept in secret so great an impression had bloud and nature and perhaps the remembrance of his Mother who had born them both made upon his Spirit When he had wiped his face he returns with a merry countenance he commands his men to wait He dined apart a little separated from his brethren and from another company of the Egyptians who were also at the Feast and had no communication with the Jews He gives charge above all that they use well the youngest of those eleven brothers which say that they are all the sons of one and the same father and that they should spare nothing on them After all he ordered that they should fill their sacks with Corn and that they should put again the money also in them as they had done at their first journey and spake to his Steward giving him charge to take the Cup in which he drank and to put it in the sack of little Benjamin which he did and after they had well dined they passed the rest of the day in all tranquility expecting the morrow to put themselves upon their way and to return to their father When the day began to dawn after they had bid their Adieus and given their thanks they depared from the City very joyfull for that they had had so happy Accidents But they were not very far before they see a man coming from Joseph that seems exceedingly to chase stops them and sayes to them that some body had stoln away his Masters Cup with which he serves himself to drink in and to Divine things hidden that this could not happen but from them and that they were very injurious after they had been enterteined in the house of the Governour of Egypt with so much courtesie to render him evil for good and to fly away after they had committed a Theft so base and so outrageous The brothers extreamly astonished answer that this cannot be and that they should be the wickedest men upon the earth if they had as much as dreamt of such an attempt That there was no likelihood that they that had brought back faithfully the money that had been put into their sacks would steal in the house of so high a Potentate Furthermore that there was no need of words but that he should come to proof and search every where and that if any one of them was culpable of that sacriledge they were content to deliver him up to death and to render themselves all the Governours slaves for reparation of that fault The condition is accepted with moderation that the faulty should be punished and that the innocent should go free They are all searched in order
and the Cup was found in the sack of the youngest The brothers are seized with a profound astonishment and the poor child so amazed that he hath not a word to defend himself They begin all to afflict themselves and to rent their clothes and return to the City as Thieves taken in the fact to render an account to the Governour As soon as he saw them he reproched them of ingratitude and said to them that they were much deceived to come to him to steal seeing there was not a man in the whole world that had more news of secret things then he All prostrate themselves on the ground and do him Reverence Judah takes the word and sayes That they came not to excuse themselves that they had nothing to say since God had rendred their iniquity so visible that they were come all to offer themselves to him to be his slaves with him that had done the deed Nay it shall not go so saith Joseph but the culpable shall stay with me and ye shall return all of you at liberty to your house Then Judah drew near desired audience with a profound humility and declared how that child was his Fathers heart and life and that having received order from his Excellence to pluck him out of the arms of the old man and to bring him they had given him battells to make him resolve on that Voyage to which he would by no means hearken But the desire they had to give all possible satisfaction to his greatnesse had made them presse that businesse so farre as to oblige themselves life for life body for body and to deliver their little children to death in case that they brought not back their brother Benjamin that thereupon the goodman rendred himself with much difficulty and that to go and tell him at present that his dear sonne in whom he lives and by whom he breathes is stayed prisoner in Egypt for a case of theft would be to give him a double death and to send him to the Grave with inconsolable griefs And therefore he beseech'd his Greatnesse to shew them mercy and to take him for a slave in the place of his brother Benjamin Joseph could hear no more so much love and pity did he feell in the bottome of his heart He caused all the servants to withdraw not being willing that any of the Egyptians should be witnesse of this action and then he lifted up his voyce with a great sigh and a torrent of tears that glided from his eyes and said I am Joseph is my Father yet alive At that speech these poore men stood so surprised and in such an extasie that they made him no reply By how much the more he saw them astonished by so much the more did he make much of them and making them approach very near him he said again I am Joseph I am he that ye sold to the Ishmaelites to be carried into Egypt Trouble not your selves God permitted this for my good and for yours Two years of Famine are past there are yet five remaining and I have been sent from on high into Egypt to nourish you and to preserve you in the rigour of the time It was not by your counsels but by the ordinances of God that I came into this Kingdome And now behold I am as a father to Pharaoh the Superintendent of his house and the Prince of Egypt Go haste ye to return to my father carry him the news of my life and of my dignity relate to him all the glory and all the magnificence that invirons me and tell him that I expect him here and that it is the will of God that he should come to sojourn in the land of Goshen where he shall have all that he can desire for his children and for his flocks This said he embraced them weeping begining with the little Benjamin and then they took the boldnesse to speak to him with open heart about all that had passed thinking themselves obliged above all measure to his goodnesse The fame of this acknowledgement ran in the house of Pharaoh who ordered Joseph to cause his Father to come and sojourn in Egypt with his brothers dispatching many charriots to carry all his baggage The children returned Triumphing and gave him the news that his sonne Joseph was alive and the second person of the Realm of Egypt that had the managing of all The Good-man thought that it was a dream and the admiration of it held him so seized that he could not come to himself again at length when he saw that it was all in good earnest and that the Chariots that were to carry away all his family were at the gate he said that now there remained nothing more for him to desire if his sonne Joseph was alive and that he would see him before his death Some time after he departed being encouraged by an heavenly Vision that promised him all good successes in that journey and when he was arrived at Goshen he dispatched Judah to give the newes of it to his sonne Joseph who at the same instant went up into his Coach to go to meet him and seeing him embraced him with close enfoldings weeping for joy and tendernesse upon his neck His Father holding him between his arms said My son It is at this houre that I shall dye content since God hath shewed me the grace to see you and to leave you alive after me The holy man was also presented to King Pharaoh who made him a great enterteinment and demanded of him his age to which he answered that he was but an hundred and thirty years old that those dayes were few and evil and were not extended to the age of his Fathers He blessed the King and his place of abode was assigned in the land of Goshen where he lived in a most full content And now I demand of my Reader if there be any thing more magnificent more sweet and more benigne then the heart of Joseph in all the circumstances of that Reconciliation with his brethren We see many Histories wherein the Grandees of the earth that mount up on their Thrones after they have been offended who have nothing so ordinary as to make Furies and Vengeances with squadrons of Hangmen march with them by their side to Ruine those that have done them any displeasure But this man after he had been so cruelly used after he had been stripped of his cloathes cast into an old pit of water domineered over and sold to Barbarians by his own brothers with an intention to keep him in an hard slavery the rest of his dayes not onely forgets all that had passed but pardons them with a profusion of Charity he does them good he over-whelms with good offices those ungratefull men and in obliging them he hath but one trouble which is to see them shamefull of their crime He weeps while he embraces them one after another He would not that that fault should be imputed to them