circumstances of his crime Behold you not saith he a bruitish stupiditie to conspire against your father having as yet the bloud of your brothers before your eyes and all the assurances of the scepter in your hands Needs must you perpetrate a parricide to make your self possessour of a Crown which was acquired for you by so solemn and authentical a Testament Look you after nothing but the bloud of your father to set a seal upon it yea of a father whose life is so dear to all bonest men and of nature so indulgent to love his children that have never so little merit An ingratitude able to make Heaven blush and earth tremble under your feet An ingratitude worthy that all the elements should conspire to punish it This man ceased not to discharge against him words of fire with a masculine eloquence and the miserable Antipater prostrated himself on the ground and prayed God to do a miracle in favour of him to make manifest his innocency since he found himself so oppressed by the malice of men It is wonder saith the Historian that those who during their life have believed no God would yet acknowledge him at their death This man lived as if there were neither Heaven God nor Angels and now seeing himself in the horrours of death prayed the Divinity to excuse his crime Varus saith unto him My friend expect not extraordinarie signs from Heaven in your favour but if you have any good reasons boldly produce them The King your father desireth nothing more than your justification Thereupon he stood confounded like a lost man Varus taking the poison that had been before represented to the Councel caused it to be given to an offender already condemned who instantly died and all the assembly arose as it is said with manifest condemnation of Antipater His father esteeming him absolutely convicted required of him his complices he onely named Antiphilus who brought the poison saying this wicked man was cause of all his unhappiness It was a great chance Herod at that time had not caused the sentence of death to be executed upon him but according to his ordinary proceeding he resolveth to inform Caesar of all that had passed and to send him the whole process formally drawn to order all at his pleasure In the mean time Antipater is streightly imprisoned expecting hourly as a miserable victim the stroke of death Herod at that time was about seventy years of age Horrible state of Herod in his lattâ—r days and already felt through imbecillity of body the approach of the last hour It was a very hard morsel for him to digest Never man better loved this present life Very freely would he have forsaken his part of the next world eternally to enjoy this though he in effect was therein most unhappy Towards the end of his days he grew so harsh so wayward then so collerick and furious that his houshold servants knew not how to come about him they handled him in his Palace as an old Lion chained with the fetters of an incurable malady He perswaded himself he was hated of all the world and was therein no whit deceived as having given too great occasion thereof The people almost forgot their duty with impatience and could no longer endure him As soon as his sickness was bruited abroad Judas The golden Eagle thrown down and Matthias the principal Doctours of the Jewish Law who had the youth at command perswaded the most valiant of their sect to undergo a bold adventure which was that Herod having re-edified and adorned the Temple of Jerusalem and as he had always shewed himself for the accommodation of his own estate to be an Idolater of Caesars fortune to set upon the principal gate the Romane Eagle all glittering in gold This much offended the sight of the Jews who could not endure any should place portraictures of men or beasts or any other figures in their Temples so much they abhorred such monsters which their fathers had seen adored in Aegypt Behold why this Judas and Matthias who were the chief thinking the sickness of Herod would help them began earnestly to exhort the most valiant of the young men who every day frequented their houses to take in hand the quarrel of God according to the spirit of their Ancestours and to beat down this abomination which they had fixed upon their Temple That the peril was not now so great Herod having enough to do to wrastle with his own pain but if it should happen they lost their lives to die in so glorious an act was to be buried in the midst of palms and triumphs There needed no more to encourage the youth Behold a troup of the most adventurous came forth about the midst of the day armed with axes and hatchets who climbed to the top of the Temple and hewed in pieces the Eagles in the sight of the whole world Judas and Matthias being there present and serving for trumpets in this exploit The noise hereof instantly came to the Palace and the Captain of the Guard ran thither with the most resolute souldiers He much feared some further plot and that this defacing of the Eagle might prove a preamble to some greater sedition But at the first as he began to charge the people retired which the more encouraged him for pursuit Fourty young men of those who had done the feat were taken in the place Judas and Matthias who accompanied them deeming it a thing unworthy to flie away and that at the least they ought to follow them in peril whom they had brought into danger Being presented to Herod and demanded from whence this boldness proceeded they freely answered Their plot had been fully agreed upon among themselves and if it were to do again they would be in readiness to put it in execution in regard they were more bound to Moses than Herod Herod amazed at this resolution and fearing greater commotions caused them to be secretly conveyed to Jerico whither himself after though crazy was carried and assembling the principal spake to them out of his litter making a long narration of the good offices he had done in favour of the whole Nation of the Temple he had built for them of the ornaments with which he had enriched it adding he had done in few years what their Asmonean Kings could not perform in six-score And for recompence of his piety at noon day they had hewed down with notable boldness a holy gift which he had raised in the Temple wherein God was more interessed than himself for which he required a reason These now fearing any further to incense him declined the danger and put him upon their companions leaving them to the pleasure of the King At that time the High-priesthood is taken from Matthias and another Matthias who was held to have been the authour of the sedition burned alive that night with his companions at which time an eclipse of the moon was seen that made this spectacle
It is from this point I intend to draw the first reason which bindeth the Nobilitie to great perfection especially those who are of state and dignitie seeing that how much the more they are eminent in honour so much the more they are proposed as an aim to the eyes of all the world If a little planet happen to be eclipsed who can tell the news thereof but some cold-foundred Mathematician who perchance beholdeth it in the shadie obscurities of the night But if the least change happen that may be to the Sun every one lifteth his eye to Heaven he cannot make a false step but the numberless numbers of men which inhabit the four quarters of the earth do observe it The like thing is seen in the life of Great Life of Great men enlightened men and private persons If an Hermit in his Cell suffer himself to be transported upon some motion of choler who knoweth it but his cat or table And if it be a religious man in a Covent his imperfections are manifested but to few which would be of force to cherish their vices if they did not take their aims rightly levelled towards God But as for great ones all the eyes of men are fixed upon them nor can they suffer eclipse but as suns so darkening the whole world with their shadie obscurities that they who in their own errour have eyes of moles are Arguses and Lynxes to see and censure the actions of men of qualitie Great men vitious resemble King Ozias they all carrie their leprosie upon their forehead Then I demand of you this admitted that they cannot hide themselves no more than the Sun and that they all have honour in special recommendation fearing the least blemishes of fame do you not behold them between the desire of honour and fear of contempt as between the hammer and the anvile enforced as it were with a happy necessitie to do well since to do ill is so chargeable You will say unto me this intention were impure to carrie ones self in praise-worthy actions by the paths of humane respects to which I agree But withal adde it may easily be purged and freed if you prefigure in your mind that so many men as watch upon our actions are so many messengers of God if you consider them not as men but as Angels of this Sovereign Majesty who are assigned for the inquisition of your actions This contemplation well imprinted in your spirit shall by little and little proceed rarifying the most gross thoughts as the Sun-beams do the vapours of the earth and you shall change this necessitie you have to do well by the honest enforcement of those who eâ—lighten you into a will so free and dis-interessed that you will ever after put on a resolution to remain in the lists of virtue although all the world should be blind You will resemble the Sun who placed in Heaven by the Creatours hand if happily he one day should chance to have no spectatours of his light would shine as radiant for the eyes of a Pismere or silly Bee as for the greatest King in the world S. Augustine Aug. de Civit Dei l. 6. c. 10. Doâ—â—â— Archimiâ—â—â— senex jam decrepitus quotidie in Capitolio Mimum agebat quasi libenter Dii spectarent quem homines desi erant An observation of S. Augustine upon â— Comedian maketh mention of an old Comedian who in his younger days after he had a long time played in the Comedies which those blind Idolaters had instituted to the honour of their gods with the general applause of the people the glory thereof did so intoxicate him that playing for the gods he acted all as for men when he grew old and not so followed by his ordinary troup of Auditours he went to the Capitol and made much ado to play his Comedies alone before the statues of his false gods doing all said he then for the gods and nothing for men If this poor Pagan had not failed in the principles of true Religion he had hit the mark It is true men many times serve to pollish our actions their presence is to us a sharp spur which makes the spirit to leap and bound beyond it self The like whereof is seen in Oratours and Preachers to whom their Auditorie sometime serves as pipes to Organs Such penetrate the clouds born upon the wings of the wind who otherwise had low flagged in the dust void of the estimation of men It would be a miserable vanitie to have no other aim than always to play for men and never for God It is fit that all these creatures should serve us for ladders to mount up to Heaven And this it is wherein men of state who are in eminent place have much advantage they are in a great Theatre which is to them a powerful spur to do well yea so forcible that it was a wonder admired by the judicious Cassius Longinus to hear it Longin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ajax said that a Grecian Captain seeing himself in a dangerous encounter involved in night and death desired not of God the safeguard of his life but onely so much day as might suffice to see himself die valiantly Behold the force of this motive to give up a life the most pretious thing in the whole world to enjoy one glimmer of a day-light which could serve to no other purpose but to enlighten his death Then Noble men who are seated in dignitie I leave it to you to conclude if you perpetually being in the mid-day and in the rays of so many as behold you who illustrate your life and make your death lightsom have cause or not to slacken or grow remiss in the course of perfection For the second reason I say the foyl setteth off the sparkling of the diamond and greatens the lustre of virtue How doth a man know what he is if he see not himself in the occasions of good and ill The triumph of virtue as Plato said very well is to have Erit illi gloria aeterna qui potuit transgredi non est transgressus Eccl. 31. Epitaph of Vacia Qui res homines fugit quem cupiditatum suarum infaelicitas relegavit alios faeliciores videre non potuit qui velut timidum atque iners animal metu oblituit ille sibi nen vivit sed quod turpissimum ventri somne libidini Senâ—c ep 55. Theophylact. in Collectan Graec. Epi. An excellent passage of Theophylact. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sin in power and virtue in will To be able to sin to be thereunto sollicited by attractive pleasure and yet not to commit it this is all which a good man can do A solitary life is not alwaies laudable if it be not guided by divine and super-natural helps as that of Saints For what honour is it for a retired man to have this Epitaph of Vacia inscribed upon him Here lyeth be who fled from the world and the affairs thereof confined
To repress all the desires and concupiscences of flesh and if one have any feeling thereof not to give consent thereunto IV. Never to stay at all upon thoughts and imaginations of things dishonest but so soon as they present themselves to chase them away and extinguish them in your heart no otherwise than you should quench a burning hot iron in a fountain V. To mortifie your senses which are most commonly Eyes Oculi patellae luxuriae Isidor apud S. Bern. tom 1 serm de luxuria Salvian l. 3. de gubernat Oculi tui videbunt extranea cor tuum loquetur perversa Prov. 23. 3. the fore-runners of sin and above all to restrain your eyes which according to the opinion of S Isidore are as dishes wherein luxurie serveth up the viands of voluptuousness They are the windows the alurements the snares the conduits of love It buddeth in the eyes that it may at leasure blossome in the heart And therefore it is fit to stand upon your guard with so subtile and vigorous a sence which often filleth the soul with appetites and flames I do not say that one should look upon nothing and always live as if the soul were buried alive in the flesh but I affirm you must divert your sight from objects which dart a sting into a mind sensible of such penetrations As for the ears there is no doubt they may serve as handles for love and that it hath taken many that way An evil word hath fingers to incite the flesh He who heareth it and he that willingly speaketh it is not innocent before God Smelling blasteth chastitie and tast roughly assaulteth but kisses and unchast toucheâ— cut her throat VI. To flie idleness reading of love-books comedies stage-plays immodest pictures feasts private familiarities loose companie and all occasions of sin VII To have in detestation even the shadows of impuritie To speak to proclaim in every place the praises of chastitie and for this purpose to love penance mortification of the bodie labour rough and harsh apparel modestie even to the seeming somewhat wayward the Sacrament of the Eucharist the meditation of the four last things devotion towards the most blessed Virgin and all that may conduce to the maintenance of honestie VIII To remain firm in great and forcible temptations is verily the trophey of chastitie Since as Plato hath said the triumph of virtue is to have the power not the will to sin It was a notable act of Chastitie of Charls the 8. continencie in Charls the eigth ardently to love a maiden endowed with an exquisite beautie to have her at his dispose and yet to abstain for one sole word Lyps in monitis politic lib. 2. cap. 17. Exemplo 12. addit datos puellae 500. aureos which this poor creature spake to him brought even into his chamber For she by chance perceiving the picture of our Ladie cast her self at the Kings feet shewed him this image crying out with a face all bathed in tears Sir I beseech you for this Virgins sake preserve the honour of a silly maid At this word spoken for a young King enkindled with love and absolute in power to conquer the motions of lust is it not a matter that meriteth much applause IX To contemn great rewards and high advancements of fortune for the preservation of chastitie Johannes Moschus in prato A couragious Ladie As did that noble Lady of whom John Moschus speaketh who seeing her husband consume in perpetual prison for debt not able any way to relieve him was reduced to terms of extream and miserable want and besides pursued by a man of prime note with all sorts of allurements offers and accommodations which might shake and stagger an afflicted heart and enforce her to condescend to a sin which seemed to have necessity for a patroness she notwithstanding stood firm like a rock preferring chastitie poor and patient before a rich and delicate dishonour I could also nominate creatures as pure as strong adorned with most excellent natural parts more chaste more wise more fortunate than Lucrece who with as much industry as courage have refused powerful and passionate men that sought them with such excessive benefits as would have overwhelmed any inferiour chastitie But they not to commit one onely sin covered under the curtain of the night have despised treasures to guard another jewel in an earthen vessel who for this act deserve to be raised above the stars X. To withdraw the chastity of others from this sink with liberal alms great labour infinite incommodities As that worthy Hermit Abraham Abraham the Hermite did of whom Surius speaketh who loaden with years and merits went into a brothel-house in disguised habit to reduce a Niece of his that went astray as at this day many honest matrons worthy of eternal memory spare nothing to gain poor abused doves out of the faulcons tallons and dedicate them to Altars where soon after they work wonders in matter of virtue XI To suffer in your body great torments yea Hieron in vita Pauli Sabel l. 5. c. 6. death it self for the defence of chastity as many holy virgins have done As that youth reputed the son of a King of Nicomedia who fast tyed on a bed of flowers and wooed by a Courtizane with intention to corrupt him spit out his tongue like a dart of fire and bloud in the face of this she-wolf A tongue Lingua silet clamatque silens loquiturque pudorem sanguine quae pinxit sola pudicitiam A bold attempt of Didymus which in dumb eloquence speaketh to all posteritie and proclaimeth the honour of chastitie XII To expose your self to great sufferings for the preservation of others chastitie As that brave Didymus a young beardless Gentleman who beholding a poor Christian maid named Theodora thrown into a brothel caused her to escape by giving her the habit of a man and himself remained for pledge in the attires of a woman expecting the fury of executioners Ambr. lib. 2. de virgin Quasi adulter ingressus si vis Martyr â—grediar Vestimenta mutemus conveniunt mihi tua mea tibi sed utraque Christo Tua vestis me verum militem faciet mea te virginem Bené tu vestieris ego melius exuar who gave him the crown of Martyrdom Saint Ambrose makes him speak to the maid to this effect Sister I am come hither as an adulterer and if it please you I will go out a Martyr Let us change habits I pray you we are as I perceive both of one stature My apparrel very well fitteth you but yours will set much better upon me and both will agree in the service of Christ Jesus My attire shall make you a virgin and yours me a Martyr You shall be most fortunately clothed and I more happily despoiled It was so done Didymus was apprehended and Theodora understanding it run back like a lyoness amidst the swords to die with him The twenty
Religion and justice according to their power and in case of corruption they wished upon themselves by way of execration the trembling of Cain the leaprosy of Gehezi the lot of Judas and all that which may astonishman V. To have ears always open and bowels of compassion ready to hear the complaints of widdows orphans afflicted and forlorn people who endure all the torments of the world to break through the press to manifest their miseries The Emperor Trajan hath done many brave and eminent Notable act of Trajan acts but none of his atchievements were so resplendent as the justice he readily afforded to a virtuous widdow Her son had been slain and she not being able to obtain justice had the courage to accost the Emperour in the midst of the Citty of Rome amongst an infinit number of people and flourishing legions which followed him to the wars he was then going to take in Valachia At her request Trajan notwithstanding he was much pressed with the affairs of a most urgent war alighted from his horse heard her comforted her and did her justice This afterward was represented on Trajans pillar as one of his greatest wonders And it is said he was highly commended and admired by S. Gregory the great VI. To doe good and to execute justice with expedition not stretching the leather with the teeth as said the good King Lewis the 12. taxing the delayes reverences and neglects of Judges The Chronicle Strange act of Theodorick Chron. Alexandrinum of Alexandria relateth an admirable passage of Theodor. King of the Romans to whom a widdow named Juvenalis made her complaint that a suit of hers in Court was drawn at length for the space of three years which might have been dispatched in few days The King demanded who were her Judges she named them they were sent unto and commanded to give all the speedy expedition that was possible to this womans cause which they did and in two days determined it to her good liking Which done Theodorick called them again they supposing it had been to applaud their excellent justice now done hastned thither full of joy Being come the King asked of them How commeth it to pass you have performed that in two days which had not been done in three years They answered The recommendation of your Majesty made us finish it How replieth the King When I put you into office did I not consign all pleas and proceedings to you and particularly those of widdows You deserve death so to have spun out a business in length three years space which required but two days dispatch And at that instant commanded their heads to be cut off The good Juvenalis was so strucken with admiration for such an act that she came to the King to render thanks and to offer candles to him as to a holy Saint And would to God Theodorick had still persevered in such integrity VII Not to be contented with conscience alone but to have science also well to examine matters and to observe the formes of right Not to cause any body to be punished or tormented by precipitation without sufficient poofs It is a lamentable thing when through a desperat hast an innocent is bereaved of that in a moment which never can be again restored although he should live an hundred years But it is to be wickedly unjust when that is also confirmed by malice and cruelty which Mad cruelty of Piso Senec. de ira lib. 1. c. 16. was begun by mistaking As happend to Piso who rashly condemned a poor soldier to death wrongfully suspected of the murder of his living companion As the innocent man had now his neck under the sword of his executioner this camerado of his supposed to be slain by him appeared living and in health The Centurion who attended the execution brought them both back again with much concourse of people to present them to Piso This furious judge enragedly ashamed of the first sentence which he overhastily had given commanded they should both be put to death and that also the Centurion should be added to them One because he was already condemned although guiltless another because he was thought to be dead and the third because he would preserve in the Judge wisedome and innocency This Barbarian shortly after paid for this fault joyned with many others by a merveilous turn of Fortune and a most shameful death VIII To be more inclining alwaies to mercy than severity yet notwithstanding well to take heed least this mercy degenerate into a softnesse very prejudicial to the maintainance of justice Also to visit prisons to see what is fit to be done and not suffer prisoners to consume in a tedious and irksome misery without true cause of delay IX To extend the hand that honest men may be maintained protected recompenced for services done to the Common-wealth and Malefactours punished and used according to their demerits since reward and punishment as Democritus said are the two Divinities of Weals-publike and the two poles on which the affairs of the world do move X. As for the justice of particular men it is to Justice of particulars obey Laws and Magistrates keep peace and concord among their neighbours To wrong no man in his honour body goods allies reputation nor any thing that appertaineth to another either by word deed or by sign XI To be true in words loyal in promises faithful in proceedings to handle the affaires which one manageth roundly and freely without dissimulation deceit treachery to avoid usury and all unjust gain to pay debts not to withhold servants or hirelings wages to be ready to satisfie those whom one hath offended often to beg of God that in the day of his great Assises we may appear in the robe of Justice to expect with all confidence the benigne breath of his mercies The twentie ninth SECTION Practise of Gratitude ONe Of the noblest acts of justice is the acknowledgement Benoficia pulveri si quid mali patimur marmori insculpimus A singular saying of Sir Thomas More Amb. l. 6. Hexan c. 4. Tolies dog of a benefit A virtue very rare in this Age where as well Sir Thomas More said good turns are written in sand and injuries and revenges on marble Saint Ambrose assureth us it was not without mystery young Toby took a dog for the companion of his voyage God would he should learn acknowledgement of benefits in the nature of this creature the Hierogliph of gratitude The acts of acknowledgement are I. Not to deny dissemble nor ever to forget a benefit Gratitude of Hebrews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Joseph Anti. l. 4. but to acknowledge it retain it praise extol it as the ancient Hebrews did who set marks on their armes and ensigns at their gates for the remembrance and acknowledgement of a benefit received It is a great shame to be ashamed to owe a benefit and to avoid the sight of a benefactor as if his presence upbraided either
torment with servitude poor afflicted Queens contrary to all equity reason and Royalty of their birth Anthonie who knew Herod to be his creature and the work of his own hands would not willingly understand these complaints Notwithstanding to please Cleopatra he swore a great oath he would examine the business in sending for Herod and if he were found culpable of such a villany he would inflict an exemplar punishment upon him Behold Herod cited to Laodicea where Mark Anthonie was to remain for a certain time whither he was summoned to appear and purge himself of the murder of Aristobulus of which he was supposed to be the Authour This was a clap of thunder to this disloyal wretch which most powerfully awakened him when he least thought of it and put such terrours upon him as are not to be imagined Upon one Herod's affrightment side he had before his eyes the image of his offence and the voice of bloud which rung in his ears on the other side he saw all his fortune depended on Mark Anthonie who at that time handled nothing but by the counsel of Cleopatra his mortal enemy and whom he well knew to have an enterprize in hand upon the Kingdom of Judea for her advancement But nothing so troubled his brain as a furious jealousie For he imagined that Anthonie a loose and wanton Prince one that courted all the Princely beauties of the world would do the like to his wife whose picture he formerly had and that with the more ease to enjoy her he would make him serve as a sacrifice for his fatal loves This spirit of his was torn and distracted on all sides and in all objects discovered precipitation and affrightment one while he seemed to resolve to undergo a voluntary banishment sometime he supposed death more suitable other-while he framed to himself some purpose of resistance but nothing appeared to him better than to delay and draw the business out at length as long as he could Anthony pressed with the voyage he undertook to war against the Parthians sent instantly for him delays and excuses thrust him further into suspition Necessarily he must go or resolve to loose all He taketh leave of his mother in law Alexandra and Mariamne his wife without seeming to be amazed without complaint without giving testimony of his discontent as if he had a short journey of pleasure to make Last of all he had his own mother and his sister Salome in Court to whom he much recommended vigilancy over the deportments of those whom he esteemed to have wrought him the mischief Then drawing his uncle Joseph aside he spake these words to him Uncle you know the occasion that transporteth me to Laodicea which truly is very difficult seeing my innocency assaulted by powerfull and secret malice which would be so much the more dreadfull if it had as much effect as passion But I hope to find day-light through the storm and that you shall see me return triumphant over caluâ—ny through my integrity as I have already raised tropheys over hostility by arms If God shall otherwise dispose of me it is a meer plot prepared against me for the beauty of my wife on whom Mark Anthonie may perhaps have some design and this may be a cause to shorten my days and he thereby to get more liberty for his unbridled passion But I for the present conjure you by the love which I have born you by my fortune which you reverence by bloud and nature if happily you hear I am otherwise used than my quality and innocency permit never let the death of Herod be waited on with the injury of his bed Preserve the Kingdom for your self and your bloud and cause my wife instantly to take her leave of this world to accompany me in the other Kill her couragiously lest Horrible jealousie another enjoy her after my death If the souls of the dead have any feeling of the affairs of the world that shall serve me for a solace Joseph much amazed at this manner of proceeding doth notwithstanding promise him he would perform all according to his will if necessity so required but that his fortune ever powerfull and invincible made him conceive other hopes in all kinds Thereupon he set forward on his way carrying along with him the richest parcels of his treasure to make a present of them to those whom he should most stand in need of shewing in all things else as much confidence in his countenance as he hatched despair in his heart When he was arrived at Loadicea he found strange Great pleading against Herod informations prepared against him which strongly charged him with the murder of Aristobulus It was shewed to Mark Anthonie how Herod ever had a design upon the scepter of Judea with a desperate and enraged ambition That nothing so much perplexed him as to see Aristobulus alive to whom he in conscience knew the Kingdom in such sort belonged that himself durst not demand it of the Romans but under the title of Regency whilest the right heir grew to maturity That he had converted this Regency first into an Empire afterwards into a Tyranny removing as much as he could the Royal bloud from dignities to advance men of no worth witness Ananel placed in the High-priesthood of which Hircanus was despoyled and that which made him alter his resolution therein was not good affection but importunity and evident danger of popular commotions which he well foresaw rose upon this rejection of the bloud Royal. That Aristobulus being preferred to the High-priesthood received with all alacrity and applause of the people he shewed this action to be most hatefull to him being not sufficiently able to cover the fury of his envy under the ordinary mask of his hypocrisie That after this time he had not ceased to persecute the dead Prince and his mother in such sort that finding no longer repose among the living they were enforced to put themselves into the coffins of the dead to be carried to the sea and from thence to be transported to Aegypt That he had caused them to be surprized in the act and in sequel thereof had not afterward sought any thing more than to be rid of them That the young Prince was drowned in the water not alone and separated from the rest but manifestly smothered by the insolent youth of the houshold and bosom of Herod All this process as was then said was so evident that had it been written with the rays of the Sun one could not wish more perspicuity The voice of bloud cried to Heaven which the trayterous wretch could not stop The picture of this poor Prince which had a little before his death been carried into Aegypt was presented with a singular admiration of his beauty His ghost was made to speak which asked justice of Mark Anthonie for having been so unworthily so inhumanely murdered in the flower of his tender years by the most horrid treason that ever was
fashion and indeed somewhat too bitter according to her custom Joseph who was desirous to entertain the Queen in the good favour of his Master were it out of folly or drunkenness said Madame your mother Alexandra may tell you what pleaseth her But to give you a clear and ample testimony of King Herod your husband his love know that in case he happen to be put to death he hath commanded me to kill you not being able to abide in the other world without your company At these words the poor Ladies looked pale with horrour Out alas the frantick man said Alexandra in her heart what will he do living if after death he intend to destroy those who are yet alive In the mean time many bruits the dreams of the credulous were spred through Jerusalem that Herod was dead that Mark Anthony had caused him to be executed he being convicted of the murder of Aristobulus whether these rumours were divulged by Herods enemies or whether himself caused them to be secretly buzzed to try the face and disposition of the times The wise Mariamne seemed to believe nothing Alexandra grew passionate and bated like a hawk on the pearch entreating Joseph with all possible supplications he would remove them from Court and conduct them to the Court of Guard of the Roman Legions disposing them into the hands of Colonel Julius from thence to pass to Mark Anthony for she vehemently desired this Prince might see her daughter perswading herself that so soon as he should behold her he would be taken with her beauty and doe any thing in her favour These intentions being oblique were unhappy in the success and all Alexandras pursuits served her for no other purpose but to vent her passion In the end Herod returneth victorious with authenticke Return of Herod testimonies of his justification and Anthonies amity notwithstanding the endeavours of Cleopatra God reserving this parricide for a life like Cain attended with a death most dreadful His mother and sister fayled not presently upon his arrival to serve him up a dish of their own dressing and to tell him the design which Alexandra had to put herself into the power of the Romans Salome envious against Mariamne even to fury steeping her serpentine tongue in the gall of black slander accused her of some secret familiarity with Joseph whereupon Herod who was extreamly jealous thought in that very instant to ruin her and so drawing Mariamne aside he demanded of her from whence this correspondence grew which she had contracted with Joseph The most chaste Queen who never went out of the lists of patience shewed her self both with eye visage countenance word to be so penetrated with this cursed calumny that well the trayterous wretch perceived how far she was alienated from such thoughts and verily being ashamed to have uttered such words he asked pardon of her bemoaning with scalding tears his credulity giving her many thanks for her fidelity and making a thousand protestations of an everlasting affection The good Ladie who was displeased to behold such hypocrisie said covertly to him That truly it was an argument of love to his wife to desire her company in the other world He who understood by half a word presently perceived what she would say and entered into such desperate fury that he seemed as a mad man tearing his beard and hair of his head and crying out Joseph had betrayed him and that it was apparent he had great correspondence with Mariamne otherwise so enormous bruitishness would never have escaped any man as to reveal such a secret Thereupon he commandeth Joseph should be killed in the place to serve as a victim at his return not consenting to see him nor hear one sole word of his justification It was a great chance he had not at that time finished the sacrifice of his intemperate cruelty and that to satisfie his chymerical humour he had not put Mariamne to death But the irrefragable proofs of her innocency and the impatient ardours of his love withheld the stroke onely to make the sparkles of his choller flie further off he discharged it upon Alexandra shutting her up for a time keeping her a part from the Queen her daughter and doubtlesly resolving with himself it was in her shop where all these counsels plotted for his ruin were forged and fyled Certain time after Herod saw himself embarqued Troublesom affairs of Hâ—rod in another business which he thought to be at least as perillous as the former Mark Anthony who always had lent his shoulders to underprop him after he had for a long time stroven against the fortune of Augustus Caesar fell to the ground in the Actiack battel ending his hopes and life with a most mournfull catastrophe This accident struck the Tyrant more than one would think seeing his support ruined his affairs which he supposed to have been so well established in one night dissolved and that he had him for an enemy who was in a fair way to become Emperour of the world His friends and enemies judged him as a lost man He who already had escaped so many ship-wracks despaireth not at all in this extremity but resolves to seek out Caesar who was then at Rhodes and prostrate himself at his feet But before he set a step forward he did an act wholly barbarous and inhumane Hircanus the true and lawful King who by his Most lamentable death of Hircanus sweetness and facility had first raised Antipater and afterward saved Herod's life seating him in the Regal throne to the prejudice of his own allies was as yet alive worn even with decrepitness for he now was past eightie years of age The Tyrant fearing lest he being the onely remainder of the bloud Royal should again be re-established in the throne by the suppliant request of the people who much affected his innocency seeing him already upon the brink of his grave threw him head-long into it tearing out his soul with bruitish violence which he was ready to yield up to nature Some held this was meer crueltie without any colour of justice wherewith this diabolical Prince was wont to palliate his actions Others write that Hircanus days were shortened upon this occasion Alexandra being not able to put off her ambition Ambition of Alexandra causeth the death of her father but with her skin seeing Herod gone upon a voyage from which it was likely he should never return sollicites her father Hircanus shews him the time is come wherein God will yet again make his venerable age flourish in Royal purple The Tyrant is involved in snares from which he can never free himself Fortune knocketh at the gate of Hircanus to restore the Diadem which is due to him by birth-right and taken away by tyranny It onely remaineth that he a little help himself and his good hap will accomplish the rest Hircanus answereth her Daughter the time is come wherein I should rather think of my grave than a Regal
the person of the good Patriarch Flavianus by express letters What doth not a playstered sanctity for the subversion of the simple What doth not a bad servant when once he possesseth the easie nature of his Master Pulcheria who some years before had seen the heresie of Nestorius to arise and had partly stifled it when she was in the manage of affairs by her excellent direction never was deceived in the choice of a side but most constantly tied herself to the doctrine Great prudence to stick to Altars and the true Church of the See Apostolick That gave a particular benediction to all her enterprizes and made her sway in the peoples hearts as she caused true religion to flourish on Altars All the Eastern and Western Clergie esteemed her and lent their assistance to maintain her authority which was no little support All those who have sought to strike these Powers have therein lost their endeavours And very well Aristobulus King of the Jews one of the greatest States-men who had governed that Kingdom being upon his death-bed freely confessed the foulest fault he had ever committed in matter of policie was to have opposed the Pharisees who then had lawfull authority over affairs of Religion and gave his wife Alexandra counsel to practise and hold good intelligence with them by all possible means The very same which he advised out of reason of State Pulcheria practised by consideration of piety and ever held herself firm on the rock of S. Peter as it it is said the mothers of pearl fix themselves to rocks during the tempest If the wicked Eutyches had appeared in her time she had consumed his heresie as the ice of one night under the rays of the Sun but it was then the kingdom of darkness Chrysaphius perpetually besieged the ears and heart of the Emperour Theodosius disguising all affairs to him according to the sway of his own passion He drew along with him the good Eudoxia who became too curiously intelligent in matter of religion and lost herself to follow rather the aims of her pregnant wit than the tracks of holy humility more agreeing to her sex Pulcheria who understood all this goodly business was much perplexed to see her brother and sister in law after they had shaken off the yoke of her good precepts to fall into a little apostacie and not being able to get access to talk with them she made the apple of her weeping eyes speak to God in continual prayers She wrote to Rome sometime to the Emperour Valentinian her cousin sometime to Eudoxia the Younger his wife daughter of our Eudoxia sometime to Pope Leo himself solliciting them for the reduction of these poor wandering sheep she every where disposed squadrons of religious persons to force God with the arms of prayers All the powers of Heaven and earth conspired at that time The battery was strong enough to move a heart that never yet was obdurate In the end Theodosius awakened as out of a long Theodosius awakened sleep opened his eyes and with horrour saw the precipice whereinto he was ready to fall He detesteth the disastrous Eutyches and leaveth him to the censures of the Church Pulcheria four years after her banishment returned in triumph to the Court with the general applause of all sorts Her first care was to seize on the person of Chrysaphius and by form of justice to send him into the other world that he might no longer trouble this wherein she shewed that living otherwise as a bee in the delights of virginity she had not so much honey but withal a sting The poor Eudoxia well perceived her Mistress was returned and her heart bled to behold this change She no longer remembred the condition of Athenais and she who before would not be but under the feet of Pulcheria could not endure her now by her sides It is a strange thing how the ayr of the Court doth as it were necessarily breath ambition These two pure souls which seemed in the beginning as an Ancient hath said able to abide together in the eye of a needle when they were in concord found the whole world in their discord too little for their separation Eudoxia tyred with the many revolutions of Court returneth to Jerusalem as a Pilgrim with a great oath never to set foot again in Constantinople and verily she had her tomb in Palestine as we shall see anon Theodorus in the collection of his history insinuateth to us that she never undertook this voyage till the death of the Emperour Theodosius her husband which happened shortly after You would have said that his good sister was come of purpose to dispose his soul for this passage He was about fifty years His death of age and had already ruled fourty three years with a most happy reign had not this apple of discord been which outragiously disturbed the peace of his Court and steeped his life in many acerbities That which is read most probable of his death is that riding a hunting at full speed and falling from his horse he hurt the reins of his back so that of necessity he must be carried back to his Palace in a litter at which time he plainly saw his last hour approched and signed his innocent life with the seal of a death truly Christian A Prince in all things else of a most sincere life religious learned mild courteous patient in whom nothing could be blamed but the over-much facility of his nature which many times made his heart of wax to be moulded in the hands of those who were nearest unto him and this was in a manner the cause of his ruin But it was well for him he betook himself firmly to the good counsels of his sister who dearly loved his good and aimed at nothing but the glory and repose of his Empire We have here inserted his Pour-traicture and Elogie IMP. F. AVGVST THEODOSIVS MINOR FLAV. THEODOSIUS JUNIOR ARCADII ET EUDOXIAE FILIUS OCTO ANNORUM PUER ORIENTALE CEPIT IMPERIUM ET PER ANNOS QUADRAGINTA TRES PULCHERIAE SORORIS AUSPICIIS ARMIS ET LEGIBUS FAELL CITER ADMINISTRAVIT PRINCEPS DE MELIORI NOTA CHRISTIANUS VITAE INTEGERRIMAE DIVINIS LECTIONIBUS INTENTUS PATIENTIA ET CLEMENTIA SUPRA CAETEROS CLARUS OBIIT CONSTANTINOPOLI ANNO CHRISTI CDLII AETATIS XLIX Upon the picture of THEODOSIUS A Scepter free from pride a goodness sweet A life not feign'd but where true graces meet As Zeal he for sole favour did advance So Heav'n his shield became the Cross his lance HE had no male issue by his wife Eudoxia and Marriage of Pulcheria and new government the Empire might not fall to the distaff which seemed to invite these two Princesses who till this day had swayed in government to sound the retreat But Pulcheria was become very necessary for the state and as yet had not lost the appetite of rule Theodosius having cast his eyes by the advise of his Councel upon Martianus
her the news thereof The Empress saluted him very courteously and disposed her heart to speak to him touching a certain sum of money she desired to give for the entertainment of his Monks but the good man divining the thoughts of her heart saith to her Madame trouble not your self for this money there are other affairs which more concern you know you very shortly must depart out of this world and now you ought to have but one care which is to entertain your soul in that state you desire it should part out of this life Eudoxia at the first was amazed at this discourse It seemeth souls as Plato saith go not but with grief out of fair bodies but this was too much disengaged to do in the end of those days any unresigned act After she had a long time talked to Euthymius as one would with Angels she gave him the last adieu full of hope to see him at the Rendez-vous of all good men Returning into Ierusalem she had no other care but to set a seal upon all her good works then distributing whatsoever she had to the poor she expected the stroke of death freely and resignedly her soul was taken out of her body throughly ripened for Heaven as fruit which onely expects the hand of the Master to gather it She was about threescore years of age having survived Theodosius her husband and Pulcheria Flaccilla Marina Arcadia for all of them went before her into the other world she was married at twenty years of age she spent twenty nine in Court and as it were eleven in Jerusalem she deceased in the year of our Lord 459. the 21. year of Pope Leo and the 4. of the Emperour Leo Successour of Martianus A woman very miraculous among women who seemeth so much to have transcended the ordinary of her sex as men surpass beasts More than an Age is required ere nature can produce such creatures They are born as the Phenix from five hundred to five hundred yeare yea much more rare A great beauty great wit great fortune a great virtue great combats great victories to be born in a poor cottage as a snail in his shell and issue out to shew it self upon the throne of an Empire and die in an hermitage all is great all is admirable in this Princess But nothing more great nothing more admirable than to behold a golden vessel with sails of linnen and cordage of silk counterbuffed by so many storms over whelmed and even accounted as lost in the end happily to arrive at the haven Behold her Potraicture and Elogie AVGVSTA EVDOXIA EUDOXIA AUGUSTA THEODOSII JUNIORIS CONJUX EX HUMILI FORTUNA IN MAGNUM IMPERIUM TRANSCRIPTA SCEPTRUM VIRTUTIBUS SUPERAVIT CELESTIS INSTAR PRODIGII FOEMINA INGENIO FORMA VITA SCRIPTIS ET RELIGIONE CLARISSIMA CUM VICENIS NUPTA ANNOS XXIX EGISSET IN IMPERIO ET UNDECIM FERME IN PALESTINA HIEROSOLIMIS RELIGIOSISSIMO EXITU VITAM CLAUSIT ANNO CHRISTI CDLX AETATIS LIX Upon the picture of EUDOXIA Fortune unparallel'd beauty her own A spirit that admits no Paragon Divine immense although it seem to be 'T was but the Temple of the Deitie HEr example drew an infinite number of great Ladies to contempt of pleasures and vanities of Court to seek the Temple of repose in the deserts of the holy Land Among others Queen Eudoxia her Grand-child who as we have said was married into Africk treading the world under foot with a generous resolution came with her Crown to do homage at the tomb of her Grand-mother kissed her ashes as of a holy Empress and was so ravished with the many monuments of virtue she had erected in the holy Land that there she would pass the residue of her days and choose her tomb at the foot of that from whence she derived her bloud and name It is a great loss to us that the learned books written by this Royal hand have been scattered for those varieties of Homer which are extant are not Eudoxia's Photius much more subtile than Zonaras to judge of the works of antiquity maketh no mention thereof in the recital of the writings of this divine spirit but of her Octoteuch which he witnesseth to be a worthy heroick and admirable piece Behold that which is most remarkeable in the Court of Theodosius And verily for as much as concerneth the person of the Emperour he did enough to make himself a Saint by living so mortified in his passions in the delights of a flourishing Court It is a meer bruitishness a very plague of mans soul to make no account of Princes but of certain braggards vain brain-sick and turbulent spirits who fill histories with vain-glorious bravadoes whoredoms murders and treacheries these are they of whom the spirit of flesh an enemy of God proclaimeth false praises and such an one seemeth to himself sufficiently great when there appeareth a power in him to do ill A calm spirit united docible temperate though he have not so many gifts of nature is a thousand times to be preferred before these vain-glorious and audacious who are onely wise in their own opinion valiant in rashness happy in vice and great in the imagination of fools It is good to have the piety of Theodosius and to let over-much facility work in praying and pray in working to have the beak and plumage of an Eagle and the mildness of a Dove to lay the hide of a Lion at the feet of the Stature of piety As for Pulcheria she was the mirrour of perfection among the great Princesses of the earth yet not without her spots but still giving water to wash them away And for Eudoxia you find in her what to take what to leave many things to imitate few to reject but an infinite number to admire Behold in the end the Fortunate Pietie which I have set before your eyes as a golden statue not onely to behold it in passing by but to guild your manners with the rays and adorn your greatness with the glory thereof Who will not admire the prosperity of the Empire of Constantinople in the manage of Theodosius of Pulcheria of Martianus under the rule of piety and not say Behold the world which trembleth in all the parts thereof under the prodigious armies of Barbarians who seem desirous to rend the earth and wholly carry it away in fire and bloud from the center Behold the Roman Empire which hath trodden under foot all Scepters and Crowns of the earth ruined dis-membred torn in a thousand pieces in the hands of a vitious Emperour who buried it under the shivers of his Scepter and behold on the other side God who preserveth his Theodosius his Pulcheria his Martianus among these formidable inundations which cast all the world into a deluge as heretofore he did Noe in the revengefull waters which poured down from Heaven to drown the impurities of the earth What nurse was ever so carefull to drive a flie from the face of her little infant while
which said these words as it were singing Take and read often repeating them Admiration stopped the floud of tears and he began to examine in himself whether such a voice could come from any neighbour-place by some ordinary means All which well weighed he found it could not be humane but that God by this voice instructed him what he was to do He went from this place thither where he left S. Pauls Epistles with his friend Alipius imagining that as S. Anthonie had been converted by the reading of one word in the Gospel on which he casually happened God might likewise work somewhat in his soul by the words of his Apostle He openeth the book with a holy horrour and the first sentence he encountered was that which said It was time to live no longer in good cheer feasts and the Rom. 13. Non in commessationibus ebriâ—tatibus non in cubilibus imjudicitiis non in contentione aemulatione sed induimini Dominum Jesum Christum carnis providentiam ne â—â—ceritis in concupiscentiis vestris drunkenness of the world That it was time to live no longer in unchast beds quarrels vanities and emulations but that we must be clothed with Jesus Christ as with a robe of glory no more obeying the flesh nor the concupiscence of the heart There was no need to read any further Behold in an instant the ray of God which did directly beat upon his heart and opened to him a delicious serenitie Behold him throughly resolved He sheweth this passage to his faithfull Alipius as the decisive sentence of a long process which he had with sensuality And Alipius casting his eyes upon the subsequent words found (a) (a) (a) Rom. 14. Infirmum autem â—n â—â—ae reâ—ipite Receive him who is weak in faith Behold me said he If you determine to forsake the world take me for your companion They rose and went both to the good S. Monica Mother saith Augustine you shall not need to take the pains to find me out a wife Behold me a Catholick and which is more resolved to leave the world to live in continency The resolution is made and concluded with God there is no means at all to retire Had not God withheld the soul of this holy widdow of Naim it was already upon her lips to flie out for joy beholding this dead son this son of so many tears to come unexpectedly out of his tomb and present himself before her eyes with a splendour of incomparable light She made bon-fires of joy in her heart and triumphed with celestial alacritie blessing God who had stretched out the power of his arm on this conversion and who by the bounty of a true father had surmounted the vows of an afflicted mother Augustine in the mean while thought sweetly to begin his retreat from the Rhetorick Lectures wherein he was engaged There yet remained but twenty days to the time of vacation which had the continuance of twenty years to a man who then entertained far other affections notwithstanding through great wisdom and modesty he would not break with exteriour pomp by publishing a change of life in the Citie of Milan but suffered the time to steal away with little noise When the term expired he quietly discharged himself thereof and likewise freed himself from the importunity of fathers who passionately sought him to be Tutour to their children for his great capacity he alledging for his excuse that the exercise of the School had brought a difficulty of breathing and an indisposition of the breast upon him which threatened him with a ptysick if he desisted not This was very true but yet not the principal point of his resolution Behold how this great man avoided the occasions of ostentation and the divers interpretations he might make to himself for a gloss of actions and although God as he said had put into his heart flaming darts and juniper-coals against slanderous tongues he chose rather to take away occasion of calumny than to see himself put upon the necessity of defending himself very far different therein from the nature of those who make great flourishes to end them in nothing After he was discharged from his professon of Rhetorick he retired himself into the Grange of Verecundus where he stayed a long time as yet a Catachumen leading a most Angelical life spent wholly in prayer and the study of holy letters From thence he wrote to S. Ambrose of the errours of his passed life and the estate wherein he presently was by the grace of God as also of the aid he had contributed to his conversion demanding besides what book he should read the better to prepare himself for the grace of Baptism S. Ambrose certified him of the contentment he took in this so particular visitation of God and advised him to read the Prophet Isaiah but he seeing he could not yet understand it did defer it till another time wherein he might be better practised in holy Scriptures In the end the day so many times desired being S. Ambrose baptized S. Augustine come wherein he was to be born anew by Baptism it being in the thirty fourth year of his age as Cardinal Baronius accounteth it he went from the Grange of Verecundus to the Citie of Milan where he was christened by the hand of Saint Ambrose and had for companion of his Baptisin his faithful friend Alipius and his onely son Adeodatus at that time about fifteen years of age so prodigious a wit that his father could not think upon it without astonishment I had nothing Horrori â—â—ibi erat istud ingenium therein saith he my God but sin the rest is from you who so well know how to reform our deformities But all was there admirable for at the age between fifteen and sixteen years he already surpassed many great and learned men He also verified the saying of Sages affirming these such sparkling wits are not for any long continuance upon earth for he died some years after his return into Africk leaving a repose in the father who already apprehended the course of this Ingenium nimis mature magnum non est vitale youth and although he grieved to see him taken away in the flower of his age yet on the other side he was much comforted in the innocency of his life hope of his immortality knowing it was the will of the gardener who had gathered the fruit according to his good pleasure to lay it up in store After this baptism there were nothing but hymns songs lights of eternal verities thanksgiving and tears of joy This done he must take the way of Africa and they The death of S. Monica were now arrived to the port of Ostia expecting the opportunity of navigation when the holy and venerable mother Monica of fifty six years of age and worn with many labours rendered to nature her tribute and soul to its Creatour This admirable woman resembleth the Ark in
tollerations which were rather esteemed the feaver of times than men S. Ambrose entered into charge as is most probably thought about the end of the reign of this Valentinian and had not much occasion to intermedle with him yet from his enterance sheweth he would become a Lion For seeing in the State some practises in Magistrates which turned to the prejudice of the Church he with much freedom and generosity complained to the Emperour and though this Prince was one of the most absolute who had swayed the Scepter he was no whit offended but answered to S. â—mbrose It is a long time I have foreseen your nature Thood lib. 4. cap. 6. and the libertie you would use when a Myter was set on your head Yet notwithstanding did I never oppose your election and though I might exercise the resistance which the laws allow me without any other authoritie yet I gave my consent for the desire I have to behold a stout man in this charge Do what the laws of God appoint you the times are sick and need a good Physitian This so favourable beginning promised good effects The death of Valentinian the father for the future But this Prince lived not long after for having reigned about twelve years in a very harsh manner he being haughty and excessively cholerick it happened that hearing one day the Deputies of a Province in Bohemia who excused themselves upon certain incursions and roberies imputed unto them he entered into so violent and thundering distempers that they laid him on the bed of death for from the Councel-table he at that instant was carried into his chamber The veins of his body shrunk up his speech stopped his members were turmoiled with horrible convulsions and his face spread all over with purple spots In conclusion he was wasted with fervours of anger more daÌ„gerous than the dog-star which in few hours took him hence who under the sword of the Roman Empire had made so many Armies of Barbarians to tremble to teach us we have no greater enemies than our selves Valentinian left two sons the one by his first wife Severa which was Gratian The other by Justina which was Valentinian the Younger Let us see how S. Ambrose treated with them both The holy Bishop who had already exercised so much authority over the father retained it on the sons with so much the more priviledge as their age and the necessity of the affairs of the Church required Valentinian some years before his death foreseeing as it were what would happen declared his eldest son Gratian Successour of his Empire and from that time associated him to his dignity As he was a Prince very awfull and who among his sharp proceedings spared not to mingle many sweet attractives when he undertook an affair so he made himself appear in his latter days as a setting Sun in his Royal Throne and having made a most specious Oration to all his Captains and souldiers there then about him flattering and calling them companions by way of Court-ship he exhibited many large demonstrations of amity to them then taking his little son Gratian Gratian the son of Valentinian by the hand clad in an Imperial robe being then of fourteen or fifteen years of age he told them that this was his Heir whom they were one day to have for companion and who should with them tread under-foot the powers opposed against the Roman Empire adding he should equal his father in valour and in affection due to their good services but surpass him in sweetness having been made happy with a better education than himself This young youth as saith his history was beautifull as a star for his eyes sparkled like two lightening-flashes his face very amiable and complexion mingled with white and red When the souldiers beheld him in this habit they began softly to strike their targets and at that instant the trumpets sounded with a thousand acclamations to salute him This action was the cause that the sudden death of his father made him instantly Emperour with his uncle Valens who yet lived when for a singular tryal of friendship he divided his dignity with his brother the little Valentinian who was not yet above five or six years old being then left an orphan under the charge of his mother Justina Afterward the great necessities of the Empire made them likewise associate Theodosius to the Crown one of their fathers chiefest Captains The young Gratian who was endowed with an excellent disposition presently put himself under the wings of Saint Ambrose to direct him in affairs of his salvation and conscience which he esteemed the most important of all might concern him Our great Prelate entered so far into his soul that living and dying nothing was so sweet nor familiar in his mouth as the name of Bishop Ambrose And well to discover the apprehensions of this fair soul and the easie enterance it gave to all the forms of virtue proposed by this great Saint you must observe even in the judgement of Pagan Historians who never graced him above his merit that he was the most accomplished Prince for his age which ever bare the Diadem of Caesars And if a life so precious could have been redeemed with the bloud and tears of the faithfull it had replenished the Church with sanctity the Empire with glory and the whole world with wonders The beauty of body which he enjoyed contained a spirit wholly celestial enchased therein for it was full of generous viva city and as fire out of his sphere seeketh its nourishment in the conquests thereof so he lived by sciences and lights that they became tributary by his judgement and travel as well as men by his arms He laboured much in the matter of eloquence Excellent qualities of the Emperour Gratian. seeing it was then a study as it were absolutely necessary for Emperours to reign over people and that words were the cement which united wills and arms for the safety of the publick By good chance he had Ausonius for Master esteemed even in the judgement of Symmachus the most able man of his time most happy Master of an excellent schollar who made him change the school of Rhetorick for the purple of Consul-ship Gratian was naturally eloquent nor was it hard to manure so generous a nature When he pronounced some Oration he had early in his young years the majesty of his father conjoyned with an admirable modesty and a little a crimony which gave an edge to his actions The ordering and inflection of his voice were rarely proportioned He seemed eloquent in pleasing arguments grave in serious polite in laborious and when the subject required fervour and invective his mouth spake tempests This enforced no diminution upon his military exercises wherein he was infinitely dexterous whether he were to run wrastle or leap according to the custom of the Roman souldiers his agility made the world wonder or whether he were to manage a horse or handle
prosperitie and so much glorie I ow this acknowledgement both to the publick and your particular amitie for you have granted me the repose of my Church you have stopped the mouthes of the perfidious and by my good will I wish you had as well shut up their hearts and this have you done with marvellous authoritie fortitude and faith The holy Emperour ceased not afterward to oblige the Church in all occasions by the favour of his Edicts and shewed himself so openly zealous that even he first of all the Emperours merited the title of Most Christian given afterward to our Kings His Predecessours who professed Christianity ever suffered their reputation to be dishonoured with many blemishes which much weakened the worth of their actions but Gratian was the most royal and sincere of them all for he so little complied with the Zeal and virtue of Gratian by the direction of holy S. Ambrose Gentiles that their Priests coming together to offer him the title and habit of Great Pontife which all the Christian Emperours had yet for ceremony and reason of State retained this good Prince confidently refused it by the counsel of Saint Ambrose and although the Gentiles were so much moved they could not abstain from words of menace he contemned all humane respects where the glory of God was interessed As for the rest to consider further the energy of the discretion of this holy Bishop it is to be noted that the faith of Gratian his tender plant was not a languishing and idle faith but much employed in the exercise of good works which Ausonius a worldly man could not sufficiently admire in his schollar well seeing he knew much more than his Master He who observed the most particular actions of Singular qualities of a young Prince the life of this Emperour hath left in writing that from the time of his childhood never did he let any day pass without praying to God most devoutly daily rendering some vow to Altars and that those who knew his most secret thoughts gave assurance he lived in unspeakable purity of heart and moreover he was very sober and abstinent in his ordinary course of life and for as much as toucheth and concerneth chastity it might well be said that the Altar of Vestal Virgins where perpetually burned a sacred fire which purged all was not more holy than the chamber of Gratian nor the couches prepared in the Temple for ceremonies more chaste than his Imperial bed He had the heart of a mother towards his poor subjects and the beginning of his Empire was consecrated by the comfort of the people for whom he much sweetened the taxes and subsidies freely cutting off what was due to his own coffers and to take away all cause of enquiry in time to come upon that which he liberally had granted he commanded through all Cities papers and obligations of publick debts to be burnt Never bon-fire more clearly blazed than the same not a creature complained the smoak hurt his eyes Every one praised the Emperour beholding that as his benefits were not frail and transitory so the evils he took away were never to return How could he but do well for the publick seeing Admirable charity in an Emperour he was most liberal towards particulars He was not contented to visite the sick but himself led Physitians along with him thither causing them to minister at his charge and in his own presence that which was necessary for their recovery He was seen after the defeat of the Barbarians which I spake of to run into the Tents of his souldiers to enquire the number of the hurt and himself with his own victorious hands to touch the wounds and cause them instantly to be drest hastening and encouraging the surgeons And if any poor souldier through distast refused to take broath he would sit down by him and charm him with such sweetness of words till he obtained of him that which conduced to his health He ceased not to comfort the most afflicted to congratulate with the most happy to enquire into the necessities of all the world even to the making the packs of a poor subject to be carried by his own mules and all this did he indefatigably with singular promptness and alacrity void of oftentation giving all and reproching no man Behold the fruits of the good education of S. Ambrose which well sheweth that in making a good man of a great Prince the whole world is obliged The twelfth SECTION The death of the Emperour Gratian and the afflictions of S. Ambrose OUt alas Eternal God who art elder than the beginning of time and more durable than the end of Ages must great gifts be so freely given to the world to become so short My pen abhorreth to pass beyond the bloud of this poor Prince in whom the earth had nothing to wish but immortality Behold what a wound it is for the Empire what sorrow in the Church and a touchstone to the virtue of S. Ambrose Gratian after the death of his father had reigned about seven years when behold a monster started up in England to dispossess its natural Prince and cast fire and confusion into the Empire It was Maximus who according to the relation of Zosimus was a Spaniard by Nation companion of the great Theodosius and Captain of the Roman troups which were then in great Britain This wicked man vexed to the quick that the Emperour Maximus rebelleth against his Prince and his wicked disposition Gratian had associated Theodosius in the Empire without ever mentioning himself at all resolved to enter into the Throne by tyranny since he could not arrive thither by any merit Never Tyrant used more industrie to cover his ambition than did this man Never hath any sought more support from the dissimulation of sanctity and justice yet I beseech those who make account by the like ways to bring their purposes to pass to learn by the success of Maximus that if the arm of God sustain not an affair the more exaltation it receiveth the deeper ruins it findeth Maximus then a son of the earth who had nothing great in him but the desire of reign made himself sometime an English man other-while a Spaniard ever leaning to that side where he saw most support for his affairs As an English man he laboured to have it thought he had some correspondence of affinity with Saint Helena mother of great Constantine and he was so impudent as to take the very name of that family causing himself to be proudly called Flavius Clemens Maximus As a Spaniard he would be reputed the allye of Theodosius whom he saw to be powerfull in the affairs and whose force he more feared than loved his advancement As for Religion he well discovered by the effect that he had no other God but honour Notwithstanding like those who provide oyl to burn in the lamps of Idols as well as in that of the living God he embraced all sorts of
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
can ought avail me Ruffinus notwithstanding insisted protesting he would instantly perswade the Bishop what ever he pleased He failed not to find out the Bishop but the Saint gave him a very sharp reprehension advising him rather to dress his own wounds than intercede for others for he partly understood that he had a hand in this fatal counsel Ruffinus notwithstanding plyed it all he could and endeavoured to charm this man with fair words saying finally for conclusion he would immediately accompany the Emperour to the Church S Ambrose who was ever very serious answered If he come thither as a Tyrant I will stretch out my neek but if in quality of a Christian Emperour I am resolved to forbid him entrance Ruffinus well saw the Bishop was inflexible and went in haste to advise the Emperour not yet on this day to hazard his approach to the Church He found him on his way as a man distracted that had the arrow in his heart and hastened for remedy and he saying he had dealt with the Bishop It is no matter saith Theodosius let him do with me what he please but I am resolved to reconcile my self to the Church S. Ambrose advertised that Theodosius came went Aedicula jaculatoria out and expected him at the door of a little Cell seperated from the body of the Church where ordinarily salutations were made Then perceiving him environed with his Captains Come you oh Emperour saith he to force us No saith Theodosius I come in the quality of a most humble servant and beseech you that imitating the mercy of the Master whom you serve you would unloose my fetters otherwise my life will fail What penance replieth the holy man have you done for the expiation of so great a sin It is answereth Theodosius for you to appoint it and me to perform it Then was the time when to correct the precipitation of the Edict made against the Thessalonians he commanded him to suspend the execution of the sentence of death for the space of thirty days after which having brought him into the Church the faithfull Emperour prayed not standing on his feet nor kneeling but prostrated all along on the pavement which he watered with his tears tearing his Psal 118. Adhaesit pavimento anima mea vivisica me secundùm verbum tuum hair and pitifully pronouncing this versicle of David My soul is fastened to the pavement quicken me according to thy word When the time of Oblation was come he modestly lifted up himself having his eyes still bathed with tears and so went to present his offering then stayed within those rayls which seperated the Priests from the Laity attending in the same place to hear the rest of Mass Saint Ambrose asked him who set him there and whether he wanted any thing The Emperour answered He attended the holy Communion of which the sage Prelate being advertised he sent one of his chief Deacons which served at the Altar to let him understand that the Quire was the place of Priests and not of the Laicks that he instantly should go out to rank himself in his order adding the Purple might well make Emperours not Priests Theodosius obeyed and answered that what he had done was not on purpose but that such was the custom of the Church of Constantinople Yea it is also remarkable that returning afterward into the East and hearing Mass at Constantinople on a very solemn festival day after he had presented his offering he went out of the Quire whereat the Patriarch Nectarius amazed asked him why his Majesty retired in that manner He sighing answered I in the end have learned to my cost the difference between an Emperour and a Bishop To conclude I have found a Master of truth and to tell you mine opinion I do acknowledge amongst Bishops but one Ambrose worthy of that title Behold an incomparable authority which was as the rays of his great virtue and sanctity from whence distilled all that force and vigour which he had in treating with all men I imagine I hitherto have exposed the principal actions of S. Ambrose to the bright splendour of the day and so to have ordered them that all sorts of conditions may therein find matter of instruction It hath not been my intention to distend them by way of Annals but historical discourses proper to perswade virtue So likewise have I not been willing to charge this paper with other particular narrations which may be read in Paulinus Sozomen Ruffinus and which have exactly been sought out by Cardinal Baronius suitable to his purpose I conclude after I have told you that Paulinus his Secretary witnesseth he writing by him a little before his death saw a globe of fire which encompassed his head and in the end entered into his mouth making an admirable brightness reflect on his face which held him so rapt that whilest this vision continued it was impossible for him to write one word of those which Saint Ambrose dictated As for the rest having attained the threescore and Death of S. Ambrose fourth year of his age he was accounted as the Oracle of the world for they came from the utmost bounds of the earth to hear his wisdom as unto Solomon and after the death of Theodosius Stilicon who governed all held the presence of Saint Ambrose so necessary that he esteemed all the glory of the Roman Empire was tied to the life of this holy Prelate In effect when on the day of holy Saturday after his receiving the Communion he had sweetly rendered up his soul as Moses by the mouth of God a huge deluge of evils overflowed Italie which seemed not to be stayed but by the prayers of this Saint Let us I beseech you pass over his death in the manner of the Scripture which speaketh but one word of the end of so many great personages and let us never talk of death in a subject wholly replenished with immortality Oh what a life what a death to have born bees in his first birth on his lips and at his death globes of light in his mouth What a life to be framed from his tender age as a Samuel for the Tabernacle not knowing he was designed for the Tabernacle What a life to preserve himself in the corruption of the world in a most undefiled chastity as a fountain of fresh water in midst of the sea What a life to arrive to honour and dignities in flying them and to have enobled all his charges by the intefrity of his manners What a life not to have taught any virtue before he practised it and to become first learned in examples before he shewed himself eloquent in words What a life so to have governed a Church that it seemed a copy of Heaven and an eternal pattern of virtues What a life to have born on his shoulders the glory of Christendom and all the moveables of the house of God! What a life to have so many times trampled the head of
remembering what had passed in the Roman Empire he saw that those Emperours who had shewed themselves most fervent in the superstition of false gods and were the greatest persecutours of Christians had been infamous and unhappy not beloved of the people without name not honoured issueless and and for the most part odious and execrable to posterity He then imagined that this Religion which professed so much sanctity and was grown up in the tempests of three hundred years had something divine in it and that perhaps it would not be amiss to invoke in this great labyrinth of affairs the God of his mother As he then went up and down revolving these discourses in the bottom of his thoughts casting his eyes up to Heaven he perceived about the evening the figure of a great Cross all composed of most resplendent light which seemed unto him to bear these Characters IN HOC VINCE Vanquish in this sign This was much more important than the bowe in Heaven which Augustus Caesar saw about the sun when he entered into Rome to take possession of the Empire Notwithstanding Constantine and the Captains who observed this sign in Heaven had some distrust because of the figure of the Cross which till then was ever accounted of an ill presage Now as the Emperour slept in the night in great perplexity of cogitations it seemed that the God of the Christians appeared unto him with the same sign which he had seen the day before commanding him expresly to carry it hereafter in his Ensigns Following this vision he caused a Banner to be made in the manner as Eusebius describeth it who had seen it It was as a launce all of gold which had a piece of wood athwart in form of a Cross from whence hung a rich imbroidery in which was the image of the Emperour and about it a Crown of gold and pearl which bare in the middle the two first letters of the name of our Saviour This was from that time forward his prime Banner which the Romans called the Labarum It was no otherwise different from the standards of the Roman Bands but that it carried the sacred cypher of this venerable Title which was not understood by all the world but held by the Pagans as some devise of the fantasie of spirit The war against Maxentius having so prosperously succeeded as we have said under this propitious standard Constantine held the Saviour of the world in great veneration and made the Edicts which we know in favor of Christians Notwithstanding he for a long time deferred his publick and solemn profession thereof whether it were that the course of great warlike enterprizes and affairs diverted his mind or whether he feared to distast the prime men of the Empire by this change It is likewise thought that his wife Fausta whom he in the beginning much affected greatly weakened his love to Christianity in such sort that the Christians ceased not to be still ill intreated in this remisness of the Emperour In the Absolute coÌ„version of the Emperour end after the calamitie of the death of his son and wife so tragically happened in his own house he seriously opened his eyes about the nineteenth year of his Empire to seek remedy for his evils Zosimus a Pagan leadeth us as it were not thinking of it to the knowledge of the time and manner of his Baptism For he saith that Constantine after the death of Crispus and Fausta had great remorse of conscience and that not wholly having abjured Paganism he sought from South-sayers and Pagan Philosophers as others adde the means to purifie himself from the bloud which he so unfortunately had shed It is said that one Sopater the wisest of the Discourse of Sopater Platonists who had sometime lived in his Court told him these stains of bloud would stick on souls and never be washed out and that if they departed this life without punishment they would re-enter into other bodies to expiate in the end those crimes which they had committed and that there was no other remedy The Emperour found this Philosophie very harsh and his spirit being much tormented with very strange disturbances behold saith Zosimus an Aegyptian newly come from Spain to Rome note that he meaneth the great Bishop Hosius who was sent at the same time into Aegypt by Pope Sylvester This Aegyptian saith he having insinuated himself into the favour of some Ladies of the Court found by their means access to the Emperour who failed not to propose unto him the difficulties and troubles of his conscience This man answered him that his Majesty should not need to disquiet himself hereupon and that there was no crime so enormous which might not be expiated by the remedies which are practised in Christian Religion To this the Emperour very willingly hearkened and resolved all delayes laid apart to become a Christian See here the beginning of the Baptism of Constantine His Baptism As for the sequel it is a question much perplexed for some would have him to be baptized in the suburbs of Nicomedia upon the point of death and others at Rome by S. Sylvester about the 19th year of his Empire I say briefly to decide this difficulty that it is a most unreasonable belief to think that Constantine the Great called by the general voice of the holy Fathers The holy and Religious Emperour Constantine recorded in memorials and publick registers of the Church which are recited before Altars as the chief of Orthodox Princes Constantine whom the Arians yea the most refractory which have been after him never durst declare of their faction to have been christened at his death by the hand of an Arian Bishop out of the communion of the Catholick Church There is not one to be found who favoureth this opinion but Eusebius who hath been an Ensign-bearer of the Arians and who no more ought to be credited in this article than a Pagan Historian it being most unequal to take him for a Judge who had made himself a party in this affair And if some passages be found somewhat doubtful in the Chronicle of S. Hierom which seem to support this errour it is easie to consider that this Doctour who was a merchant enriched with infinite variety of learning hath made many pieces which he rather translated and compiled from others than composed upon his own invention and the learned are not ignorant that his Chronicle is accounted in this kind of books as a work formed from observations and opinions of Eusebius which should not at all alter the estimation we have of Constantine acknowledged and averred by so many other passages of the same Doctour And if S. Ambrose in the funeral Oration of Theodosius said that Constantine received Baptism being in extremity we must not Iâ— ultimis coâ—stitutus therefore infer that he was baptized by Arian in the last instant of his life otherwise he would not call him in the same passage a Monarch of great
have no other Gods but scepters no other Paradise than fruition of Empires His father Antiochus the Great had given him this lesson For he was an active Prince but more judicious than his son who never ceased to disturb his neighbour and covertly attempt the Kingdom of Aegypt by arms and subtilities until such time that the Romans clipped the wings of his ambition as well to stay the progression of his over-much power become formidable to the Empire as to punish him for the dangerous correspondences he held with Hannibal He was enforced by reason of some agreements and transactions of peace to send his son to Rome in hostage and that was this Antiochus we mention This young Prince who already had in his imagination He was delivered for an hostage to the Romaâ—â— designs of Empire mannaged this occasion and deriving his happiness out of the necessity of his fathers affairs learned therein all the extent of supream powers on earth and began to reflect on the Romans as gods of the whole world On the other side Scipio and all the other great Captains were forward to let the people behold this off-spring of the Asian Kings as a Lion enchained and finding him vain enough they spared not slight complements and court smokes but ever held in their own hands the highest point of authority and drew profit out of all affairs During his abode in Rome his father Antiochus the Prudence of the Romans Great overwhelmed under the burden of his ambition found the catastrophe of his pretensions in a tomb and his eldest son Seleveus succeeded him who had a short life and an unhappy reign At which time young Antiochus felt in himself a vehement itch of rule more powerfully than any of his Predecessours had done for soon understanding his brothers death who left him the kingdom of Asia and knowing Ambition of Antiochus his sister Cleopatra married to the King of Aegypt was a widow and the mother of onely one child of whom he hoped to be easily rid he ardently thirsted to joyn the two Empires and unite them under his power Now the Kingdom of Syria appertaining to this young Orphan the son of his sister he in the beginning entered thereinto with great modesty in the quality of a Tutour and Regent and not a King aforehand disposing the peoples minds by Attalus and Eumenes who did him good service in this pretension This wolf clothed in a lambs-skin thought to enter by the same ways into the Kingdom of Aegypt and wrote thus to his sister That it seemed the Gods had His craft thrown him among thorns at the time when Kings of his age walked not but on violets and roses That being absent out of the Kingdom he had received sad news of the death of his thrice-honoured father and immediately of the death of his well-beloved brother whose days he wished might have been lengthened with his own years But that nothing afflicted him so much as to see her a widow burdned with an infant whose hands were not so early fit to manage a scepter Behold therfore the cause why be now undertook the government of the Kingdom of Syria which was the possession of his Ancestours and whereunto she had right by the title of dower But otherwise though he were heavily surcharged with two Kingdoms he was no whit discouraged to share with her also in the cares of Aegypt since besides charitie towards his own the continual practice of affairs he had at Rome in the most knowing school of the world it had acquired him some dexteritie and experience in the sway of Kingdoms That he would make her reign in the affluence and pleasures of a flourishing Court and prostrate the whole world at her feet That she should onely be troubled to see their submission as the Gods behold earth from heaven and that he would be as faithfull a Regent as be hadever been a loving brother Cleopatra had been married to Ptolomeus Epiphanes and cast as a bait by the father to catch the Kingdom of Aegypt under hope conceived that having studied in his school she would beguil her husband and bring Nilus to Euphrates But she opening her eyes found Prudence of Cleopatra against the wiles of her brother her flesh was much nearer than the smock and ever upheld both her husband and son against her fathers plots She understood the heart of her brother to be desperately subtie and ambitious and seeing she could not possess Syria where he had strongly fortified himself she easily admitted this his imaginary title of Regency which she could no longer withhold But for so much as concerned Aegypt she made answer That she very humbly thanked him for the compassion he had of her widow-hood and that the Gods who afford the deepest roots to trees the most subject to winds would furnish her with sufficient courage to suffer so boisterous shocks As concerning the Kingdom of Syria his providence had prevented the good opinion she conceived of him being alreadie resolved to put the Regencie into his hands But as for Aegypt there was no necessitie be should rob himself in the freshnese of his youth of the pleasures so fairly acquired for him to undergo so many burden som charges in a forreign Countrey wherein he would not be honoured as were the Ptolemees That her people were somewhat jealous nor would confide in external power which might much discontent him in the sinceritie he pretended in the mannage of her affairs That she was assisted by a wise Councel with whose did she hoped to maintain her people in perfect peace and raise her son to the height of the happiness of his extraction and that it should ever be a singular comfort for her to be assured of the good affection be bare towards her estate and to correspond with him in an unfained intelligence Antiochus who found not his expectation in his sisters letters laid down the sheep-skin to put on the Lions and began to make open war by invading the Kingdom of Aegypt which was the cause Cleopatra instantly cast her self into the protection of the Romans although she nothing doubted but that her brother had thence sought support and credit But she on the other side knew they favoured justice and willingly undertook the causes of widows and orphans And verily the Senate of Rome either through the integritie Equity of the Senate of Rome to support widows of their manners or to ballance scepters which swayed under them and make none too great to the prejudice of their power inclined to the widows part and commanded Antiochus to retire out of Aegypt He who knew how to court men went about to gain Popilius Lenas deputed by the Senate to determine this affair requiring some delay to withdraw his forces leisurely of purpose to spend time for the renewing his plots A notable act of an Embassadour But the other a man resolute and not to be paid with words
their Minerva in marriage the Guardian-Goddess of their Citie who had refused all the gods This Prince was not amazed at their complement for he presently replied Their motion was gratefull But seeing Minerva was a great goddess he must suitably accommodate her to her dignity and therefore ordained they should find out six hundred thousand crowns to give her in marriage An Athenian thereupon replied Jupiter her father took the goddess Semele without demand of any portion But this was to little purpose their flattery cost them so great a sum that needs must they afterwards exact it with the peoples clamour many of them affixing pasquils upon Anthonies statue to deface false applauses by a just reproch If all flatterers were punished in such measure the number would be very small But since they find rewards where others received nothing but punishment it is no wonder the Ages are wholly drenched into servile complacence Never were Christian men seen to be more disposed to slavery The great eye of Divine Providence is taken away and all sense of Religion to adhere to men of gold and silver They cease not to deifie them and we may truly say the favour of the rich and great-ones of this Age is now adays become a false Divinity which receiveth Incense and Victims almost from all hands Notwithstanding he is cursed by the Prophet who putteth his trust in man to the exclusion of God and who thinking to fortifie himself throughly in the course of humane affairs makes to himself an arm of flesh and hay to raise fortunes which will vanish like phantasms For this cause I here purpose to present unto you some passages of Gods greatness to oppose them against the abjectness and infirmity of the mightiest on earth that so we may learn from this discourse to be replenished with a worthy estimation of the Divinitie and a knowledge of the nothing of the richest magnificences on earth The greatness of God compared to the low condition of men AL the praise of great things endeth in one ample word by how much the more an essence is simple by so much the fewer words shall we need to explicate it Of whom must we learn to speak of God but of God himself And what do we learn God is who he is from him but that he is what he is That is to say little and that is to say all For as S. Bernard hath excellently observed call God good call him great call S. Bernard l. 5. de consid Si bonum si magnum si beatum si sapientem vel quicquid aliud tale de Deo dixeris in hâ—c verbo instatiratur quod est Est N. mpe hoc est ei esse quod omnia esse Si centum talia addâ—â— non recessisti ab esse si ea dixeris nihil addidisti ad esse si nihil dixeriâ— nihil de eo minuisti him blessed call him wise call him all you can you find him included in this word When God said I am what I am he said He is all he is Adde hereunto a century of attributes you shall not go far from the essence If you speak them you adde nothing unto it if you mention them not you not at all lessen it S. Denys gives a particular reason thereof when he saith that (a) (a) (a) Greatnes of essence essence is the first and last pledge of Nature the most intimate most necessary most independent most simple and most perfect of all things in the world Behold the cause why the Celestial Father could say nothing better to the purpose of himself than (b) (b) (b) Ego sum qui sum Eternity of nothing first humiliation of man I am what I am Let us here then speak of the excellency of Gods Essence comprised under these words and oppose against it the frailty and nullity of our essence that penetrated with the greatness of the Omnipotent we may be drenched in the abyss of low humility 2. Our first abjectness and which is of power to humble those who think themselves the most able in the world is that we have been an eternity in nothing For if you mount still a cending upward to the source of time when you shall have reckoned millions of Ages you shall find nothing but labyrinths and abysses of this great eternity without end and when you shall present to your thoughts all that time which hath preceded be it real or imaginary you will be ashamed to see so many millions of years wherein you had not so much as the essence of a rush of a butter-flie or a silly gnat That Rodomont who threateneth to hew down mountains and thunder-strike mortals and thinks all the ample house of Nature was created onely for him who swalloweth the world by avarice and wastes it as fast by riot thirty or forty years ago was not able to contend for excellency with a catter-piller (c) (c) (c) Heâ—ierni quâ—â—pe sumus igâ—oramus quoniam sicut umbra dies nostri sunt super â—erram 〈◊〉 8. 9. Tâ—rtul adver Marâ— l. 1. c. 8. Vna germana divinitas nec de nè vitate nec de vetustate sed de sua vâ—ritate censetur Non babet tempus aeternitas omne enim tempus esi Deus si vetus est non erit si est novus non fuit What weakness what confusion of humane essence But thine O great God hath no beginning It hath seen all times unfolded from thy breast It hath assigned them measure and hath taken none from others for it self but its Eternity The beginning of the lives and reigns of all Caesars is reckoned but of Gods years no man hath a register He is neither young nor old ancient nor new Content your self with saying He is Eternal 3. The second point of our infirmity is that after Humiliation of death we have had being for a few years we shall be to speak according to the phrase of the world an eternity in a tomb as bodies confiscated by death abandoned to worms despoiled even to the bones become dust and consumed to be reduced into the mass of elements from whence we came I affirm the soul is immortal which many times serveth to immortalize its punishments I affirm the body riseth again although both being separated so long one from another no more make up a man The Axiom of S. Bernard Bernard c. 3. de animâ In non hominem vertitur omnis home Estne quicquam in terris tam magnum quod perire mundus sciat Senec. l. 4. natur qq c. 1. must be made good Every man is reduced to be no longer a man So many persons go daily in and out of the world as small drops of water into the seas The ocean is no whit altered either by their enterance in or passage out Seneca was astonished how one could say there were Comets which presaged the death of great men It is not credible
of his power in the misery of mortals but with the Scripture that he separateth light from darkness with a diamond to wit a most strong and resplendent knowledge of the merit and demerit of men What sense is Notable passage Adamante diserevit lucem tenebras Eccles 16. 14. Secundum 70 there to make a power which takes its glory from ignorance and is potent in contempt of reason Is not this to make all terrible even to its own favours What sense is it to appoint a Judge to satisfie the whole world according to desert and to make him sign Decrees irrevocable in favour of some one before knowledge of all merit Cannot we make him potent unless we make him unjust Adde also that in the feeling we have of Praedestination Goodness of God the mercy of the most mild Father shineth with visible marks For we do not make him to damn him through a negligence of thoughts and coldness of affection which cannot be in a God so active or a heart so loving but we believe his goodness extendeth to Cain and Judas and would they have endeavoured they had the means to gain beatitude which never fails any man if he want not correspondence In the end we likewise acknowledge in this point Si voluisset Esau cacurrisset Dei adjutorio pervenisset Aug. ad Simp. l. 4. 2. the most prudent government of God who will have nothing idle in nature nor grace He could enlighten us without the Sun and afford us fruit without the earth but he will his creatures operate and that one unfold the rays of his substance another supply with the juice of its bosom In like manner he is pleased we make his grace to profit us to raise our riches out of his favours and derive our glory from his bounty He will give a title of merit to our happiness to advance the quality of his gifts He will crown in us what comes from himself as if it were wholly ours Why shall we shut up the eyes of his wisdom why tie up the hands of his liberality An Ancient said He more esteemed the judgement of certain men than their proper benefits God will we value both in him that we enjoy his bounty by favour and his judgement by merit The actions of the Sovereign Monarch are free from controul as his gifts from repentance I will leave you now to conclude what quiet we Third point Repose of Conscience may have in our consciences upon the matter of Praedestination I leave you to think whether a good soul have not cause to say O be the Divine Providence praised for evermore since it so worthily hath provided for me I cannot adore its counsels unless I love its goodness It sweeteneth my pains it comforteth my cares when it teacheth me my eternal happiness depends on him and me on him who loveth me tenderly and on me who cannot hate my self unless I derogate from my essence after I have failed in all virtues Courage then we roul not under this fatality which writeth laws on diamonds and ties us to inevitable necessities The fodder is not cast we have yet the mettal boyling apace in hand we may appear on the mould of virtue we may make our selves such by the grace of God as to put our salvation in assurance our life into repose and death into crowns I cannot fear God with a slavish fear since he is nought but goodness but I will ever dread my works since I am frailty it self Let us hereafter live in such sort as we would be judged Let us consecrate our life to innocency and banish all sin Let us undertake piety humility obedience alms and devotion towards the Blessed Virgin which are most assured marks of Praedestination Let us not presume of our own forces nor despair likewise of Gods mercy If we stand upright let us still fear the declining of nature which easily bendeth to evil and if we stoop let us quickly raise our selves again making all avail to our salvation yea our proper falls We have a great Advocate in Heaven who openeth as many mouthes for us as we have inflicted wounds on his body We have inflicted them through cruelty and they will receive us through mercy serving us towards Heaven for a chariot of triumph as they were to us on earth a mirrour in life and a sepulcher in death The sixth EXAMPLE upon the sixth Drawn out of Simeon of Constantinoplâ— MAXIM Of the secret Power of Praedestination PROCOPIUS PRaedestination is an admirable secret wherein Marvellous secret of Praedestination experience teacheth us there is nothing which the happy ought not to fear nor any thing the miserable may not hope Stars fall from the firmament to be changed into dung-hills and dung-hills of the earth mount to Heaven to be metamorphosed into stars The graces of God insinuate themselves by secret ways and the impressions of the will are extreamly nice all that past is a dream and the future a cloud where thunders murmur in the dark We tremble when we read in the History of holy Historia Patrum orientis Raderus Fathers that an Hermit grown white in the austerities of Religion understanding a notable thief had gained Heaven by a sigh he cast forth in the instant of his death was much displeased and presently became nought because God was good blaming his mercy to trie his justice For one sole censure made him loose forty years of penance and drew his foot out of Paradise to deliver his soul to hell I purpose here consequently to produce a singular conversion that you may admire and fear the secret ways of God Simeon of Constantinople is the Authour of it who enlarged it with many words but I will abbreviate it into good proportion which shall render it no whit the less effectual The Emperour Diocletian having pacified Aegypt sojourned sometime in Antioch of purpose to destroy Actor 12. the name of Jesus Christ in the same place where the faithfull began to be called Christians Theodosia a Procopius presented to Dioclesian great Ladie came to him bringing her son along with her named Neanias in very good equipage with purpose to prefer him in Court and satisfie her ambition To make her self the more acceptable she freely protested her deceased husband died a Christian that she had often attempted to work him to forsake this superstition adverse to Gods and men and that being unable to prevail upon his inveterate obstinacy she had manured this young plant speaking of her son carefully training him in the service of the gods and Prince with infinite detestation against Christianitie Diocletian who was much delighted with such accidents loudly praised the Ladie and casting his eye on Neanias he found him of handsom shape good presence understanding and valiant whereof he conceived great hope he might prove hereafter a principal instrument of his desires That which also pleased him the more
eternal seed of so many sundry books as were hitherto published and which will encrease to the consummation of the world And although the most able Philosophers had they been persecuted by Tyrants would not willingly have lost a tooth for defence of their Maxims yet the wisdom of our Saviour is such that having possessed the heart and hands of those who profess it causeth them to pour out all the bloud of their veins and to use so much courage for preservation thereof as it afforded them lights in its establishment 5. From thence consider it is his absolute power over His power Data est mihi â—â—nis potestas in coelo in terrd Matth. 28. 18. all things and note if you please that it is manifested principally in three Articles First the facility of prodigies and miracles which appeared in Jesus Christ For this large house of nature which we call the world had no other motion but from his will and he therein commanded so universally that he seemed to hold the Heavens and elements under hire to be instruments of his wonders He lighted new stars at his birth he eclipsed the ancient Sun at his death he walked on waters as on marble pavements he caused the earth to cast up the dead four days after We find many of Pharaoh's Magicians have done false miracles but it was saith Saint Augustine by speedily applying active natural things to passive We find Saints have done true miracles but in the quality of Ministers It onely appertaineth to Jesus Christ to do them with an original power which hath its source in his bosom with an absolute command which receiveth not any modification in all nature with a simple will which needeth no other instruments It onely belongeth to him to do them for the full mannage of the worlds government and to transmit them into the person of Saints to the consummation of Ages In the second place I say this power marvellously shineth in the great Empire of the Church which his Heavenly Father hath put into his hands to build it raise it cement it with his bloud illuminate it with his lights nourish it with his substance to make laws in it establish Sacraments eternize sacrifices create Pastours and Priests and invisibly to rule in it by a visible head a power not to be shaken even unto the gates of hell to exercise a jurisdiction over souls to bind them to unloose them pardon sins change hearts ordain their predestination according to his will Finally this great power appears in that he first of all opened Paradise his soul being exalted from the first day of his creation to the vision of Gods Essence and afterward passing through all the Heavens to place himself at the right hand of his Father and put his Elect into the possession of the Kingdom he had purchased by his bloud Have not we cause to crie out thereupon and say O happy he Beatus quem elegisti assumpsisli habitabit in atriis tuis replebitur in bonis domus tuae â—ancium est templum tuum mirabile in aequitate Psal 64. Temple of Justinian whom you have chosen to raise him to the Hypostatical union He shall dwell in the Palace of the Divinity and we shall be filled with the blessings of thy house Thy Temple which is his sacred Hamanitie is infinitely holy It is said Justinian having finished the magnificent Church of S. Sophie which he built with so much industry and charge such numbers and such a general contribution of endeavour of riches and power of the whole Empire placed therein a statue of Solomon who seemed to be astonished and to hide himself through shame and confusion to see his Temple surpassed by that of the Emperour It was a vanity of a worldly Prince But we in verity would we represent what passeth here should paint both Moses and all the Prophets absorpt in a profound reverence in the consideration of the Temple of the Church and the wonders of Jesus Christ 6. Let us for conclusion of this discourse adore that which we cannot sufficiently comprehend and endeavour to bear an incomparable love to the Person of our Saviour for the excellencies we have expressed But if you require the practise of this I say Practise of the love of Jesus reduced to 3. heads 1. To adhere Conglutinata est anima 〈◊〉 cum ed. Gen. 34. 3. it is reduced to three heads which are to adhere to serve and suffer The first note of faithfull affection appears in a strong adherence to the thing beloved so as the Scripture speaking of love says it causeth one soul to clasp unto another If you begin heartily to love Jesus Christ you will find you shall think upon him almost insensibly every moment and as saith S. Gregorie every time you fetch your breath there will come a pleasing idea of God to fill your soul with splendours and affection You will feel a distast and unsavouriness of heart against all earthly things so that it will seem to you that the most pleasing objects of the world are mingled with gall and wormwood You will seek for your Jesus in all creatures you wil languish after him all which beareth his name Numquid quem diligit anima mea vidistis Cantic and memory will be delightsome to you you will speak of him in all companies you will have an earnest desire to see him honoured esteemed acknowledged by all the world And if you perceive any contempt of his Person which is so estimable you will think the apple of your eye is touched Your solitude will Suspiret ac â—eties se a summo bono anima nostra sentiaâ— recessisse quoties se ab illo intuitu deprehenderit separatim fornicationem judicans vel momentaneum a Christi contemplatione discessum be in Jesus your discourse of Jesus Jesus will be in your watchings and in your sleep in your affairs in your recreations and you will account it a kind of infidelity to loose sight of him but an hour Love is a great secret very well understood by Abbot Moses in Cassianus Let our soul saith he sigh and think it self sequestred from the sovereign goodness so soon as it looseth never so little sight of the divine presence accounting it a spiritual fornication to be separated one sole moment from beholding Jesus For the second degree as it is not enough in Siquis diligit me sermonem meum servabit Ioan. 14. worldly amities to have affections languors and curious lip-complements but you must necessarily come to some good effects and considerable offices which are the marks and cement of true affection so you must not think the love of Jesus consisteth in slight affectations of idle devotion He must serve who will love his will must be wedded his command entertained and executed his liveries put on and we wholly transformed into him by imitation of his examples S. Augustine to confound the weakness
Charls of Anjou much fearing this young Lion forgat His sentence and death all generosity to serve his own turn and did a most base act detested by all understandings that have any humanity which is that having kept Conradinus a whole year in a straight prison he assembled certain wicked Lawyers to decide the cause of one of the noblest spirits at that time under heaven who to second the passion of their Master rendered the laws criminal and served themselves with written right to kill a Prince contrary to the law of nature judging him worthy of death in that said they he disturbed the peace of the Church and aspired to Empire A scaffold was prepared in a publick place all hanged with red where Conradinus is brought with other Lords A Protonotary clothed after the ancient fashion mounteth into a chair set there for the purpose and aloud pronounceth the wicked sentence After which Conradinus raising himself casting an eye ful of fervour and flames on the Judge said Base and cruel slave as thou art to open thy mouth to condemn thy Sovereign It was a lamentable thing to see this great Prince on a scaffold in so tender years wise as an Apollo beautiful as an Amazon and valiant as an Achilles to leave his head under the sword of an Executioner in the place where he hoped to crown it â—e called heaven earth to bear witness of Charls his cruelty who unseen beheld this goodly spectacle froÌ„ an high turret He complained that his goods being taken from him they robbed him of his life as a thief that the blossom of his age was cut off by the hand of a hang-man taking away his head to bereave him of the Crown lastly throwing down his glove demanded an account of this inhumanity Then seeing his Cousin Frederick's head to fall before him he took it kissed it and laid it to his bosom asking pardon of it as if he had been the cause of his disaster in having been the companion of his valour This great heart wanting tears to deplore it self wept over a friend and finishing his sorrows with his life stretched out his neck to the Minister of justice Behold how Charls who had been treated with all humanity in the prisons of Sarazens used a Christian Prince so true it proves that ambition seemeth to blot out the character of Christianity to put in the place of it some thing worse than the Turbant This death lamented through all the world yea which maketh Theaters still mourn sensibly struck the heart of Queen Constantia his Aunt wife of Peter of Arragon She bewailed the poor Prince with tears which could never be dried up as one whom she dearly loved and then again representing to her self so many virtues and delights drowned in such generous bloud and so unworthily shed her heart dissolved into sorrow But as she was drenched in tears so her husband thundred in arms to revenge his death He rigged out a fleet of ships the charge whereof he Collenutius histor Neapol l. 5. c. 4. 5. recommended to Roger de Loria to assail Charls the second Prince of Salerno the onely son of Charls of Anjou who commanded in the absence of his father The admiral of the Arragonian failed not to encounter The son of Charls of Anjou taken him and sought so furiously with him that having sunck many of his ships he took him prisoner and brought him into Sicily where Queen Constantia was expecting the event of this battle She failed not to cause the heads of many Gentlemen to be cut off in revenge of Conradinus so to moisten his ashes with the bloud of his enemies Charls the Kings onely son was set apart with nine principal Lords of the Army and left to the discretion of Constantia Her wound was still all bloudy and the greatest of the Kingdom counselled her speedily to put to death the son of her capital enemy yea the people mutined for this execution which was the cause the Queen having taken order for his arraignment and he thereupon condemned to death she on a Friday morning sent him word it was now time to dispose himself for his last hour The Prince nephew to S. Lewis and who had some sense of his uncles piety very couragiously received these tidings saying That besides other courtesies he had received from the Queen in prison she did him a singular favour to appoint the day of his death on a Friday and that it was good reason he should die culpable on the day whereon Christ died innocent This speech was related to Queen Constantia who was therewith much moved and having some space bethought her self she replyed Tell Prince Charls if he take contentment to suffer An excellent passage of clemency death on a Friday I will likewise find out mine own satisfaction to forgive him on the same day that Jesus signed the pardon of his Executioners with his proper bloud God forbid I shed the bloud of a man on the day my Master poured out his for me Although time surprize me in the dolour of my wounds I will not rest upon the bitterness of revenge I freely pardon him and it shall not be my fault that he is not at this instant in full liberty This magnanimous heart caused the execution to be staied yet fearing if she left him to himself the people might tear him in pieces she sent him to the King her husband entreating by all which was most pretious unto him to save his life and send him back to his Father Peter of Arragon who sought his own accommodation in so good a prize freed him from danger of death yet enlarged him not suddenly For his deliverance must come from a hand wholly celestial Sylvester Pruere writes that lying long imprisoned in the City of Barcellon the day of S. Mary Magdalen aproaching who was his great Patroness he disposed himself to a singular devotion fasting confessing his sins communicating begging of her with tears to deliver him from this captivity Heaven was not deaf to his prayers Behold on the day of the feast he perceived a Lady full of Majesty who commanded him to follow her at which words he felt as it were a diffusion of extraordinary joy spread over his heart He followed her step by step as a man rapt and seeing all the gates flie open before her without resistance and finding himself so cheerful that his body seemed to have put on the nature of a spirit he well perceived heaven wrought wonders for him The Lady looking on him after she had gone some part of the way asked him where he thought he was to which he replied that he imagined himself to be yet in the Territory of Barcellon Charls you are deceived said she you are in the County of Provence a league from Narbon and thereupon she vanished Charls not at all doubting the miracle nor the protection of S. Mary Magdalen prostrated himself on the earth adoring
COURT That it is to no purpose to think upon death so far off and that it always cometh soon enough without thinking on it That the best employment of life is to bewel prepared for death and that good thoughts of death are the seeds of immortalitie 1. IT is a strange thing that men being all made out of one and the same mass are so different in beliefs in reasons in customs and actions as the Proteus in Poetical fables Our manners daily Diversitie of men teach us a truth which says There is not any thing so mutable upon earth as the heart of man Yet we see in the world many honourable personages and good men who travel apace to this triumphant Citie of God this Heavenly Jerusalem looking on the blessings of the other life with an eye purified by the rays of faith and expecting them with a hope for which all Heaven is in bloom But there Opinion concerning the other life are an infinite number of black souls marked with the stamp of Cain who consider all is said of the state of the other world as if it were some imaginary Island feigned to be in the Ocean to amuze credulous spirits and fill them partly with pleasing dreams partly with irksom visions If these people could find some apparent proofs they would easily perswade themselves there were no death but their senses convinced of the contrary from experience of all Ages they believe that which they dare not think on and commonly die after so bruitish a fashion that a man may say They had converted the lights of an immortal spirit wholly into flesh But you generous souls whom at this present I intend to guid through the hopes and terrours of the other life observe this first step you must make to enter into a new world with constancy not unworthy a soul sensible of its immortality 2. Life and death are two poles on the which all Life death the two poles of the world creatures rowl life is the first act moveable and continual of the living thing death the cessation of the same act And as there are three notable actions in things animated the one whereof tendeth to nourishment and increase the other to sense the third to understanding so there are three sorts of lives Divers kinds of life the vegetative the sensitive and the intellectual the vegetative in plants sensitive in beasts the intellectual which onely appertaineth to God Angels and men The intellectual life is divided into two other which are the life of grace and glory In Heaven the place of things eternal reign those great and divine lives which never die and which are in a perpetual vigour being applied to the first source of lives which is God But in the more inferiour rank of the world are dying lives of which we daily see the beginning progress and end Here properly is the dominion of death and our onely mystery is to die well Some do it of necessity others every day anticipate it by virtue Now it is my desire here to shew you That death in the state wherein the world is at this present is a singular invention of Divine Providence whether we consider the generality of men whether we look on the vicious or fix our thoughts on the just 3. Some complain of death but you would see Providence of God concerning the sentence of death in the generality of men much other complaints if in such a life as we live there were no death You would see men worn with years and cares daily to charge altars with vows and prayers men insupportable to all the world irksom to life inexpugnable to death men old as the earth incessantly calling upon the hour of death and almost eating one another with despair God hath herein saith Plato well provided for seeing the soul was to be Plato in Timaeo Pater misericors illis mortalia vincula faciebat shut up in the body as in a prison he hath at least made it chains mortal What makes you so much desire life I find saith the worldling it is a pleasure to behold the light the star elements and seasons There will be much more delight to see them one day under your feet than there is now to behold them over your head Are there now so many years you have been upon the earth and have you not yet sufficiently looked upon the elements There were certain people among the Pagans who by laws forbade a man of fifty years to make use of the Physitian saying It discovered too much love of life and yet with Christians you may find at the age of four-score who will not endure a word of the other world as if they had not yet one days leisure to look into it But I must still Ambr. l. 2. de Abel Cain Non advertitis senectutem hanc aerumnarum esse veteranam processionibusque aetatis miseriarum crescere stipendia Scyllâ—o quodam usu circumsonari nos quotidianis naufragiis perform the actions of life Have you not done them enough See you not that to live long is to be long in the entertainment of travel and misery which extend their power over our heads according as the web of our life lengtheneth Do you not consider we are in this life as fish in the sea perpetually in fear of nets or hooks Will you not say we live here in the midst of misery and envie as between Scylla and Charybdis and that to decline once perishing we daily make ship wrack Notwithstanding we are pleased with life as if man were not so much a mortal creature as an immortal misery Do you not know life was given by God to Cain Revolution troublesom the most wicked man on earth for a punishment of his crime and will it rest with you as a title of reward There is great cause to desire life Were there no other miseries which are but too frequent this anxiety and turmoil of relapsing actions would tyre us What is life but clothing and unclothing rising and down-lying drinking eating sleeping gaming scoffing negotiating buying selling masonry carpentery quarreling cozening rowling in a labyrinth of actions which perpetually turn and return filling and emptying the tub of the Danaïdes and to be continually tied to a body as to the tending of an infant a fool or a sick man That is not it which withdraweth me say you But I must see the world and live with the living Had you been all your life Baseness of the world time shut up in a prison and not seen the world but through a little grate you had seen enough of it What behold you in the streets but men houses horses mules coaches and people who tumble up and down like fishes in the sea who have many times no other trade but to devour one another and besides some pedling trifles hanged out on stals When I have seen all this but for half an hour
I say O God how little is the world Is it for this we deceive we swear and make a divorce between God and us But admit we were not interessed in this action must we not rest on the law of God who maketh life and ordaineth death by the juridical power of his wisdom ever to be adored by our wills though little penetrable to understanding Will you I pronounce an excellent saying of Tertullian The world is the Vterus naturae An excellent coÌ„ceit drawn from the words of Tertullian belly of Nature and men are in it as children in the mothers womb the birth of men are the world 's child-bearings death its lying in and deliveries Would you not die to hinder the world from bringing forth and unburdening it self by the way the Sovereign Master hath appointed it We have seen Tyrants of all sorts some invented exquisite torments and tryals others forbade eating and drinking some to weep some caused children to be taken from the teat to strangle them and cut their throats as Pharaoh and Herod But never was there any amongst them who forbade women with child to be delivered The world hath for a long space been big with you and would not you have it to be delivered at the time God's counsels have ordained Were it a handsom thing think you to see an infant presently to have teeth and articulate speech and yet if it might be would stay in the mothers womb using no other reason but that there is warm being Judge now and take the even ballance if the world be the belly of nature if this good mother bare us the time Gods providence appointed if she now seek her deliverie that we may be born in the land of the living in a quite other climate another life another light are not we very simple to withstand it as little infants who crie when they issue out of bloud and ordure at the sight of day-light yet would not return thither from whence they came 4. Behold the Providence of God in that which Providence in the death of the vicious Boet. l. 4. de consol Cum supplicis carent inesâ— illis aliquid alteriuâ— mali ipsâ— impunitâ—s S. Eucher in paraenesi concerneth death in the generality of all men Let us see in this second point the like providence towards the wicked the vicious rich and proud Great-ones who spit against Heaven We must first establish a most undoubted maxim that there is nothing so unhappy as impunity of men abandoned to vice which is the cause the paternal providence of God arresteth them by the means of death dictating unto them an excellent lesson of their equality with other men Mortals circumvolve in life and death as Heaven on the pole artick and antartick from east to west the same day which lengtheneth our life in the morning shorteneth it in the evening and all Ages walk that way not any one being permitted to return back again Our fore-fathers passed on we pass and our posteritie follows us in the like course you may say they are waves of the sea where one wave drives another and in the end all come to break against a rock What a rock is death There are above five thousand years that it never ceaseth to crush the heads of so many mortals and yet we know it not I remember to this purpose a notable tradition of the Hebrews related by Masius upon Josuah to wit Masius in Josuah Notable action of Noah that Noah in the universal deluge which opened the flood-gates of Heaven to shake the columns of the world and bury the earth in waters in stead of gold silver and all sort of treasure carried the bones of Adam into the Ark and distributing them among his sons said Take children behold the most precious inheritance your father can leave you you shall share lands and seas as God shall appoint but suffer not your selves to be intangled in these vanities which are more brittle than glass more light than smoke and much swifter than the winds My children all glideth away here below and there is nothing which eternally subsisteth Time it self which made us devours and consumeth us Learn this lesson from these dumb Doctours the relicks of your grand-father which will serve you for a refuge in your adversities a bridle in your prosperities and a mirrour at all times Moreover I affirm death serves for a perfect lesson of justice to the wicked which they were never willing throughly to understand for it putteth into equality all that which hazard passion and iniquity had so ill divided into so many objects Birth maketh men equal since they receive nought else from their mothers womb but ignorance sin debility and nakedness but after they come out of the hands of the midwife some are put into purple and gold others into rags and russets some enter upon huge patrimonies where they stand in money up to the throat practise almost nothing else throughout their whole life but to get by rapine with one hand and profusely spend with the other Some live basely and miserably necessitous A brave spirit able to govern a large Common-wealth is set to cart by the condition of his poverty Another becomes a servant to a coxcomb who hath not the hundreth part of his capacity It is the great Comedie of the world played in sundry fashions for most secret reasons known to Divine Providence would you have it last to eternity See you not Comedians having played Kings and beggars on the stage return to their own habit unless they day and night desire to persist in the same sport And what disproportion is there if after every one have played his part in the world according to the measure of time prescribed him by Providence he resume his own habit I also adde it is a kind of happiness for the wicked to die quickly because it is unfit to act that long which is very ill done And since they so desperately use life it is expedient not being good it be short that shortness of time may render the malice of it less hurtfull If examples of their like who soon die make them apprehensive of the same way and how seasonably to prepare for death it is a singular blessing for them But if persisting in contempt they be punished it is God's goodness his justice be understood and that it commandeth even in hell 5. But if at this present you reflect on the death of the Just which you should desire I say God's Providence there brightly appeareth in three principal things which are cessation from travels and worldly miseries the sweet tranquility of departure and fruition of crowns and rewards promised First you must imagine what holy Job said That The sweetnes of the death of the just Iob 3. Qui expectant mortem quasi effodientes thesaurum Tert. de pallio Homo pellitus orbi quasi metallo datur this life is to the just as
all the fair riches of the earth The ambitious perish as spiders who present wretched threeds and some little flies in them such are also the snares pursuits and businesses of the world But the Just forsake us like the silk-worm For this little creature had it understanding would be well pleased issuing forth of her prison to become a butterflie to see the goodly halle of great men Churches and Altars to smile under her works What a contentment to the conscience of a just man in death to consider the Churches adorned Altars covered poor fed sins resisted virtues crowned like so many pieces of tapistry by the work of his hands Hath he not cause to say I entered into the list I valiantly 1 Tim. 4. Bonum certamen certavâ— cursum consummavi in reliquo reposita est mihi corona justitiae Exhortation to such nice people as fear death fought I have well ended my race there remains nothing more for me but to wear the Crown of Justice which God keeps for me as a pledge 6. I yet come again to thee worldly man who so much fearest this last hour Learn from this discourse to fortifie thy self against these vain apprehensions of death which have more disturbance for thee than the Sea surges Is it not a goodly thing to see thee tremble at thy enterance into so beaten a path wherein so many millions have passed along before thee and the most timorous of the earth have finished their course as well as the rest without any contradiction All that which seemeth most uneasie in this passage is much sweetened by two considerations the first whereof is That God made it so common that there is no living creature exempt and the other That to dispose us to a great death we every night find in our sleep a little death Wilt thou then still doubt to set thy foot-steps firmly in the paths which the worlds Saviour with his holy Mother imprinted with their tracks After thou hast slept so many years and so long passed through the pettie miseries of death shalt thou never come to the great Why art thou so apprehensive of death Sickness and miseries of the world will one day perhaps make thee desire that which thou now most fearest Were it not better to do by election what must be suffered by necessity Hast thou so little profited in the world that thou hast not yet some friend some one dearly beloved who passed into the other life Needs must thou have very little affection in store for him if thou fearest the day which should draw thee near to his company What is it maketh all these apprehensions arise in thy mind Is it so ill with thee to forsake a world so treacherous so miserable so corrupt If thou hast been therin perpetually happy which is very rare couragiously set a seal upon thy felicity and be not weary of thy good hap which may easily be changed into a great misfortune Many have lived too long by one year others by one day which made them see what they feared more than death But if thou be afflicted and persecuted in this life why art thou not ashamed when God calleth thee to go out faintly from a place where thou canst not stay without calamitie Deplorest thou thy gold silver costly attire houses and riches Thou goest into a Countrey where thou no longer shalt need any of that They were remedies given thee for the necessities of life now that thy wounds shall be cured wouldest thou still wear the plaisters Bewailest thou loss of friends There are some who expect thee above which are better than the worldly more wise more assured and who will never afford thee ought but comfort Thou perhaps laments the habit of body and pangs of this passage It is not death then which makes thee wax pale but life thou so dearly lovedst It hath been told thee in the last agonies of death the body feeleth great disturbances that it turns here and there that one rubs the bed-cloths with his hands hath convulsions shuts fast the teeth choaketh words hath a trembling lower lip pale visage sharp nose troubled memory speech fumbling cold sweat the white of the eye sunk and the aspect totally changed What need we fear all that which perhaps will never happen to us How many are there who die very sweetly and almost not thinking of it You would say they are not there when it happens Caesar the Pretour died putting on his shoes Lucius Lepidius striking with his foot against a gate the Rhodian Embassadour having made an Oration before the Senate of Rome Anacreon drinking Torquatus eating a cake Cardinal Colonna tasting figs Xeuxes the Painter laughing at the Picture of an old woman he was to finish and lastly Augustus the Monarch performing a complement But if something must be endured think you the hand of God is stretched out to torment you above your force or shortened to comfort you He will give you a winter according to your wool as it is said sufferings according to the strength of your body and a crown for your patience You fear nothing say you of all that I mention but you dread Judgement Who can better order that than your self Had you been the most desperate sinner in the world if you take a strong resolution to make hereafter an exact and effectual conversion the arms of God are open to receive you He will provide for your passage doubt it not as he took care for your birth He will accompany you with his Angels he will hold you under the veil of his face under the shadow of his protection if he must purge you by justice he will crown you by his mercy The fifteenth EXAMPLE upon the fifteenth MAXIM The manner of dying well drawn from the Model of our LADIE ONe of the most important mysteries in the world is to die well It is never done but once and if one fail to perform it well he is lost without recovery It is the last lineament of the table of our life the last blaze of the torch extinguished the last lustre of the setting Sun the end of the race which gives a period to the course the great seal which signeth all our actions One may in death correct all the defects of an ill life and all the virtues of a good are defaced and polluted by an evil death The art of dying well being of so great consequence it seems God permitted the death of his Mother to teach us what ours ought to be The death of the Virgin Mary is the death of a Phenix which hath three conditions resolution disengagement and union I begin with resolution of conformity to the will 1. Quality of good death is the indifferency of time and manner of God which is the first quality should be had to die well That is to hold life in your hands as a loan borrowed from Heaven ever ready to restore it at the least
all which here pleaseth and distracteth hearts is but a poor praeludium of the great act of the inexplicable contentment which passeth in eternity O man thou hast heretofore been a little infant in thy mothers womb amongst bloud and ordure involved in thin skins swadled in clouts and swath-bands which nature gave thee thou wast held in them to prepare for this world for this life where thou now breathest air with all liberty know this world is a second womb in comparison of heaven Thou art yet in prison in obscurity in fetters till the coming of the great day wherein God shall give thee a new body a glorious body a spirituall body With these hopes the mother of the young Machabees saw the members of her children hewed and cut in pieces under the bloudy sword of persecution With this hope holy Anchorites filled the desarts with their tears walked on scorching sands trampled dragons under foot stifled the concupiscences of flesh in snows and thorns with this hope Martyrs sacrificed themselves in as many torments as they had members They preached on crosses sang in flames triumphed on wheels and to merit this glory thou wilt not resolve to forsake that company which hath robbed thee of thy heart and dishonoured the character of thy profession Thou wilt not resolve to suffer a little injury a slight persecution Thou wilt not accomplish thy vows discharge thy obligations put thy self into some course of a regular piety And what may we think of thee O soul so many times ungratefull and disloyal if Heaven open in rewards cannot yet dilate thy heart to his love who readily offers them The twentieth EXAMPLE upon the twentieth MAXIM Divers observations upon the length of life and desire of the state of Resurrection IT is not my purpose to enlarge hereupon narration of many Resurrections whereof we have sundry notable examples both in the old and new Testament and in the lives of Saints in which kind there is not an Age which doth not furnish us with store I onely rest upon some observations which evidently shew the passionate desires humane nature hath to the most blessed state proposed us in the Resurrection The Platonists said The presence of felicity was August l. 22. de Civitate Dei c. 11. Omne corpus fugiendum ex Platonicis 2 Cor. 5. 4. Qui sumus in hoc tabernaculo ingemiscimus gravatii eo quod nolumus expoliari sed super vestiri ut absorbeatur quod mortale est a vita the absence of body and that we must flie from it as from a prison to enter into the liberty of beatitude But the Apostle hath much better said That we groan in this tabernacle and are in great pain not that we desire to be despoiled but to be better clothed that all which is mortal in us may be as swallowed up by life Verily we have a tender love of our bodies and even those who do most torment them do it for no other purpose but to place them one day in ease We live not without thinking on this Resurrection and immortality the fruition whereof we shall never find but in Heaven God hath given us this desire to teach us we are created for it but he doth not afford us the performance of it here to tell us we must seek for it else where We desire to live long and commodiously shortness of life taketh away the one and continual sicknesses bereaves us of the other So many men have sought for their resurrection here on earth and have found nought but their destruction Our body in the declining of age is not like Vestal fires to be everlastingly repaired All in it is lost all is dissolved but if any thing therein be re-established it is not to the proportion of its primitive vigour Spirits without which we cannot live cease not to alter our life and the very air we breath drieth and devoureth us There have been men in the world who have in this life made boast of great age as if they had already some scantling of the condition of Resurrection but they have been very rare and to speak truly they have continued long and lived but a while since there is nothing long in a happiness whereof we find an end It is a remarkable thing that the eldest of all the Patriarchs Pet. 2. 3 5. Vnus dies apud Dominum sicut mille anni mille anni sicut dies unus in Genesis who was Methusalem arrived not to the time which S. Peter calleth a day of God A thousand years saith the great Apostle are before God but one day And not any one of the first men of the world with his so many years mounted to the thousand year of his age Yea it is a thing very well to be observed that in the account the Scripture maketh of the years of Patriarchs the age of women is not considered And Baronius findeth the Bible never reckoned the days and years of women but of Sara Judith and Anne the daughter of Phanuel to teach us our lives are short since those of Eve the mother of the living and of so many other mothers from whom men issued entered not into the line of account in Gods Chronicle We know not how long the first woman of the world lived but we understand she returned into dust and that we must tread the like path Greece the mother of fables sought to use posterity as they do children it hath pleased it self to scare us with strange tales of huge bodies and long lives but we have more difficulty to believe them than it facility to invent them Phlegon a rare Authour Phlegon de rebus mirabil c. 17. says he read in Appollonius the Grammarian that the Athenians desirous to fortifie the long Island which was near to their Citie laying the foundation of their fortresses found a sepulcher one hundred cubits long with this Epitaph which said Macrosiris is here interred in the long Island after he had lived five thousand years compleat These are impostures and Rhodomontadoes which seek to brave Ages and cannot affront worms nor be defended from corruption All about us is sufficient to give us a lesson of the shortness of our life The corn on which we live dies every year to the root The Vine feels as many deaths as winters and although it renew every year it cannot attain to the reasonable age of some drunkards Fifty or three-score years make up its age as also of Apple-trees Pear-trees Plumb-trees Cherie-trees and other such like whereof eating the fruits we should think the wood which bears them liveth no longer than we Tame creatures which are perpetually among us live but a while The age of a horse ends at twenty years It is a great chance if a dog arrive to that number The ox will be well contented with sixteen sheep with ten cats are between ten and six pigeons and so many flying fowl live not long for we daily
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
stept far into age bear the torch before youth Let women endeavour to establish piety which is the ornament of their sex Let children be well bred and trained within the laws of modesty Let the doctrine of Jesus Christ be sealed with the seal of good manners there is no Libertine but will be daunted at the sight of a life led according to the laws of Christianity For it is a mirrour which killeth basilisks by reverberation of their proper poison But if blasphemers continue still so impudent as to vomit forth unclean and injurious words against the Religion we profess have not laws which are in the power of the Sovereign Princes on earth and of their Ministers of State iron hands able to stay their most daring impudencies I call you hither O holy Prelates O Monarchs To the great-ones of all Christendom Princes and Potentates who are in the world as the great Intelligences who make the Heavens move and who by diversity of your aspects cause calms and storms in this inferiour region wherein we live I pray tell me where do you think hath glory which you naturally love placed its throne and state if not in the bosom of true piety By what degrees are those immortal spirits of your Ancestours mounted up to the joys and delights of God having replenished the earth with the veneration of their memory if it were not by making the honour of the Sovereign Master march in the front of all their designs and thinking nought their own but what was acquired for God Remember you are not altogether like the Angel Apo. 10. of the Apocalyps which beareth the Sun and Rainbows and all the garnishments of glory on feet of brass you enjoy dignities and supereminencies that draw the Great-ones into admiration astonish inferiours attract people evict honour and wonder from all the world But consider if so you please that all this is onely supported on feet of clay and morter Time changeth you cares consume you maladies assail you death takes and despoileth you They who adored you in thrones may one day trample on you in sepulchers Alas if it happen you carry all your own interests with violence of passion to the height of your pretensions and that you hold Religion and the glory of Jesus in a perpetual contempt what will your soul one day answer when it leaves the body unto the thundering voice of a living God saying to you as he did to Cyrus in Isaiah Assimilavi te non cognovisti Isaiah 45. me I called thee by thy name I created thee like unto my self I made thee a little God on earth and thou hast forgotten me I so many times marched before thy standards many times have I humbled the most glorious of the earth for thee I brake brazen gates pulled down iron bars to afford thee hiden treasures and the wealth of Ages which nature for thee preserved in her bosom The Sun seemed not to shine in the world but to enlighten thy greatness the seas surged for thee and for thee the earth was wholly bent to honour and obedience Admirer of thy self and ignorant of Gods works thou hast so ill husbanded my goods that thou hast changed them all into evils I gave thee rays and thou hast made arrows of them to shoot against me Did I seat thee on thrones that there thy passions might sway Did I imprint on thy forehead the character of my greatness that thou mightest authorize crimes Thou hadst a feeble pretext of Religion and hast neglected the effects Thy interests reigned and my honour suffered in thy house At what aimed thy ambition so strong of wing and so weak of brain which onely thought how to envy what was above the more to oppress any thing below it What did that burning avarice that profuse riot that spirit of bloud and flesh employed in the advancement of thine own house to the contempt of mine For an inch of land a wretched matter of profit the fantasie of an affront jealousie onely subsisting in a body of smoke all the elements must be troubled men and swords drawn forth for revenge and bloud of so many mortals shed but for my Name which is blasphemed it is sufficient to wag the finger to shew onely a cold countenance a slight touch of that great authority whilst I was neglected having done no other fault but to have paid ingratitudes with benefits O you Great-ones who sit at the stern of Churches and temporal Estates how far will you become accountable to Gods justice if you place not his honour in the first rank of all your intentions Alas Ought not you to entertain an ardent zeal towards the Religion which our Ancestours consigned unto us with so many examples of piety that Heaven hath not more stars than we lights before our eyes Can we well endure that the verities and maxims of God which the Prophets foretold us the Apostles pronounced the Confessours professed the Martyrs defended in the piece-meal mangling of their bodies amidst combs and iron hooks burning cauldrons wheels armed with keen razours should now adays be the sport of certain giddy spirits and the aim of profane lips who void of wit or shame dare invade holy things Is it not for this O France the beloved of God and orient pearl of the world thou hast seen in thy bosom so many hostilities such contagions famines monsters and devastations that had not the arm of God supported thee thou wouldst have been long since drenched in irrecoverable confusions O you who bear the sword of justice and have authority in your hands will you not one day say All Omnis qui zelum habet legis statuens testamentum suum exeat post me they who have the zeal of the law and the pietie of our Ancestours follow us couragiously for behold we are readie to revenge the quarrels of God and to account his glorie on earth in the same degree the Angels hold it in Heaven This was the conceit of the valiant Machabee the Prince of Gods people who having seen an Apostate of his Nation offer incense to an Idol slew him with his own hand on the very same Altar saying aloud He who hath the zeal of the law let him Vae mihi quis natus sum videre contritionem populi mei Sancts in manu extrantcrum facts sunt c. Nunc ergo silii aemulatores estote legis date animas vestras protestamento Patrum Moriamur in virtule propter fratres nostros non inferamus crimen gloriae nostre follow me Wo to me since I am born to behold the desolation of my people Holy things are in the hands of strangers The Temple hath been handled as the most wicked man on earth Our mysteries our beauties our glories are desolated To what purpose do I still lead a miserable life Fathers of families will you not say to your children what he did to his Children be ye emulatours
Perfecto odio oderaâ—â— illos Psal 138. is dangerous lest seeking to pull them away we be more passionate against the party who hath them then against all the most abominable iniquities We must not believe our selves when there is question of some important punishment nor such as are born to flatter our likings with too much servitude but those Angels for our counsellours if it be possible who are disintangled from the matter of Interests There are some who use to fortifie themselves in their resolutions by the deportments of those who are held for Saints in the Church and do readily alledge the examples of David who being upon his death-bed recommended to his son Solomon the punishment of Joab and Shimei But we must here consider that David is not a man impeceable to serve Question upon the act of David as a pattern for all our actions and that it is ever better to consecrate our dying lips with the words our Saviour spake a thousand years after on the crosse then with those he left in this instant as a Testament to his son The Jews had naturally great inclinations to revenge and many sought to perswade themselves it was by their laws permitted which is the cause this great King was not so perfectly free from all the seeds of Hatred in the whole course of his life But forasmuch as concerneth this last will of his one may excuse him for divers reasons nor can it be denyed an act of justice to put Joah to death who had defiled his hands with the bloud of two innocent Princes but it is strange that David reserved this so rough a punishment for him after fourty years of great and singular services when he was about threescore and ten years old Yet Theodoret brings a reason of state for it wherein he sheweth that Joah Theodoretin c. 2. l. 3. Regum citatus in Glossa Joah being in himself a great Captain was withall daring in his manners and tyrannicall in his undertakings and had already made it but too much appear that he meant to embroil the state after the death of his Master and to set Adonijah upon the throne to the prejudice of Solomon which was the cause that David who sought fixedly to establish the Kingdome upon his lawfull successour councelled him to take him away by a just punishment of other crimes which he had committed And as for Shimei who had surcharged him with injuries and curses when afterward he returned victorious into Hierusalem he came before him and craving pardon of his fault with lowly submission which stayed David and made him swear he should not dye for it which seemeth to convince him of perjury when he commanded his son Solomon to kill him I cannot approve Tostatus his distinction who saith When persons very different in the qualities of their rights treat together that he who hath justice on his side may promise things with an intention not to perform them as the other meaneth them For verily the permission of this manner of captious proceedings would throw a distrust upon all treaties But it is easie to see that David in this occasion beholding himself to be accomplished with joy and glory when Shimei came to cast himself at his feet and that Abishai counselled him instantly to put him to death he swore he should not dy and that the alacrity of a day so pleasing should not be purpled with humane bloud so that he had no further purpose but to assure Shimei for the time present and to promise him impunity in this conjunction of Kingdome and affairs but when he saw this spirit was insolent and like also to occasion trouble in the young King he did not absolutely command as Cajetan observeth to put him to death for what was past which had been pardoned but not to spare him in new occasions of commotion as actually Solomon following the intentions of the King his father troubled him not upon his slanders but upon another occurrent Now although one may alwayes give colour to the Hatred which is undertaken upon consideration and that it be sometimes necessary for the extirpation of the wicked yet must we more incline to clemency then justice in all which concerneth our selves For Hatreds of Interest which concern estates and Hatred of interest honour they many times in these dayes are incurable if they be not accompanied with some reasonable satisfaction It is a thing very remarkable that our Saviour Luc. 12. 14. who accordeth elements and pacifieth totall Nature would not undertake the agreement of two brothers upon the partition of their patrimony Nay there are some now a dayes so greedy and fleshed in prey that for a fingers breadth of land they would oppose Jesus Christ if he should visibly come to mediate their reconciliation After a thousand reasons which may be alledged for peace and good correspondence they derive but one conclusion out of it which is to have their will For which cause God chastiseth them and very often permitteth dissipation of goods ruine of families and many other accidents which stain their consciences and tarnish their reputation As on the contraty he blesseth the children of peace who forgo somewhat of their interest to acquire this inestimable treasure It is almost as hard to preserve charity in a great suit as to maintain fire in the water or under earth to keep inextinguible lamps He who will persist with a conscience indifferently Christian must never descend into suits Suits their nature and description but with a leaden pace and come out of them with the wings of an Eagle Suits are as the sons of Chaos and night there is nothing in them but confusion and darknesse It is a mixture of all evils which hath the heat of fire the threats the roaring thunders and tempests of the air the rocks of the sea the talons of birds of rapine and ravenous throat of fishes the gall of serpents the fury of salvage beasts and the malignity of poysons Before it ever walketh the desire of anothers goods by its side deceit revenge injustice falshood and treachery after it repentance poverty shame and infamy As war is made for peace so we sometimes undertake suits for justice and those are honest men who desire it but they who at this present do it with all sincerity are the greatest Saints of this age who seem to be given by God to mortifie civil hatreds and to establish minds in concord After suits Hatred brings forth another mischief Duell which is Duel a true Sacrifice of Moloch which hath cost France so much bloud mothers and wives so many tears which filleth families with sorrow friends with grief ages with horrour and hearts the most reasonable with the detestation of such a Crime The edicts of our most Christian King which have Means to use an efficacious remedy in Duell had more force then all other have served instead of a Jasper-stone to stanch
care for affairs to cure their sadnesse It is the counsel which the Apostle gave to the Thessalonians We 1 Thes 4. entreat you my brethren to profit more and more and to endeavour to be peacefull and that attending your affairs you take pains with your hands as we have appointed you that you by your conversation may edific those who are none of ours and that you may need nothing The fore-alledged Authour notably deduceth this Text of Saint Paul with many other which he citeth shewing that a singular remedy for Sadnesse caused by Idlenesse is the occupation of the mind and body For my part I am perswaded that by this means The serupulous many scruples might be cured wherewith divers minds are now-adayes miserably turmoiled For they no sooner enter into the great representations of Gods judgement of sinnes and of the torments of the damned but they presently bear all Hell on their shoulders The thunders of the divine Justice roars not but for them and for them the lightning-slashes they build scaffolds in their heart whereon their imaginations walk they nail themselves on voluntary Crosses and bind themselves on racks making an executioner of their mind and a continuall punishment of their life All they think in their opinion is sin all they do nought but disorder and all they expect meer malediction They never have made a good Confession they have ever forgotten some circumstance they have not well summed up the number of their sinnes the Confessour hath not well comprised what they would say they must eternally begin again and for trifles of no value they must run and weary all the tribunals of Confession and employ more time then would be needfull for a man who should manage all the great affairs of France It is a pittifull thing and verily tyrants never invented so rigorous torments which superstition witty in the fruitfulnesse of its own tortures surpasseth not It so toileth the mind that the body is extremely weakned which is seen in a face discoloured and wan a brow heavy an eye troubled a heart sobbing a countenance ghastly a losse of sleep and appetite a forbearance of all recreations and pleasures of life To speak truly these poor souls are worthy of compassion for they are perpetually in most painfull Purgatories Remedies for scrupulous minds Efficaciously to comfort them they must be put into the hands of some prudent charitable and resolute man who may enter into their heart and may be as it were the soul of their soul They must be drawn from this indigested and too frequent devotion from all those generall confessions so often reiterated they must not be permitted to accuse themselves of all the vain imaginations of their interiour but of the transgressions which passe to their exteriour They must be made to account their doubtfull sinnes for not sinnes since ordinarily the scrupulous have a mind wakefull and adverse enough to themselves not to doubt of any grievous sinne great conceits must be put into them of the goodnesse and mercy of God their courage must be raised and they instead of sinnes caused to set down in writing or otherwise their good works and the favours they have received from God It is sometimes fit to change meditations into good broths to excite them with some generous thought to stirre them up some difference or suit if it be needfull to hold them in businesse interlaced with honest repose and convenient recreation to handle them sometimes a little severely to teach them to believe and to suffer themselves to be directed and to accustome them to brave this scrupulous conscience and to vaunt to have despised whatsoever it dictateth Lastly to perswade them there one is who hath answered for their soul before God and that if there be any ill in his direction he shall be damned for them and no hurt come to them thereby To commend them for their dociblenesse when they obey to let them see the fruit of their obedience in the consolation of their soul to exhilerate them to heighten them to take them from themselves and to turn them into other personages Many have been absolutely cured by these kinds of proceedings many much sweetned For there are of them who suffer all their life time their thoughts being as devils settled in some possession which never fully forsake them but they must be let to understand the crosses ordained them in this life and that undertaking a good resolution for patience they shall multiply their merits § 3. The remedy of Sadnesses which proceed from divers accidents of humane life HEnce I discover very long dilation of pleasures daily framed in so many divers occasions which makes it sufficiently appear unto us that as of all living creatures there is not any more delicate more sensible and which is waited on with such a train as man so there is none more exposed as a Butt for all accidents which are of power to occasion trouble then he Alas what is man who maketh a crime of his birth a slavery Miseries of Humane conditions of his life and an horrour of his death To salute day-light with his teares to come into the world to be instantly crucified his mouth open to cryes and hunger to bring a barren mind a frail body enraged concupiscences to be a beast so many years then an infant to feel his misery to see his poor liberty fettered to live under the fear of rods in a perpetuall restraint of will then to enter into adolescency followed by youth which causeth loud storms of passions to beare along with them the seeds of all his miseries After that a servitude of marriage an evill encounter of wives and husbands of affairs of cares of poverty of children of slanders of quarrels affronts of contumelies of bodily pains of faintnesse of spirit of ruines of families of poison of punishments of privation of all one loveth of vexations by all one hateth an old age contemptible sick and languishing Death a hundred times invoked to fly from the miserable and to lay hold of the fortunate With all this to see abysses of fire and torments prepared for sins ordinary in worldly life Who is it that trembleth not thinking upon all these objects and who saith not that one must be either well fortified with prudence to divert his evils or have patience to bear them Note that all which may afflict us is reduced to The subjects of our afflictions the losse of goods of credit of friends of incommodities of body or mind and that our miseries which we think to be infinite are confined within three small limits For all the Sadnesses which may arise from these five sources God hath given us five remedies Five remedies for all Sadnesses Sense Reason Time Necessity and Grace There are many dolouts which grow from the senses and are likewise cured by the senses We must not think all Sadnesses have ears patiently to hear the
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
temptations and those that have yielded once thereto have done a thousand other worthy actions to blot out the memory of one ill If Clemency hath no place in such occasions it will have nothing to do about a Prince and if it find no employment with him it is to be feared that the vengeance of God will find work there to busie it self The wisest of Kings is of opinion that this virtue is the foundation of thrones whence it follows that that Prince which is unprovided thereof puts his own person in danger and his estate into shaking It is to deceive ones self to think that a Prince may be secure there where there is nothing secure against the violence of the Prince Despair of Mercy hath often caused horrible cruelties to ensue and it is needfull alwayes to take heed of the force of a last necessity There are some things which ought to be pardoned by the contempt of punishing them others by the profit and others by the glory and it is alwayes to be remembred that we have a Judge over our heads which suffers us to live by his onely goodnesse being able every moment to punish us by his Justice At last to conclude this little Treatise Valour procures an high reputation to a Monarch making him terrible to his Enemies and amiable to his Subjects Greatnesse maintains it self by the same means which gave it its beginning and it renews new vigour by those qualities which have been the Authours of its originall Our fist Kings attained to this dignity by their valour and by that stoutnesse which they had to expose their courageous persons to very many hazards for the safety of the publick this made them admired and lifted them up at last upon the Target to be shewed throughout the whole Army and chosen by generall consent to command over others by the title of their deserts The same of Valour doth so easily run through and with such approbation the minds of people and valiant men that it sufficing not it to make Kings upon earth it hath made amongst the Heathens Gods in Heaven They have deified an Hercules and a Theseus for having cut off the head of Hydra's and overcome Minotaures and not contenting themselves to have consecrated their persons they have put wild beasts and monsters amongst the Constellations for having served as objects of their victories chusing rather to eternize beasts amongst the Stars then to diminish any thing of the eternall glory of those valiant men Alexander being crowned King by his father Philip before he took possession of the Kingdome that fell to him by the decease of his Predecessour assembled together all the great ones of his Kingdome and said to them that he would counsel them to chuse such a one as should be most obedient to God which should have the best thoughts for the Publick Good which should be most compassionate towards the Poor which should best defend the right of the weak ones against the strong but above all that should be the most Valiant and should adventure himself most boldly for the safety of his Countrey And when they had all confirmed to him that which his birth had given him he took an Oath that he would keep all he had propounded as he did testifying in all his actions his Goodnesse and Valour above all the Kings that had gone before him A Monarch shall give some proof of himself by diligently studying the art of Warre in often frequenting the exercises thereof in being able to judge of places and Armies of Captains of Souldiers of Defences of On-sets of Policies and Stratagems of Fortifications of Arms of Provision of Munition and giving exact order for every thing that belongs to Military affairs He must often shew himself in the Army by exhorting encouraging consulting resolving giving orders and causing them to be executed by shewing readinesse of courage in dangers and an invincible heart in the midst of bad successe But he ought not at any time to mix himself therein without great necessity seeing that the hand of one man can do very little and the losse of a King brings a dammage unrecoverable The young King Ladislaus thrust himself into danger at the Battel of Varna against Bajazet the Turk when he had there lost himself and that they had taken away his head and put it upon the end of a spear as a sad spectacle to the Christians This caused their whole Army to be routed which before was half victorious and gave the victory to the Infidell Warre is a long and difficult profession and one of the most dangerous which never ought to be undertaken but upon necessity I cannot neither ought I here to teach it by words reserving that to the skill of the more understanding and to the experience of perfect ones I am onely obliged to advertise that great heed is to be taken lest any one take rashnesse or salvage rage instead of true valiantnesse Those are no Bravado's nor terrible looks that give the most valiant blows in Armies It pleaseth not God that a Virtue that doth such wonders upon earth and places the Hero's in the heaven should be accomplished by such feeble means This is no effect of boasting nor of ignorance nor of fury this is a branch of generousnesse which teacheth the contempt of dangers and of death it self for the glory of God for the defence of ones Countrey for the subduing of the impious Infidels and wicked ones for the exaltation of the true Faith of Religion and the glory of ones Nation Oh the excellency of this divine Virtue which protects so many people with the shadow of its branches and laurels which causes a calm to be found in a tempest safety in the midst of dangers comfort in disastres an upholding in the midst of weaknesse Happy are the wounds of the valiant whence flows more honour then bloud Happy their immortall Souls which flie hence into heaven carried upon the purple of so generous bloud and which flying hence leave to posterity an eternall memory of their prowesse Time hath no sythe for them Death is unprovided with darts Calumny loseth its teeth there and Glory spreads throughout the Ensigns of their Immortality THE MONARCHS DAVID SOLOMON DAVID REX SALOMON REX DAvid is a great mixture of divers adventures of Good of Evils of Joyes of Griefs of Contempts of Glories of Vices of Virtues of Actions of Passions of un-thought-of Successes of strange Accidents and Marvels It is not my purpose to set forth his Life here which is exactly contained in the holy Scripture but to make some reflexions on the principall things therein that concern the Court We will consider him in a two-fold estate of a Servant and of a Master and will observe with what wisdome he preserved himself in the one and with what Majesty he behaved himself in the other The whole beginning of his History is a continuall combate against an horrid monster which is the
body of the King with those of his three children and hung them upon the walls of Bethshan where they were seen untill the time that certain valiant men of his party took them away by night and gave them buriall Such was the end of this unhappy Prince whom impiety disobedience love of himself and the jealousie of State accompanied with his ordinary ragings threw head-long into a gulf of calamities At the same time that this unhappy battell was David receives the news thereof fought David was pursuing the Amalekites which in his absence had sacked the town of Ziklag which was the place of his retireing that Achish the King of the Philistims had bestowed upon him He was so happy that he overtook those robbers loaden with their prey and took out of their hands his two wives Ahinoam and Abigail whom they had taken away As he came from this battell a young Amalekite presents himself and brings him the news of the death of Saul of Jonathan and of his other sons affirming that he himself had stood by at the death of the King and had helped him to dye by order which he had received from him cutting off the thread of his life and delivering him from those deadly pains that caused him to languish and for a proof hereof he shewed him his Crown and his bracelet which he presented to David hoping for a great reward from him But this virtuous and wise Prince aswell for conscience sake as his reputation took great heed of receiving or manifesting any joy at this accident but on the contrary being moved with extream grief he tore his garments and put all his court in mourning he wept he fasted he made funerall Orations for the honour of Saul and Jonathan and set forth lamentations which caused as great esteem of his virtue as they moved pity to his countrey Not content herewith he caused the Amalekite that brought him the news of the death of Saul to dye by Justice which he himself had helped to confirm according as he had avouched by obedience and by compassion not enduring that he should lay hands upon a King for to take away his life from him by any pretence whatsoever that he could alledge It seemed that after the death of this unhappy Prince David should forthwith have taken possession of all his estates but wisdome hindred him from proceeding herein so hastily They knew that he had not assisted at the the battell for to help his people that he had retired himself into the hands of the capitall enemies of Israel and many might very justly think that he had born arms for Achish which might diminish much the great opinion that they had of his virtue Further also although that Saul was not so much loved in his life-time yet his death might very well have defaced that blemish of hatred that many had conceived against him They considered that he had sacrificed himself with his three sons for the publick safety and had spared nothing for his countrey They had pity on the evil usage that the Philistims had done unto his body his former good actions in time past the dignity of a King his laborious life and tragicall death did quell all the envie that any could have at his fortunes Hence it was that Abner his chief Captain who was a man sufficiently upright would not lose any time but seeing there remained yet a son of Saul named Ishbosheth aged fourty years although he was but of little courage and as little understanding he made him presently to come into the Camp and caused him to be declared the true and lawfull successour of the estates of Saul not so much for the esteem that he had of his sufficiency or for the love that he bore him as intending to reign by him and over him All the people gave unto him the oath of Allegiance except the kindred of Juda from which David was sprung which gathered together in favour of him and crowned him King in Hebron where he reigned about seven years before he possessed the whole power of the Empire The Kingdome of Judah was then one body with The kingdome divided by the ambition of the favourites two heads the house of Saul and David clashing against each other not so much by the inclination of the Masters as by the ambition of the Favourites and Servants which would reign at their costs Abner was high and courageous Joab also the Joab and Abner do seek for the government chief Captain of David stern and violent which would gain the favour of his Master by devouring him in the which he did not succeed well for that the spirit of David was not so feeble as to comply with such behaviour and it was nothing but necessity which caused him to passe by many things These two chief Captains full of jealousie the one Their combat over the other meeting together at the Fish-pond of Gibeon with the chief of the Nobility Abner began first and demanded a combat under pretence of play unto whom Joab which had no need of a spur easily consented Presently one might see the young men of each side nimbly to bestir themselves whose fingers did itch to be at it and did not fail quickly to surprise one another The sport growing hot by little and little came to a full combat and at last to a battell where many remained upon the place Joabs party was the stronger and that for twenty which he lost he killed three hundred and sixty of Abners men who was constrained to retire himself But Azael the brother of Joab a nimble runner followed The death of Azael by his rashnesse him lively with his sword at every turn ready to wound him the other which had no desire to slay him being not ignorant that if it should come to that it would prove the seed of an irreconcileable enmity between him and Joab his brother prayed him twice to depart from him and to content himself with the spoil of some other without being ambitious of his Azael would not hearken unto him but desired to make himself famous by getting the better of the Captain of the Army At last he seeing him insolent unto that extremity turned back and struck him through with his Launce Joab and Abishai his two brethren incensed with that his slaughter followed Abner with all their force who saved himself upon a hill where a great squadron of the family of Banjamin encompassed him and cryed with a loud voice unto Joab saying shall the sword devour for ever and would he make of a sport so deadly a tragedy as if he were ignorant that it was dangerous to drive them to despair Joab caused a retrait to be sounded making a shew to do that for courtesie which he agreed to for necessity Abner laying aside his warlike humour fell in love The disagreeing of Abner and Ishbosheth with a Concubine of Saul named Rispah which was a
his ambition did here bound it self and promised to speak to the King thereof very willingly which she did going expresly to visit him Solomon went forth to meet her made her very great reverence received her with most courteous entertainment and having ascended his Throne he caused another to be set at his right hand for his mother which said to him That she came to make a very little request unto him upon which it would be a displeasure to her to receive any deniall The son assured her and said That she might boldly demand and that he was no wayes intended to give her any discontent As soon as she had opened the businesse and named Abishag's name Solomon entred Solomons rigour into great anger and said she might have added thereto the Kingdome seeing that he was his eldest brother and that he had Joab and Abiathar on his side and without giving any other answer he swore that he would make Adonijah die before it was night whereupon presently he gave order to Benaiah who supplied the office of Captain of the Guard which failed not to slay this young Prince Those that think that Solomon might do this in conscience He cannot well be justified for the murder of his brother and that one may conjecture that God had revealed it unto him take very small reasons to excuse great crimes and see not that whosoever would have recourse to imaginary Revelations might justifie all the most wicked actions of Princes There is not one word alone in the Scripture that witnesses that after the establishment of Solomon this poor Prince did make the least trouble in the State he acknowledged Solomon for King he lived peaceable he was contented with the order that God permitted for the comfort of the losse of a Kingdome which according to the Law of Nations did belong to him he desired but a maid servant in marriage and he is put to death for it Who could excuse this I am of opinion of the The just punishment of God upon Solomon Dr Cajetan who saith that this command was not onely severe but unjust and I believe that hence came the misfortune of Solomon for that having shewed himself so little courteous towards his mother and so cruel towards his brother for the love of a woman God to punish him hath suffered that he should be lost by all that which he loved most After this murder he sent for Abiathar the chief Priest and gave Abiathar the high Priest deprived of his dignity by a very violent action him to understand that he was worthy to die but forasmuch as he had carried the Ark of the living God and had done infinite services for the King his father even from his youth he gave him his life upon such condition that he should be deprived of the dignity of the high Priest and should retire himself to his house The Scripture saith that this was to fulfill the word of the Lord which had been pronounced against the house of Eli but yet it follows not for all that that this depriving was very just on Solomon's side being done without mature consideration And although God ordains sometimes temporall afflictions upon children for the punishment of the fathers yet one cannot neverthelesse inferre from this that those which torment and persecute them without any other reason then their own satisfaction should not any wayes be faulty for otherwise one might avouch that the death of our Lord having come to passe by the ordinance of God Pilate and Caiaphas that did co-operate unto this order without any knowledge thereof should be without offence As for those that think that the Levites were accusers in those proceedings it is a conjecture of their own invention and if indeed it were so one might yet further reason by what Law could the Levites bring accusation against their chief Priest This jealousie of Government is a marvellous beast and those that would excuse it find for the most part that there is no stronger reasons then swords and prisons and banishments In the mean time the news comes to Joab that he was in great danger for having followed the party of Adonijah and as he saw himself on the sudden forsaken and faln from the great credit that he had in the Militia he had recourse to the Tabernacle which was the common refuge and taking hold of the Altar he asked mercy and his life Banaiah the executour of the murder goes to him by Solomons order and commands him to come forth for which he excuses himself protesting that he would rather die then forsake his refuge which was related to King Solomon who without regard to the holy place caused him to be massacred The death of Joab at the foot of the Altar to mingle his bloud with that of the sacrifices Behold what he got from the Court after fourty years services and one may affirm that if it had been sometimes a good mother to him now it acted a cruel step-mother at the last period of his life There remained no more but Shimei to make up the last Act of the Tragedy and although David had given commandment for his death Solomon seemed yet to make some scruple upon the promise of impunity that was made to him and this was the cause that he appointed him the city of Jerusalem for a prison with threatning that if he should go forth thence and onely go over the brook of Cedron he would put him to death The other that expected nothing but a bloudy death willingly received the condition and kept it three years until the time that on a day having received news of his servants that were fled to the Philistims it came into his mind to follow them without taking heed to that which was commanded him which caused that at his return he was murdered by the commandment of Solomon by the hand of Benaiah Behold the beginning of a reign tempestuous and one must not think to find Saints so easily at the Court especially in those which have liberty to do what they please many things slip from them which may better be justified by repentance then by any other apology That which follows in this history of Solomon is all peaceable and pleasing even unto his fall which may give cause of affrightment The third year of his reign he had an admirable Dream after the manner of those that are called Oracles A wonderfull Dream of Solomon It seemed to him that God appeared to him and spoke to him at the which he was in an extasie and seeing himself so near to him that could do all he desired of him with incredible ardency the gift of Wisdome to govern his people the which pleased so much the Sovereign Majesty that not onely he gave him a very great understanding above all the men of the world but further also added thereto Riches and Glory in so high an eminence that none should equall him There
carrying into the other world a great account to give to God for having embroiled the estate of the Church for having behaved her self imperiously and for having alway sought with ardency the satisfaction of her Revenge It is probable that she passed out of this life in the Catholick Belief and in Repentance But as concerning the death of Antonina her confident it is buried in a great obsurity and it is to be feared that her life extremely dissolute even to her old age and her damnable practices have cast her headlong into an eternall misery Justinian languished a long time after Theodora's death having seen all his designs of Warre of Law and of Buildings perfected bestowed his whole time afterwards in serving God and expired the rest of his life in Devotion to which he ever had a very strong inclination It is held that about the end of his dayes he fell into two errours the former whereof was That he should not die and indeed it seemed to all the world that death had passed him since he had already attained to the age of fourscore and four years which is very rare in an Emperour and not conformable to the Scripture which sayes That the life of Mighty men is ordinarily short enough neverthelesse it is not probable that in the solidity of his judgement which endured even to his end he should suffer himself to be perswaded with such a vanity The other fault which he committed is more true which is That by a zeal not discreet enough that he had conceived for the humanity of our Lord he would believe that it was not subject to our miseries but impassible and incorruptible even before his Resurrection He was near of publishing this opinion and authorising it by his ordinances but yet he never did it and repented of it at his last hour calling back in his Will the Patriarch Eutichius that he had driven away for opposing this his errour So Nicephorus writes manifestly and every equitable judgement will conclude with him for the salvation of this Emperour We have very considerable proofs of it first his name hath never been blotted out of the Ecclesiasticall Tables out of which it was a custome to deface the memory of Heretick Emperours Secondly S. Gregory the Great who speaks alwayes very correctly calls him Emperour of pious Memory In the third place Pope Agathon writing after his death saith That he was an Emulatour of the sincere and Apostolick faith Finally he was commended in the sixth universall Counsel with an Elogy worthy of a most Catholick Prince Even some Patriarchs of Constantinople have caused his memory to be yearly celebrated with acclamations of happinesse and publick Orations in his praise His great Austerities his magnificent Almes his Churches his Devotions his Laws his indefatigable pains for the Publick have defaced the spots that so easily slide into the lives of great ones Let us not rashly condemne that which we may excuse with Justice and let us not be evil with Ours if God will be good with His. I confesse that this end somewhat troubles me seeing my self constrained to follow an opinion different from that of a great modern Historian which handles this Emperour with much severity It is true that I have alwayes had a venerable esteem of that Authour knowing well that by the rayes of his virtues and of his learning he hath surpassed the lustre of the most glorious purples Yet the respect which I bear to Truth and the honour which I owe to the memory of great men that have so much obliged the Publick give me permission to say here that Justinian hath never been so black as he hath painted him being ill informed by the writings of Procopius and of Euagrius his enemies or following opinions that by a false intention and manifest equivocation are insinuated into the spirits of men many Ages since Fables easily surprise us and when they are authorised by a long time and by the belief of many persons they passe oftentimes for truths That which I say is manifest in that which Baronius himself writes touching the opinion which he had of the grosse ignorance of Justinian whom he reproaches often in his History that he could neither write nor read and yet it is now more then visible that it is an errour crept in by an equivocation of Names and a fault in Printing which hath caused the name of Justinian in the text of Suidas to be taken for that of Justin as I have already said This is so clear that the Commentatour of Procopius an enemy to Justinian as well as his Authour hath not been able to dissemble it but confesses that he hath observed in history that oftentimes the name of Justinian hath passed for that of Justin and that by this means the ignorance that agreed to his uncle Justin hath been attributed to this Monarch and farther yet the accident of the troubles of mind that befell his nephew Justin That which I say is proved after an excellent manner by the great Cassiodore who might have seen Justinian when being young he came into Italy who calls him aloud The Learned Prince and most wise Emperour And that grave Authour Agapetus who dedicated to him the Treatise of Reigning well which Baronius highly commends sayes openly that he was created Emperour Philosophizing and that in the Empire he ceased not from Philosophy And Procopius his Calumniatour avouches that he spent ordinarily a good part of the night in his closet to study upon the sublimest Sciences and that he could discourse of them pertinently with the ablest Scholars of his age After this judge if there be any reason to set him forth as a Peasant without Learning and without Letters Now as this illustrious Authour was overtaken in that which he spake concerning the wit and the capacity of Justinian so as being a man might he be mistaken in that which he hath written of his manners following some pieces of the slanderous history of Procopius which he had read in Euagrius and in others like him But I intreat my Reader yet once more to see and consider whether it be reasonable to believe that obscure Libel of an Authour enraged against the memory of that Prince to the prejudice of so many grave and judicious persons that have quite contrary opinions of him It is evident that this Procopius was a Libertine and a true Atheist who hath spoken and written in his first book of the History of the Gothes That it is a folly to trouble ones self about the belief of Divine things and that it should be left to every one whether Priestor Lay to believe all that shall seem good to him rather then disturb the Common-wealth being extreme angry that Justinian tormented the Pagans the Jews the Samaritans and endeavoured to reduce the whole world to the Christian and Catholick Belief Judge my Reader hereupon what faith a man deserves to have that making a shew to be a Christian
World and that Heaven makes me be born again in your Person If you will reign happily fear God which is the source of Empires and the Sovereign Father of all Dominions keep his Commandments and cause them to be observed with an inviolable fidelity Take the care and the Protection of his Church Love your young brothers and your sisters rendring your self good and officious to your Kindred Honour the Church-men as your Fathers cherish tenderly your subjects as your children and be all your life time the comforter and the Protectour of the Poor Chastise the vicious and recompense the men of merit Establish not Governments Judges and Officers which are not capable and without reproch and when you have established them deprive them not of their charges without a most just cause Serve first of all for an example to all the world and lead before God and Man a life irreprochable After this action he stayed about a year longer in the world purifying continually his spirit by repentance by good works and by the contemplation of heavenly things And when he saw himself infected with an extraordinary sicknesse he caused immediately the Sacraments to be administred to him and dyed with a most pious and most exemplary death at the age of seventy two years the fourty seventh of his reign and the four teenth of his Empire His Corps were exposed in publick clothed after the manner of a King with a sword and the Gospel which he had so gloriously defended Then he was interred with a stately Magnificence in the Church of Aix the Chappell which he had built He was universally lamented by all the world as the Father of the Universe and the singular ornament of Christianity The Pagans themselves wept for him abundance of tears so true it is that the goodnesse and sweetnesse of a King towards his subjects is a ray of God that renders him lovely in his life and gives splendour even to his ashes after his death He was afterward Canonized by Paschal that was not a lawfull Pope but forasmuch as the true successours of Saint Peter never retracted that action He is held for a Saint and honoured publickly in the Church with the approbation of all ages Saint LEVVIS S. LEWIS K. OF FRANCE I Do not forget that I have already spoken of Saint Lewis in the first Tome but because that was by accident and by the way I will here extend my thoughts somewhat more largely and give you a more compleat Elogium of him It is very true that an Antient faith That great Goodnesse is seldome joyned with great Power and that well-accomplished Kings are so few in number that their names might be comprehended all together within the circumference of a Ring But I may add that if God did take delight to carry this Ring in very deed as the Scripture doth attribute it to him in an Allegory and if he would engrave there the names of all the good Kings that of great S. Lewis would possesse the first place This Monarch was so like unto virtue that if it should have shewed it self on the one side incarnate to mortall eyes and Saint Lewis on the other one should hardly have been able to judge which had been the Copy and which the Originall It is not my intention to write of his life here upon which so many excellent pens have laboured very fortunately but to make a reflexion upon some principall points of his Government Great things do not alwayes cause themselves to be known by a multitude or great variety of discourse but oftentimes by draughts abbreviated And no man in my opinion ought to conceive amisse of this seeing that we measure every day the greatnesse of the Sun by the shadow of the earth and his goings in the Dyals by a little thread I know that heretofore three lines onely represented upon a Table did set forth an Idea of the perfection of the excellentest Painter in the world in the understanding of the skilfull and I will draw here three little draughts for to set before your eyes the beauty and bignesse of the virtues of S. Lewis In one word he hath done three mervellous things whereof the first is that he found out the means to joyn the wisedome of State with that of the Crosse The second that he hath planted humility upon Sceptres where it hath ordinarily very slippery footing and hath likewise placed it amongst the Rubies and Diamonds of the Crown where its lustre is often darkened by the too stately glittering of the World A third is that he hath joyned the devotion of one consecrated to Religion to the courage of the Alexanders and Cesars As for that which concerns the first conjunction it The first marvel the joyning of the wisdom of State with the Gospel Tert. Apol. is so rare that Tertullian who flourished two hundred years after the Nativity of our Lord when as yet there had no speech been of any Emperour that had embraced Christianity said That if the Cesars should become Christians they would cease to be Cesars and if the Christians should become Cesars they would cease to be Christians He conceived that poornesse of spirit could not agree with so high and stately riches nor humility with a sovereign Empire or the tears of Repentance with the delights of the Court that the hungring and thirsting after righteousnesse could not stand with the desire of Conquerours nor pitifulnesse with Arms nor purenesse of heart with the conversing with most pleasing beauties nor peace would consist with the licentiousnesse of warre and suffering persecutions with an absolute power to revenge ones self And neverthelesse Saint Lewis alone hath found means to joyn things together which seem so contrary in the highest degree that ever they were found to be in so-Kingly an estate Amidst the riches of a Kingdome so abundant he was not rich but onely towards the poor and if God had permitted him he would have as willingly covered himself with the habit of Saint Francis as with his Royall Purple He did never consider himself otherwise amongst all the goods that he possessed but as the Steward of Jesus Christ he left unto God willingly the glory of having given them him to needy persons the benefit of receiving them and kept nothing to himself but the pains of distributing them He assaid a thousand times to enter into Religious Orders and yet still answer was made him that God would have him to be King he wore the Crown by way of obedience he used riches onely for necessity and had no other thing in his desire then spiritual nakednesse and a perfect unloosing himself from all worldly things In the midst of an Absolute power he was so meek that his heart seemed a Sea where a calme perpetually reigned The Scarlet of his attire did never colour his face with the heat of anger Arrogance did never puff up his words he made it his glory to communicate himself
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
He sayes that it was a design of God on which they should think no more unlesse to thank him These bad brethren after their fathers death finding themselves pricked with remorse of conscience and imagining that that pardon was but a dissembling cast themselves at his feet and beseech him to lay aside all the resentments of past wrongs but he raised them weeping and promised them a Charity totally fraternall and for ever inviolable And though he was so puissant and so absolute he never advanced his own children to the prejudice of his brothers observing them and respecting in every thing the right of Eldership which nature had given them over him Certainly a man that hath such a power over himself ought to be looked upon on earth as a Starre that should descend from heaven and as the liveliest image of the divine Goodnesse he merits not onely to triumph on Pharaoh's charrets but on the Heaven of heavens and so be beheld by Angels with admiration of his desert Finally that which was glorious in Joseph for the fulnesse of this perfection was the strength and equality of an incomparable spirit he was alwayes like himself and saw all the changes of his fortune without changing He descends into the deep pit with the same countenance as he mounts upon Pharaoh's charret He complains of nothing He accuses no body He stifles all the displeasures and all the resentment of nature in him He is loved of his Mistresse without condescending to her passion He is hated of her without accusing her cruelty He is accused without defending himself persecuted without resisting So many years roul over his head without writing one onely word to his father to the disadvantage of his inhumane brothers He suffers with silence He hides his evils with industry He does good without affectation He bears upon his shoulders all the cares of a great Government without groaning under his burden He communicates his glories and his pleasures He reserves to himself onely the toils He takes the bitter and the sweet the hard and the soft prosperities and adversities as the sea that receives all the rivers without changing either colour or savour All his life is but a picture that hath alwaies the same visage and as the Deâ—ty does continually one and the same action without altering or wearying it self he continues the exercises of his goodnes without remission even to the last article of his life MOSES WHat spectacle is this here A cradle of bulrushes floating upon the River Nile and in it a little abandoned Infant for whom his own mother is constrained to make a grave of water to avoid the fury of the murderers that came to pluck him from the breast His sister follows him with weeping eyes and sayes to him Go poor child whither fortune shall conduct thee go my dear brother upon the floats of a furious Element which perhaps will be more favourable to thee then those inhumane men that seek thy life when as thou knowest not yet what 't is to live This River will have pity on thee or if it swallows up thy cradle in its waves it will lodge thy bones in its bosome and cover thy death to sweeten the bitterest of our evils which is to have eyes to look upon our misery But while that this poor maid weeps upon the bank of Nilus and mingles her tears with the water of the River Providence takes the care of that cradle she makes her self as the Pilot of that little vessel which is without mast without rudder without cordage she supplies all and does all she shews how one may find life in death and an haven in a shipwrack The daughter of King Pharaoh comes with her female train and in it is her intention to bathe her self but in God's intention that she might be made the mother of that little Infant exposed to the mercy of the waters and that since she could not be so by Nature she might be by Adoption She discovers first of all that cradle which was on the waters side and dispatches one of her damsels to take it up and bring it her that she might see what was in it she finds a very fair child which pleads his case before her by the cloquence of his tears and of his cryes and implores her mercy against the fury of the Infant-slayers Her heart is melted in compassion towards it and she gives command that it should be kept and nourished his sister standing opportunely by sayes unto her that she knew where was a good Nurse that would well acquit her self of that duty if it pleased her Majesty that she might call her whereto she having shewed some inclination she causes the mother to come that nursed with all security her dear Infant which she had exposed through diffidence This little body drawn out of the bundle of rushes is he that God hath chosen to shake all Egypt to overthrow the pride of Pharaoh's and to draw his people out of Captivity The Hebrews were already multiplied exceedingly in the Kingdome of Egypt after the death of Joseph in the space of sixty five years and began to make themselves feared of their Masters The face of the Realm was changed and he that was then upon the Throne was a Prince that remembred not any longer the obligations that the Monarchy had to the Patriarch Joseph but blamed the counsels of his Predecessours for having permitted a stranger-people to have a dwelling in his Kingdome that seeming to him according to humane Policy of pernicious consequence and thinking that that waxing stronger as it did every day might be capable to make an attempt upon the State or be serviceable to those that had a design to make a commotion and to embroil the affairs of the Kingdome He judged not ill according to the rules of Politicians and for that purpose he resoved with himself to abate and to destroy them by what means soever it was done The first was to consume them amongst stones and mortar in the structure of those prodigious Pyramids that are to be seen in Egypt The second was to command the Midwives to kill all the Male-children which they did not execute through the fear which they had of God and the horrour of that command This made him advise upon a third means and ordain that all the Boyes from the day of their birth should be drowned in the River Nile But God that would teach Princes and State-Ministers that although one should have in Idea any just and lawfull design yet one never ought to seek to compasse it by unjust and violent means permitted not this unhappy Prince that gnawed himself with cares and unquietnesse and tormented his life by so many new inventions of malice and of fury ever to bring about what he projected and his successour after a thousand scourges and a thousand disastres of his Kingdome which he saw every day fall by pieces before his eyes was buried in the red
businesse fill'd them with such an amazement that their ranks being in disorder they killed one another without knowing their own party The people of Israel having received intelligence of that rout take heart again and get them out of the caves into which they had retired themselves to range themselves about Saul's person who was thereby transported with such an ardour that he conjur'd all his Army to follow the Philistims without drinking or eating till they were all destroyed This was a precipitation of his unequall spirit and a true Chimaera yet desiring to make that passe for Zeal which was a pure Passion he would needs cause his son Jonathan to be put to death for having sucked a little honey at the end of his rod but the people rescued him out of his hands and desisted to pursue the Philistims being not in a condition to fight with them Some time after Samuel exhorted him to enterprise a puissant Warre against the Amalekites sworn enemies of the people of God and conjur'd him to make every thing passe through the edge of the sword without sparing any body and above all to reserve nothing of the booty that should be made upon them that should not be consumed with fire To this Saul seem'd to be inclin'd with vigour and raised an Army of more then two hundred thousand men so great was the weight of the Authority when Samuel put himself into party He fell suddenly upon the Amalekites and defeated them with a generall rout so farre as to take their King prisoner but he contented himself with destroying and burning all that was caytiffe and unprofitable reserving Agag the King with the best flocks and herds and choicest moveables In the mean while he was so much puft up with this victory that he caused an Arch of Triumph to be erected to himself and spread himself in the vanities of his spirit while God was thinking of rejecting him and giving orders to Samuel to tell him his unhappinesse Yet Saul blind in his sin received the man of God into his Camp with an extraordinary joy vaunting himself for having efficaciously fulfilled the commandment of God and while he was speaking it the voyce of the Flocks that he had put aside was heard whereupon Samuel said What means this Cattle that strikes my ears with its bleatings To which he answered That he had reserved them expresly for an offering to the living God But Samuel replyed That there was no Sacrifice so pleasing to God as Obedience and that Sin which was contrary to him was a kind of Idolatry and that since he had despised the Word of God he should be cast off and deprived of the Kingdome whereat he being astonished confessed that he had offended hearkning more to the voyce of the People then to that of God and beseeched Samuel to excuse his sinne to bear with his infirmities and to go with him to the sacrifice to adore God in sign of reconciliation Whereto Samuel replyed that he would have no more any thing common with a man whom God had abandon'd and saying this steps forward and turns his back to him the other layes hold on the fringe of his robe which remained in his hands which when the Prophet saw Behold said he how your Kingdome shall be divided and given to a better then your self The Triumpher of Israel the true God of hosts is not as a man to change his purposes and repent him of his counsels The King humbled himself again acknowledging his fault and beseeching Samuel earnestly not to leave him but to render him the ordinary respect before the Princes of the people and to come and worship God with him Samuel fearing the disorder of the Army consented for that time but afterward never saw Saul any more to the day of his death He ceased not to weep bitterly for him considering that he that had been chosen by his hand had come to so little good and had carried himself with so much contempt of the commandments of God This wounded his heart and would not let him put an end to his mournings till his great Master comforted him and suggested David to him who should fill up worthily the place that Samuel was about to lose by his iniquity And indeed he performed then a bold enterprise going to Bethleem under colour of a Sacrifice and Anointing David King in Saul's life time although that design was secret that it might be managed with more successe After that time Saul was left visibly by God possessed with an evil spirit and gnawed perpetually with jealousies of State which the person of David caused in him by reason of his valour and great virtues as I shall declare in the following Elogy In the mean while Samuel lived retired from Court without meddling with Sate-affairs and Saul by his departure changed the sins of Vanity and of Fearfulnesse into Sacrilegies and Massacres letting loose the bridle to his fury to retain the phantasme of an Empire that flew out of his hands Good Samuel ceased not in his solitude to bewail two King that he had made looking upon one as an homicide and the other as a sacrifice of death He was afflicted inconsolably to hear of the deportments of that furious Saul that made of one wickednesse a degree to passe unto another inventing every day new butcheries to cement his Throne with the bloud of his brethren He melted himself with compassion for his poor David seeing Saul's sword hang but by a little thread alwayes ready to fall upon his innocent head He deplored the miseries of the poor people which he could not any longer remedy and passing over again in his remembrance all the vicissitudes of mans life and the treacheries of the Court he had an ardent thirst to depart out of this world to go to find Innocence in the bosome of his Fathers God heard him and drew him to himself by a peaceable death the seventy and seventh year of his age the eight and thirtieth of his Government and the seventh after his retreat from Court He was mourned and lamented for by all the people as the Father of his Countrey and magnificent Funeralls were made for him to render him a testimony at his death of the commendable actions of his holy and generous life Saul remained yet two years upon the Throne after him and the Even before his great overthrow the Soul of Samuel returned from Limbus not by the work of the Pythonesse but by the will of God and spake to him and told him of his disastre as I have said in the Maxim of the Immortality of Souls DANIEL DAniel entred into the Court by Captivity stayed there by Mortification made himself known by Prophecy and there also rendred himself renowned by great Virtues To comprehend this it is necessary to know that the little Kingdome of Judea was ordinarily very much exposed to the Armies of the Assyrians which God had chosen to be scourges and the
Syrians thought that he that engaged himself so boldly was the most interressed and that without doubt there was all likely hood that it was Ahab they fell upon him with ardour so that he thought he should have been hemmed in But when he betook himself to crying out aloud animating his souldiers to his defence the enemies that had a mind to spare him retired to fall on Ahab It happened that an Archer letting fly an arrow at randome stroke him with a mortal wound whereupon he commanded his Coach-man to turn about and to draw out of the mingling well perceiving that he was grievously hurt All the Army was immediately scattered and the Herald of Arms proclaimed that every man might return to his home King Ahab dyed the same day and his body was brought back to Samaria where it happened that as his Coach that was all bloody was a washing in a pool of the same City the Dogs ran thither and licked up his bloud according to Elijahs prophecy Ahaziah his sonne succeeded him inheriting the superstition and misery of his father for after he had reigned a very little while he fell out at a window of his house and grievously hurt himself without being ever able to find a remedy to his evill And having forsaken God sent messengers to the God of Ekron to know if he should recover from that sicknesse but the Prophet Elijah having met his Messengers upon the way rebuked them sharply for that they went to consult with Idols as if there were no God in Israel and commanded them to tell their Master that he should not be cured of his wound but should dye without ever rising out of the Bed wherein he lay This Prince offended at this truth causes the Prophet to be pursued and sends one of his Captains with fifty souldiers to apprehend him This man in mockery called him Man of God and prayed him to descend from the mountain whither he had retired himself but Elijah persisting alwayes in his spirit of rigour said that he would give him proofs that should make him know that he was not a Man of God through vanity and irrision and at the same instant he caused fire to descend from heaven which consumed him and all his company Ahaziah sends another of them for the same purpose which meets also with the same successe He charges again a third the Captain of which gained Elijah by submission and brought him to his Master to whom he spake constantly the truth and advertised him of his approaching death and the other durst not do him any mischief well knowing that he was under Gods protection The truth of the Prophecyed was manifest soon after by the death of Ahaziah who had for successour his brother Joram who reigned twelve years and although Elijah was already translated from this life that is but a passage to another estate his Prophecy failed not to be accomplished particularly upon the house of Ahab and the wicked Jezabel For Elisha according to the order of God and the command received from his Master caused Jehu to be crowned to reign in Israel To this purpose he dispatched one of his Disciples put a violl in his hand wherein was the oyl destined for his unction giving him charge to go to Ramoth in Gilead where Jehu one of Jorams principall Captains commanded and besieged the city continuing the siege that Joram had laid before it whiles he went to Samaria to be dressed of some wounds that he had received in the warre against the Syrians Aboue all he recommended to him that the businesse should be kept very secret and that when he should be arrived he should call Jehu aside and withdraw into some chamber and there consecrate him King with that unction that he had in his hand making him know that God gave him his masters house and crown to revenge the bloud of the Prophets and servants of God upon the race of Ahab and on Jazabel This sonne of a Prophet sent by Elisha did all that was commanded him and arriving at the Camp found Jehu environed with other Captains and signified to him that he had a word or two to speak to him which made him quit the company and enter into a neighbouring chamber where the other powred out the sacred oyle upon his head said to him I have anointed you this day over the people of the God of Israel and consecrated you King to ruine from God the house of Ahab your Master and to revenge the bloud of the Prophets and servants of God upon Jezabel who shall be eaten up of Doggs and no body shall give her buriall As soon as he had said this he opens the door and flies Jehu comes forth and shews himself to his Captains who had a curiosity to know what had passed in that treaty and asked of him what that mad-man meant that came to him Jehu feigning that they well enough knew the cause of it and need not go about to inform themselves held them in expectation and in fine declared to them that it was one of Elisha's desciples that had brought him the news that he should reign in Israel and that such was the will of God It is a wonderfull thing that none of the chief men of the Army opposed themselves against it but that all at that very instant laid down their Cloaks under Jehu's feet as it were to raise him a throne and cryed out God save the King The conspiracy against Joram being framed he hinders any notice to be given him and marches with a strong hand to the City to surprise him and Ahaziah King of Judah together with him that was come to visite him in his sicknesse The sentinell that stood at the gate of the City told that he saw a body of Cavaliers coming in a right line to the City whereupon the King ordered that one of his men should go out to discover it This Scout was gained by Jehu and ranged himself on his side Another is sent out which doâ—s also the same whereat the King being much astonished takes his Coach and and Ahaziah his to see what the businesse was As soon as he perceived Jehu he said What are you not a man of peace Whereto Jehu replyed What peace while the fornications and poysonings of Jezabel your Mother are yet in full vigour Joram saw plainly by his countenance and by that answer that there was mischief and began to wheel about saying to Ahaziah his companion We are betrayed and seeing that he was no way prepared to make resistance to such a power betook himself to flight But Jehu bending his Bow le ts fly an Arrow at him that pierced him through and killed him in his Chariot At the same instant he caused his body to be taken up to cast it on the road in the field of Naboth and pursued Ahaziah who having received a mortall wound as he fled gave up the Ghost at Megiddo from whence he was carried to
Nero who by Anicetus the same man who before killed his mother did raise a horrible calumny against the honour of his wife and caused this instrument of the devil to affirm that he had played with the Empresse on which he caused her to be banished and poor Octavia as a guilty person did suffer under that wicked sentence and was banished into the Isle of Pandaluria and because Poppea could not sleep in quiet with Nero as long as Octavia was alive he filled up his cruelty and by a most unworthy death he sacrificed her to the appetite of that most bold woman whom afterwards he killed with a spum of his foot on the end of his life and of his Empire My pen is weary to describe so many horrours and doth go over them as on so many burning coals but my Reader it is to represent unto you that this pernicious caitiste causing the poyson of his evill actions to diffuse it self into the veins of all the city of Rome The world was in its heighth of iniquity when S. Paul and Seneca meeting together at one time did endeavour to cure the maladies of this wicked Court the one by Philosophy the other by the Gospel Behold here the manners learning abilities and the successe both of the one and of the other Who hath not Seneca in veneration a good Authour Johannes Sarisburiensis saith hath not the understanding of a reasonable man He is known by all knowing men in his Writings and mis-known by some in his Manners and his Life Suillius a Roman Advocate accused for corruption and banished by the counsell of Seneca at what time he was imployed in the government of Affairs did write a defaming Book against that great From whence proceeded the calumnies against Seneca personage which two Greek Historians but men of small judgement Dion and Xiphiline have followed and in many things have blamed him with as much passion as impertinence This Opinion hath infected divers spirits who either for want of capacity or application do discourse unto us of Seneca as of a man quite contrary to his Books which hath made me diligently to examine his Life to take away the abuse and to give you an Idaea of that puissant Genius with as much clearnesse as sincerity Know then that he was a Roman by his Extract His birth and Bloud He was born at Corduba a city in Spain which was then under the Empire of Rome and full of Italians who being born almost in all the parts of the world were yet born within the Circle of their Empire His father was of an ordinary family a Gentleman of no great account removed from the observation of the world and as farre from command as from ambition addicted above all things to the study of Eloquence reasonably learned but of an admirable memory for having but once heard them he would readily rehearse two thousand names and two hundred verses His mother was named Helvia one of the most beautifull women in the Empire full of understanding and judgement of a high virtue and a rare modesty she had some knowledge in letters and an extraordinary capacity to increase that knowledge if time and custome had given her leave to take an advantage of it His elder brother was called Novatus or Gallion and had a great command in the Empire His younger brother was named Mela a man farre from ambition who lived in the house and studied Eloquence with his Father who in that regard did preferre him in his own judgement above his brothers But Seneca was nourished and advanced in Rome His Education and Spirit in the time of Augustus Cesar he received his first elements of learning under the Discipline of his father and afterwards studied Philosophy under Attalus and Socion In his first years he made the vigour of his Spirit the force of Eloquence and the abundance of Learning to appear so fully in him that he was admired by the most knowing men But that great spirit did by degrees consume his body which was lean and thin and troubled with defluxions and the ptisick which would have brought him to his grave if the cruelty of Nero had not prevented it He was obliged to make an Oration in publick before The fury of Caligula against him Caligula the Emperour concerning which that monster in nature who could not endure any thing that was great and praisefull and by a malignity of manners envied all professours of Learning did pronounce aloud that he had too much spirit and that they must kill him which had presently been put in execution if one of the Mistresses of the Emperour who knew Seneca and favoured him for his Eloquence had not perswaded him that he was not worth killing a lean poor fellow and one whom death would suddenly of it self take away from the world Howbeit he lived many years afterwards and increased in knowledge as in age and as much in Eloquence as in them both attending a more favourable time to make a manifestation of it Claudius succeeded the Emperour Caligula who was not a man for Seneca and though he was indued with extraordinary qualities for a Courtier yet the favour of the times did not much smile upon them His clear spirit and his brave works made him to be known in the house of Germanicus a Prince of the Bloud who was poysoned in the flower of his age and left behind him children of great consideration namely two Princesses who made themselves diversly talked of in Rome the one was Julia the other Agrippina the mother of Nero. This Julia took an affection to Seneca being much pleased with the beauty Dion doth distinguish them in his 9. Book and Suetonius chap. 29. of his spirit and the grace of his discourse He daily frequented the house of Germanicus being no lesse in discretion then in favour and wisely judged that these two high-born Princesses might one day contribute to the making of his fortunes But the Court is an uncertain sea where sometime a tempest doth arise when a calm is expected The favour of Julia in the stead of advancing Seneca did suppresse him and did almost overwhelm him without any hope of rising again although in the end it was in effect the cause of all his reputation It came to passe that Messalina the wife to the Emperour Claudius the most insatiable woman in her lusts that Nature ever produced did conceive an enraged hatred against the house of Germanicus and especially against the Princesse Julia because she was highly esteemed for her rare beauty and the high spirit of Messalina could not endure that any Lady should be praised at Court for her beauty but her self Besides she perceived that her husband whom she absolutely governed did make very much of that young Princesse she therefore caused her to be falsly accused for prostituting her honour and procured her to be banished the Court. An inquiry was made after those who
did frequent her house Seneca was named amongst the foremost Calumny against Julia and Seneca and by calumny invelopped in the same accusation whether it was suspected that he had treated of love with her or whether it was thought that he was an accomplice in her excesses and had flattered her in her passion without giving her advice It is true that our Seneca was then in the flower of his age and was none of those fullen and stern Stoicks that had put the world into a fright He had a gentle spirit discreet and agreeable to women but he was too advised to let his passions flie so high as to commit any loose act in the house of the Cesars Dion his greatest enemy doth justifie him in this businesse and doth confesse that all this accusation was most unjustly grounded and that Messalina was so depraved and so corrupted with the inordinatenesse of filthy lusts that no credit was to be given to her Neverthelesse she ceased not to bear down the innocent with the weight of her power she condemned the Princesse to banishment and afterwards to death as Dion and Suetonius do affirm It did much afflict her that Seneca was alive who by divers sentences in the Senate was allotted to death but the good Emperour Claudius was most unwilling to extinguish in that Spirit the Glory of Eloquence and of the Empire desired his life of the Senate and was contented that he should be banished into the Isle of Corsica where at the beginning he was touched with a melancholy amazement to find himself separated from the pleasures of the Court to live amongst the rocks and people as ungentle as the rocks but he imployed all his Philosophy to comfort himself and to temper the eagernesse of his fortune with the tranquility of his mind Here his spirit being delivered from the noise and the tumults of Rome and the servitudes of the Court did altogether reflect upon it self and found there those Lights and those Treasures which before lay undiscovered to him Tribulation is to men as a spurre to incite them to the production of brave works and of generous actions and this appeared in Seneca who in this Seneca benished to Corsica where he composed excellent works place of banishment did write most excellent Treatises neither did his conversation with those rude inhabitants alter the graces or the beauty of his language He treated there with the Intelligences and dived into the Contemplation of the World He took off the vail from Nature that she might the better be seen in her majesty Howsoever in that solitary place he had sometimes his hours of affection beholding himself severed from his mother whom he tenderly loved and whom in that affliction he comforted w th a letter which might pass for a good book He passionately desired the company of his brothers and some personages of Honour who loved him with as much sincerity as profession There was some that think it strange in Seneca that he should desire and endeavour his return and that in his consolatory letter to Polybius he did write the praises of the Emperour Claudius who did banish Seneca did well to desire and procure his liberty him But have not they somthing to do who exact more perfection in Seneca a man at that time of the world then is required in a Prophet where is the bird that doth not sometimes beat his bill against the cage to find out the door to his liberty Jeremy was exceeding patient and yet he humbly besought K. Zedekiah to draw him out of prison where he had suffered much and much feared that he should be committed again unto it Doth not S. Paul say that liberty is better then slavery that one is to be supported by necessity and the other to be procured by reason What fault hath Seneca done that in his exile he wrote unto Polybius a great favourite a letter consolatory on the death of his brother and inserted in it a few good words to appease the Emperour Should he have spared a period or two to deliver himself from a banishment where he had continued for the space of eight years I should no way approve him for bestowing flatteries on a wicked man which should be an act unworthy of a Philosopher for a generous spirit had better to endure the extremity of evil then praise a tyrant and give applauses to his person You may observe how carefull he is in that Tract to give not so much as one Complement to Messalina who was a very bad woman although she had the command of all he onely praised an Emperour who in that time wherein he wrote his Consolation to Polybius was in good reputation and made the face of the Empire look farre otherwise then it did in the Reign of Caligula his predecessour He is so discreet that all the praises he doth give him are no more then wishes Let the Powers of Heaven preserve him long on The excellent Complement of Seneca earth Let him surmount the years and the acts of Augustus and as long as he shall be mortall let there not any die in his house Let him give us a long sonne to be Master of the Roman Empire having approved him by his long fidelity And let him have him rather for his Colleague then for his Successour Afterwards he addresseth himself to Fortune speaketh unto her Take heed O Fortune how thou makest thy approaches to him Let not thy power be seen in his person but by thy bounties Let him redresse the calamities of mankind and re-establish all that which the fury of his Predecessour hath ruined and made desolate Let that fair Starre which is risen when the world was falling into the Abysmes continue alwayes to illuminate the Universe Let him pacifie Germany and let him open England Let him gain and surmount the Triumphs of his Father His Clemency which is the first of his Virtues doth promise that I shall not be a Spectatour onely and that he hath not cast me down to raise me up no more But why say I cast down he hath upheld me from the hour that I fell into my misfortune when they would have thrown me headlong down he interposed and by the moderation of his divine hands he laid me gently on the earth He hath entreated the Senate for me and not content himself to give me life he hath desired it of others that I might enjoy the Grant with more assurance Let him deal with me as he pleaseth I assure my self that his Justice will find my cause to be good or his Clemency will make it so It is all one to me whether I am judged not guilty by his Equity or whether I am made innocent by his Bounty In the mean time I rejoyce in my miseries with a sensible consolation to see the course of his Mercy which goes through the Universe and which every day doth call forth the Banished from this
in it But in my opinion it is unworthy the gravity of so great a personage and I know not to what purpose it is to revile the Ashes of the Dead although it is not forbidden to write a true History to leave a horrour to posterity in recording the lives of the wicked This howsoever may serve for instruction not to play with wasps or incense those who have the pen in their hand and can eternally proscribe their Adversaries After this sport he was imployed upon the Earnest He is made Minister of State and Agrippina mother of the young Emperour desiring to confirm her self in the Monarchy and to govern by her son did supply him with two creatures men of gteat capacity and fidelity Burrus for Arms and Seneca for Laws The first was severe in his conversation the other was of a mild and pleasing disposition They both agreed even to their deaths in the government of the Affairs of State Then it was that Seneca did enter into those great imployments and exercised that high wisdome which he had acquired for the Government of the Empire He began with his Prince who was the first and the most amiable object of all his troubles and although at the first he did expresse himself very tractable and agreeable to all the world yet Seneca perceived in his infancy the His judgement on Nero. marks of a cruel and bloudy nature and told to his intimate friends that he nourished a young lion whom he endeavoured to make tractable but if he should taste once of the bloud of men he would return to his first nature And this was the occasion that at that time he did write for him the two Divine Books of Clemency where with variety of remarkable proofs he doth establish the Excellency the Beauty and the Profit of candor of Spirit and the advantage which redounds unto a Prince to govern his Subjects with Bounty and Love On the contrary he remonstrates the horrour and disastres of Tyrants who would prevail by Cruelty in the management of their Estates All his endeavour tended that way wisely foreseeing that Nero would fall into extreme Cruelties and for that cause he did willingly give way that he should delight himself in Comedies in Musick and such Exercises of softnesse hoping that in some manner it would make more civil his savage nature He also composed for him many eloquent Orations which the young Emperour would pronounce with great grace to the generall admiration both of the Senate and the people He made also many excellent Ordinances some He put his State in good order whereof by the report of Dion were engraved upon a pillar of silver and were read every year at the renewing of the Senate He hated all the inventions the deceits and tricks of State as a trade of iniquity and did ground himself on the eternall principles of Justice by which he kept the Empire in a profound peace in great abundance and a sure felicity So that in a manner Frontine makes a true narration he saith that Seneca had so redressed all abuses that it seems he had brought goodnesse into the Empire and called the Gods from heaven to be conversant again with men In which he made use of the Philosophy of the Stoicks not that which is so rigid and so sullen but that which he had tryed and seasoned for that designe to give to the world a taste thereof His opinions for the The Maximes of Seneca most part are Rationall Sacred and Divine If he speaks of God it is in the same sense as the Of God Saviour of the world did discover to the Samaritan He professeth openly that God is a Spirit and that the difference betwixt God and us is that the better part of us is Spirit but that God is all Spirit most Pure Eternall Infinite the Creatour of the great works of Nature which we behold with our eyes If he speaketh of true Worship and the most sincere Of Religion Religion which we ought to imploy to honour and adore the sovereign King of the Universe he doth sufficiently declare that the worship of God ought to be in Spirit and in Truth as our Saviour hath prescribed When you figure God saith he represent a great Spirit but peaceable and reverend by the sweetnesse of his Majesty a friend to men and who is alwayes present with them who is not pleased with bloudy Sacrifices for what delight can he take in the butchery of so many innocent creatures The true Sacrifice of the great God is a pure Spirit an upright understanding of him and a good Conscience We ought not to heap stones upon stones to raise a Temple to him for what need hath he of it the most agreeable Temple that we can build for God is to consecrate him in our hearts Lactantius hath so much Lactan. div Instit lib. â— cap. 25. esteemed of this passage that in the sixth Book of his Institutions he doth oppose it to the Gentiles as a buckler of our Christianity If there be a question about the Presence of God Of the divine presence Epist 83. which above all things the masters of spirituall life do commend in their Instructions he saith That it is to no purpose to conceal ones self from man and that there is nothing hid from God who is present in our hearts and in our most secret thoughts If we rest in the Contemplation of the Divine Providence Of Providence which is the foundation of our life he believeth a Providence which reacheth over all And in a Tract which he hath composed he pertinently doth answer those who are amazed why Evil arriveth to good people since so great and so good a God hath a care of their wayes He saith That it is the chastisement of a Father an exercise of Virtue and that what we take to be a great Evil is oftentimes the occasion of a great Good that such is the course and order of the world according to the Divine dispensation to which we ought to submit our selves If we consider the Immorrality of the Soul which Of the Immorrality of the Soul Juvâ—e de 〈◊〉 animaâ—â—â— qâ—â—rere â—mò credere Epist 102. is the foundatton of our Faith and of all virtuous actions it is certain that he had a good opinion of it and professerh in his 102. Epistle That he delightneth not onely according to Reason to search after the Eâ—ernity of the Soul but to believe it and he complaineth that a letter received from a friend did interrupt him in that Contemplation which seemed to him so palpable that it was rather to him an agreeable Vision that he had in a Dream then any Discourse in Philosophy And in the end of the Epistle he speaketh of wonders of the originall of the Soul and the return of it to God And in the Preface of the first Book of Naturall Questions which he did write some few
years before his death which makes the truth more remarkable he speaketh clearly that the Soul returneth to heaven if it be well purified from its commerce with earth that heaven is its true Countrey and Element and that it is a great proof of its Divinity that it delighteth to hear of heavenly things as being the affairs proper to it self We must take care not here to judge and condemn Seneca on a doubtfull word as when in his Consolation to Martia he saith That all end by Death and by Death it self He onely there toucheth of Goods and Evils of Honours Riches Pleasures Troubles and the Cares of this present life It is most clear that there is nothing in that Sentence which derogates from the Immortality of the Soul because he concludes that Treatise with the joyes which a happy Soul receiveth in the other life And it is not from our purpose to consider that Seneca sometimes in disputing speaketh by supposition according to the Idaea of others and not according to his own We cannot know better the opinion of an Authour then by his Actions and his Practise and we observe that Seneca hath not onely professed the Immortality of the Soul by words but believeth the effect in secret for he reverenced the Souls of great Personages and did believe them to be in heaven which he testified before he received the Christian Faith when being in a countrey-house of Scipio of Africa he rendred divine honours to his Epist 86. Spirit prostrating himself at the Altar of his Sepulchre and perswading himself he said that his Soul was in heaven not because that he was Generall of the Army but because he lived an honest man and having infinitely obliged his ingratefull countrey he retired himself in a voluntary solitude to his own house to give no fears and jealousies of his greatnesse If we demand where he placed the sovereign good His opinion of the sovereign good and the end of Man we shall find that he established the felicity of this present life to live according to Reason and that of the life to come in the re-union of the Soul with its first beginning which is God From this foundation he hath drawn a rule and propositions which he hath dispersed over all his Books and these are to despise all the goods of the world Honours Empires Riches Reputation Pleasures gorgeous Habiliments stately Buildings great Possessions Gold Silver precious Stones Feasts Theatres Playes and to take all things as accessory and to regard them no more then the moveables of an Inne where we are not but as passengers And above all things to esteem of virtue of the mortification of loose desires of contemplation of eternall virtues of Justice Prudence Fortitude Temperance of Liberality Benignity of Friendship of Constancy in a good course of life of Patience in Tribulation of Courage to support injuries of Sicknesse Banishment Chains Reproaches of Punishments and of Death it self We may affirm that never any man spoke more worthily then he of all these subjects Never Conquerour did subdue Nations with more honour then this great Spirit with a magnificent glory at his feet hath levelled and spurned down all the Kingdomes of Fortune All that he speaketh is vigorons ardent lively His heart when he did write did inflame his style to inflame the hearts of all the world His words followed his thoughts He did speak in true Philosophy but as a king and not as a slave to words and periods His brevity is not without clearnesse His strength hath beauty his beauty hath no affectation he is polished smooth full and entire never languishing impetuous without confusion his discourse is tissued yet nothing unmasculine invincible in his reasoning and agreeable in all things Howsoever we ought not to conclude by his Books that he was a Christian because he wrote them all before he had any knowledge of Christianity and therefore it is not to be wondred at if sometimes he hath Sentences which are not conformable unto our Religion Some one will object that he is admirable in his Writings but his Works carry no correspondency with The answer to the calumniatours of Seneca his Pen. This indeed is the abuse of some spirits grounded on the calumnies of Dion and Suillius which those men may easily see confuted who without passion will open their eyes unto the truth He reproacheth him for his great Riches in lands in gold and silver and sumptuous moveables and layeth to his charge that he had five hundred beds of cedar with feet of ivory It seems that this slanderer was steward of Seneca's house so curious he was in decyphering his estate But all this is but a mere invention for how is it possible that he who according to Cornelius Tacitus did not live but onely on fruit and bread and water and who never had any but his wife to eat with him or two or three friends at most should have five hundred beds of cedar and ivory to serve him at his feasts It is true that he had goods enough but nothing unjustly gotten they were the gifts and largesses of the Emperour And because he had sometimes written that Goods were forbidden to Philosophers he therefore was content to hold them in servitude and not to be commanded by them He was overcome by Nero to carry some splendour in his house as being the chiefest of the Estate and it was put upon him as a sumptuous habit upon some statue We cannot find that he had ever any children but his Books or that he made it his study to enrich his Nephews or his Nieces or to raise a subsistence for his house from the charges greatnesse and riches of the Empire He had the smallest train and pomp that possibly could be and when he had the licence to be at liberty from the Court he lived in an admirable simplicity and which is more he besought Nero with much importunity to discharge him from the unprofitable burden of his riches and to put severall stewards into his houses to receive his revenues but he made answer to him that he did a wrong unto himself to demand that discharge for he had nothing too much and that he had in Rome many slaves enfranchized who were farre more rich then Seneca Yet for all this Reproach is proved to be unjust Dion proceeds further in his slander and alledgeth That he indeared Queens and Princes to him for he wrote their Papers and professed himself a friend to the richest Favourites What is this but to reproach a Courtier with his Trade his Discretion his Civility his Affability which this great personage made very worthily to comply with his Philosophy He married an illustrious Lady and of invaluable wealth What! should he being in that high dignity to please Suillus become suitor to some chamber-maid or for mortifications sake court some countrey girle ought he to bring such a reproach after him to the Court of the
a King in Name onely and that the Queen signed The pernicious language of an Incendiary first in all the Declarations and did not permit that any Effigies should be stamped on the moneys but her own That of necessity he must discharge himself from the tutelage of that Imperious woman and teach her to submit to the law of Nature which allows not that Sex to command their husbands On the other side this Forger of iniquity heating two furnaces with one fagot ceased not by his complaints to set on fire the heart of the Queen telling her That she must chastise the rash young Man and retain the Sovereignty entire on her own side otherwise his unruly passions attempting to part the Crown betwixt them would take it away from them both and put all things into a confusion This was the occasion that Mary arming her heart with a manly courage would enjoy the Rights and Prerogatives of her birth and did afterwards reign in full authority 4. This young Husband who of a Subject was become The jealousie of King Henry Stuart Darley a Master could not with moderation endure his change of fortune but daily endeavoured to hold more of command than of compliance The Queen also who desired to be known the sole efficient Cause of his preferment being unwilling to lose the name of Mistress in taking that of wife did distast his importunity deferred his Coronation and did allow him but a little part in the affairs of the Kingdom She ordinarily did confer much with David Riccius her Secretary an old and a discreet man who with great honour possessed her ear and her good opinion for she cherished him rather for the necessity of her affairs than for any attractive qualities that were in him for he was but of a deformed body as they who have seen him do affirm But the calumny of the The Book of the death of the Queen of Scots printed in the year 1587. Puritans who know of every wood how to make an arrow did not forbear in their bold discourses to reflect upon the honour of Queen Mary concerning that subject although it was the most incredible and the most ridiculous thing in the world Cambden also the most sincere of all Historians of the pretended Religion and Monsieur de Castelnau have disdained to speak of it as being an out-rage which had no foundation at all of truth although the Earls of Morton and Lindsey two execrable Incendiaries who had undertaken the divorce of the Royal House following the spirit of Heresie most impudently to breathe forth the greatest lies did work a great alteration on the King in the cooling of his affections to his wife The spirit of Henrie now became furious and A spirit tormented with two great devils did perceive it self to be possessed on by two fiends The one the Jealousie of Love the other of Estate which both at one time did commit a prodigious Ravishment on his heart They made him believe that he passed for a King in fansie onely and that his Throne was no more than a meer picture whilest another was made a Partner in his bed In effect the excellent Beauties of the Queen which had given him such heats of love did now raise his jealousie to the height of those flames He was all on fire perpetually night and day and being tormented with shadows suspitions and rages with choller frenzies and with terrours he lived as on the wheel not knowing which way to turn himself His passion did suggest unto him a bloudy remedy A tragick remedy by the death of the Secretary of the Queen which was to draw the Secretary from the Cabinet of the Queen at the hour of supper and under colour of communicating some affair unto him to stab him with a ponyard in the Presence-Chamber The body being all bloudy by threescore wounds which it received fell down just at the door of his Mistress imploring Heaven and earth against those who by so black a treason had ravished his life from him in the flower of his hopes The Queen being frighted at the noise did run to the door and with his bloud received the last breathings of his soul some drops of the bloud falling on her outward garment She startled at the horrour of the sight and believed that some sprinklings of the bloud had painted on her face the opprobriousness of the act But as she made her complaint the Murderers The passion of divelish fury presented a pistol to her without any regard to the brightness of her Majesty or the bigness of her womb desiring nothing more than at one blow to destroy both the Tree and the fruit They locked her up in a chamber of the Palace taking from her all her ordinary servants and putting a Guard on her of four-score souldiers On this the Estates met and the pestilent Councel were assembled where with mouthes full of fire the Hereticks ceased not to breathe forth Rebellion Bloud and Butcheries They gave it out aloud That they ought not by halfs to do a work of so great importance and since the Queen who was a Pillar of the Papists Religion in Scotland was already shaken they ought to lay her low as the earth and utterly destroy her in giving allowance to the Libels and the Calumnies which were published against her They had attempted to have seduced the The horrible attempt of Heresie spirit of the young King promising him to put the Crown in peace upon his Head if he would maintain and support their Design to which as he shewed an inclination they began to weave an horrible conspiracy to take from him all the most eminent persons of the State and imbarque the innocence of the Queen in the common shipwrack The Earl of Murray who fled into England for having raised Arms against their Majesties returned back and came into Scotland rathers as a Triumpher than a guilty person They made him an overture of their pernicious counsels which he entertained with horrour for as yet he was unwilling that the Affairs should be carried on with such an extremity of violence wherefore in private he repaired to the Queen demanding pardon for his offences past and promising all obedience for the time to come He counselled her to recollect and rouze up her spirits and pardon the injuries passed and to take away from the Conspiratours all the apprehensions of Despair The Queen bending her spirit to the necessity of the time and her present affairs did receive him with all courtesie and told him that she was ready to perform all as he pleased She assured him that he was not ignorant that her heart was without gall having always pardoned offences even to her own destruction by her too much clemency And though she had been used by him with too much rigour for a Brother that she would not cease to cherish him and to gratifie him above all other to give him the
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
smiling she added some few words that she blamed Paulet and Deurey who guarded the Prisoner for not delivering her from that pain It is true that in the morning she sent one named Killigrew to Davison to forbid to put that command in Execution whether it were that her Remorse of Conscience had put her into some frights her sleeps being ordinarily disturbed with horrible Dreams which did represent unto her the images of her Crimes or whether it were an artifice to procure her the reputation of being mercifull in killing with so much treachery The Secretary came to her in the field and declared to her that the Order for the Queen of Scotland's death was now finished and sealed on which she put on the countenance of displeasure and told him that by the Counsel of wise men one might find out other expedients by which it is believed that she intended poison Nevertheless she now was commanded that the Execution should be delayed And as Davison presented himself to her three dayes afterward demanding of her if her Majesty had changed her advice she answered No and was angry with Paulet for not enterprising boldly enough the last of the Crimes And said moreover That she would find others who would do it for the love they did bear unto her On which the other did remonstrate that she must think well of him for otherwise she would ruin Men of great Merit with their posterity She still persisted and on the very same day of the Execution she did chide the Secretary for being so slow in advancing her Commands who as soon as he had discovered the affair the evil Counsellours did pursue the expedition with incredible heat for they sent Beal a Capital Enemy of the Catholicks with letters directed to certain Lords in which power was given them to proceed unto the Massacre who immediately repairing to the Castle of Fotheringhey where the Queen was prisoner they caused her to rise from her bed where the Indisposition of her body had laid her and having read unto her their Commission they did advertise her that she must die on the morning following 16. She received this without changing of her countenance and said That she did not think that the Queen her Sister Her death and miraculous constancy would have brought it to that extremity But since such was her pleasure death was most agreeable to her and that a Soul was not worthy of celestial and eternal joys whose body could not endure the stroke of the Hang-man For the rest she appealed to Heaven and Earth who were the witnesses of her Innocence adding that the onely Consolation which she received in a spectacle so ignominious was that she died for the Religion of her Fathers she beseeched God to increase her constancy to the measure of her afflictions and to welcome the death she was to suffer for the expiation of her sins After she spake these words she besought the Commissioners to permit her to conser with her Confessor which by a barbarous cruelty was refused a cruelty which is not exercised on the worst of all offendours and in the place for a Director of her conscience they gave her for her comforters the Bishop and the Dean of Peterborough whom with horrour she rejected saying That God should be her Comforter The Earl of Kent who was one of the Commissioners and most hot in the persecution of her told her Your life will he the death and your death will be the life of our Religion Declaring in that sufficiently the cause of her death whereupon she gave thanks to God that she was judged by her Enemies themselves to be judged an instrument capable to restore the ancient Religion in England In this particular she desired that the Protestants had rather blamed her effects than her designs After the Lords were retired she began to provide for her last day as if she had deliberated on some voyage and this she did with so much devotion prudence and courage that a Religious man who hath had all his Meditations on death for thirty years together could not have performed it with greater Justice And in the first place she commanded that supper should be dispatched to advise of her affairs and according to her custom supping very soberly she entertained her self on a good discourse with a marvellous tranquillity of mind And amongst other things turning her self to Burgon her Physitian she demanded of him if he did not observe how great was the power of the Truth seeing the sentence of her death did import that she was condemned for having conspired against Elizabeth and the Earl of Kent did signifie that she died for the apprehension which they had that she should be the death of the false Religion which would be rather her glory than a punishment At the end of supper she drank to all her Servants with a grave and modest chearfulness on which they all kneeled down and mingled so many tears with their wine that it was lamentable to behold As soon as their sobs had given liberty to their words they asked her pardon for not performing those services which her Majesty did merit and she although she was the best Mistress that ever was under heaven desired all the world to pardon her defects She comforted them with an invincible courage and commanded them to wipe away their tears and to rejoyce because she should now depart from an abyss of misery and assured them that she never would forget them neither before God nor men After supper she wrote three letters one to the King of France one to the Duke of Guise and the third unto her Confessor Behold the letter in its own terms which she wrote unto King Henry the Third SIR GOD as with all humility I am bound to believe A Letter unto Henry the Third having permitted that for the expiation of my sins I should cast my self into the Arms of this Queen my Cousin having endured for above twenty years the afflictions of imprisonment I am in the end by her and her Estates condemned unto death I have demanded that they should restore the papers which they have taken from me the better to perfect my last Will and Testament and that according to my desire my body should be transported into your Kingdom where I have had the Honour to be a Queen your Sister and ancient Allie but as my sufferings are without comfort so my requests are without answer This day after dinner they signified unto me the sentence to be executed on the next day about seven of the clock in the morning as the most guilty offendor in the world I cannot give you the discourse at large of what is passed It shall please your Majesty to believe my Physitian and my servants whom I conceive to be worthy of credence I am wholly disposed unto death which in this Innocence I shall receive with as much misprision as I have attended it with patience The
his avarice And as she had her eyes blinded and was applying her self to the Block she began the Psalm In te Domine speravi In thee Lord have I hoped and amongst those sacred words In manus tuas into thy hands which she again and again and divers times repeated the Executioner trembling and indisposed made one stroke with his Ax and in stead of her neck the Ax fell higher and cutting off some part of her Coyf it made a grievous wound on the hinder part of her head whereupon readily dispatching two strokes more the Executioner took up the head from the body and shewed it openly all pale and bloudy as it was yet still carrying in her eclipsed eyes the attractives of that brave Soul which now did cease to animate her body and with a horrible voice he pronounced Long live Queen Elizabeth and so let the Enemies of the Gospel perish which word the Dean repeated and the Earl of Kent applauded when all the world besides them were in tears The bloud was collected in silver Basons and the Corps was laid forth on the Scaffold Her poor Maids drew near unto her desiring that they might be permitted to divest her and to bury her with their own hands But the furious Earl did drive them out of the hall and caused the sacred body to be carried into a Chamber of the Castle where it was locked up He also ordered that the Cloath and boards should be burnt that were purpled with the bloud of this Martyr as if there were any Element in the world that was able to take away so celestial a tincture These two Virgins did not cease to follow with their eyes the body of their Mistress looking upon her as well as they could through the clefts of the door as she still lay bloudy and but half covered They waited there like two Magdalens at the Sepulcher until such time as she was interred in the Cathedral Church of Peterborough where all the best sort of men as long as it was allowed did repair to let fall their tears and lay forth their sighs upon her Tomb. The news being brought to London all the Bells did ring for joy to convey the tidings of it to cruel Elizabeth who did conceal her self rather for shame than grief although she counterfeited to be extreamly touched for the Death of her Kinswoman And in effects she often felt the Remorse of Conscience and had horrible Dreams which did make her to cry out in the night and to wake her Maids of Honour with her affrights 17. As long as Truth or Virtue or Men shall continue upon the earth that wound shall bleed as long as there shall be Eyes or Tears in this Vale of misery there shall be tears distilled on these Royal Ashes and the piety of the living shall never cease with full hands to strew Lilies and Violets and Roses on her Tomb. Marie whom Heaven absolvest doth now commence an eternal Process against Elizabeth she shall be brought before as many Tribunals as there are reasonable Spirits and shall daily be condemned without ending of her misery because she put no end to her injustice It seemeth that God did expresly give her a long life as to Cain to Herod to Tyberius and other Tyrants to fill up the measure of her iniquity to possess a bloudy Scepter amongst Jealousies Affrights and Defiances and to see her hell alive whom at last stooping unto the impotency of age and slighted by her own creatures she would often complain that all the world did abandon her and that she had not one left in whom she might repose her confidence God hath dried up her root on Earth and made her die childless He hath placed on her Throne the bloud of Mary who at this day doth hold the Crown of England and of Scotland Great GOD if it be permitted to enter into the cloud of thy great Mysteries and the Secrets which thou hast concealed from our Eyes Is it not from this bloud we shall one day see a flower to arise the most illustrious of the Posterity who between his hands shall bring forth the Golden Age who shall make the Ancient Piety to triumph and on his Royal shoulders shall carry it even into the Throne of Glory who shall render divine honours to the ashes of his Mother and about her Tomb shall make the Cypress trees to grow that shall advance unto the Stars her honoured Name which they shall wear engraved on their leaves Elizabeth shall then be but a Specter of horrour and her pernicious Councellers shall appear round about her as the pale shades in the center of Darkness England shall awake from her long Lethargie and with veneration shall look on her whom she hath dishonoured with so much fury Incomparable Marie we say no more that Providence hath been a Step-mother and that she hath used you with too much rigour and violence She hath caused you to enter in a garden covered with palms and laurels which you have bedewed with your tears manured with your afflictions enobled with your combats and honoured with your bloud She hath mounted you on a Scaffold where you have acted the last and most glorious Tragedie that was ever represented in the world by your Sex or in your condition The Angels O Divine Princess from the portals of Heaven did with admiration contemplate your Combat they encouraged your Constancy they sang your Praises and with emulation they prepared for you your everlasting Crowns The heart of a woman against a hundred leopards The heart of a Diamond against a thousand hammers which never turned for all their violence which never could be tempted with the glitterings of honour which always did temper with gall the most delicious contentments of this life to follow he JESUS her wounded JESUS her JESUS crucified for her The most Catholick Queen in the world who honoured nothing more than Churches and Priests and Altars to live twenty years as it were without a Church without a Priest and without an Altar to make in her self a Temple of her body an Altar of her heart and a Sacrifice of her bloud nay what shall I say in a Death so abandoned to be her self the Altar to be her self the Priest and her self the Sacrifice What Virgin hath seen the twentieth year of her captivity What Martyr hath sanctified so many prisons Who hath ever made experience of so many Deaths in one Who hath ever seen Death to come with a more willing foot And who hath indeer'd it with a greater joy who hath mannaged it with wisdom and who hath accomplished it with greater glory Your fair Name O Marie borne on the Wings of Triumph and Renown doth pass through Sea and Land is an object of Veneration to the people and of Ornament unto Heaven where your Soul with advantage doth rejoyce in the pleasures of eternal happiness Look down fair Soul and behold your Islands and your Realms with those
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