in the processe of our succeeding Ascents and Parallels The seventh Ascent MOses being in his own judgement and in all outward appearance unfit for so great a Charge was very unwillingly perswaded by God to undertake it insomuch as it came to a very high expostulation between them Was there ever such a dispute with the Almighty Or was there ever seen such a difficulty in man to be perswaded to so high a point of preferment Behold what arguments he raiseth against the Lord and his own self And his first refusal seems to proceed from a vice of over-modesty for the sacred Text tells us That Moses said unto God Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt which the Lord was pleased graciously to answer and satisfie with an assurance that he world be with him c. Then he proceeds to something of a double diffidence first objecting Behold when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you and they shall say unto me What is his name What shall I say unto them To which the Lord was pleased to reply by condescending to give him his Name I am that I am and commanded him to say to the children of Israel that I am had sent him unto them and so furnisht him with a large Commission and instructions But yet our Moses will be doubtful still of the force and effect of his Almighty Commission for he answered and said But behold they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice for they will say The Lord hath not appeared unto thee Now this redoubled doubt and diffidence of poor Moses the most gracious Lord pleased to reform with two stupendious miracles and so to frighten him into a better obedience First with his own Rod turned into a Serpent and returned into a Rod again and then with his own hand made Leprous and whole again all in a moment so drawing as it were its contagion and cure from his own bosome Nay further to fortifie his faith and credit his Commission with the children of Israel the Lord assures him that he shall have the power to turn the water of the River into blood upon the dry Land Now after all this was it possible that there should be any more evasion found out by our too modest Moses Yes surely and to something savouring of a very high infidelity For Moses replied unto the Lord O my Lord I am not eloquent neither heretofore nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant but I am slow of speech and of an impedited tongue But yet behold the benignity of our gracious God who is pleased still to confute him without any takeing of offence onely asking him the question Who made mans mouth or who maketh the dumb or the deaf or the seeing or the blind Have not I the Lord then assuring him that he will be with his mouth and teach him what he shall say What could be expected after this but a ready assent yet instead of that behold he flies out to a flat denial to all this over-modesty diffidence and almost infidelity he will yet adde obstinacy and a dismal disobedience as ever was heard of and plainly bid the Lord send whom he would Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses yet so mercifully as to be pleased to reconcile himself to him instantly again and by further assurances of his Almighty favours with the promised assistencie of his brother Aaron so to convince his doubting servant and to convert him to a more resolute faith and active obedience Thus then the businesse now stands agreed on our poor modest diffident and fearful Moses is now become a faithful and a stout one and the Lord who full well knew before his capacities to discharge is now pleased to pardon his long unwillingnesse to perform his so great and weighty Commands The Parallel Now truly our second Moses cannot appear lesse Parallel to the first in this his unwillingnesse to accept of all publick Charges than he has done in all his accomplishments of parts or any of the past Ascents And yet this unwillingness of his never proceeded from any diffidence of or disobedience to any Divine Commands which was indeed the fault of our former Moses but partly from his own humility over-modesty and high contempt of all earthly things His sanctified spirit lookt upon all those flattering flourishes of this worlds greatnesse no otherwise than as the true gardens of Adonis which in the beginning make a fair shew of some siâ—ly flowers but in conclusion afford nothing but thorns He alwayes reckoned that the Careers of the greatest honours here below were but of ice and most commonly bounded with headlong ruins He found in his younger judgement as we have seen though certainly it was an inspired piece of prudence that all the pitiful felicities of this life were onely floating Islands which recoil backwards when a man thinks for to touch them with his fingers or as the Feasts of Heliogabalus where were fair invitations many reverences and many services but in the end nothing but a Table appears set out with a Banquet made of wax which melts before the fire and from whence a man must return more hungry than he came Or yet more like the inchanted egg of Oromazes wherein the impudent Magician boasted to have inclosed all the happinesse of the Universe but when it was opened there was found nothing but wind These were the solitary considerations that moved his late most Serene Highnesse to his so long and close concealment of himself And indeed the heavenly Providence over this great Person if we look well throughout him can never be otherwise read then as letters written with the juice of Limon by the help of fire or flame of a burning Bush as before which must not onely flame neither but must consume even to his own door may be ready to involve all in a general conflagration before he would at all think himself to be concerned or busily bestirre himself to quench it or before he would undertake the unhappy necessities of State then requiring a war any part of his incomparable Mosaical conduct So that we may at last affirm and conclude of him as Claudian does of his brave Emperour Theodosius that Solus meruit regnare rogatus there is none worthy of a Crown but he that must be importun'd to it Now some we know there have been that have had an most enraged desire to Empire and yet would feign themselves to have all the aversions in the world against it and so have caused themselves to be carryed to their Thrones like unwilling beasts to the slaughter The truth of it is the heart of man as the Scripture tells us is inscrutable above all things and more especially so in point of ambition and
off without any issue at all and the Crown and Scepter was so quickly translated to another Name and Nation quite contrary to the Tyrants intentions and the projects both of his will and Statute Then what has been the Catastrophe or sad issue of that Family too for treading in his most unfortunate foot-steps we of this Age have fully seen for no one of them that I know of yet has died a natural death and the last prince we had of that Line lost his whole head-ship of the Church with his Prerogative and Soveraignty over Laws so much desired and contended for in those dayes upon a pitiful Scaffold erected before the Porch of that Palace where his impious Predecessor that Henry the Eighth the first of all Kings inhabited and his body by a strange providence without any forefight or contrivance of man at all was carried to Windsor and there deposited in the same Vault with him Then look upon his disastrous issue and we shall finde his whole posterity too has been so exterminated here that there is not so much as the print of a foot-step of them left to be seen amongst us This one instance I say that we have started so near our own doors though it might serve for all for as the judicious Spaniard tells us En los casos raros uno solo exemplo haze experiencia In such rare occasions one example is enough to prescribe and to make experience and the acute Philip de Commines observes That the example of one sole accident is enough sometimes to make men wise yet I could alledge a thousand more to this purpose if the necessity of our main businesse would permit but I must hasten Now on the contrary observe how Ecclesiasticus prophesies With the seed of the righteous shall continually remain a good inheritance and their children are within the Covenant Their seed stands fast and their children for their sakes Their seed shall remain for ever and their glory shall not be blotted out And we have as clearly found in our experience that all those Princes and great Persons who have arranged themselves within the lists of Sanctity Modesty and the observation of Laws the Lord hath as it were immortaliz'd their bloods in their happy Posterities as we do now see it made good in this our precious Parallel and might in many thousands more of Royal Princely Noble and Illustrious Families besides which I have as little liberty at present to produce so shall refer to every Readers more particular observation whilst I that write and every temperate person I hope that reades shall rest abundantly satisfied in the point that it was a most irrefragable favour of God Almighties towards us as well as his late most Serene Highnesse to give him leave and to direct him to establish his Throne in the best of his own blood and to leave a Prince behind him to govern us that he was certain was so much of his own heavenly make that he can never degenerate from those his high holy and most heroick vertues as we may see more at large in the succeeding Ascent and Parallel The third Transcendental Ascent MOses drawing nearer towards his death had the honour and favour to be commanded by the Almighty to lay his holy hands upon his Successor Joshua and to blesse him and to put some of his honour upon him that all the Congregation of the children of Israel might be obedient c. Then the Lord commanded Moses to charge Joshua and encourage him assuring him that he should go over before his people and that he should cause them to inherite the Land which he should see And last of all when Moses was upon the point of his departure the Lord himself was pleased to condescend to give to Joshua this particular Charge before Moses his own face Be strong and of a good courage for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the Land which I sware unto them and I will be with thee Now all this could not but be a most extraordinary comfort as it was a high transcendent prerogative to the departing Patriarch The Parallel That this was a most Princely and Supreme priviledge which our first Moses by the favour of Heaven enjoyed to lay his hands upon blesse and put some of his own spirit upon his Successor in his life time I presume none will dispute and as little can any man I hope doubt but that our second Moses too was indulged by God a Parallel prerogative and did the very like to his most gracious Son and successor knowing him as we all have done to have ever been a most prudent pious and indulgent Father of his Country and so by consequence he must have been much more of his own Family and most of all of his Eldest Son who was not onely to be the Head of that but of three Kingdoms and other vast Dominions and Territories thereto belonging Nay that he did actually part with some of his honour to put upon him in his own life time was made notoriously evident in his resignation of that high Title of Chancellor of the Universitie of Oxford I say again high Title and take it to be the highest next to the Soveraignty it self that England can afford Who can imagine it lesse that knowes that University to be one of the four Cardinal most Ancient Famous and Flourishing Universities in the Christian World that has been ever acknowledged by Forreigners themselves to have been the happy Seminary of the greatest spirits which have held predominance in all manner of Learning and Sciences and was ever lookt upon as the glorious Altar of the Sun from whence light was wont to be borrowed to illuminate all other lamps To be the Head I say of this most glorious Body who can deny to be equal to so great and good a Father to give and to so hopeful and gracious a Son as was this our present Protector and second Joshua to receive Then as to the other part of this grand Mosaick Prerogative held forth in our Ascent lesse doubt sure must be made that his late Highnesse was most thoroughly assured of the great worth and due deserving of his Successor as also of his great felicity and prosperous successes in all his future undertakings First by reason of his Highnesse his great illuminations and particular revelations that he had from God himself as we have sufficiently seen in all his actions before which certainly could not fail him now in so important an affaire as this that so nearly did concern the happinesse of so great a people Secondly he that had so clear and thorough an inspection into the aptitude of all his Officers that he employed as we have likewise seen in those Ascents that treat of his Election of them how could he choose but have an insight extraordinary into the due merit and high deservings of his own Son None sure
can imagine his inspired wisdom to be capable of such a defect that are not themselves like those old Monsters called the Lamiae which were alwayes blind within their own doors and could onely make use of their eyes when they were from home Then lastly how could he be unknowing to those perfections which all the Nation has been so satisfied in for these many years that he has been with reverence lookt upon and admired as an Angel descending from Heaven and vouchsafing to let himself be inchased within a humane body a Prince of so incomparable sweet and excellent disposition that he may be worthy indeed to be called the dear delight of God as well as man And that this was the judgement of all the World concerning him I shall instance in one person for all who was not long since a member of that most beautiful body before mentioned I mean that most famous and flourishing University of Oxford who drew an anagrammatical Prophesie out of Virgil foretelling the glorious Fate of this happy Prince now near two years since and presently upon his acceptance of that most unvalueable honour to be their Chancellor which because has proved so exactly true a Prophesie I have thought fit to publish my friends paper to the perusall of all the World and insert it here presuming that neither he nor any wise man else will be offended at it Celsissimo ac Gratiosissimo Domino Domino Richardo Cromvel Seremissimi Domini Protectoris Filio Primogenito Celeberrimae Academiae Oxoniensis Cancellario Honoratissimo Anagramma Genethliacum EPITHALAMIUM O Richarde Cromvel magnus es Majori nubis Chara Dei soboles Magnum Jovis Incrementum SIccine Virgilius credendus Numine plenus Quis furor inflatus sacrum rapit usque Prophetam Vt Nobis tua clara vetus Natalia Vates Praedicat simul sponsam Quae denique Major Cum siet atque etiam verè tu Magnus habendus Quid tua Progenies fuerit nisi Maxima Princeps O Fortunatos Natâ istâ Prole Britannos Noster Oliverus Magnus Sic ut usque virere Possit aeternos aetate requireret annos Hoc sceptrum semper quatiat Cromvellia Proles Vivat Imperium teneat Primo vel ab Ortu Solis ad Hesperium Cubile sic Anglia vivat Sic vovet optat Prohpetizat Amplitudinis vestrae Servus Observantissimus To the most Illustrious Lady of the Thrice Noble Lord My Lord RICHARD CROMWEL An Explication of the Virgilian ANAGRAMM Madam THough Virgil ben't much your acquaintance yet You must confesse you owe him no small debt Thus to foretel your Princely Husbands Birth His Fortunes and his Honours upon Earth Your Name and Marriage too all which does lie Wrapt up we see in 's Antique Prophesie He calls your Lord Great Increment of Jove What then must th' issue be of your chast love He 's great we know and you a Major see How can your Children less than Maxims be On those fair Pillars our Protector stands You give him Rulers over Seas and Lands Your swelling Womb's the Cushion where he leanes And findes himself eternal by your means So may your Olive branches flourish still About Great Oliver and his Thrones up fill So prayes and Prophesies Madam Your Ladiships most obedient Servant Now for his most Serene Highnesse his happy Birth there is none sure will deny it to be great as his that pretended his extraction from mighty Jupiter and we may more truly say of him than could be fancied of those old Heroes that Deus est in utroque Parente God was apparently in each Parent Then for his blessed Marriage the next thing pointed at in the Prophesie that can be comparable to nothing more than to the sacrifice of Juno where the gall of the offering was never presented There was so faithful and pure a love observed to be on both sides that the Noble spirit of the one lived wholly in the other and as the Flowers of the Sun perpetually followed the motions of each others heart so they still continue to court each the others vertuous dispositions All this I say is the Anagrammatical Prediction of Virgil himself and as to those sublime Honours and Fortunes which his Highnesse has since arrived at all that proves to be my friends proper Prophesie Now whether Virgil or my Friend were the greater Prophet let the World judge whilst I shall satisfie my self with that great felicity which our second Moses took in the contemplation of his most gracious Sons and Successors perfections upon whom methinks I see him in his old Princely and Fatherly Majesty now looking down from the top of the holy Mount encouraging his most excellent son to climb up after him and keep the track of his Ascents Nay methinks I hear God Almighty himself speaking to his now most Serene Highnesse as he did before to Joshua There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the dayes of thy life as I was with my second Moses so I will be with thee I will not fail thee nor forsake thee Be strong and of a good courage for unto this people shalt thou divide for an Inheritance the Land which I sware unto their Fathers to give them onely be thou strong and very couragious that thou mayst observe to do according to the Law which Moses my Servant commanded thee turn not from it either to the right hand nor to the left that thou mayst prosper whithersoever thou goest This Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth but thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayst observe to do according to all that is written therein for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good successe Have not I commanded thee Be strong and of a good courage be not afraid neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest Thus was the Lord pleased to discourse with Joshua And now methinks I hear all the people of this Land crying out to our most Serene Prince and Protector just as the children of Israel did there likewise in the same Chapter to their General Joshua All that thou commandest us we will do and whithersoever thou sendest us we will go according as we hearkned unto Moses in all things so will we hearken unto thee onely the Lord thy God be with thee as he was with Moses Whosoever he be that does rebell against thy commandment and will not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him he shall be put to death onely be strong and of a good courage With these Divine speeches made by God himself and his instruments the people upon the inauguration of Joshua methinks I hear our present Lord Protector and Princely second Joshua treated at this very day What Divine documents his sacred Highness has received from the Almighty are onely yet betwixt the Lord and
Moses though we cannot hold up our Parallel to the heighth of that honour which the first had to be conveyed to his grave by God himself and put into the earth by those Almighty hands which had made him out of it yet we may say that he was interred with as much state and carried to his mother earth with as much solemnity and magnificence as ever person in the World was nay his very Effigies was honoured with so great a reverence as if some divinity had attended the Royal procession And yet this is not all the glorious Sepulture that his Highnesse had for what the Orator said of his Prince we may mutato nomine most aptly conclude of him Totum nec capiet Olivarium brevis ista tumuli clausura Britannum nomen pectus unumquodque nobile vivum stabit defuncto monumentum vivet ipse suo letho superstes multam aetatem feret etiam mortuus gloriaeque plenus deducetur ad Posteros c. The whole great Oliver cannot be contained within so scanty an enclosure as is the vault that holds his body the British Name it self and every noble breast of the Nation shall stand a living Monument to his memory Thus shall his Highnesse outlive his death and grow great in glory whilst he is consuming in his grave and be conveighed into the arms of posterity with everlasting acclamations Good Princes as well as Poets find their honours to swell from their last ashes and like Phoenixes spring afresh from their funeral Piles as we shall more at large make out in our next which is our last Mosaical Ascent and closing Parallel The sixth and last Transcendental Ascent MOses built himself a Monument in the hearts of all his people and left a blessed Memorial behind him and all this was attested by the Spirit of God himself after his death expressely assuring us that there arose not a Prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face in all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the Land of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his servants and to all his Land and in all that mighty hand and in all that great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel The Parallel Thus the Lord is pleased to make the memory of his Saints precious in the language of the Spirit as sweet ointment poured forth for we see here how he will make his dead servant Moses to ascend still in this World by the fragrancy of his memory and indeed it is the last Ascent that humane perfection is capable of to mount up after a blessed death to a happy and honourable remembrance amongst men a most particular grace and prerogative which the Divine goodnesse indulgeth to none but to his most dear servants For some there are as Ecclesiasticus not Apocryphally observes which have no memorial at all who are perished as though they had never been and are become as though they had never been born and their children after them but the righteousnesse of merciful men hath not been forgotten c Then again their bodies are buried in peace but their name liveth for evermore nay further the people will tell of their wisdom and the Congregation will shew forth their praise Has not our most Serene second Moses received this precious Transcendental favour likewise from the hands of his gracious God has he not so filled the mindes and mouthes of all the good people of the Nation that they have nothing almost left to think and speak on but the memory of their late great Protector Insomuch that we can compare this glorious Ascent of his Highnesse his happy death to nothing so properly as to the expiration of the Phenix upon the Mountain of the Sun in the sweet odours of his heroick vertues O what a memory has his Highnesse left us of his unspotted piety and undefiled policy amidst all the depravations and corruptions of the Word O what a memory has he left us of his arriving to the highest honours and dignities by flying them and to have ennobled all his Charges by the integrity of his manners O what a memory of a life lead truly according to Christianity that has alwayes daunted the most audacious Libertins and like a Divine Mirrour killed Basiliskes with the repercussion of their own poison O what a memory has he left us of having governed a Church and State so as if it had been a clear copy of Heaven and an eternal pattern of holy Policy holding himself alwayes to those heavenly Poles of piety and justice that support the great policy of the Universe esteeming them as Democritus did the two divinities of Weales publick or great wheeles upon which all the affaires of the World were to move so establishing himself still upon those holy Columnes as the one has given him immortality with God so the other has perpetuated his memorial amongst men O what a memory has he left behind him of having borne upon his shoulders so happily all the interests and glories of this Nation and the very moveables of the House of God! O what a memory has he left of having so many times trampled the heads of Dragons under his feet and rendered himself the wonder of the World For who indeed is it but must remember how this brave valorous and Princely person who was to joyne the kingdom of his vertues to the force of his armes was alwayes of so vigorous and sublime a spirit that he measured still all his most difficult undertakings by the greatnesse of his own courage and like a Caesar indeed but more like a true Moses resolved to break through all obstacles to Crown his inspired purposes O what a memory of a blessed death in a good old age and full fruition of all his labours to have died as in a field of Palmes and all planted with his own hand manured with his constant industry and water'd with his own painful sweats O what a memory after death to be acknowledged by all to have built himself before his death a most stately Tombe stufft with the precious Stones of his own most goodly and incomparable vertues all which rightly now to represent would require a recapitulation of all our Parallels and take up a bulk bigger than this small Volume is intended to bear And it is enough I conceive to our present purpose to say that this Nation shall for ever preserve the memory of him as of a Prince that has proved it possible though miraculous to hold a conjunction of piety with the Supreme power and Soveraign authority sweetly tempered with goodnesse things before thought utterly incompatible in Kings and truly I know not what just quarrel any man can have against his memory but that he hath shewed a path to mortall men and trod it by his own example to prove it possible to arrive at so much perfection and that may be a fault
all his promised assistance to him by which means he wrought stupendious miracles in Egypt and by those so quickly brought to a confusion all the Learning Policy Sorcery and Malice of the Egyptians And indeed to go about to prove that there is fidelity in the Lord of Heaven and Earth towards his servants here below would be altogether as impertinent as to demonstrate water to be in the Sea or light in the Sun especially when he that is the eternal Truth has said it that he is righteous in all his wayes and faithful in all his words and works Our Moses is now to meet with men and devils but the Lord will enable him as he promised to withstand and subdue all their malitious and magical oppositions First Pharaoh upon our Moses his coming to Court and receiving his first summons instead of being obedient to the Lords commands and giving the people their desired liberty to go and serve him calls his Cabinet-Council about him and by their politick advices encreaseth presently the Israelites Taskes on purpose to inflame them to a mutiny and make them murder those that came about to deliver them But the Lord who stills the roaring of the waves and the madnesse of the people is pleased quickly to pacifie them and make them comfortably to submit to their barbarous burdens and peaceably and patiently to expect the day of their desired Redemption When this subtile piece of king-craft would not serve proud Pharaohs turn and all his politick Junto were at a stand the Devil must be presently employed and all the Magicians of the Land sent for that they forsooth may beard this great Embassadour of God and vye with their diabolical enchantments divine Miracles So Moses could no sooner cast his Rod down upon the ground to become a Serpent but those devilish Sorceres would do as much though all theirs were to be devoured by the Divine Rod. Nay Rivers turned into blood and producing of innumerable Frogs could not out-do their cheating inchantments But when the sacred Rod was to be stretcht forth again and the dust of the earth smitten into lice then Ars tua Typhe jacet the Magicians are all at a gaze there their Sorcery is quite confounded and they are constrained to confesse that the Devil their good Lord and Master hath a power limited for silly lice of which man is naturally a creator are enough to confound these great Negromancers and make them acknowledge and adore the finger of God Now after all this when malice and Magick could do no more yet the Tyrant will be stiff still till his Court and Kingdom too be infested and invaded with huge Armies of flies whose grievous swarms boldly stormed the Royal Chamber of Pharaoh then he begun to be inclined to let the children of Israel go but he had no sooner got from under the Rod but he relapseth into his old disobedience obstinacy and hardnesse of heart neither would he let the people go Then followed the miraculous Murrain upon beasts with the plague of boiles and blaines upon the more beastly and brute men with the most stupendious storm of fire and water mingled together that ever the earth felt before or since before Pharaoh would be brought to incline to our Moses and his peoples request But he had no sooner got once more a respit from those plagues but he stood at a defiance with God Almighty again and his Embassadour too Then must millions of Locusts be sent for to make his hard heart relent which he did again soon for a little time but returned presently to his insolence and Tyranny Then prodigious palpable darknesse must be sent a darknesse thick enough to be felt yet proud Pharaoh himself had no feeling longer than he remained under the importunity of the plague still relapsing into his old obduration of heart till the Lord was pleased at midnight to smite all the first-born of the Land of Egypt from the first-born of Pharaoh that sate on the Throne to the first-born of the captive lying in the dungeon and all the first-born of cattel Then was the Tyrant throughly startled he rose up in the night he and all his servants and all the Egyptians and there was a great cry in Egypt for there was not a house where there was not one dead This was a blow indeed that reacht to the very heart of Pharaoh and all his people who now with tears in their eyes are turned from being Tyrants to be suppliants and do humbly beseech their Petitioners to be masters of their own desires nor onely so but offer to accommodate them for their journey with all necessaries lend them all their Jewels of Silver and Jewels of Gold and Rayment and to give all such things as they required O wonderful conversion but yet Tantae molis erat c. So great difficulties had our great Patriarch Moses to encounter before he could arrive to be a Captain-General And now he has begun his most miraculous March with a Pillar of a Cloud before him for his Quita sol by day and a Pillar of fire for his Torch by night Yet Pharaoh will have another fling at him and thinks now by force of arms to destroy those abroad whom he could not securely keep at home in quiet bondage by all his arts and policies But behold the Prodigy of all Prodigies The Red Sea is cut into a Royal high-way for the Israelites and made a dreadful grave for the Egyptians Those mighty waters stand all on heaps and congeale themselves into walls as it were of brasse for the defence and safe passage of the people of God but dissolve themselves into liquid floods for the overthrow of Pharaoh and all his Chariots who were no sooner entred than overwhelmed and so they sunk down as lead in those mighty waters as our great Moses himself expresseth it in his Song of thanksgiving to God for that stupendious Deliverance I should be infinite if I went about to relate the Myriads of wonders that our Moses shewed afterwards in the Desart in the conduct of this chosen Army which quickly becoming faithlesse and mutinous yet by the prayers and for the sake of our most admirable Moses was the Almighty pleased never to forsake them but to feed them constantly with miracles showring Quailes upon them for flesh and the Bread of Heaven for them to eat and gave them continual Prodigies to drink from the very first bitter waters at Marah which he turned to be sweet to the strange tapping of the Rock in Horeb. So happy are the people who have the Lord for their God and so dear and dutiful a servant of his for their Leader as this our first Moses was and our second cannot but appear to be The Parallel I believe truly that there is no intelligent Person living that looks upon this long Story of our present Ascent but would take the particulars of the children
direction for the government of people if not enlightned with the true rayes of God and that light is not to be had but by the means of prayer The practise therefore of this holy duty has been ever stiled and esteemed by the holy Fathers of the Church The Key of Heaven and the confusion of Hell the Standard of our Christian warfare the conservation of our peace the bridle of our impatience the guardian of our temperance the seal of chastity the advocate of offenders the consolation of the afflicted the passe-port of the dying c. for the Just do live and dye in prayer as the Phoenix in her perfumes A Christian doubtlesse without prayer is no more than a Bee without a sting which can neither make honey nor wax From the defect of this duty have proceeded all the desolations of the earth from hence are dayly derived so many falls so many miseries for that men will not apply themselves to tast the things of God in prayer as our glorious Patriarch and his Parallel have alwayes done No man living can deny sure but that it was the perpetual preservation of the children of Israel that their Moses had that happy faculty to its perfection for it is manifest that they had otherwise been swallowed up by the Divine vengeance and in stead of being brought to the Land of Canaan they had been fearfully cut off from the land of the Living I hope it is already made as evident in our past Parallels that we have received as great Deliverances and preservations by the means of our second Moses which could never have been but by his free frequent and powerful accesses to God in prayer as I shall shew more at large presently In the mean time I will be bold from these two great patterns of piety to draw a closing Corollary and lay down the whole state of the question if it may be worthy to be called one in one single naked Proposition Every good Prince being a publick Person and charged with so important affairs that depend wholly upon Providence and expect the motion of the Divine will ought after these two grand exemplars of Piety and Policy to consider That he is to hold a great deal of commerce with Heaven where his businesse so much lies and therefore should resolve to set apart according to the proportion of his time and other occasions some principal hours of leisure shall I say or business at least of retirement to negotiate with God particularly about his government in imitation I say of these two greatest Statesmen our first and second Moses who had so familiar a recourse to the Almighty that as the one was so the other for ought I know may be entitled The friend of God O matchlesse Title His most incomparable Piety knew sufficiently what Gregory Nazianzen tells us That if we are to have the Lord in our minds so often as we do breath How much more suitable it is to a Statesman to be conversant in that holy duty having most need to suck in the life-giving spirit as from the Fountain of the Word by the means of prayer It is not therefore unfitly stiled The spirit of prayer for it is the breath of the inward-man Os meum aperui saith the Scripture attraxi spiritum I opened my mouth and drew in the spirit We are all ready to be choaked with flesh and fat and to be devoured with flames of concupiscence unlesse we upon all occasions open our mouths to take in that gentle air of God By this blessed means it was that our incomparable Paire our first and second Moses have arrived at this great perfection to whom the Lord has vouchsafed so much of his familiarity as to treat with them as friends and to declare himself as it were unable to deny them any thing As for the first we have seen enough already in sacred Story and for our glorious second Moses our own manifold observations and frequent experimental knowledges may be sufficient to inform us For that his late most Serene Highnesse had the purity and excellency of this precious spirit is not onely manifest to those that have had the happinesse to be present at his daily spreading of his hands and pouring forth of his spirit before the Lord and to joyn with him in his Devotions but to the whole Nation except the most stupid and malitious part of it that either will not or cannot be sensible of the great benefits that we have for so long a time received by his powerful addresses unto God How many times has the Divine vengeance been diverted from falling upon our sinful heads by his importunate intercessions How many pestilences famines and other plagues which our impenitency hardnesse of heart and ugly ingratitude had as well deserved as either the cursed Egyptians or murmuring Israelites have been kept off from us by his means Has he lesse often than the former Moses conquered his enemies more by his own prayers than his souldiers armes Has he not by that means obtained as we have seen a secret vertue to be fastened to his Standards making windes and tempests to fight under his Ensign that we may almost cry out with the Poet O nimium dilecte Deo c. How often has he opened as aforesaid Lands inaccessible calmed stormy Seas taken Towns impregnable and with petit handfuls of men discomfited huge Armies How often have we seen him give me leave to repeate those wonders cleaving of Rocks hewing through Mountains and to do the works of Gyants with the reputed Pygmes of the World and find facility in all that humane reason conceived impossible And how I say again could all this be but that the Lord could no more deny any thing to the prayer of this his dear servant and favourite our second than he could to the former Moses His fair soul was no whit lesse elevated upon the pitch of highest contemplations from his very infancy than the former great Moses was His high soul was not unlike that Ibis the stately bird of Egypt that always builds her nest in Palmes So it was perpetually conversant in high contemplations and had no more impressions of earth than the supream Sphere of celestial Bodies Or else more truly yet resembling the Palme-tree it self where that brave Bird builds which as it is the tallest and streightest of all trees so beares its best and most solid strength on its top So had our most gracious Protector and second Moses all his vigour alwayes in God and for God His life was a perpetual Sabbath Sabathum delicatum a delicious Sabbath as the Prophet calls it nourishing and reposing his soul with the constant draught of this holy spirit of prayer He made it not onely his lock and key of the day but his bolt of the night nor onely so but his very meales and recreations and all that his Highnesse did more in a becoming silence than any exteriour ostent