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
obligations cannot but cut to the heart of any Captain-General yet this very sad disaster befel our glorious Patriarch in the Rebellion of Corah Dathan and Abyram who rose up before Moses with two hundred and fifty more Princes of the Assembly famous in the Congregation and men of Renown and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said unto them Ye take too much upon you seeing that all of the Congregation are holy every one of them and the Lord is also amongst them wherefore then do you lift up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord This when our dear Moses heard he fell on his face to shew his great humility and replied onely You take too much upon you you sons of Levi speaking onely then to Korah and his company but when Dathan and Abiram were sent for they tell him plainly that they will not come up to him and expostulate the matter thus by message with him Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a Land that floweth with milke and honey to kill us in the Wildernesse but thou must altogether make thy self a Prince over us Then Moses to shew his magnanimity the Text sayes was very wroth and said unto the Lord Respect not thou their offerings c. Here it is to be observed that Korah was of the same Tribe with Moses too Nay yet the Lord would bring a nearer trial to his dear servant Moses permit his own right hand and onely helper appointed to him by God and one Brother in blood to revolt against him and joyn himself with a silly woman to raise a sedition against him in his own Family but that businesse was quickly quasht by Moses his most Clement proceedings with them by whose powerful intercessions to the Lord Aaron escaped onely with a bare rebuke and Miriam was chastised with a Leprosie for seven dayes These must of necessity be very heart-breaking blows to our poor Patriarch but he that had an assured safe retreat in his own heart and the sweet repose of a clear and a quiet conscience is no more moved with those unkindnesses of kindred and unfaithfulnesses of friends than the firmament it self and serene Empyrean heaven used to be with all the clatter and combustion fury and confusion of the inferiour Orbs. The Parallel Of all the cruel unkindnesses in the World there are none that pierce so to the quick or are so deeply sensible to a Noble nature as those which it receives from persons whom it has obliged Indeed we find that those ungrateful returns of injuries for favours received do bring astonishment even to the gates of Heaven it self which caused the Almighty Father to sigh out those lamentable complaints by the mouth of the Prophet Hieremy How comes it to passe that my beloved hath committed so many outrages so many misdemeanours in my house as much as to say Have I then O my beloved lodged thee in my Temple have I nourished and bred thee up from thy Cradle with my Fatherly hand and cherisht thee in my bosome now to betray my honour and thus to defile the glory of my Altars So the Royal Prophet tells us that he could have born any thing from an enemy or a stranger but from one that he trusted or from an intimate familiar and bosom-friend to receive an injury or unworthy return was beyond his power to bear with patience and the truth is it were enough to stagger the greatest Saint Yet this was our first Moses his miserable condition as we have seen and shall find it fully parallel'd in our second Now it is manifest that it is our Heavenly Fathers constant course to put his children to the full proof and exercise of their vertues to instruct them to the highest pitch to be as near imitators as they may be of his own Divine vertues who does nothing but good to ungrateful man and receives nothing but ill from him as we shewed at large in our last Ascent And such trials as those are questionlesse very necessary for his servants for it is undoubted that his most practised servants a very Moses himself would putrifie in long prosperities as in a dead Sea which produceth nothing so that the All-wise God out of great kindnesse to his most dear servants does sometimes strike such blows as these that they as Jonathan may have their eyes still open and suck in honey from the very end of the Rod that scourgeth them and in the severe chastisement of a father finde the consolation of true children O what a goodly Theater is a good conscience and what a beautiful Arcenal it is to have the Armes of vertue still in a readinesse as our first and second Moses have had against all essayes whom no unkindnesse of unthankful friends or conspiracies of ungracious enemies could ever startle from their sweet and serene repose Now that we may make good our Parallel we must reflect a little upon the barbarous ingratitude that his late Highnesse has met withall from Persons of other obligations and Princes too of our Assembly And truly who would not have thought after so many wonderful Deliverances by the hand of our second Moses as we have seen and the beating down of all open oppositions to the destruction of the common enemy but that our miseries should have had an end and our glorious Captain-General some rest But yet I must say with a sigh and to the eternal exprobration of some persons late in power that we found no other but aliud ex alio malum one mischief to follow upon the very heels of another How many malignant parties of our own have gone about to disturb that happy peace purchased with the price of so much blood and no stone left unstirred to throw us into a second and a third and may be into more confusions and greater than the former and that by some of our Elders too as I have said and Princes of the Assembly Nay our religious brethren of Scotland too must be set on foot again by them to make their Covenant a stalking-horse for Rebellion and to renew a war in all probability more cruentous and dangerous than the former But our most Renowned second Moses being born upon the wings of that Providence which never failed him made a most happy and quick dispatch of that work putting an end to all those Kirk enchantments both here and there for the present and I hope for ever And yet after all this that by the gracious providence of God and his Highnesses great care and prudence all means of making head and imbodying themselves again was taken from them I should be infinite to tell how often those of that leven have shewed their venemous teeth against his Highnesse his happy and most godly designs to disturb him again and our peace Nay some of those that have had the greatest share in his Highnesse his Successes
immediately following tells us That the Lord repented him of the evil which he thought to do unto his people And when the Lord was angerly resolved at another time utterly to extirpate the people for their incessant rebellions Moses made such another though something longer yet no lesse effectual prayer to the Lord for them and the Lord as if he had been able to deny his Moses nothing or as if with reverence be it spoken good Moses his word had been a Law unto him he presently replied I have pardoned them according to thy word nay how often has the Lord desired Moses to let him alone as if he had been struggling with him and tyr'd with the importunity of his prayer It would make another Book of Numbers to recount the particular Deliverances which that disobedient people had from the Divine wrath how often from being consumed by fire and eaten up by fiery Serpents and the like by our Moses his most powerful and importunate prayers as also their many miraculous Victories over their enemies all of which were obtained more by his prayers than their forces as particularly in the defeat of the Amalekites who were visibly more conquered by the holding up of his hands than by their dextrous managery of armes our Moses his blessings upon and prayers for them being of more force against the enemy and gave them more deadly blows than all their Cuttleaxes and warlike Engins The Parallel By so much as has been shewed in our Ascent of our Moses his happy power in prayer I doubt not but it does plainly appear how great a preservation it was to that perverse people to have a Prince and Captain over them that had so familiar an addresse unto God and I hope it will never more be called in question by any knowing Christian whether that Divine gift of prayer be a qualification equal to the dignity or requisite to the profession of a Prince though I know some of our Modern Politicks have impiously gone about to dispute that too whom for shame I shall forbear to name though I 'le be bold to give the World the ungodly words of one of the Principal of them Non suadeo Principi stupenda in fanis latitatione neglectis iis quorum cura eum maxime solicitum tenere debet omne otium conterere aut sanctuli nomen gestusve affectare bonus animus gratissimus Deo cultus est optimè orat qui officio gnaviter functus patriae incolumitatem procur averit unde tot hominum salus dependet c. Now not to trouble you with a literal translation for I hold the words not worth it he tells us That he would not have a Prince addicted to too much Devotion nor to affect to be a little Saint he sayes his prayers best quoth he that does his businesse happiliest c. It is in my opinion a very pitiful vain and a false presumption that this Gentleman makes and never indeed can be brought into question by any discreet or sober Christian whether a Prince should be so addicted to Devotion as to intend no other businesse at all that were a madnesse in any private person much more then must it be in any man that is concerned in the publick for besides the inconsistency of such a Devotion with every mans particular vocation which God has commanded likewise to be followed it is altogether in its own self unacceptable to God Otherwise we should enter into Religion as if we were to be lifted upon a rack to be tortured and I say besides it is an injury to the Lord himself to think there can be no true piety or devotion in the World if our bodies be not torne in pieces and our spirits quite beaten down And therefore Gilbertus a great Doctor writing upon that sentence of Paul to the Crinthians Glorificate portate Deum in Corpore vestro Glorifie and bear God in your bodies makes this most elegant and remarkable observation You must bear Jesus Christ not drag him Portari vult Christus non trahi So he proceeds Non est foenum Christus sed flos campi fasciculus mirrhae inter ubera sponsae c. Now he plainly drags him who makes himself surcharged with him and who indiscreetly afflicts himself in the service that he rendereth to the Divine Majesty not considering that Jesus Christ is the flower of the field or the poesie of mirrh between the breasts of the Spouse and not a load of hay to be drawn under which we must needs groan like a wheel ill-greased This was so foolish a superstition and so old a one that the Philosopher himself a Pagan could not but find fault with when he said Superstitio amandos timet quos colit violat It is a very fond superstition indeed saith this wise Pagan and raised by simple people onely which through a grosse errour fears what it should love by vertue and very scarcely can have any knowledge of or approach to God but by violating his Clemency a thing most hateful to him through a false presumption of his severity They must be very silly souls indeed and have very little or no feeling of the Divinity that can apprehend God whom we know to be infinitely merciful to be as terrible as a Minos or a Radamanthus mentioned in poetical Fables who were alwayes represented in those fictions to be most spiteful deities to come and pry into all humane actions to number all mens steps and taking pleasure to prepare punishments for them were wont to raise themselves Trophies upon poor mens ruines It would be a very pretty piece of Christianity one would think now to be preached That devotion and all labours in Religion should be undertaken by us without any relaxation perpetual disturbances undergone by Christians without any repose and miseries without any remedy or comfort at all Sure this must be thought the extreme of all extremes and yet our Modern Politicks will suppose so sottish a devotion as this that they may the better lay their foundation of a wretched incuriousnesse in Religion and prophane neglect of that Divine duty But I must not make it my businesse now to enter the lists formally with that sort of people who we know are accustomed upon all occasions to throw dirt in the very face of the Deity it self for I have another way to go at present and so will hasten to our Parallel For my part I am fully satisfied and so I hope will be every discreet and understanding Christian that the frequent exercise of prayer is as necessary to a Prince Governour or Statesman for the well management of all affairs as it is for an animal to breath The spirit of the best man we know is no otherwise than as a Sun-Dial which is of no use at all but when the Sun reflects upon it Nor can any Prince or Statesman in like manner expect that his understanding should receive any true light or
resting upon them they continued to prophesie in the Camp and he was solicited to forbid them Then Moses said to him that would have had it forbidden Envyest thou for my sake would God that all the Lords people were Prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them So it plainly appears that our great Patriarch and Prophet Moses was absolutely in his own judgement inclined to favour a liberty of Prophesying and that his judgement too was seconded by Divine approbation for what he then spoke was from the very mouth and dictate of the Spirit of God himself The Parallel Thus we see what Philosophers assure us is very true that Omne bonum est sui diffusivum All good is diffusive of it self nothing indeed is so proper to its nature as to be communicable much more then must the Spirit of all goodnesse be so that is this Spirit of God himself the Holy Spirit of prophesie What else made our great and gracious Patriarch so willing to part with some of his spirit as the Text tells us he did to the seventy that he set round about the Tabernacle nor onely so but to endeavour and desire as we have seen in the Ascent That all Gods people were Prophets too and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them O words worthy to be written in Letters of Gold with a Pen of Diamond And was not this the very sense and true Prophetick Spirit of our second Moses too Has he not alwayes endeavoured to impart that spirit of his to and improve it in the hearts of all his people that were capable of it Has he not alwayes incouraged the free use and exercise of it throughout these Nations whilst some cruel greedy envious and exterminating spirits were not onely striving in private but enacting in publick to make a monopoly of this holy Spirit and engrosse it to themselves Nor onely so but went about to extirpate and root out all those that desired the free use and exercise of it O Antichristain Tyrany But this sufficiently argued that theirs was not the true spirit of prophesie neither of nor from the Lord at all for that no spirit whatsoever can have a true union with God that has not a commixture of charity is evident by the drift of the whole Chapter of that Epistle to the Corinthians cited in the last Parallel From whence then must this spirit of bitternesse amongst men proceed is it from the more brutal part of man An ancient Father in an elegant gradation of his tells us no for Homo homini Lupus A man is a Wolf to a man that will not reach it for Saevis inter se convenit No beast so savage that will prey upon his own kinde Is it from any devilishnesse that may possesse humane nature no Homo homini daemon will not reach it for those wicked spirits do agree well enough within themselves for our Saviour himself testifies of their union when he sayes That if their house were divided it could not stand From whence then can this spirit of bitternesse amongst men proceed even from men themselves Homo homini homo That alone can reach this malice for nothing is so mercilesse an enemy to man as man himself No creature in the earth besides Canibal-men will prey upon their own speices nor can any but barbarous Christians think that the God of all mercy delights in humane sacrifices like those devilish deities of old and still in America that will be propitiated by no other means From whence then must this spirit of bitternesse amongst Christians proceed is it from any principle of faith or primitive practise surely no for the first children of the Christian Church bore neither rod nor stick in their hands wherewithal to plant faith in the hearts of men How comes it to passe then that we see some sort of people have publisht a Religion all bristled over with swords and pikes all sooted with the smoke of musket and canon all sprinkled over and besmear'd with the blood of Christians Must now the ancient Armes of our Christian forefathers which were prayers and tears be laid aside and none but killing weapons taken up no Schooles to decide controversies between Christians but bloody Campanias nor way to save the souls of men but by destroying their bodies Did God refuse to have his Temple built by David though a man after his own heart because onely his hands were bloody and can he now be contented to have the very morter that is to bind up the stones and ciment the walls of his Church be tempered with blood and her breaches made up with skulls and carkases Will he now suffer the stones of his house to be all polisht with such stroakes as are smitings of Brethren who would not endure in that of Solomons building so much as the noise of hammer ax or iron or brasse toole From whence then can proceed this spirit of bitternesse amongst brethren that the red Dragon should begin again to play Rex and that Whore prepare to dye her Scarlet anew and the pale Horse of imprisonment and exile threaten a range about the streets till his late most Serene Highnesse was pleased to oppose himself and all his power against those cruel and as I said before Antichristian designs From whence I say could arise this root of bitternesse between Brethren from nothing but a meer Machiavillian trick too a pretence forsooth of conformity or uniformity in the Church which has been and is undoubtedly the greatest cheat that ever the Devil invented to make men run a mading in Religion and to embroile Christendom in direful wars perpetual confusions and most bloody ruins The witchcraft of that Jezebel it was that so long troubled this our Israel and that our great Jehu as well as second Moses so furiously marcht against and thanks be to God has pretty well dissolved her inchantments Her painted face he has now likewise discovered in its pure naturals to all the World and pulled off the vizard of all pretenses whatsoever for let the ends of these conformity-mongers be never so plausible to ciment the State forsooth against all division we find it has been throughout all Europe the onely mother and nurse of all disturbances whatsoever in matters of Religion and the greatest occasion of civil bloodshed that ever was in the World for there can be no War so passionate as the War of conscience All these horrid inconveniences and mischiefs his Highnesse's great Mosaick prudence most timely lookt into and prevented amongst us How often have we seen the furious Furnace heating by several parties so could expect no lesse than a fiery-trial But he would neither suffer King nor his Court though he was the pretended head of that pitiful Body nor yet Bishops Arch-Deacons Deans Chancellors and Officials with their long-tailed c. Nor yet any Superintendent with his Classes and pretended Directories to impose any
liked it when this Government came first to be proposed to me That it put Us off that Hereditary way well looking that as God had declared what GOVERNMENT he had delivered over to the Jews and placed it upon such persons as had been instrumental for the Conduct and Deliverance of his People And considering that promise in Isaiah That God would give Rulers as at the first and Judges as at the beginning I did not know but that God might begin and though at present with a most unworthy Person yet as to the future it might be after this manner and I thought this might usher it in I am speaking as to my Judgement against making it Hereditary to have men chosen for their Love to God and to Truth and Justice and not to have it Hereditary for as it is in Ecclesiastes Who knoweth whether he may beget a Fool or Wise honest or not what ever they be must come in upon that account because the Government is made a Patrimony Thus we see how his most Serene Highness has put it clearly out of question that an ordinary fair Election of a Prince is much better like to prove than any casual hereditary succession much more then must an extraordinary and Divine Election as ours has been be more acceptable to God and man and prove to be more prosperous to the People But most especially when the whole World is satisfied in the Divine endowments of the Person Elected as we have been all in the behalf of this most gracious Prince our present Lord Protector whom his Mosaical Highnesse has been pleased to nominate and bequeath to us for his Successor and of whom we can conclude no otherwise than what the Spirit of God has done concerning Joshua That he is full of the Spirit of Wisdom for our second Moses has laid his happy hands upon him so the whole Nation shall hearken unto him and he shall do as the Lord commanded our second Moses as we shall see more amply made out in the following Ascents and Parallels The second Transcendental Ascent MOses was permitted and commanded by God to nominate one for his Successor that had a very near relation to him his own houshold Servant his Minister or Menial Attendant in his Family for so was Joshua as we find in several places of holy Scripture as first in the Book of Numbers And Joshua the son of Nun the servant of Moses one of his young men answered and said c. Then It came to passe that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun Moses Minister saying c. The Parallel We do not finde in any part of Holy Writ that the great Patriarch Moses had any son capable of this great Charge to succeed him in the Government of Gods people There is indeed mention of the Circumcision of one but never any thing more spoken of him So it is to be presumed that either he had none living or at least as we said before not capable of so great a Charge God Almighty in the mean time brings this high favour and prerogative as near to him as possibly might be next to the nomination of a son which as it seems by humane collection then could not be In the mean time it may be worth our while to sit and consider the Transcendency of Divine Favour and Priviledge that our great Protector and second Moses had in this particular above his Prototype the first whilst he has been as we have seen permitted and directed by God to nominate his own son nay his Eldest son to succeed him in the Soveraign Charge the other being commanded to choose but his Menial Servant and Minister and that was a Divine favour too Herein I say our second Moses has out stript his pattern and our Parallel here must over-ballance the Ascent it self For so much as a son and an Eldest son ought to be above a Servant in the respect and reputation of any Father of a Family so much more of favour and indulgency extraordinary found our glorious Protector and second Moses from the hands of God than that great Patriarch himself his first dear Favourite the former Moses did O stupendious transcendencies of Divine love O happy Priviledges of a Prince and Prerogatives unexpressible O Soveraigne Favours of Heaven undeniable What man living is there now upon the face of the Earth that can dispute whether it be not a most sublime instance of the Almighties affections to any Fathers it being granted which I hope will not be denied that he is the Soveraign Mover and Architect of our lives and fortunes when he is pleased to propagate their greatnesse and glories to their children it being doubtlesse the greatest temporal dispensation that men of honour can be capable of upon Earth to have a flourishing Posterity given them by God which may make them eternally to live in the memory of men by those most lively images of their vertues It has been we know observed by the vertuous in all Ages that those Princes and great Persons that have lived any way sordidly or viciously fatting themselves with the blood and sweat of the poor or have establisht any Tyrannies in the World have neither been fruitful nor fortunate in their Posterites and as Nature has ever shewed it self to be scanty in the propagation of beasts of prey as Wolves and other creatures designed onely for spoil and no other use which would otherwise soon bring the earth into desolation So Almighty God by a secret oeconomy of his Divine Providence permitteth not the Princes or Potentates who have made themselves disturbers of the Publick peace and infringers of Laws both Divine and Humane whereof they ought to be Protectors should make the brutishnesse of their savage souls to survive them in their Posterities Now not to go far from home for an example nor yet much distant from the present Age I shall produce for an instance of this great truth a late Prince of our own that was Henry the Eighth who whilst he lived made all Laws his slaves and his passions his Masters as unquestionable a Tyrant as ever breathed who left three children that all successively sate in the Throne after him yet none of them had the power to propagate any issue to perpetuate him nor yet so much as to erect a Tomb for him and he can to this day boast of no other Monument to record his memory to the World but the same which he left behind him who did make his ambitious brag of the burning of Diana's Temple and which is most to our present purpose though hinted before again to be noted after his death as if the Lord would explicate his own indignation and with his dreadful hand had written upon the walls of his Palace Mane Thekel Pharez as his Divine Judgement against him and all his posterity all his then hopeful and very glorious stem and branches were soon withered away or cut
the place which but some few hours before he despaired of and resolved to rise from before it We find likewise in Roman Story that Calphurnia wife to the adopted father of Julius Caesar gave him timely notice of a dream of hers concerning him which he despising and going fearlesse to the Senate-house found her dream to sort to a woful effect But his wise Successour Augustus who was to be Revenger of his blood upon the Conspirators made better use of anothers dream that was Antonius his Physitian advising him though he was sick yet he should not fail to be present in the Battle which was the next day to be given by Brutus and Cassius and by no means to stay in his Tent which he would have done had not Antonius used his most pressing perswasions to the contrary which was the saying of his life for the enemy won the Tents and would have undoubtedly destroyed him had they found him there So by this means he won the day and the world together and became the sole peaceable Monarch of the Roman Empire that under his Reign our Prince of Peace and Glorious Redeemer should be born as he was Now God forbid that we should think the Almighty Providence lesse solicitous over the persons of Christian Princes and their pious proceedings no he has abundantly shewed that no Mother or Nurse had so much tender affection and care over their sucklings as his goodnesse has shewed it self careful in their pre-cautions and admonitions of dangers and most frequent conservations which all Christian Histories are full of But indeed we need go no further than to the Histories of the holy War written by Paulus Aemilius and Gulielmus Tyrius how often he has vouchsafed missions of Angels and also holy Dreams and Visions to direct those pious Princes Nay the Lord kept the very birds of the air in pay under Godfry of Bouillon for who can be but astonisht to hear it told how when he besieged Jerusalem the Sultan having taught pigeons to carry messages dispatched one of them with a Letter which she bore under her wings to give some advice to the besieged but Providence would have it that a Hawk seizing on her just over the Christian Army took her and made her bring her information to the Christians touching the enemies design But as for Dreams the three last Harry 's of France are undoubtedly the greatest examples who all were divinely admonisht of their approaching danger of death by their Queens and other Princes of their blood but they with over-confidence would run on heedlesse and headlong to their own destruction Nay the middlemost of the three besides the admonitions he receiv'd from the Dreams of others saw himself in a Dream how all his Royal ornaments viz. his Linnen Vesture Sandalls Dalmatian Robe Mantle of Azure Sattin the great and lesser Crowns Scepter and hand of Justice Sword and Guilt-Spurs all bloody and fouled with peoples feet and that he himself was very angry with the Sexton of St. Denis about it and though he wanted not good counsel according to the danger of his Dream to stand securely upon his guard and make use of the fair pre-monition of heaven yet would forsooth out of his gallantry expose his person to the malice of those who kept a fatal blow in store for him I cannot stand here to dispute with the learned Volaterranus whether all men in general going to Bed not cloy'd with bad affections nor any superfluities of meat or drink but being throughout vertuously and healthfully disposed their souls in sleeping may not foresee things to come for I must hasten to accomplish our Parallel and it is indeed as much as concerns our present purpose to say that we are very certainly sure of so much as by some instances has been shewed already and might be by many more that the Dreams of Kings and Princes Prophets Generals of Armies Magistrates and all Publick Persons that hold any Eminent Degree either in Church or State are commonly prophetical and monitory of things to come or to be done This I say by grace especial and Divine not Natural as may more plainly appear in this our precious Parallel And indeed to say that our most gracious Lord had not an equal care of his late sacred Highnesse our second Moses as he had of the former of an Alexander a Julius or Augustus Caesar who was to be as glorious in his Victories and a greater Instrument of Divine wonders than any except this his happy Parallel would be an infidelity greater as theirs that oppugne Divine Providence it self I dare not yet boldly affirm that our second Moses in his retirement met with any flaming Bush and the Lord speaking to him out of it or that he has had any such personal discourses with the Almighty if his late Highnesse has had any of those they were onely then known as I believe to the Lord and to his own sacred self But this I have most certainly been informed that his Highnesse had many Revelations and Divine Dreams to the same purpose admonishing him what he should do and foretelling him what he should arrive at which that I may not prejudice by my rude relation I hold better to passe by with silence till some that his most Serene Highnesse was pleased to make knowing of them shall do the World the favour as to make the discovery But so much is notorious to all these Nations that as our second Moses was retired like the former and near the backside of the Desert too but still near the Mountain of God the Lord found him out there and called him for who can hide what the Lord will bring to light Sed quis te Cyllarus aut Arion posset cripere quem sequebatur imperium as was most excellently said by Eumenius What Horse or Dolphin is so swift that can steal from mortal eyes a person whom the Providence of God pursueth with Empire in hand A burning and a speaking Bush must call the first Moses from his retirement to deliver and conduct his brethren out of bondage and no lesse I am sure than three Kingdoms all in a flame with the united cries of so many millions and in them too the voice of God for so is vox populi could move our incomparable late Protector to ingulph himself in the Ocean of Publick imployment We have seen that extraordinary Persons must have extraordinary Calls and our second Moses his first Call from his dear divine solitude was a publick Parliamentary Call and there too when he was most violently perswaded to appear how long was it before he could induce his most setled and serene Soul to be capable of the sollicitudes of State but for divers years sate in Parliament and Committees upon all the Common-wealths occasions as the Birds of Baruch upon white thorns and as the Gyants of holy Job before spoken of which mourn'd under the waters and this we shall see more plainly appear
idlenesse was a meer moth of Noble mindes and iron it self sure if it had the reason to discourse understanding to chuse its one commodity would cry out to us that it better loved to be kept in constant use and exercise than to lie rusting and consuming in the corner of a horse Wherefore we see that God does not ordinarily entertain great souls in the pleasures of an idle life but in the rigid exercises of vertue for we know that there are many most excellent fishes that will die in standing waters and are delighted in the most bubbling sluces and turbulent seas and rivers and the best birds will alwayes be abroad in the most troubled air Our glorious Eagle therefore was alwayes seeking out for action and never to be found lazing or beating of his wings in the lower Regiment of the air but soaring alwayes aloft amongst the furies of Lightnings Tempests and Whirle-winds playing with Thunder-claps and ever having his eye where the day was to break His painful vigilancies were so great in Court as well as Camp City and Field that we may say of him as was once of the Great Constantine Tam assiduus in actione sua constitit ut vel labore refici ac reparari videretur He was so conversant in action that it seemed to be nothing but his continual recreation Gaudent siquidem saith the same Author divina perpetuo motu jugi agitatione se vegetat aeternitas His constitution was so strenuous that it must needs have been akin to those celestial bodies that refresh themselves with their own motion and perpetual agitation So true it is what Seneca tells us Contempta res est home nisi supra humana se erexit A man is a very pitiful vile and contemptible thing unlesse he be ambitious to raise himself above all the ordinary courses of the World but that saying is to be verified in no sort of men so much as the Noble Souldier whose honour depending upon the most superlative degree of vertue must seek out and pursue wayes beyond all equality and such a person is sure of attaining his end for Polyaenus has assured him that Voluntas ad laborem propensa cuncta vincere superare consuevit A propense will or a soul prone to labour has been ever wont to conquer and overcome all difficulties And Appian gives the like encouragement when he proclaims Nihil tam arduum quod industria animi fortitudine superari non possit Nothing so high or hard but is to be compassed and overcome by industry and a willing valiant mind What these and all the Philosophers Poets Orators or Historians have said or could prescribe his late most Serene Highnesse has alwayes fully understood and most perfectly practised as no one of the Army that has served under him but must bear him witnesse how present he would be upon all Guards and Watches as if he were ubiquitary how incessant in all his Actions and Labours as if he were impassible how alwayes taking order for and moving about his body as if he were immortal Indeed this laborious vertue which is no small one in an officer his Highnesse was more Master of than any that I ever heard or read of If any Work were to be raised his hand must be in it first if any duty to be done his president must be still the foremost so by rare skill mingling the Captain and the common Souldier together he did both intend the diligence of others from whom he might though not so effectually have exacted it and ease the burden of their labour by making himself a companion and partaker of their pains and travel But of this and his other great pieces of Conduct we shall say more in our next Ascent where we shall represent him a most compleat Captain-General The thirteenth Ascent WE have found our Moses a most valiant and vertuous Souldier and a most vigilant skilful and careful Officer but that he might be all and yet not fit to command in Cheif and a shepherd is not very likely to make a great General fitter he must be sure in the opinion of most to lead his flocks than to conduct an Army of men Yes we shall find him a most glorious and accomplisht Captain-General otherwise he would never have been selected sure by the Divine Wisdom to conduct and command so great and troublesome a body as that of the most mutinous perverse and rebellious people in the World and to carry them in his bosom as a Nurse beareth her sucking child or if there could be yet any danger of doubt in any of this I would refer that doubting person to the whole current of holy Scripture where he shall find by the exact discipline observed in his Army the ordering of his several Marchings and Encampings the Election of his ablest Officers as well as Souldiers and the fighting of his Battels his extraordinary and incomparable skill in Military Conduct The Parallel Good Souldiers get honour to their Captains and Officers and all together being gallant men must of necessity make a glorious General It highly concerns him therefore who is to Command in Cheif to let his prime and principal care be placed in the Election of his inferiour officers as our first and second Moses have so exemplarily done for this is the first step of all Military Conduct wherein I am sure he has out-done all the Generals that ever were before him unlesse this to which he is so parallel Is it not plain that his Highnesse found such horrid abuses in all the former Armies that he was faine to new modell this to bring about those his great and mighty workes that he has done And what sort of Officers were they that he chose and instruments that his inspired wisdom pickt out and fitted for his purpose even such as his Souldiers were before spoken of men of clean hands and purer hearts that were to fight the Lords Battels He rejected ever those gay gawdy outsides of the world those petit spirits of the Abyss before spoken of sprung from the race of Cadmus I mean those silly fencing fellows swaggering swashbucklers and Hectors aforesaid who appear like Comets of fire and blood to bring murder pestilence and poison into houses who as I said make the Pillars of Heaven to tremble with their blasphemies have nothing else of souldiers in them but to pill and ravage in their Quarters like Harpies and feed themselves with humane blood who are ever readier to shew their valour for a cold countenance an extravagant word or a Caprichio of spirit than they would either be for God their Country or the whole World A most wretched and abominable sort of men that never think of or look up to Heaven but to blaspheme it indeed more like Centaurs than men and have their hearts all spotted over like the skin of a Panther No these were the pitiful things as we have said
pious late Protector and second Moses could never induce himself to court any thing that had not Heaven and the Stars to give him for a Reward So I hope we may at length happily conclude that under the heart of this our second as well as we have seen under that of our first Moses there remained alwayes prepared a Temple of true Piety and our Parallel in this particular likewise to be accomplisht The two and twentieth Ascent MOses was not onely accomplisht in all points of Piety that were expedient for so great a Prince and Patriarch but he was advanced by God to the highest dignity and perfection of a Prophet and he was endowed with so extraordinary a spirit of Prophesie that never any man before or since him had the like He was that really which the old Poets in their fabulous superstitions fancied of their god Janus with his double face to look both before and behind him The Great Moses was an inspired Prophet à parte Post as well as à parte Ante how could he otherwise have writ the History of the Creation of the World the Deluge and of all those things that happened before his time of which there could be no Record either in writing or secure Tradition at that time so his whole Book of Genesis must of necessity be extracted out of the Chronicles of Heaven onely That he prophesied of futurities of the highest concernment his other four Books give sufficient evidence and to all this the Lord Almighty himself hath set to the seal of his own approbation first that he was faithful in all his house and that with him he would speak mouth to mouth even apparently and not in dark speeches and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold c. Then the Lord is pleased expressely to declare concerning him That there arose not a Prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face Over and above all this when prophesying of the Mystery of Mysteries a futurity then of the highest concernment to mankind the incarnation of the Word the Spirit of God is pleased to resemble Moses to the Messiah that was to come saying The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee of thy Brethren like unto me unto him ye shall hearken which words are verbatim quoted for the proof of that Word incarnate both by the Proto-Apostle Peter and the Proto-Martyr Stephen and sure in reason some great similitude of God he must needs contract who had so free frequent and full conversation with the Deity face to face The Parallel That Moses was a great yea the greatest Prophet of the old Law I believe is made abundantly manifest by our Divine Ascent and that our most pious gracious and glorious late Lord Protector and second Moses was a great Prophet too according to his proportion I hope will be made out by the processe of our precious Parallel But now because the name of Prophet here seems to sound something equivocal and is really capable of very various acceptions it may be worth our pains to dilate a little upon and to fix it before we proceed to make up our happy Parallel Indeed there has been an infinite number of persons which have past under the reputation of Prophets that in very truth were no better than Wizards all or Wiseakers in our Country Language that is in plain English mad-men fools or knaves but all such phanatical Prophets as those we shall at present passe by as impertinent to our purpose and not at all worthy of any share in this discourse and enter into a cursory debate onely concerning those who have more justifiable pretensions according to the most genuin signification of the word to that highest and most sacred humane dignity and three sorts of men there are that do and may lay just challenge and claim to that most excellent Title according to all the judgement of Antiquity as well as the present Age. And the first are those inspired witty Prophets or Prophets of phansie which go under the common name of Poets The second sort are those inspired prudent Prophets or Prophets of Affairs received now under the stile of Statesmen And the third sort are those inspired Divine Prophets or Prophets of Religion who though they have the onely true legal and proper right to that Divine honour yet the others are not quite to be cast out or rashly disinherited of that title The first we may call Aery or Poetical Prophets the second more Earthy and Political the third all Fiery and Celestial For this first sort of Prophets our Moses was amongst them too as is sufficiently to be seen in the many Hymnes that he composed for the glory of his God and the comfort of his people as also the many Poetical expressions phrases and prosopopiea's that he useth rendring God as it were coming towards us in his glory and Majesty This first sort of Pretenders then have indeed a pretty fair claim right and title to be taken into this supereminent Degree and that may first here appear from the very name that all good people in all Ages ever gave to the skilful in that heavenly mystery which was alwayes Vates or Propheta as much as Diviner Forseer or Prophet Then none will deny but that they had the onely right in times of Gentilisme being the onely Pagan Prophets and Conservators of Religion in those dayes Nay both Clemens Alexandrinus and Eusebius themselves confesse that the ancient Poets did receive the mysteries of their Religion from the Jews and preserved them still as sacred though folding of them up in some Fables As first it is plain that the History of Deucaleon was taken out of that of Noe and so kept up the remembrance still of that dismal Deluge The stupendious Story of the retrogradation and going back of the Sun in the time of Ezekiah was continued in that famous fiction of Phaeton They that would behold the building of that proud Tower of Babel which was undertaken by Nimrod and his Associates to climb up as it were by ladders into Heaven and scale its battlements to see what was done there shall find it though under certain alegories amply described in Homer under the fabulous phansie of the Gyants Oetus and Ephialtes sons to Iphimedia where he describes their height and wonderfull vast strength and bignesse and how they went about to lay the mountain Ossa upon that of Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa all which Story Ovid recites likewise with divers others in his Metamorphosis hiding under seeming Fables many of the most Divine and considerable truths but most particularly he recites the manner of the Beginning and Creation of the World just as our Moses did and must of necessity have received it from him Nay Homer Hesiod and Linus must undoubtedly have borrowed from his Books all that they