throne You know what opinion I had of greatness in an age and condition wherein rightfully I might cherish it I voluntarily forsook it preferring repose before all the crowns of the world Now that I am in the haven would you recall me into the storm Daughter leave such words I have seen too many miseries speak to me of my grave not of scepters Alexandra replied that although in his own person he not at all pretended to life nor to the fortune of the living he notwithstanding ought not to neglect his bloud but permit justice to be done and meddle with nothing but by writing a word or two to Malichus the Lieutenant of Arabia who would aid him with money and forces as much as should be needfull In conclusion he was bound to save both his daughter and grand-child from the ravening teeth of this Tyger She deafened his ears with so many reasons that in the end he yielded and treateth with Malichus who should safe conduct him with a good troup of horse The letters are put into the hands of one called Dositheus a cousin of Joseph whom Herod lately had caused to be massacred to be with all safety delivered But the perfidious wretch betraying the bloud of his allye and the fortune of Hircanus in stead of carrying the letter faithfully to Malichus delivered it into Herod's hands who commandeth to require an answer and bring it to him thereby to discover the practice thereof and understand the Arabian's purpose He faileth not to promise Hircanus all assistance inviting him with much earnestness to be with him as soon as possible Herod having discovered the whole plot sends for Hircanus and asked if he received not some letters from Malichus Yes answered he but they contain nothing but complement The other demanded Had you not some present with those letters He confesseth that verily Malichus had presented him with four horses to draw his coach Thereupon without any other form of process the Tyrant made this venerable old man to be murdered embrewing the hoary hairs in the bloud of him who had been a sosterer a father a protectour of him yea all Then after he had imprisoned Alexandra and Mariamne in a strong fort under the custody of Joseph his treasurer and Sohemus the Iturean he goes directly to Rhodes leaving the absolute charge of his Kingdom to his brother Pheroras The history telleth not the sorrow of the Queen Alâ—xandra and Mariamne priâ—onâ—rs and her mother for the death of Hircanus It is probable all was a long time concealed as from such who were held in a straight prison and had conversation with no man Alexandra gnawed her bridle of impatience Mariamne resisted the dull languishments of this captivity with a generous constancy and endeavoured to sweeten the discontents of her mother All her comfort was in God For how could she speak or think of any thing else My God said she you steep all creatures for me in wormwood If I heretofore have loved them and sucked some sweetness from the world for an ounce of honey you have given me a pound of gall From the time I began to bear a Diadem on my head I have felt nothing but thorns and Royalty hath been nothing to me but a specious slavery My God how long shall it continue Shall we not behold that bright day to shine over our heads which is perpetually in its Eastern rising which may drie up our tears and breaking the bands of our captivity place us in Abraham's bosom the liberty of the elect These poor Ladies stayed there perpetually pent up between horrid walls beholding nothing but rocks and savage wildernesses which to their sorrow seemed to resound compassion They knew not in what state the world was much less the affairs of Court. At every season the Goaler came to visit them they expected nothing but news of their death The Guard in the beginning shewed themselves severe in their countenances and reserved in their words all was full of horrour affrightment and melancholy silence In the end for there is no Mariamne conferreth with Sohemus iron but will be softened in the fire Sohemus visiting them more oft according to the commission he had felt fiery arrows flie from the eyes of Mariamne so sharp that they transfixed his heart with compassion judging it a hard thing to hold a Queen in captivity who was able to enthral all hearts with so many supereminent excellencies as Heaven had conferred upon her He began to shew her a pleasing countenance and Mariamne seeing him one day in a good humour took confidence thereby to know some news of the other world Sohemus said this Ladie to him you now behold us in a most wofull state and much unworthy our qualities but the day perhaps will come the storm may blow over Mischief and misery knock not always at one and the same gate You know who I am and that in obliging me you engage not an unable creature much less an ungratefull Tell us in a word to what end doth King Herod hold us here and of what condition are the affairs of the times Sohemus at these words felt his heart assaulted with most violent counterbuffs on the one side he represented to himself the avengement of Herod freshly exemplified in Joseph on the other side he was so touched with compassion of those words this noble Ladie spake to him that the ice of his heart dissolved and began already to evaporate through his eyes Mariamne finding him waver spake boldly Sohemus it is a word which can no whit prejudice you being stored up in deep silence and which may much advantage us for the security of our affairs Sohemus supposing either that Herod never would return again in the quality of a King or that he being under the protection of Mariamne might easily work his reconciliation openeth his heart unto her and saith Madame I put my secrets and life into your hands yea I desire to die before ever I undertake to execute this harbarous command which Herod hath imposed upon me in case the affairs he negotiateth at this time with Caesar succeed not according to his wish And what is it saith Mariamne to him Madame I tremble onely to think of it It is a matter which concerneth your life My friend replieth the good Queen it is his ordinary guise he enjoyned his uncle Joseph as much upon his first voyage But is there no means to deliver us from this Sohemus answereth that Pheroras brother of Herod had charge of the Kingdom and he being a man extreamly distrustfull ever had his eye upon sudden surprizals Well then said this poor Princess we must die on what side soever he turn me I behold nothing but the image of death with which I am already grown acquainted Sohemus comforted her with his best endeavour But she then shutting up her ears from all earthly comfort opened her heart to celestial contemplations daily more and more purifying her soul
of the law and yield your souls up for the testament of your Ancestours Children will you not answer what the holy Machabees did by the lips of their elder brother Let us die in virtue for our brethren and not defile our glory by any crime which may be objected against us Let war be proclaimed against Libertines and blasphemers who will still persevere with deliberate malice in their impiety Let these infernal mouthes be stopped and condemned to an eternal silence Let the standard of the Cross be adored by all Nations and the enemies of Jesus dissolved as wax melted on the flames of burning coals as smoke scattered in the air Let a chast and sincere worship of God flourish every where and sacrifices of praise mount to Heaven to obtain benedictions on earth But you SIR who most near approch to the Kings person having given so many testimonies of your prudence your courage and fidelity seem to speak unto him with the same tongue which holdeth ears enchained by the charms of your eloquence and say what France pronounceth 7. GReat King for whom our Altars daily smoke An Apostrophe of France to the King in Sacrifices and for whom our lips cease not to send forth thanksgivings of prosperitie to Heaven The monsters are not all as yet vanquished Behold the last head of Hydra which God hath reserved to this triumphant sword which the Cross guideth valour animateth justice moderateth and the stars crown Needs must impietie be crushed under those feet which have already trampled on so many Dragons and be fettered with an hundred iron chains under the Altars we daily charge with our vows When Libra the constellation of your birth ariseth the Ram falleth It is not time O Monarch of flower-de-luces that appearing on the throne of justice with Ballance in hand all sparkling with the rays of glorie which environ you after so many battel 's concluded by your victories you humble the horns of this Ram of insolent impiety which dares so confidently oppose both by words and actions the Religion which crown you the spirit which possesseth you and the power which directeth you Alas Alas SIR To what purpose were it to have walked on the smoking ruins of so many rebellious Cities What would it avail to have thrown down in one Rochel so many surly rocks with the help of so great so faithfull and happy counsel and opening one gate there at your enterance to have shut up a thousand against factions and civil wars What contentment could your Majesty have by wiping away the sweats on the Alps you had gotten on the Ocean and to have gathered palms perpetually verdant for you as well in the frozen ice of winter as the scorching beats of summer if you must again behold at your return that Religion you so often defended trodden under the feet of impiety wounded by slanderous tongues outraged by blasphemies and contaminated by insolent spirits who know not God but to dishonour him It now at this time presenteth it self to you with sighs in the heart and tears in the eyes It sheweth unto you the robe which Clodovaeus Charlemaigne and S. Lewis your Predecessours gave you with so much splendour now torn in pieces with such violence it imploreth your assistance it expecteth your power it breaths an air much the more sweet in the confidence conceived of your zeal and courage I call to witness that great Angel which hath led you by the hand to so many conquests and triumphs making you dreadfull to your enemies helpfull to your Allies awfull to your subjects and amiable to all the world it is not here where he will limit your actions and fix the columns of your memorie We still hope quickly to see the day which shall drie up the tears of the poor shall ease their burdens shall sweeten their pains shall â—our oyl on their yokes And from whom should we expect all this but from a Prince so pious so benign We promise our selves to see a Clergie which shall speedily put it self into so good a way under your favour entirely purified from the dregs of simonie ignorance and the liberty of evil actions Who can give us this happiness but a King who hath under his heart a Temple for true piety We sigh for that great day that day which shall for ever wash away the stains of bloud impressed on the foreheads of French Nobilitie which shall dissipate disorders shall stop the current of so many dissolutions and what can assure us of it but the certainty of your Edicts We most earnestly desire to behold an absolute regularitie in justice and in all Officers that a golden Age may shine again which hath so often been varnished through the corruption of souls set at sale And who shall do it but a King that from his most innocent years so much hath cherished the title of Just that be for it contemned the name of a Conquerour which his valour presented him and of Most Sacred which the veneration of his virtues afforded him Impiety vanquished beareth the keys of all these hopes nor shall we have any thing more to fear or desire when that shall be throughly suppressed throughout all the parts of the Kingdom Dear delight of Heaven is it not for this God drew you the last year from the gates of a sepulcher and restored you to life to render us all to our selves Alas Great God what a stroke of thunder was the news of this maladie What a terrour to all Cities What astonishment in all Orders What a wound in the heart of the whole Kingdom Your poor France remembered the 27. day of September made sacred by your royal birth It considered this nativitie had done to your state what the infusion of the soul into a bodie and saw you almost taken hence at the same time that your Majestie entered It beheld all that greatness and those comforts readie to be shut up within your tomb The Queens drenched in their deep sorrow could not speak but by their tears and sobs Your good Officers dissolved in lamentations at the foot of your bed which was become at the Altars of grief All humane hopes were cut off by the violence of the maladie Nothing was expected but the fatal blow which all the world deplored and which no man could divert But who knoweth not SIR God permitted it to let us see your virtues by their bright reflection The lustre of beautifull paintings must be suffered a little to mortifie before we can judge of them We could not sufficiently know your Majestie in the bright splendours of fortune and such good success of arms Needs must we have a character from God of men afflicted and a mark of the Cross of Jesus to consummate so excellent qualities And what heart was not then seized with admiration when we saw a young King so great so flourishing so awfull to look death in the face with a confident eye to expect it with
he should sway his Scepter or his life Cardan who was imployed no less than one hundred hours to make his Horoscope did easily observe in the stars the incommodities of his body and disasters of his person but he could no way attain to the period of his life which is of the secrets reserved in the knowledge and in the method of God All England was extreamly corrupted in her faith under the Regency of this Seimer and the Ladies of the Court were enveloped in the errours of the time He found none but the Lady Marie daughter to Henry the Eight and Katharine which continued in the Religion of their Grand-Fathers and though she was tempted and sollicited on all sides yet she would not suffer her self to be surprized with a new Faith but with a vigorous force did roar against all the torrents of Opinions and the overflowing disorders which reigned in that age It was for this that God did cause her to mount on the Throne of his own Tower and gave her the grace to be both the restorer of Religion and the State by the assistance of this Cardinal As soon as Edward was dead not without suspition Mary the lawfull heir is troubled and Jane is chosen Queen by Faction of poison Dudley Duke of Northumherland who was then most mighty in power and had newly married his Son to the Lady Jane issued from the bloud Royall conceived himself strong enough to begin the Regency of England the better afterwards to usurp the Crown He caused his Daughter-in-Law to be proclaimed Queen of England and seized on the Tower of London and gave order for the apprehending of Queen Mary But the generous Princess being advertised of the attempt did take horse in the time of night and secured her self in a place of strength and conjured all her good Servants to assemble themselves to defend her person and her right It is to be admired that persevering in the true Religion contrary to that of the great ones of the Kingdom at the same time when she conceived her self abandonned and her cause most deplorable that she should behold the principal of the Nobility and Gentry and Commonalty to fall down before her and to offer her their obedience and their Arms to take the possession of the Crown She marched immediately to London in the middle of her Army apparelled in a Gown of Velvet of a violet colour and mounted on a white horse She entered into the Citie with great applauses of her Subjects and surprized the Duke and caused him to deliver his Daughter in Law into her hands It was a spectacle worthy observation to consider the Inconstancy of these worldly affairs and to look on that person who but yesterday promised to himself to force the whole Kingdom under the power of his Laws to tremble now at the fear of death pronounced by his Judges who condemned him to be drawn upon a Hurdle to be hanged drawn and quartered The Queen sent him Catholick Divines to convert him to whom he gave ear and abjuring Heresie he imbraced the Catholick Religion which was the occasion that the Queen did moderate the Sentence of the Execution and was contented that his head onely should be cut off with his sons who was the husband of Jane This miserable Lady from a high Tower where she was prisoner beheld the body of her dear husband without a head at the sight whereof she fell down into a swoun and being a little recovered she melted into tears and did fetch from her heart so many and so deep sighs that they seemed to be able not onely to mollifie the hearts of men but to cleave the Rocks asunder There was a long Deliberation concerning her The Execution of the Lady Jane Fact because the Queen had an inclination to pardon her observing her to be both young fair knowing and of a delicate temper and one who had not offended but by the violent suggestions of her Father-in-law and of her Husband who had put the Crown upon her head But the Judges did remonstrate that it was of a most dangerous consequence to suffer that person to continue alive who had carried the Title of a Sovereign and that one day it might give a new fire to the enterprizes of the Remainder of her Faction On these Considerations the Sentence of Death was pronounced which she received with a Constancy admirable in her Sex and age A Doctour was sent unto her to reduce her to the Catholick Religion which at the first she refused alledging That she had too little time to think on an Affair of that importance Which being reported to the Queen she deferred the Execution for certain dayes to instruct her at more leisure so that she was gained to God and continued to the the last hour of her life in such tranquility of mind that a little before she came out of prison to go to her Execution she wrote divers Sentences in Greek Latine and English on the contempt of Death and when on the Scaffold it was represented to her that she should die by the sword which according to the custom of that Countrey is accounted a nobler kind of Execution than to die by the Axe she said That she would die by that Axe which was yet discoloured with her husbands bloud and couragiously she tendered her neck to the Hang-man drawing tears from her self and the hearts from all those that did behold her O most unfortunate Ambition that hast made so young a Princess a sacrifice of Death who for the excellency of her spirit might have been another Minerva or at least the tenth of the Muses Behold the strange Revolutions which did prepare the way to Cardinal Pool for the performance of those high Designs which God had committed to his Conduct Queen Marie did incontinently make void all the Sentences which had been pronounced against him and called him back into England to which place in a short time he came as if he had been carried on the shoulders of all honest men The Pope made him his Legate and gave him full power to ordain and execute all things which he should conceive necessary for the glory of God and the establishment of the true Religion He travelled to this Work with incomparable wisdom Pool travels to the Reducement of England to the ancient Faith and with a zeal invincible He well perceived that to restore Religion by arms was to undertake a most laborious if not an infinite work which would open all the veins in England and draw drie as well their purses as their bloud and cover the Kingdom with the calamities of civil wars which would continue for many Ages He resolved to put his good Counsels in execution with gentleness which others propounded to perform with all violence And in the first place he had recourse to Prayers The course he held to Mortifications to Vows and to Devotions which he performed in secret and which
Queens Princesses and Ladies who in the course of the world have flourished in much sanctity beginning from the Court of David and then concluding in our Age to the end the multitude of examples may place the Sun in full splendour before their eyes who take the greatness of their condition for pretext of their remisness For the present because Reason should carry the torch before History I will satisfie my self with publishing this Christian Institution which treateth of the MOTIVES and OBSTACLES men of Qualitie have to Perfection with the practise of virtues most suitable to their condition the whole attended by two books of Histories that very amply contain the good and evil of Courts I consecrate this small labour at the feet of the Church among so many worthy Writers which make her wholly radiant in gold not unlike that Bird which as the Kings of Asia contributed great treasure to the building of a Temple she having no other wealth went thither to present her Feathers It remaineth SIRS that you make the COURT holy and you shall sanctifie the world your examples may do much therein when you shall advance the standard of piety a plentifull Train will follow Behold how all those that have framed their fortune upon vice have built on abysses they have sowed wind as saith the Prophet to reap tempests their hopes are crackt as clouds swoln with the vapours of the earth and their felicity like a golden statue hanged in the Air on a rotten cable hath melted upon their head Never any man hath had good fortune in impiety He that looseth his conscience hath nothing else to gain nor loose Nothing to gain for that nothing remaineth for him but unhappiness and nothing to loose because he hath lost himself So many crimes and impieties daily float on the face of this Age that you must stretch out your arms against iniquity If you have your hearts fixed where God planted them you shall place the confidence of well doing in the life of the most timorous and shame of ill doing upon the brow of the most impudent Your hands shall always be in a readiness to overthrow vice and your feet shall not walk but on Palms of victory The Church extendeth her hands out to you and imploreth the aid of your authoritie and good examples You are in the house of God as Joseph in that of the Lord of Egypt The Master hath put all into your hands defile not the honour of his bed since with his finger he hath imprinted the lustre of his glory on your fronts If you be among men as Mountains over valleys be Mountains of perfume of which Solomon speaketh in the Canticles and not those hills of the Prophet Osee which have nothing but snares and gins to serve for stumbling-blocks to those whom they should enlighten If you be elevated in the world as cliffs above the Sea be watch-towers not rocks If you be Stars be Suns to be the Chariots of light and life and not comets to pour malignity on the four quarters of the world Be ye assured that how much the more you are united to God so much the greater shall you be the more conformable you are to the will of the Sovereign Master so much shall you behold the earth in contempt under your feet and Heaven in Crowns over your heads The DESIGN and ORDER of the Book TO speak properly we have but two great Books the Heaven and the Bible which never perish The others have an Air and a certain continuance amongst men and at the last arrive unto their period But the most part of those who at this day do write do come into the world as drops of rain into the Sea of which the Ocean takes no notice neither of their coming in or their going out In so great a croud of Writers I have put forth my first Tome of the HOLY COURT as under that consideration esteeming that I brought but a little dew into a great River and having spoken some Truths by the way I should bury my self from my birth in the Tomb of so many Books which is excusable by the law of necessity and honourable by the multitude and the qualities of those that write Howsoever I see that GOD who governeth our lives and our pens hath been pleased that this Work should be had in some respect and having exceeded the merit of the Authour it should also exceed his hope producing some fruit and withal some comfort to my travels which I cannot now judge to be ill employed This hath again put my pen into my hand to follow the continuation of it to which so many personages of Honour have brought so many reasons to induce me that having but little leisure to undertake this second Work I have had the less boldness to refuse it Those who complain that my pen hath not swiftly enough followed their desires are to remember that though Slowness be a mother a little to be blamed yet her Children are not deformed The bringing forth of good Books ought not to resemble that of Birds concerning which an Ancient writeth that they come out of the Belly of their mother before they are born we ought to give them form and a long time to foster them in the Mind before they appear in publick For in precipitation it is a poor attempt to be able onely to hope for nothing but to erre hastily to repent at leisure I do more fear the Reproches of precipitation than deliberation for in this mortal condition wherein we live our most perfect Actions are but heavy assays and the most gross proofs of perfection This may be said without any diminution to the merit of some celestial Spirits who make promptitude and goodness to march together with an equal pace it being not expedient that those who cannot follow them should glory in the infirmities contrary to so great abilities For me I content my self with the approvement and admiration of other mens works reserving nothing but industry for my own And though for all my pains I cannot of my self find in my own work satisfaction enough to content the Readers whom I acknowledge so favourable to me yet so it is that I find I have brought something which bears some correspondence with their desires This I can assure them that the contraction of the precepts which I have drawn into so few words being able to stretch them into Volumes are not without their profit and that Histories are made most choice of in that nature where besides their majesty which lays forth the most specious affairs of the Estate of Empires since the beginning of their Christianism they have a certain sweetness with them which sound spirits will find to be so much advanced above all Fables and Romances as the pleasures of Truth do surpass all illusions of Sorcerers You shall here perpetually observe a great Theater of the Divine Providence where God knows I have no other Design than
her it was a thing in the judgement of all those who would truly weigh it very far from her thought since she had always more feared King Herods love than hatred Lastly that she made no reckoning of life wherein she had suffered too much sorrow yea much less of the Court from whence she never received any contentment and that if they would oppress her by false testimonies it was easie to gain victory of one who made no resistance more easie to take the Diadem from her head and her head from her shoulders but most hard to bereave her of the reputation of a Princess of honour which she had of her Ancestours and would carry to her tomb The poor creature was like a silly sheep in the Lions throat or among the paws of many wolves They proceeded to sentence all tended to baseness It was supposed the King was willing to be rid of her and that sufficed Never was any one to be found who had the courage to plead the cause of this innocent Queen or in any sort to mollifie the passion of Herod All those consciences were oppressed either with crimes or cowardise from whence it came to pass these false Judges did more for the Tyrant than he desired for they all resolved upon death He himself was surprized with horrour though he were wholly a bloudy man and commandeth she should be kept in a prison of the Palace with delay of execution thinking perhaps by that means to make her more plyant to his passion But the enraged Salome who had raised this storm not willing to do any business to halves approched to the King her brother and shewed him such birds were not to be kept in cages that his life and crown thereby ran into hazard that already all tended to a revolt and that if he delayed this execution he hastened the ruin of himself and his whole state Whereupon Herod let fall this word Let her be taken away And behold instantly an officer dispatched to the good Queen who brought her the news of the last hour of her life saluting her with a low reverence and saying Madame Invincible patience and very admirable the King commandeth you must presently die She without any disturbance said Let us then go my friend it cannot be so soon for King Herod but it will be as late for me and speaking this word she set forward and went directly to the place of execution without change of colour having a sweet aspect which drew tears from the whole world To crown her patience as she was ready to receive the stroke of death Alexandra her own mother the companion of her imprisonment the Guardian of her thoughts who had ever been one heart with her betraying bloud nature and all piety by a mischievous trick of state thereby avoiding the suspition of Herod as consenting to her daughters humour came to charge her with most bloudy injuries Barbarous act of Alexandra and it was a great chance she had not taken this poor Ladie by the hair to dreg her up and down the pavement saying to her with the foam of boyling choller That she was wicked and extreamly proud and well deserved to die in that manner by shewing herself refractory to so good a husband Behold verily the greatest indignity which could happen in such an accident There is no better honey nor worse sting than that of bees no better amities nor greater injuries than of allies The patient Mariamne onely made her this answer Mother let my soul pass in peace which already is upon my lips and trouble not the repose of my death and with a generous silence shutting her mouth up to further replies Heroick silence and opening her heart to God the onely witness of her innocency most unworthily used stretched out her neck to the executioner to seal with her bloud the last testimonies of her patience Josephus speaketh not expresly enough of the punishment she doubtless being executed in the manner at that time ordinary which was to behead offenders Most pitifull death of that quality This day-break which bare stil in the rays thereof joy refreshment to the poor afflicted souls through the horrible confusions of tyranny was then extinct in her bloud Yea the eyes of all the standers by bathed in tears beheld her in her eclipse when that fore-head full of Royal Majesty was seen couragiously to affront approaching death which maketh the most confident to tremble and when this alabaster neck was stretched out and bowed under the shining steel to be separated from this beauteous body a shivering horrour crept into the What horrour bones of all the beholders and there was no rock so hard which afforded not the water of tears before she poured out her bloud The head was separated from the body and the body from the soul But the soul never shall be divided from God raising to death such a trophey of patience The limbs lay all cold and stiff extended on the place and the voice of innocent bloud which already penetrated the clouds to ask vengeance of God was instantly heard as you shall understand onely I beseech you stay to behold the Pourtraict and Elogie of the good Queen by us here inserted MARIAMNE REGINA MARIAMNE REGINA MACHABAEORUM STIRPE INCLYTA HERODIS PESSIMI OMNIUM VIRI UXOR OPTIMA FORMA CORPORIS SUPRA CAETERAS EXIMIAANIMI ETIAM VIRTUTIBUS MAJOR INTEGERRIMAE PUDICITIAE ET INELUCTABILIS PATIENTIAE FOEMINA INIQUISSIMIS CALUMNIIS OPPRESSA MARITI GLADIO REGIAS CERVICES DEDIT ANNO ANTE CHRISTI NATALEM VIGESSIMO OCTAVO Upon the Picture of MARIAMNE FOrtune a heavenly beauty did engage To a fell husband who through boundless rage Practiz'd fierce tyranny and foul debate As well in love as in his Royal state She liv'd on gall upon the sword she dy'd Soon in the Lamb's bloud to be purifi'd The Cross so to prevent in pains pertake With patient God mishaps thrice-happy make Which after death immortalize her story And from her body take less bloud than glory Thus from the world this holy Queen remov'd Breaths forth affections to her God belov'd And her great soul to heav'n in silence rears Purg'd in her flame washed with her tears Who bravely so both lives and leaveth breath Makes of a dying life a living death THe disloyal husband who so inhumanely had treated a Ladie worthy of all honour as soon as she rendered up her soul as if he had been strucken by some invisible dart cried out with grief and said he had done an act worthy the wrath of Fury of Herod after the death of Mariamne God then dreadfully howling he ceaselesly invoked the memory and name of the poor dead creature to whom he by his sorrows could not again restore what had been taken from her by the sword of the executioner Wheresoever he went he still was accompanyed with the image of his crime still tormented and assailed with black furies
circumstances of his crime Behold you not saith he a bruitish stupiditie to conspire against your father having as yet the bloud of your brothers before your eyes and all the assurances of the scepter in your hands Needs must you perpetrate a parricide to make your self possessour of a Crown which was acquired for you by so solemn and authentical a Testament Look you after nothing but the bloud of your father to set a seal upon it yea of a father whose life is so dear to all bonest men and of nature so indulgent to love his children that have never so little merit An ingratitude able to make Heaven blush and earth tremble under your feet An ingratitude worthy that all the elements should conspire to punish it This man ceased not to discharge against him words of fire with a masculine eloquence and the miserable Antipater prostrated himself on the ground and prayed God to do a miracle in favour of him to make manifest his innocency since he found himself so oppressed by the malice of men It is wonder saith the Historian that those who during their life have believed no God would yet acknowledge him at their death This man lived as if there were neither Heaven God nor Angels and now seeing himself in the horrours of death prayed the Divinity to excuse his crime Varus saith unto him My friend expect not extraordinarie signs from Heaven in your favour but if you have any good reasons boldly produce them The King your father desireth nothing more than your justification Thereupon he stood confounded like a lost man Varus taking the poison that had been before represented to the Councel caused it to be given to an offender already condemned who instantly died and all the assembly arose as it is said with manifest condemnation of Antipater His father esteeming him absolutely convicted required of him his complices he onely named Antiphilus who brought the poison saying this wicked man was cause of all his unhappiness It was a great chance Herod at that time had not caused the sentence of death to be executed upon him but according to his ordinary proceeding he resolveth to inform Caesar of all that had passed and to send him the whole process formally drawn to order all at his pleasure In the mean time Antipater is streightly imprisoned expecting hourly as a miserable victim the stroke of death Herod at that time was about seventy years of age Horrible state of Herod in his lattâ—r days and already felt through imbecillity of body the approach of the last hour It was a very hard morsel for him to digest Never man better loved this present life Very freely would he have forsaken his part of the next world eternally to enjoy this though he in effect was therein most unhappy Towards the end of his days he grew so harsh so wayward then so collerick and furious that his houshold servants knew not how to come about him they handled him in his Palace as an old Lion chained with the fetters of an incurable malady He perswaded himself he was hated of all the world and was therein no whit deceived as having given too great occasion thereof The people almost forgot their duty with impatience and could no longer endure him As soon as his sickness was bruited abroad Judas The golden Eagle thrown down and Matthias the principal Doctours of the Jewish Law who had the youth at command perswaded the most valiant of their sect to undergo a bold adventure which was that Herod having re-edified and adorned the Temple of Jerusalem and as he had always shewed himself for the accommodation of his own estate to be an Idolater of Caesars fortune to set upon the principal gate the Romane Eagle all glittering in gold This much offended the sight of the Jews who could not endure any should place portraictures of men or beasts or any other figures in their Temples so much they abhorred such monsters which their fathers had seen adored in Aegypt Behold why this Judas and Matthias who were the chief thinking the sickness of Herod would help them began earnestly to exhort the most valiant of the young men who every day frequented their houses to take in hand the quarrel of God according to the spirit of their Ancestours and to beat down this abomination which they had fixed upon their Temple That the peril was not now so great Herod having enough to do to wrastle with his own pain but if it should happen they lost their lives to die in so glorious an act was to be buried in the midst of palms and triumphs There needed no more to encourage the youth Behold a troup of the most adventurous came forth about the midst of the day armed with axes and hatchets who climbed to the top of the Temple and hewed in pieces the Eagles in the sight of the whole world Judas and Matthias being there present and serving for trumpets in this exploit The noise hereof instantly came to the Palace and the Captain of the Guard ran thither with the most resolute souldiers He much feared some further plot and that this defacing of the Eagle might prove a preamble to some greater sedition But at the first as he began to charge the people retired which the more encouraged him for pursuit Fourty young men of those who had done the feat were taken in the place Judas and Matthias who accompanied them deeming it a thing unworthy to flie away and that at the least they ought to follow them in peril whom they had brought into danger Being presented to Herod and demanded from whence this boldness proceeded they freely answered Their plot had been fully agreed upon among themselves and if it were to do again they would be in readiness to put it in execution in regard they were more bound to Moses than Herod Herod amazed at this resolution and fearing greater commotions caused them to be secretly conveyed to Jerico whither himself after though crazy was carried and assembling the principal spake to them out of his litter making a long narration of the good offices he had done in favour of the whole Nation of the Temple he had built for them of the ornaments with which he had enriched it adding he had done in few years what their Asmonean Kings could not perform in six-score And for recompence of his piety at noon day they had hewed down with notable boldness a holy gift which he had raised in the Temple wherein God was more interessed than himself for which he required a reason These now fearing any further to incense him declined the danger and put him upon their companions leaving them to the pleasure of the King At that time the High-priesthood is taken from Matthias and another Matthias who was held to have been the authour of the sedition burned alive that night with his companions at which time an eclipse of the moon was seen that made this spectacle
much more dreadfull Herod in few days after he had tried in vain and worn out all humane remedies was reduced to that horrible state of maladie which is rightly described Fearful maladie of Herod by Josephus and Eusebius of Caesarea God would have him in this life tast in long draughts the cup of his justice wasting that caytife carkass with lingering torments Behold the cause why he was touched with a manifest wound from Heaven and assaulted with a furious squadron of remediless dolours He who from his young days had been enflamed with a desperate ambition felt at his death a fire which devoured his marrow and entrails with a secret and subtile flame He who all his life time had an enraged hunger to heap up treasures even to the opening of David's and Solomon's sepulchers to extract booty from thence was afflicted with dog-like hunger both horrible and shamefull which caused him day and night to crie out for meat yet never was satiated He who had made so many voyages and gone so many paces to make himself great saw then his feet swoln with bad and phlegmatick humours He who in his life had caused so many tortures to be inflicted felt outragious and intollerable collicks which racked him He who had taken life away from so many men was seized with an Asthma which hindered his breathing He who esteemed prudence and humane policy for the sinews of his estate felt in his body cramps and convulsions of sinews which gave him many shakes He who shed the bloud of the poor Mariamne who slew her sons to make the kids as saith the Scripture boyl in the milk of their damme briefly he who wallowed in the bloud of about fourteen thousand innocents of purpose to involve therein the Saviour of the world died in his own bloud afflicted with a cruel fluxe He who abused his body with prodidigious luxuries had dying his secret parts filled with lice and vermine with an ignominious Priapism a maladie not to be named Shall we then say the Divine Providence of God hath no eyes to be wakefull for the punishment of the wicked This desperate wretch in stead of adoring the justice of God at his death and kissing the rod which had chastised him dreameth of new slaughters publisheth an Edict by which he sendeth for the principal of the Jews of every Province to Jerico whither he caused himself to be carried and shutting them up in a Theater calleth his sister Salome and her husband Alexas and then speaketh to them in these words It troubleth me not to die and tender the tribute Notorious crueltie which so many Kings have paid before me but I am afflicted that my death shall not be lamented as I desire if you assist not Know then for this purpose I have sent for all the Nobilitie of Judea whom you have in your hands As soon as my eyes are closed put them all to the sword and let not my death be divulged till first the fortune of these same people be known to their friends by this means I hope to fill Judea with tears and sighs which shall make my soul leave my bodie with the more contentment The wretch in saying this with many scalding tears besought his sister by all that which she esteemed in the world most glorious most sacred as if he had asked Paradise of her and that necessarily she must promise it to content him at that instant with oath though afterward it were never executed In this act alone he well declared he had the spirit of a ravening wolf in the skin of a man and that the thirst of humane bloud was become natural to him As he was framing this notable Testament letters Death of Antipater were brought him from Rome written by Caesar's command which certified him that Aâ—me a Jewish Ladie of Livia's train the wife of Augustus had been condemned for sinister intelligence with Antipater and for that cause punished with death as concerning his son he wholly left him to his disposition This man in the very point of death still sucked vengeance with marvellous sweetness Vpon this news he taketh courage again and calls for an apple and a knife busying himself in the paring of it But in these employments as his pains redoubled he waxed weary of life which he so much had loved and at that instant one of his Grand-children named Achiabus who stood near to the bed perceiving he roled his eyes full of rage and made a shew as if he would have stabbed himself with the knife he had in his hand which much affrighted the young Prince held back his arm as well as he could and began to make a terrible out-crie as if his Grand-father had yielded up the Ghost whereupon the whole Palace was in an uproar Antipater who from the prison heard all this tumult supposing Herod was at the last cast his feet itched in his fetters and did not as yet despair of the Crown offering as one would say mountains of gold to his Keeper to set him at liberty But O the judgement of his God! his Goaler in stead of giving ear to all his rewards went directly to his Father and relateth to him how Antipater used all possible means to get out of prison and take possession of the Kingdom Herod houling and knocking his head How saith he will the parricide murther me in my bed I have yet life enough left to take away his Then lifting himself up and leaning on his pillow he calleth one of his Guard Go you immediately saith he to the prison and kill this parricide and let him be buried in Hircanus castle without funeral pomp This was incontinently executed and such was the end of this wicked wretch who had disturbed earth and hell to place himself in his fathers Throne according as certain Mathematicians had foretold him Few days after his death Herod having declared Archelaus for Successour of the Kingdom contrary to his first will which was disposed in the behalf of Antipater after he had accommodated his two other sons with such shares as seemed good to him and given End of a Politician most disastrous large legacies to Augustus Caesar yielded up his wicked soul in rage and despair in the LXX year of his age and XXXVII of his reign A Prince saith Josephus who all his life desired to be Master of his laws and a slave of his passions and who notwithstanding all his great felicities ought to be reputed the most miserable on the earth Behold in what tearms this Authour a great statist speaketh it to teach humane policie there is no prudence wisdom counsel greatness nor happines where God is not present For laying aside eternal torments of the other life wherewith this barbarous man dying in punishments was encompassed I assure my self there is neither peasant nor handi-crafts man if he be not mad would give one day of his life for the thirty seven years of Herods reign which
the person of the good Patriarch Flavianus by express letters What doth not a playstered sanctity for the subversion of the simple What doth not a bad servant when once he possesseth the easie nature of his Master Pulcheria who some years before had seen the heresie of Nestorius to arise and had partly stifled it when she was in the manage of affairs by her excellent direction never was deceived in the choice of a side but most constantly tied herself to the doctrine Great prudence to stick to Altars and the true Church of the See Apostolick That gave a particular benediction to all her enterprizes and made her sway in the peoples hearts as she caused true religion to flourish on Altars All the Eastern and Western Clergie esteemed her and lent their assistance to maintain her authority which was no little support All those who have sought to strike these Powers have therein lost their endeavours And very well Aristobulus King of the Jews one of the greatest States-men who had governed that Kingdom being upon his death-bed freely confessed the foulest fault he had ever committed in matter of policie was to have opposed the Pharisees who then had lawfull authority over affairs of Religion and gave his wife Alexandra counsel to practise and hold good intelligence with them by all possible means The very same which he advised out of reason of State Pulcheria practised by consideration of piety and ever held herself firm on the rock of S. Peter as it it is said the mothers of pearl fix themselves to rocks during the tempest If the wicked Eutyches had appeared in her time she had consumed his heresie as the ice of one night under the rays of the Sun but it was then the kingdom of darkness Chrysaphius perpetually besieged the ears and heart of the Emperour Theodosius disguising all affairs to him according to the sway of his own passion He drew along with him the good Eudoxia who became too curiously intelligent in matter of religion and lost herself to follow rather the aims of her pregnant wit than the tracks of holy humility more agreeing to her sex Pulcheria who understood all this goodly business was much perplexed to see her brother and sister in law after they had shaken off the yoke of her good precepts to fall into a little apostacie and not being able to get access to talk with them she made the apple of her weeping eyes speak to God in continual prayers She wrote to Rome sometime to the Emperour Valentinian her cousin sometime to Eudoxia the Younger his wife daughter of our Eudoxia sometime to Pope Leo himself solliciting them for the reduction of these poor wandering sheep she every where disposed squadrons of religious persons to force God with the arms of prayers All the powers of Heaven and earth conspired at that time The battery was strong enough to move a heart that never yet was obdurate In the end Theodosius awakened as out of a long Theodosius awakened sleep opened his eyes and with horrour saw the precipice whereinto he was ready to fall He detesteth the disastrous Eutyches and leaveth him to the censures of the Church Pulcheria four years after her banishment returned in triumph to the Court with the general applause of all sorts Her first care was to seize on the person of Chrysaphius and by form of justice to send him into the other world that he might no longer trouble this wherein she shewed that living otherwise as a bee in the delights of virginity she had not so much honey but withal a sting The poor Eudoxia well perceived her Mistress was returned and her heart bled to behold this change She no longer remembred the condition of Athenais and she who before would not be but under the feet of Pulcheria could not endure her now by her sides It is a strange thing how the ayr of the Court doth as it were necessarily breath ambition These two pure souls which seemed in the beginning as an Ancient hath said able to abide together in the eye of a needle when they were in concord found the whole world in their discord too little for their separation Eudoxia tyred with the many revolutions of Court returneth to Jerusalem as a Pilgrim with a great oath never to set foot again in Constantinople and verily she had her tomb in Palestine as we shall see anon Theodorus in the collection of his history insinuateth to us that she never undertook this voyage till the death of the Emperour Theodosius her husband which happened shortly after You would have said that his good sister was come of purpose to dispose his soul for this passage He was about fifty years His death of age and had already ruled fourty three years with a most happy reign had not this apple of discord been which outragiously disturbed the peace of his Court and steeped his life in many acerbities That which is read most probable of his death is that riding a hunting at full speed and falling from his horse he hurt the reins of his back so that of necessity he must be carried back to his Palace in a litter at which time he plainly saw his last hour approched and signed his innocent life with the seal of a death truly Christian A Prince in all things else of a most sincere life religious learned mild courteous patient in whom nothing could be blamed but the over-much facility of his nature which many times made his heart of wax to be moulded in the hands of those who were nearest unto him and this was in a manner the cause of his ruin But it was well for him he betook himself firmly to the good counsels of his sister who dearly loved his good and aimed at nothing but the glory and repose of his Empire We have here inserted his Pour-traicture and Elogie IMP. F. AVGVST THEODOSIVS MINOR FLAV. THEODOSIUS JUNIOR ARCADII ET EUDOXIAE FILIUS OCTO ANNORUM PUER ORIENTALE CEPIT IMPERIUM ET PER ANNOS QUADRAGINTA TRES PULCHERIAE SORORIS AUSPICIIS ARMIS ET LEGIBUS FAELL CITER ADMINISTRAVIT PRINCEPS DE MELIORI NOTA CHRISTIANUS VITAE INTEGERRIMAE DIVINIS LECTIONIBUS INTENTUS PATIENTIA ET CLEMENTIA SUPRA CAETEROS CLARUS OBIIT CONSTANTINOPOLI ANNO CHRISTI CDLII AETATIS XLIX Upon the picture of THEODOSIUS A Scepter free from pride a goodness sweet A life not feign'd but where true graces meet As Zeal he for sole favour did advance So Heav'n his shield became the Cross his lance HE had no male issue by his wife Eudoxia and Marriage of Pulcheria and new government the Empire might not fall to the distaff which seemed to invite these two Princesses who till this day had swayed in government to sound the retreat But Pulcheria was become very necessary for the state and as yet had not lost the appetite of rule Theodosius having cast his eyes by the advise of his Councel upon Martianus
the deluge which after it had born the whole world in the bowels thereof amongst so many storms and fatal convulsions of universal nature reposed on the mountains of Armenia So S. Monica when she so long time had carried in her entrails and heart a spirit as great as this universe among so many tears and dolours so soon as she was delivered of this painful burden went to take her rest on the mountains of Sion A little before her death beholding Heaven from a high window which opened on a garden she seemed there already to mark out her lodging so much she witnessed resentment and extasie towards her son Augustine who at that time made this admirable colloquie with her couched by him afterward in his Confessions The conclusion was that she said unto him My son I have now no more obligations to the world you have discharged all the promises of Heaven to me and I have consummated all the hopes I might have on earth seeing you a Catholick and which is more resolved to perfection of the life you have embraced When it shall please God to call me I am like fruit ripe and falling that holdeth on nothing Soon after she betook her to her bed being surprized with a feaver which she presently felt to be the messenger of her last hour Behold the cause why she being fortified with arms and assistances necessary for this combat took leave of Augustine and his brother there present affectionately entreating them to remember her soul at the Altar onely meditating on Heaven and neglecting the thought of the land of Africa which she had seemed at other times to desire for the sepulcher of her body And as her other son said unto her Madame my mother we as yet are not there we hope to close your eyes in our own countrey and burie you in the tomb of your husband this holy woman seeing this man would still tie her to the present life and divert her from cogitation of death which to her was most sweet beheld him with a severe eye and then turning her self towards her son Augustine Hearken saith she what he saith as if we absent from Africa must needs be further from God She often cast her dying eyes towards this son who was her precious conquest and who in her sickness served her with most particular assistances affirming that Augustine had ever been a good son towards her and though he had cost her many sorrows he never had forgotten the respect due to a mother Verily there was a great sympathie between the soul of such a mother and such a son which was infinitely augmented after this happy conversion and therefore we must give to nature that which belongs to it The child Adeodatus seeing his Grand-mother in the last agony as possessing the affections of his father threw out pitifull out-cries in which he could not be pacified And S. Augustine who endeavoured to comfort them all upon so happy a death withheld his tears for a time by violence but needs must he in the end give passage to plaints so reasonable The Saint died as a Phenix among Palms and they having rendered the last duties to her pursued the way begun directly for Africk Behold how the conversion of S. Augustine passed and though many cooperated therein yet next unto God S. Ambrose hath ever been reputed the principal Agent and for that cause his great disciple said of him (b) (b) (b) Aug. contra Julianum Pelagianum l. 1. c. 6. Excellens Dei dispensator quâ—m veneror ut patrem in Christo enim Jesu per Evangelium ipse me genuit eo Christi ministerio lavacrum Regenerationis accepi Ambrose is the excellent steward of the great father of the family whom I reverence as my true father for he hath begotten me in Jesus Christ by the virtue of the Gospel and God hath been pleased to make use of his service to regenerate me by Baptism Whilest stars and elements shall continue it will be an immortal glory to the Bishop Ambrose to have given the Church a S. Augustine of whom Volusianus spake one word worth a thousand (c) (c) (c) Volusian Epist 2. Vir est totius gloriae capax Augustinus In aliis sacerdotibus absque detrimento cultus divini toleratur inscitia at cum ad Antistitem Augustinum venitur Legi deest quicquid ab eo contigerit ignorari Augustine is a man capable of all the glorie of the world There is much difference between him and other Bishops The ignorance of one Church-man alone prejudiceth not Religion but when we come to Bishop Augustine if he be ignorant of any thing it is not he but the law which is defective because this man is as knowing as the law it self The eleventh SECTION The affairs of S. Ambrose with the Empeperours Valentinian the father and Gratian the son LEt us leave the particulars of the life of S. Ambrose to pursue our principal design which is to represent it in the great and couragious actions he enterprized with the Monarchs of the world Let us not behold this Eagle beating his wings in the lower region of the ayr but consider him among lightenings tempests and whirl-winds how he plays with thunder-claps and ever hath his eye where the day breaketh The state of Christianitie stood then in need of a The state of Christendom brave Prelate to establish it in the Court of Great-ones The memory of Jâ—lian the Apostata who endeavoured with all his power to restore Idols was yet very fresh it being not above ten years past since he died and yet lived in the minds of many Pagans of eminent quality who had strong desires to pursue his purpose On the other side the Arians who saw themselves so mightily supported by the Emperour Constans made a great party and incessantly embroyled the affairs of Religion Jovinian a most Catholick Emperour who succeeded Julian passed away as a lightening in a reign of seven moneths After him Valentinian swayed the Empire who had in truth good relishes of Religion but withal a warlick spirit and who to entertain himself in so great a diversitie of humours and sects whereon he saw this Empire to be built much propended to petty accommodations which for some time appeased the evil but took not away the root He made associate of the Empire his brother Valens who being a very good Catholick in the beginning of his reign suffered himself to be deceived by an Arian woman and did afterward exercise black cruelties against the faithfull till such time as defeated by the Goths and wounded in an encounter he was burnt alive by his enemies in a shepherds cottage whereunto he was retired so rendering up his soul in the bloud and flames where with he had filled the Church of God The association of this wicked brother caused much disorder in the affairs of Christendom and often slackened the good resolutions of Valentinian by coldness and
was your enemie you were his but he never yours For hostilitie comes from an usurper and defence from a lawfull Prince You do well to justifie your self upon this attempt but there is not a man will believe your justifications Who sees not you hated his life whose burial you hinder Paulinus addeth that for conclusion he dealt with him as one excommunicate and seriously adviseth him to expiate the bloud he had shed by a sharp penance This liberty of our admirable Prelate amazed all the Councel and Maximus who never thought that a Priest in the heart of his State in the midst of his Legions in the presence of his Court could have the courage to tell him that which he would never endure to hear in his Cabinet commanded him speedily to depart from the Court All those who were friends of the holy man advised him to be watchfull upon the ambushes and treason of Maximus who found himself much galled but he full of confidence in God put himself on the way and wished Valentinian to treat no otherwise with Maximus but as with a covert enemy which did afterward appear most true But Justina the Empress thinking S. Ambrose had been over-violent sent upon a third Embassage Domnin one of her Counsellours who desirous to smooth the affairs with servile sweetness thrust them upon despair of remedie The fourteenth SECTION The persecution of S. Ambrose raised by the Empress Justina WE may well say there is some Furie which bewitcheth the spirits of men in these lamentable innovations of pretended Religions since we behold effects to arise which pass into humane passions not by an ordinary way Scarcely could Justina the Empress freely breath air being as she thought delivered from the sword of Maximus which hung over her head tyed to a silken threed when forthwith she despoiled her self furiously to persecute the authour of her liberty O God what a dangerous beast is the spirit of a woman when it is unfurnished of reason and armed with power It is able to create as many monsters in essence as fantasie can form in painting Momus desired the savage bull should have eyes over his horns and not borns over his eyes but Justina at that time had brazen horns to goar a Prelate having eyes neither above nor beneath to consider whom she struck Authority served as a Sergeant to her passion and the sword of Monarchs was employed to satisfie the desperate humours of a woman surprized with errour and inebriated with vengeance Saint Ambrose like a sun darted rays on her and she as the Atlantes who draw their bowe against this bright star the heart of the world shot back again arrows of obloquie As women well instructed and zealous in matter Herod lib. 4. Solem orientem execrantur of Religion are powerfull to advance the Christian cause so when they once have sucked in any pestilent doctrine they are caprichious to preserve their own chymeraes The mistresses of Solomon after they had caused their beauties to be adored made their idols to be worshipped so Justina when she had gained credit as the mother of the Emperour and Regent in his minority endeavoured to countenance the Arian Sect wherein she was passionate that the sword Sect of Ariant of division might pass through the sides of her own son into the heart of the Empire The Arians had in the Eastern parts been ill intreated under the Empire of Theodosius and many of them were fled to Milan under the conduct of a false Bishop a Scythian by Nation and named Auxentius as their head but who for the hatred the people of Milan bore to this name of Auxentius caused himself to be called Mercurinus He was a crafty and confident man who having insinuated himself into the opinion of the Empress failed not to procure by all possible means the advancement of his Sect and did among other things very impudently demand a Church in the Citie of Milan for the exercise of Arianism Justina who in her own hands held the soul of Justina an Arian demandeth a Church in Milan her son Valentinian as a soft piece of wax gave it such figure as best pleased her and being very cunning there was not any thing so unreasonable which she did not ever colour with some fair pretext to dazle the eyes of a child She declared unto him that the place she possessed near his persō wel deserved to have a Church in Milan wherein she might serve God according to the Religion which she had professed from her younger days and that it was the good of his State peacefully to entertain every one in the Religion he should chose since it was the proceeding of his father Valentinian which she by experience knew had well succeeded with him To this she added the blandishments of a mother which ever have much power over a young spirit so that the Emperour perswaded by this Syren sent to seek S. Ambrose and declared unto him that for the good of his State and peace of his people it was in agitation to accommodate his thrice-honoured mother and those of her Sect with a Church in Milan At this word S. Ambrose roared like a Lion which made it appear he never would yield to the execution of such requests The people of Milan who honoured their Prelate as the lively image of the worlds Saviour when they once perceived that Valentinian had suddenly called him and that some ill affair was in hand they left their houses and came thundering from all parts to the Palace whereat Justina was somewhat astonished fearing there was some plot in it and so instantly commanded the Captain of the Guard to go out and disperse the rude multitude which he did and presenting himself with the most resolute souldiers he found no armed hands to resist him but huge troups of people which stretched out their necks and cried aloud They would die for the defence of their faith and Pastour These out-cries proceeding as from men affrighted terrified the young Emperour and seeing the Captain of his Guards could use no other remedie he besought S. Ambrose to shew himself to the people to mollifie them and promise that for the business now treated which was to allow a Church to the Hereticks never had those conclusions been decreed nor would he ever permit them S. Ambrose appeared and as soon as he began to open his mouth the people were appeased as if they had been charmed with his words whereupon the Empress grew very jealous seeing with the arms of sanctity doctrine and eloquence he predominated over this multitude as the winds over the waves of the sea A while after to lessen the great reputation of S. Ambrose Strange conference pretended by the Empress she determined to oppose her Auxentius against him in a publick reputation and though she in her own conscience wel understood that he in knowledge was much inferiour to S. Ambrose notwithstanding she reputed him impudent
laying aside all humane respects which had hitherto tyed him to Gentilism for considerations of his State he caused a Throne to be prepared in the Palace of Trajan where having sent for the Senate he declared with the eloquence of a Monarch the reasons which had moved him to this alteration of Religion and said SIRS I doubt not but the change of Religion which Notable Oration of Constantine partly drawn out of his acts and Edicts I have made will appear strange to many who blame all that which they cannot understand and will understand nothing but what flatters their presumption All noveltie is odious to those who love the old age of errour Yet I can tell you this is no new Religion which I have imbraced but that which was begun in the purified souls of the golden Age happily finished in our days The first men of the world had verity in bloom we now see the fruit which we may and shall enjoy if we be not ungratefull to our happiness and traiterous to our own conscience Believe me Sirs the world is almost grown out of it's non-age for God hath taken pitie of the ignorance thereof and made it see it was not time any longer to place Dragons and Owls upon Altars nor other Gods accounted as monsters if they would return into the life of men If our Ancestours blinded by mishap have made to be esteemed for Divinities so many criminals for whom our laws do now ordain punishments we are not bound to participate with the crimes of the one nor the errours of the other under pretext of antiquitie I must confess that I from my infancie have had great distrust upon the follies which I saw in the superstition of Gentiles and that which further confirmed me in this opinion was that one day I heard the answer of an Oracle which had long time stood mute and being demanded the cause of this silence answered The Just hindered it from speaking and we found those Just were the Christians who then had power to stop the mouthes of devils Afterward I began to consider those men whom I saw so persecuted and that there was not a corner of the earth that was not ruddie with their bloud yet were they notwithstanding so patient in their persecutions that they had prayers on their lips for those who rent their hearts out of their bodies This then gave me matter of amazement but when I came to think on their Church which flourished among so many storms and encreased under the swords of persecution this seemed to me more than humane yet transported with the torrent of common opinions I still resisted the voice of God which spake in my heart when it opened my eyes and made me once lively apprehend the dreadfull ends of Emperours who had persecuted Christianitie comparing them to the felicitie of my father Constantius of most glorious memorie who had preserved his hands innocent even to death free from any stain of Christian bloud This was sufficiently potent to move a soul which would easily yield to reason but God redoubling his inspirations made me one day behold in the Heavens a prodigie which many saw with me to wit the figure of the Cross composed of most resplendent light which appeared just at the time I was to wage battel against Maxentius I call the living God to witness that I therein read distinctly these words written as with the rays of the Sun IN HOC VINCE And it is a wonder that I deferred still to yield my self up till such time that the Saviour of the world advertised me in a vision to take into my Standards the sign which I had seen in Heaven the day before I instantly obeyed and have seen so prodigious effects succeed in the defeat of Maxentius which you have admired attributing to man that which was a work of the Divinitie I thought then to have discovered what I was but considerations of state which had too much force upon my soul stayed me and have made me walk along hitherto in a life more licentious than I intended I now protest before the face of Heaven and earth that I am a Christian both in heart and profession nor shall any motives ever alter that which I have so constantly resolved on Yet for all this I purpose not to force any man in his Religion leaving for this time belief as free as elements Yet for the charitie I hear towards my good subjects I cannot but wish them as much good as my self Now all my greatest happiness and which I esteem more than my Purple and Diadem is to entertain the knowledge of a living God which hath been revealed to us by his onely Son Jesus Christ the Doctour and Saviour of the world His person is full of miracles his life of wisdom and goodness his doctrine of puritie and if to conquer our pride and expiate our demerits he hath humbled himself to the punishment of the Cross so much therefore the more ought it to be honourable since he hath done for us all that which an incomparable love can do and endured all that which an invinoible patience may suffer I can do no other but love and singularly honour those who are enrolled under his Standard as my brothers in Religion and let it not seem strange to any if heretofore shewing my self very liberal to beautifie and enrich the Temples of Gentilism I now apply my self to build and adorn the Churches I will render what I ow to God and my own conscience nor shall my subjects who are of a Religion different from mine be any way interessed therein desiring to preserve them as persons whom I hope one day to have companions in faith and coheirs in glorie if they adde never so little consent to the lights wherewith the wisdom of God Incarnate hath replenished the world I onely beseech thee O great God on whom all Scepters and Crowns depend since you have united the East and West under my hands you would arrange them under the yoak of your Law which is the knot of Empires and source of felicitie I offer unto you my person mine Arms my Scepter and all mine abilities humbly begging of you to accept my slender service and to give me the assisting wisdom of your Thrones to govern in all honour all justice all peace and amitie the people which you have committed to my charge This Oration was heard by all the world with Admirable change of the world by the Oration and example of the Emperour very great applause in such sort that for the space of two hours the cries of an infinite number were heard who made many acclamations in favour of Christian Religion Fourty times was repeated UNUS DEUS CHRISTIANORUM There is but one God which is the God of the Christians and thirty times was proclaimed LET THOSE WHO DENY CHRIST COME TO NOUGHT and ten times LET THE TEMPLES BE SHUT UP LET THE CHURCHES BE OPENED And fourteen
of pretious things received from the love of subjects The river which glideth along said he though it do no other spoil still worketh out its channel so companies of souldiers which pass through towns and villages though military discipline be there observed fail not to bring thither with them much damage and therefore it was his pleasure the places should be recompenced which had been overcharged For the same reason he appointed fifteen hundred crowns of alms to be delivered to the venerable Bishop S Severinus to distribute them among the peasants which he knew had been vexed with the harbouring of certain warlick companies Verily as it is no smal temerity in particular men who have neither any charge nor knowledge of affairs to argue great men upon tributes and the husbanding of their treasures so would it be a neglect to conceal from them upon occasions the moderation they ought to use herein since it is so exactly recommended by the law of God and published in all histories If a stranger raised from the bottom of barbarism shewed himself so Religious in matters of subsidies towards men whom his arms had newly made tributary Princes and Lords of Christendom have good cause to consider what they ow to a people which is given them as to Fathers and Protectours of the publick There is no doubt but the exorbitancies committed in such like affairs are most important charges of conscience which much clog a soul in the agonies of death and in the dreadful judgement of Almighty God There is also to be seen an Edict of the same Prince where having understood that in the payment of taxes the rich made the heaviest part of the burden to fall upon the shoulders of the meaner and that the undertakers of this business ill behaved themselves therein he detesteth all these abuses as injuries done to his own person and gave full liberty to those who had been wronged to complain to him that such order might be taken as he should judge reasonable This manner of proceeding made him so beloved that other Princes having passed away like dreams of one night he reigned thirty years in a most supereminent degree of respect which those even of the religion contrary to his own bare him The third Maxim given him by Boetius was to make himself most exact in the exercise of justice because it is the basis of thrones and the spirit which animateth all government and he so deeply impressed this in his heart that the desire he had to render every one what was his was changed in him to a most ardent thirst and a continual hunger He selected out the most untainted and uncorrupted Governours he could find and spake these words unto them related by Cassiodorus Use the matters so that Judges of Provinces may be very careful in the observation of laws that Tribunals spare not to thunder out sentences against ill manners that theeves may fear the gates of your Palaces that the a dulterer may tremble before a chast Officer that the forger may feel horrour at the voice of a Herauld and that all crimes may be banished from our territory That no man oppress the poor that persecutours be apprehended and pursued as disturbers of publick repose You shall make a general peace when you have beaten down the authours of mischiefs which are committed Let Cassioder ra◠l. 22 Mihipropria cura dilapsi est postquam generalem coepicogitare custodiam Opto mei◠benè sed quod possit esse commune Captains contain their souldiers in all manner of discipline in such sort that the labourer the merchant the sailer and the artificer may understand arms are not made but for their defence I will not likewise that my nearest allies be pardoned in any case of justice since I have taken the Common-wealth into my charge I have despoiled my self of my proper interests I wish well to mine but in the generality Pursuing the maxims I will recount an admirable passage which he used among others to make his justice remarkable A Roman Lady left widow by Manuscriptum P. Sirmundi Joannes Magnus Laurentius Venetus the death of her husband had lost a son born of this marriage who was secretly stoln from her and in servitude bred up in another Province This child grown up a young man received notice from a good hand that he was of free extraction and son of a Ladie whose name was given him her aboad and all circumstances which caused him to undertake a voyage to Rome with intention to make himself known unto her He came directly to his mother who was much perplexed with certain love-affairs having betrothed her self to a man who often promised her marriage yet never accomplished it This lover then absent and detained by urgent affairs very far from Rome the Ladie had the space of about thirtie days free wherein she kept this young man in her house acknowledging him and particularly avowing him for her son throughly convinced by evident tokens so that then her charitie was so great towards him that she ceased not to weep for joy in the recovery of her loss The thirtie days expired the Lover returned and seeing this guest newly come to her house demandeth of the Lady what man he was and from whence he came She freely answered he was her son He whether moved by jealousie thinking this might be but a colour or that pretēding the marriage of the widow he would not have a charge of children plainly told her if she sent not away this found child from her lodging never should she have any share in his affection The unhappy creature surprized with love to serve his passion renounceth her own entrals and readily banisheth from her house this son over whom she had so many tears The young man seeing himself as between the hammer and the anvil in so great a necessitie of his affairs hasteneth to require justice of the King who most willingly heard him and commanded the Lady should be brought before him to be confronted by him She stoutly denied all the pretensions of this young man saying He was an impostor and ungrateful who not contenting himself to have received the charities of a poor creature in her house needs would challenge the inheritance of children The son on the other side wept bitterly and gave assurance she had acknowledged him for her own very lively represēting all the proofs which passion and interest put into his mouth The King sounded all passages to enter into the heart of the Lady and asked her whether she were not resolved to marry again She answered if she met with a man suitable to her she would do what God should inspire her The King replied Behold him here since you have lodged this guest thirtie days in your house and have acknowledged him so freely what is the cause why you may not marry him The Lady answered He had not any means which ever is necessary for houshold expence
And to what may your state truly amount saith the King The Lady replied She was very well worth a thousand crowns which was a great riches in that time Well saith Theodorick I will give as much to this young man for his marriage on this condition that you shall marry him She much amazed began to wax pale blush tremble and to shew all the countenances of a perplexed woman who sought to excuse her self but faltered in her speech The King yet to affright her more swore deeply she should marry him presently or tell lawfull causes of impediment The poor woman condemned by the voice of nature which cried in her heart and having horrour of the crime proposed unto her cast her self at the feet of the King with much profusion of tears confessing her loves dissimulation and mishap Then this great Prince taking the word from her Are not you a miserable woman saith he to renounce your own bloud for a villain who hath deceived you get you to your house forsake these fond affections and live in the conditions of a good widow taking unto you such support from your son as he by nature ought to afford you I leave to relate a singular example upon the same subject which I drew from the Chronicles of Alexandria and cited in the third book and one and twentieth Section of my first Tome The fourth Maxim which Theodorick received from our Oracle was to place deserving men in offices and to ground his State upon rewards and punishments which the ancient Democritus said were the Divinities of Common-wealths The King laied this counsell up in his heart and presently made Boetius Superintendent of Offices and dignities to the end his judgement might be as the character of the excellent qualities of such as should have principal Commissions There was no speech at all either of favour flesh bloud or nation all rewards were for men of judgement and virtue when any one was designed for some office long and serious inquiry was made of his condition which being throughly known the King gave approbation of him by writing to the Senate or forgot not to put into account all his services and laudable actions to the end the sinceritie of his proceedings might be known that he might cast a double lustre upon him who received so great a benefit from his hands We may behold the practise hereof in many letters Epist 3. lib. 4. which are to be found upon this subject and namely upon the advancement of Cassiodorus to the dignitie of a Patrician where the King writing unto him letters full of respect makes a narration of his life and functions wherein he had very well served his Majesty and then said unto him Enjoy now the recompence of your travel and doubly take the interests which you have contemned for the publick for there are no riches more glorious than to see your virtues crowned both by the testimonie of the Prince and by the praises which proceed from the month of all the world It is a great happiness to oblige a King to confess that a subject hath that already by his merit which he grants him by his liberallitie This gave so great encouragement to the nobilitie to dispose themselves to honour by the degrees of honesty that in few years the Court was replenished with persons qualified with parts of science and conscience which are the two sources of good affairs The fifth Maxim was the good husbanding of treasures which are not onely the sinews but the soul bloud and life of the people It must be confessed that the States of the world are subject to great maladies one while there is a drowsiness in affairs that is the lethargy sometimes a humour peccant and maligne composed of passions and errors which besiege the understanding that is the epilepsie sometimes obstacles which hinder the light of good counsel and they are cataracts which grow upon the eys sometimes obdurations against good advise that is hardness in the ears sometimes a malicious silence of truth that is the squinancy sometimes oppressions that is shortness of breath sometimes want of courage and those are the evils of the heart sometimes there is raised an exorbitant avarice that is the bulimy or dog-hunger sometimes coldness and remisness to unlock coffers for necessary uses that is the gout in the hand sometimes negligences opportunely to take occasions and that is the gout in the feet sometimes fiery ambititions and enraged avarice and they are feavers sometimes you may observe malignities and intestine wars which may be called the stone and nephretick pains sometimes bloudy agonies termed dissenteries sometimes great corruptions of manners that is the cachochimy sometimes sudden disturbances they are Erysepelies sometimes stenches of hidden crimes and that is an infection of the nose which the Graecians call Lozena sometimes there are discovered spots of impietie that is the Leprosie sometimes an impotency in all the members that is the Palsie sometimes a faintness over all the vital parts that is the Ptisick Never should he have done who would keep an account of all the maladies which are ever dangerous in their sources and mortal in their issues but this Ptisick which drieth up the body and maketh of a living man a kind of spectre or Anatomy is one of the least accidents and this happeneth to a State through the ill manage of Treasures contrarie to the loyaltie due to the sacred persons of Kings That is it which maketh souldiers to mutinie which offendeth the great and giveth matter of indignation to the most reasonable and of murmur to all the world whiles the one account in substance the gold and silver which they have purloined and the other reckon in idaea that which is spent entertaining their thoughts with the desire of a thing afar off as if one would warm himself with the memory of fire This is it which bringeth contempt of a Common-wealth abroad weakness at home and miserie on all sides which maketh the people hungry and a Prince necessitous in his own house The effects of this disease are better known than the remedies thereof practised for there are ordinarily in all States many Reformers who have verily notable designs upon Treasures but there is the like use made of them as of tooth-picks before dinner Money is of the sect of invisibles no man knows what becomes of it in so many hands those who abuse it have so many kinds of jugling-tricks which dazel eyes whilest they fill their purses It is a Theophrasi de plantis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 goodly plant as that wich is called the Affodil or Scepter-royal which breeds bad little worms that gnaw all the substance thereof and hide themselves under the leaves till such time that getting wings they becom butterflies all speckled over with flowers and brave it over men in the air whom they durst not behold upon the earth The States of Great-ones is also an admirable tree
in the list of combat Clodovaeus quickly alighted from his horse to rid him of life and being about to mend some defect in his cuirass he was treacherously assaulted by two Goths but he having dispatched his adversary defended himself from both these and mounted up again on his horse whom he made to curvet in a martial manner demeaning himself so bravely in all that he seemed to be as it were a flash of lightening sent from the hand of God rather than a man This defeat ruined the hopes of the Goths and cut off all the designs of heresie which subsisted not but by their favour From thence Clodovaeus marched all covered over with laurels into the Countreys of his conquests with so much good success that being before the Citie of Angoulesm which made shew of resistance the walls miraculously fell down as did heretofore those of Jericho he having by the advise of Apronius his Chaplain caused some holy reliques to be lifted up whereunto he dedicated a singular devotion What need we here make mention of the adventures which he had with the Kings Chararic and Ragvachairus whom he defeated as it were without blows This man went every where as confidently as one who seemed to have a Guard of celestial Virtues by his side his hands were fatal to purge the earth from many infidel Princes that infected it with heresie tyrannies and sacriledges Who can but wonder that in so short a time he extended his Empire from Rheine to Seine from the river of Loyre to Rosne and from the Pyrenei to the Ocean Who can but admire that he was so feared by all the Monarchs of his Age as the Grecians who have written Suidas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after that time under the title of King intended for the more excellency to speak onely of the King of France Who will not highly esteem his great authority in that he first of all stampt golden coyn which the Emperours had always forborn through extream jealousie causing the marks of his faith to be impressed on this money And who can sufficiently marvel that having at his death left four sons to succeed him he hath besides been followed by seven and fifty Kings who constantly rendering themselves imitatours of his belief have likewise shared with him in his felicity I demand of you whether one must not become blind deaf and dumb not to see understand nor declare that all the happiness and prosperity of France is inseparably tied to the piety of our Ancestours since the hand of God thundering and lightening at the same time upon so great a number of Diadems of heretical Kings as of Gombaut Godemar Chilperic Godegisilus Alaricus and in the end on Theodorick himself led Clodovaeus by the hand through so many smoking ruins so many swords and such flames to establish him with all his posterity in a Throne whereunto the great Saint Remegius hath promised an eternity of years so long as it should remain cemented with the same faith and religion which first of all consecrated the Lilies to the service of the Divine Majesty The holy Clotilda amongst all these conquests of her husband lifted her innocent hands up to Heaven to apply the forces of the Saviour of the world to his Royal banners In the end having drawn him to Paris after so many bloudy wars and sweetened the extravagancies of his nature a little too violent propending to excesses of cruelty she caused him to tast in his repose devotion and justice in such sort that having closed up his eyes in the exercises of piety she enterred him with a most honourable reputation V. Kal. Dec. Depositio magni Regis Clodovaei Du Pleix There is yet to be found an old Calendar of the Church of S. Genovefue which maketh mention of the day of his death on the seven and twentieth of November The ninth SECTION The life of Clotilda in her widow-hood her afflictions and glorious death CLotilda vehemently desired to bring forth male children for the establishment of her State and though this affection seemed to be most just notwithstanding God who purgeth all the elect in the furnace of afflictions found a rough Purgatory for this good soul in the enjoying her desires She had sons as she wished whom she endeavoured with all her power to breed in the fear of God whilest she might bow them but these children who tasted too much of the warlike humours of the father and had not enough of the piety of the mother being arrived to an age wherein it was not possible any longer to restrain them they fell into many terrible extravagancies which transfixed the heart of the mother with a thousand swords of sorrow It happened that Sigismund the cousin-germain of Clotilda for whom she had procured the Kingdom of Burgundie after the death of his wife by whom he had a son named Sigeritus suffered himself to be surprized with the love of a Ladie waiting in Court whom he afterward married to the great heart-burning of the son who could not endure to see her clothed with the spoils of his mother This step-dame being drawn from servitude and wantonness to enter into the bed of a King beholding her self crossed in her loves by this Heir of the house conceived so much gall and rage against him that she prepared a most fatal calumnie for his ruin accusing him to have a plot upon the life of his father Sigismund who was of an easie nature stirred up with love and ambition quickly believed this shameless creature and after he had called this poor young man to dinner under colour of affection he commanded him in his sleep to be strangled by the hands of his servants But the miserable man delivered out of the gulf of his passion and seeing himself defiled with an act so black and wicked publickly confessed his sin and for it performed a most austere penance but God who ordinarily blotteth out the crime not forgiving the pains and satisfactions due to his justice deprived him of Scepter and life by the hands of his allies raising up a sharp revenge to give to such like an eternal horrour of his iniquitie The children of Clodovaeus who had already shared the Kingdom of their father were not yet satisfied but desired to advance the limits of their division as far as the point of their launce might extend Behold the cause why Clodomer who was the eldest of the legitimate seeing the Kingdom of Burgundie in this danger entereth thereinto with great forces and found little resistance Sigismond being formerly convinced by his crime Having possessed himself of the places most important he took the miserable King and led him away prisoner to Orleans to dispose of him according to his pleasure But Godimer the brother of Sigismund who had retired to the mountains while the French made all this notable havock returned with a great power and having slain the French Garrisons made himself Master of the Kingdom Clodomer
content the King my father and yours who requireth from you no other satisfaction The good Prince answered Ab Brother What have you said you lately perswaded me to an act of pietie at the peril of my life think not now to induce me to an impietie although it should concern all the lives and Kingdoms of the world Behold here the time for you to reign and for me to die I willingly die for the honour I ow to my Religion for which I gladly would suffer death a thousand times if it were possible I neither accuse you nor my father whom I more compassionate than my self and counsel you to render him all the duties of pietie in the decrepitness of age whereinto he is entered As for our step-mother I pray you rather to endure her nature than revenge my death It is the work of God to take knowledge of injuries and for us to bear them When my soul shall leave this miserable bodie it shall ceaselesly pray for you and I hope most dear brother you in the end will renounce this poor libertie which entertaineth you in the sect of the Arians and if dying men use to divine I foretel that being converted to the faith you shall lay foundations of Catholick Religion in all this Kingdom which I am about to moisten with my bloud Recaredus used all the intreaties he could devise never being able to shake the constancy of his brother which much offended King Levigildus and transported him into resolutions very bloudy Notwithstanding those who might yet speak unto him with some liberty counselled him to precipitate nothing in an affair of so great consequence saying there was no apparence that Hermingildus had undertaken any plot against the life and State of his father since he came so freely to present himself upon his bare word that those who find themselves guilty use not to come to burn themselves as butter-flies at the candle That his countenance at this interview was too sweet his speech too proper his deportments too candide to cover so black a mischief and as for change of Sect it was no wonder if the King having given him a Catholick wife he had taken that Religion with its love that it was a complement of a lover which age would bend experience sweeten and prudence in the end deface that he had at that time more need of a Doctour than an executioner since the apprehensions of God were distilled in the heart by the help of tongues not the dint of swords The seventeenth SECTION The death of Hermingildus THe faction of Goizintha transported beyond all considerations ceased not to sound in the ears of the King that Hermingildus was not an offender whose power was to be neglected That his crime was not such as might promise him impunity that the laws of the Countrey had never tolerated such practises that he had violated right both divine and humane becoming a fugitive from his Countrey an Apostata in his religion arebel to the power of his father in such sort that to render his wound incurable he had changed all lenitives into poison That he had levied arms against his Sovereign without regard of his age his name the majesty of the Kingdom and the voice of nature and that there was nothing but the despair of his affairs which had taken them out of his hands That he held correspondence with the enemies of the State to whom he was become an assistant and a companion and now to make himself as impudent to defend a crime as bold to execute it had cast all the fault of his conspiracies upon the Queen his mother-in-law and the marriage of his father shewing himself so insolent in his misery that there was nothing to be expected but tyranny from his prosperity that it was to be extreamly arrogant even to stupidity to seek to retain a chymaera of piety contrary to the will of his father and that never would he be so constant in his superstition if he had not leagued all the interests of his fortune with the Catholicks enemies of the Kingdom That if order were not taken therein they should be hereafter deprived of the power to deliberate on it when they had given him all the means to execute it The credulity of the unfortunate father was so strongly assaulted by these discourses that he resolved to go beyond himself so that on a night which was Easter Eye he dispatched a messenger to the prison with an executioner to let him know he was speedily to make his resolution to choose either life and scepter by returning to the Religion of the Arians or death by persisting in the Catholick That he had a sword and a Crown before his eyes the one for glory the other for punishment the choice of either was referred to himself Hermingildus made answer he had already sufficiently manifested his determination upon this Article that he would rather die a thousand deaths than ever separate himself from the Religion which he had embraced with all reason and full consideration The Commissary replied The King your Father hath given me in charge that in case of refusal I should proceed to execution of the sentence decreed against you What saith Hermingildus He hath condemned you by express sentence saith the other to have your head cut off in this same prison where you are Whereupon the holy man fell on his knees to the earth and said My God my Lord I yield you immortal thanks that having given me by the means of my father a frail brittle and miserable life common unto me with flies and ants you now afford me on this day by these sentences a life noble happie glorious to all eternitie Then rising up again he requested the Commissary he would by his good favour suffer a Catholick Priest to come to him to hear his Confession and dispose him to death He answered It was expresly forbidden by the King his father but if he would admit an Arian Bishop he should have one at his pleasure No saith he for I have detested yea and do still abhor Arianism even to the death and since my father denieth me a favour which ordinarily is granted to the guiltie I will die having no other witness but mine own conscience Which having said he kneeled down again and made his confession to God praying very long for his father his step-mother all his enemies and pronouncing also at his death the name of his dear Indegondis to whom he professed himself bound with incomparable obligations Then afterward having recommended his soul to God under the protection of the most holy Virgin his good Angel and all the Saints he stretched out his neck to the executioner which was cut off with one blow of an ax So many stars as at that instant shined in Heaven in the dead silence of the night were so many eyes open over the bloudy sacrifice of this most innocent Prince from whom a wretched father took
COURT That it is to no purpose to think upon death so far off and that it always cometh soon enough without thinking on it That the best employment of life is to bewel prepared for death and that good thoughts of death are the seeds of immortalitie 1. IT is a strange thing that men being all made out of one and the same mass are so different in beliefs in reasons in customs and actions as the Proteus in Poetical fables Our manners daily Diversitie of men teach us a truth which says There is not any thing so mutable upon earth as the heart of man Yet we see in the world many honourable personages and good men who travel apace to this triumphant Citie of God this Heavenly Jerusalem looking on the blessings of the other life with an eye purified by the rays of faith and expecting them with a hope for which all Heaven is in bloom But there Opinion concerning the other life are an infinite number of black souls marked with the stamp of Cain who consider all is said of the state of the other world as if it were some imaginary Island feigned to be in the Ocean to amuze credulous spirits and fill them partly with pleasing dreams partly with irksom visions If these people could find some apparent proofs they would easily perswade themselves there were no death but their senses convinced of the contrary from experience of all Ages they believe that which they dare not think on and commonly die after so bruitish a fashion that a man may say They had converted the lights of an immortal spirit wholly into flesh But you generous souls whom at this present I intend to guid through the hopes and terrours of the other life observe this first step you must make to enter into a new world with constancy not unworthy a soul sensible of its immortality 2. Life and death are two poles on the which all Life death the two poles of the world creatures rowl life is the first act moveable and continual of the living thing death the cessation of the same act And as there are three notable actions in things animated the one whereof tendeth to nourishment and increase the other to sense the third to understanding so there are three sorts of lives Divers kinds of life the vegetative the sensitive and the intellectual the vegetative in plants sensitive in beasts the intellectual which onely appertaineth to God Angels and men The intellectual life is divided into two other which are the life of grace and glory In Heaven the place of things eternal reign those great and divine lives which never die and which are in a perpetual vigour being applied to the first source of lives which is God But in the more inferiour rank of the world are dying lives of which we daily see the beginning progress and end Here properly is the dominion of death and our onely mystery is to die well Some do it of necessity others every day anticipate it by virtue Now it is my desire here to shew you That death in the state wherein the world is at this present is a singular invention of Divine Providence whether we consider the generality of men whether we look on the vicious or fix our thoughts on the just 3. Some complain of death but you would see Providence of God concerning the sentence of death in the generality of men much other complaints if in such a life as we live there were no death You would see men worn with years and cares daily to charge altars with vows and prayers men insupportable to all the world irksom to life inexpugnable to death men old as the earth incessantly calling upon the hour of death and almost eating one another with despair God hath herein saith Plato well provided for seeing the soul was to be Plato in Timaeo Pater misericors illis mortalia vincula faciebat shut up in the body as in a prison he hath at least made it chains mortal What makes you so much desire life I find saith the worldling it is a pleasure to behold the light the star elements and seasons There will be much more delight to see them one day under your feet than there is now to behold them over your head Are there now so many years you have been upon the earth and have you not yet sufficiently looked upon the elements There were certain people among the Pagans who by laws forbade a man of fifty years to make use of the Physitian saying It discovered too much love of life and yet with Christians you may find at the age of four-score who will not endure a word of the other world as if they had not yet one days leisure to look into it But I must still Ambr. l. 2. de Abel Cain Non advertitis senectutem hanc aerumnarum esse veteranam processionibusque aetatis miseriarum crescere stipendia Scyllâ—o quodam usu circumsonari nos quotidianis naufragiis perform the actions of life Have you not done them enough See you not that to live long is to be long in the entertainment of travel and misery which extend their power over our heads according as the web of our life lengtheneth Do you not consider we are in this life as fish in the sea perpetually in fear of nets or hooks Will you not say we live here in the midst of misery and envie as between Scylla and Charybdis and that to decline once perishing we daily make ship wrack Notwithstanding we are pleased with life as if man were not so much a mortal creature as an immortal misery Do you not know life was given by God to Cain Revolution troublesom the most wicked man on earth for a punishment of his crime and will it rest with you as a title of reward There is great cause to desire life Were there no other miseries which are but too frequent this anxiety and turmoil of relapsing actions would tyre us What is life but clothing and unclothing rising and down-lying drinking eating sleeping gaming scoffing negotiating buying selling masonry carpentery quarreling cozening rowling in a labyrinth of actions which perpetually turn and return filling and emptying the tub of the Danaïdes and to be continually tied to a body as to the tending of an infant a fool or a sick man That is not it which withdraweth me say you But I must see the world and live with the living Had you been all your life Baseness of the world time shut up in a prison and not seen the world but through a little grate you had seen enough of it What behold you in the streets but men houses horses mules coaches and people who tumble up and down like fishes in the sea who have many times no other trade but to devour one another and besides some pedling trifles hanged out on stals When I have seen all this but for half an hour
whereof the poor have too much been frustrated to establish thy vanities and fatten thee in pleasures Where is thy liberality Where are thy alms toward miserable creatures who die in affliction in the streets Observe justice and take example by my disasters Husband it is thy wife so beloved that speaks to thee saying Ah my dearest friends where is the faith plighted in the face of the Church Where are the faithful loves which should have no limit but eternity Death no sooner absented me from thy eyes but forgetfulness drew me out of thy heart I complain not thou livest happy and fortunate in thy new affections for I am in a condition wherein I can neither envy nor malice any but I complain that not onely after my death the children which are pledges of our love were distastful to thee but thou hast wholly lost the memory of one who was so precious to thee and whom thou as a Christian oughrest to love beyond a tomb Open yet once unto her the bowels of thy charity and comfort by thy alms and good works a soul which must expect that help from thee or some other The seventeenth EXAMPLE upon the seventeenth MAXIM Apparition of Souls in Purgatorie HIstories tell us the apparation of souls in Purgatory are so frequent that he who would keep an account may as soon number the stars in the sky or leaves on the trees But as it is not fit to be too credulous in all may be said thereupon so a man must be very impudent to deny all is spoken of it and to oppose as well the authority of so many great personages as the memory of all Ages He who believes nothing above nature will not believe a God of nature How many extraordinary things are there the experience whereof teacheth us the effects and of which God hideth the reasons from us The Philosopher Democritus disputing with Solinus Polyhistor the Sages of his time concerning the secret power of nature held commonly in his hand the stone called cathocita which insensibly sticketh to such as touch it and they being unable to give a reason of it he inferred there were many secrets which are rather to humble our spirits than to satisfie our curiosity Who Jul. Scal. A Porta Caâ—eraâ— can tell why the theamede which is a kind of adamant draweth iron on one side and repelleth it on the other Why do the forked branches of the nut-tree turn towards mines of gold and silver Why do bees often die in the hives after the death of the Master of the family unless they be else-where transported Why doth a dead body cast forth bloud in the presence of the murderer Why do certain fountains in the current of their waters and in their colour carry presages of seasons as that of Blomuza which waxeth red when the countrey is menaced with war Why have so many noble families Diâ—â—arus Petrus Albinus certain signs which never fail to happen when some one of the family is to die The commerce of the living with spirits of the dead is a matter very extraordinarie but not impossible to the Father of spirits who holdeth total nature between his hands Peter of Clugny surnamed the Venerable and esteemed in his time as the oracle of France was a man who proceeded in these affairs with much consideration not countenancing any thing either frivolous or light Behold the cause wherefore I willingly make use of his authority He telleth that in a village of Spain named the Star there was a man of quality called Peter of Engelbert much esteemed in the world for his excellent parts and abundant riches Notwithstanding the spirit of God having made him understand the vanity of all humane things being now far stepped into years he went into a Monastery of the Order of Clugny there the more piously to pass the remnant of his dayes as it is said the best incense cometh from old trees He often spake amongst the holy Fryers of a vision which he saw when he as yet was in the world and which he acknowledged to be no small motive to work his conversion This bruit came to the ears of Venerable Peter who was his General and who for the affairs of his Order was then gone into Spain Behold the cause why he never admitting any discourses to be entertained if they were not well verified took the pains to go into a little Monastery of Nazare where Engelbert was to question him upon it in the presence of the Bishops of Oleron and Osma conjuring him in the virtue of holy obedience to tell him punctually the truth touching the vision he had seen whilest he led a secular life This man being very grave and very circumspect in all he said spake the words which the Authour of the historie hath couched in his proper terms In the time that Alphonsus the younger heir of the great Alphonsus warred in Castile against certain factious dis-united from his obedience he made an Edict that every family in his Kingdom should be bound to furnish him with a souldier which was the cause that for obedience to the Kings commands I sent into his army one of my houshold-servants named Sancius The wars being ended and the troups discharged he returned to my house where having some time so journed he was seized by a sickness which in few dayes took him away into the other world We performed the obsequies usually observed towards the dead and four moneths were already past we hearing nought at all of the state of his soul when behold upon a winters night being in my bed throughly awake I perceived a man who stirring up the ashes of my hearth opened the burning coals which made him the more easily to be seen Although I found my self much terrified with the sight of this ghost God gave me courage to ask him who he was and for what purpose he came thither to lay my hearth abroad But he in a very low voice answered Master fear nothing I am your poor servant Sancius I go into Castile in the company of many souldiers to expiate my sins in the same place where I committed them I stoutly replied If the commandment of God call you thither to what purpose come you hither Sir saith he take it not amiss for it is not without the Divine permission I am in a state not desperate and wherein I may be helped by you if you bear any good will towards me Hereupon I required what his necessity was and what succour he expected from me You know Master said he that a little before my death you sent me into a place where ordinarily men are not sanctified Liberty ill example youth and temerity all conspire against the soul of a poor souldier who hath no government I committed many out-rages during the late war robbing and pillaging even to the goods of the Church for which I am at this present grievously tormented But good Master if you loved me
protection which God will give them to stay the effect of hurtfull causes In such wise that according to the opinion of those Doctours glorious bodies shall be impassible as were the three Children in the fornace of Babylon not that their bodies were impenetrable to fire but because God hindered the action of flames on their bodies But I had rather say with S. Thomas it is done by a quality internal 1. part q. 97. art 1. and 5. q. 82. art 1. and adherent to the bodies of the blessed Because this manner besides that it is sweet easie and suitable to the magnificence of God is more noble more natural and nearer approaching to the condition of celestial bodies Against the second incommodity of mortal body which is terrestrial weight we shall have subtility a gift much to be desired and which also opposeth the beastliness and stupidity that insensibly cause aversion in reasonable and intellectual nature We cannot Damascen l. 4. de side c. ultim and Ambros l. 10. in Luc. cap. ultimo be ignorant that many Divines place this subtility of glorious bodies in a virtue they shall have to penetrate the most massy objects not bruising or breaking them like a spirit and that it were an errour either to say it were impossible to the divine power or was not done by our Saviour when he came out of his mothers womb or when he entered into the chamber Notwithstanding I think this penetration of bodies should be judged as extraordinarie to a blessed bodie without having any necessarie dependance Durand in 4. d. 44. q. 5. D. Thom. in 4. l. 4. q. 2. art 2. and 5. q. 83. ◠2. of its condition But I had rather believe with S. Thomas Doctour Durandus the Roman Catechism that this gift of subtility whereof question is here made consisteth in a great vigour of sense proceeding from a perfect disposition of organs and a tenderness of spirits and besides in an entire subjection and admirable pliantness of the body to the soul and of appetites to reason a matter which I esteem more than the penetration of Semiramis wals The third blemish of our bodies which is weakness and infirmity shall be excluded by the grace force and agility which will bring to pass that the blessed may go from one place to another not by a simple ability and equality of the motion of steps going forward but an impetuousness as would be that of an eagle who should fall upon her prey or of an arrow shot by a strong hand according to S. Augustines opinion August l. 22. de Civit. c. ultim Vbi volet spiritus ibi protinus erit corpus Isaiah 40. Qui sperant in Domino mutabunt fortitudinem Doctour Scotus thinks this agility will proceed from the force of the soul with substraction of weight which shall at that time be taken away from the body in this state of immortality Others think this weight shall onely be suspended and interdicted in its effect not for ever but for the space the blessed shall desire who besides this admirable lightness shall have great and sprightly forces Lastly the fourth accident of this mortal and corruptible state is deformity which hath sometimes been so troublesom to many souls little couragious greatly faithless that there have been such found in Pagan antiquity who voluntarily deprived themselves of life to be delivered from the shame and grief they conceived to be born in a body notably deformed Beauty although it be often decried since it began Of beauty to serve for a bait and to be an instrument to sin yet it must be confessed when it contracteth good alliance with the spirit and virtue namely that of chastity it hath qualities so lovely and excellencies so noble that without arms or guards it exerciseth power even over the hearts of Monarchs Zeno said grace of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 body was a Voice of flower a flower of voice voice of flower because it draweth amity to it as the flower of a garden not crying out nor tormenting it self a flower of voice because it is one of the most flowery eloquences among the attractives of nature Earthly sovereignties often employ the whole extent of their power to make themselves beloved yet never attain it but this as the rayes of the sun not breaking either gate or window gets enterance for it self in humane heart and not alledging any other reason nor affording patience of resolution transporteth a soul which lives more in that it loveth than in that it animateth And yet what is temporal beauty but a transitory charm an illusion of senses a voluntarie imposture a slave of pleasure a flower which hath but a moment of life a dyal on which we never look but whilest the sun shines on it What is humane beauty but a dunghil covered with snow a glass painted with false colours a prey pursued by many dogs a dangerous Hostess in a frail house a sugered fruit in a feast which some dare not touch for respect and others gourmandize through sensuality Go trust so fading a good Go betake you to so unhappy a snare Go tie your contentments to so slippery a knot What else will happen unto you but to court a fantasie which loosening your hold will leave you nothing but the sorrow of your illusions If beauties must be loved let us love them in the state wherein they shall never cease to be beauties let us love them in the glory of their resurrection where they shall be placed as Queens in their thrones The beauty of glorified bodies saith Durandus the Durand in 4. de 44. q. 8. Divine consisteth in three things First in a pure and resplendent colour conjoyned to a most perfect and distinct proportion of all members without the least blemish or defect able to give the least aversion Secondly in a singular smoothness as would be that of a mirrour receiving the Sun beams directly Thirdly in an interiour light which as other Doctours with a general consent do adde will diffuse it self over the body with an incomparable lustre if it happen not that the blessed to manifest themselves to feeble and mortal eyes stay the course of the rays of glory as did our Saviour in the conference he had with the two pilgrims of Emaus O Beauties which never tarnish O lights which Daniel 12. Qui docti fuerint fulgebunt tanquam splendor firmamenti c. Math. 13. Fulgebunt justi sicut sol in regno Patris eorum know not what it is to be eclipsed O house of God! O Temple of peace When will the great day come which shall devest us from all we have mortal to put us into the bosom of immortality But we must confess that among all the considerations may be had upon this subject we have not any more pleasant or effectual than the triumphant Resurrection of our Saviour which is the root and hope
eat them soon enough as if all this should say unto us What do we so long in the world since all things that must serve our use last so little Gold and silver continue long but last very little in our hands and though one keep them as well as he can they keep not ever one Master If there be creatures which live much longer they flie from us as Harts Crows and Swans you might say they are ashamed to participate in our frailty Great-ones of the earth have in all times done what they could with a purpose to prolong their days so naturally are we desirous of the state of Resurrection but they have many times abridged them seeking to lengthen them Garcias telleth us that a King of Zeilam having learned the adamant had the virtue to preserve life would neither eat nor drink but in a dish which he caused to be made of adamant through a strange giddiness of spirit but he failed not to find death in these imaginary vessels of immortality We make a great matter of it to see men very old they are beheld with admiration But if some desire to come to their age there is not any would have the miseries and troubles of it This Phlegon of whom we now speak who had been one of the most curious Authours of his Age made a book of long liv'd men wherein he confesseth he hath exactly looked into the Registers of the Roman Empire there to find old men and women of an hundred years and scarcely could he meet with a sufficient number of them to fill up a whole leaf of paper But if he would take the number of such as died before fifty which the Ancients called the exterminating death he had filled many huge volumes Pompey took pleasure at the dedication of Bâ—ro in historia vitae mortis his Theater to see a Comedianess act named Galeria Capiola who reckoned ninety nine years since her first enterance into a Theater It was a goodly play of life in a woman who danced on the brink of her grave But how many such like have there been people go into the tomb as drops of water into the sea not thinking on it Nay do but observe all which is Sovereign you will find among all the Emperours which were through so many ages there is not one to be found who attained to the age of a hundred years and four alone arrived to four-score or much thereabouts Gordian the elder came to this point but scarcely had he tasted of Empire but was over whelmed with a violent death Valerian at the age of seventy six years was taken by Sapor King of Persia and lived seven years in a shamefull captivity his enemy making use of his back as a foot-stool when he would mount on horse-back He was at first much greater in the estimation of men than he deserved and every one would have thought him worthy of Empire had he not been Emperour Anastasius a man of little worth and less courage who had more superstition than religion arrived to the age of four-score and eight years when he was blasted with lightening from heaven Justinim reckoned four-score and three which made him wax white in a vehement desire of glorie although being some-what contemptible in his person he was fortunate in Captains They speak of a King called Arganthon who heretofore reigned in Spain the space of four-score years and lived an hundred and fourty But this is rather in fables than authentical histories Of so many Popes as have been since S. Peter not any one hath possessed the See twenty five years scarcely find you four or five four-score years of age John the two and twentieth an unquiet and treasure-heaping spirit was about ninety years when death took off his triple Crown So many had Gregory the twelfth who was created before the schism but his papacy was as short as his life was long Paul the third attained to one above four-scor and was otherwise a man as peaceable of spirit as prudent in counsel Paul the fourth severe imperious and eloquent came to four-score and three Gregory the thirteenth lived as many a Prelate wise courteous prudent liberal who lived too little a while for the Churches good for which he could not end but too soon If we speak of the blessed S. John S. Luke S. Polycarp S. Denys S. Paul the Hermit S. Anthony S. Romuald so many other religious men they lived long And it seems there are many things in religion which further long life as contemplation of things Divine joys not sensual noble hopes wholesome fears sweet sadness repose sobriety and regularity in the order of all actions But all this is little in comparison of the Divine state wherein bodies shall not onely never end but live eternally impassible as Angels subtile as rayes of light quick as thought and bright as stars Conclusion of the MAXIMS by an advice against Libertinism where all men are exhorted to zeal of true Religion and the love of things eternal Of the obscurity and persecution of TRUTH INcredulity is an immortal disease which hath reigned from the beginning of the world and which will never end but with the worlds dissolution Dreams and lies are many times believed because they insinuate themselves into the heart by charms but truth which will never bely her self hath much ado to make her self understood and if she be once known she is beloved when she smiles and feared when she frowneth There are four things have ever been much unknown Four things much unknown in the world time wind terrestrial Paradise and truth Time is a marvellous creature which perpetually passeth over our heads which numbereth all our steps which measureth all our actions which inseparably runs along with our life and we have much business to know it as well in its nature as progression It is a very strange thing that there are such as promise themselves to reckon up the years of the world as of an old man of three-score and yet we know by the experience of so many ages it is a great labyrinth wherein we still begin never to end It was for this cause the Ancients placed the figures Hadrianus Junius of Trytons on high Towrs with tails crookedly winding to represent unto us the intrication of the foulds and compasses of time And for this also Isa 6. Hieron in Isa in the Prophet Esai the Seraphins covered the face and feet of God with their wings to teach us faith S. Hierome that we are very ignorant in things done before the world and in those which shall happen to Non est vestrum nosse tempora momenta quae Pater posuit in sua potestate Actor 1. the end of it If we on the other side consider the wind we cannot but sufficiently understand the commodities and discommodities of it which have made the wise to doubt whether it were expedient there should be
womb but how much more it cost to make him anew drawing forth so much labour sweat and bloud from the Son of God who annihilated himself for him cherishing and fostering him saith Thomas Aquinas in his Treatise of Beatitude in such sort that one not well instructed by Faith would say Man were the God of God himself Hereupon we will beg that we may not frustrate the merit of the life of God given to eternize ours and we will practise some kind of mortification to bear God in our flesh as saith S. Paul to conform our selves to the sufferings of the King of the afflicted Saturday which is the day wherein God rested from the Creation of the world we will meditate upon the rest the blessed enjoy in Heaven There is no more poverty no sickness no grief no care no calumnie no persecution no heat no cold no night no alteration no confusion no noise The body resteth five or six foot under ground freed from the relapsing employments of a frail and dying life It is in the grave as in an impregnable fortress where it no longer fears debts serjeants prisons nor fetters And the soul when it is glorified leadeth the life of God himself a vital life an amiable life an inexhaustible life for which we must sigh and labour and beg it often of God with the tears of our eyes and the groans of our heart as saith S. dugustine It is requisite the same day to make a review of the whole week to examine the state of your soul your passions affections intentions aims proceedings and progressions And especially at the moneths end to consider diligently what God would have of us what we of him and what course we take to please both him and our selves what desire we have of perfection what obstacles what defects what resistance what means and to mannage all our endeavours under the protection of our great Captain Jesus Christ The eighteenth SECTION Devotion for the hours of the day THe Church likewise assigneth us a practice of Devotion for every hour of the day if we will apply it right For as if she meant of a Christian champion to make a true Bird of the Sun which saluteth that bright Star almost every hour seeming to applaud by its songs and the clapping of its wings so she requireth that in imitation thereof we loose not God out of sight all the day long but keep perpetual centinel to worship and pray to him At the break of day Not to say any thing of our nightly exercise The Church inviteth us in the Hymn of S. Ambrose to ask five things the protection of God for all that day peace government of the sense guard of the heart and Mortification of the flesh At the third Hour from the rising of the Sun the hour wherein the Holy Ghost descended in the likeness of fiery tongues upon the Apostles we pray to the Holy Ghost so to replenish our understandings our wills our senses our hearts our tongues our mouthes with vigour and flame that we may by our good example enkindle our neighbours At the sixth Which is noon we look up to our Son of Justice to intreat of him four things that is alienation from the heat of concupiscence mortification of anger health of body and peace of mind At the ninth Which is about three a clock when the Sun is now declining towards the west we cast our eye upon our great Star and desire him as he is the immoveable Centre about which the whole world is turned and holdeth the beginning and continuance of light in his hand first to grant us a happy evening secondly a constancy in virtue thirdly a good end At evening When darkness draweth near we beseech the Divine Majesty to gather unto him our hearts oppressed with sin and distracted by so great diversity of actions to cleanse them and to direct them in the way of Eternity that when we shall be deprived of this temporal light we may make a sweet retreat into the bosom of God who is the fountain of Intellectual light and that having finished our life as we have ended this present day we may receive the prize of Beatitude At going to bed Now that darkness covereth the face of the earth we will shelter our selves like little birds under Gods wing beseeching him to keep us according to his accustomed goodness in his protection to drive away evil dreams and the illusions of night from our sleep hindering the crafty surprizals of our adversary who goeth up and down like a roaring Lion besetting the sheep-fold These devotions are grave authentick and sufficient throughly to instruct a soul that will practise them The nineteenth SECTION Of Confession a very necessary Act of Devotion and advice thereupon I Place Confession and Communion amongst the weekly devotions because for such as desire to lead a pure life there is no excess if at the weeks end they acquit themselves of this duty And although I have lately spoken enough according to my scope of the practise of these exercises in Treatises upon this subject and that to write more concerning them after so many books were but to bring a drop of water to the river yet am I obliged by the necessity of my design to tell you in few words that to make your Confession good it ought to have the properties of a looking-glass Solidity lively representation and clearness Solidity 1. In going to it with much consideration of your own misery sins and imperfections 2. Much reverence towards the Majesty of God 3. A reasonable examination of your conscience 4. A dislike of your offences more for Gods sake than out of any other consideration Lively representation 1. In avoiding confessions made by rote which have always one and the same tune or such as are over drie and not sufficiently explained or such as are too historical and full of superfluitie 2. In representing perspicuously the State of your soul and succinctly discovering how you have behaved your self Fiist in those acts of devotion which concern more particularly the Divine Service accusing your self of impure intentions negligences irreverences voluntary distractions contempt of holy things coldness in Faith and evil thoughts Secondly towards your self in the direction both of your interiour and exteriour namely in sins of vanity pride sensuality intemperance curiosity impurity idleness pusillanimity anger envy jealousie quarrels aversion impatience murmuring lies detraction injuries swearing breach of promise impertinent and idle discourse flattery scoffing and mockery Thirdly towards your neighbours as well supeperiours and equals as inferiours unfolding the defects that may have happened in the duties which Charity or Justice oblige you to render to every one according to his degree Here examine every word and you shall find matter for accusation Clearness of Confession consisteth in explaining your selves in simple honest and significant terms S. Bernard in his book of the Interiour house which is the Conscience hath
retreat Neverthelesse redoubling his importunities he prevailed and so soon as he was separated from his scholar he who before was a dove with wings of silver and who in acts of virtue took a strong and confident flight suffered himself to fall into the mire with a scandal as shamefull as the excesse was violent Lust assaulteth and on all sides besieges him Licencious youth takes possession of his soul and continually blows love and beauty into his ears It many times hapneth that the passions of young men which have been too severely restrained so soon as they have found passage do the more violently overflow as if nature went about to take revenge upon art and precepts They must sometime be shewed the world with contempt they must be enured against its assaults they must be prepared against its deceits that they be not like foolish pigeons which have never seen any thing but suffer themselves to be taken with the first baits S. Arnold who was a man that breathed nothing but wildernesses in my opinion held the spirit of Dagobert in a life too much restrained which in the first approach of liberty flew out into most violent extravagancies He presently took an aversion against Queen Gomatrade his wife and in a liberty of doing all which flatterers told him fell to him as an inheritance he durst to repudiate her and take a young Lady named Ragintrude whom he most affectionately loved Lust is the throat of Hell which never sayes It is enough and when shame hath no bridle to with-hold it it makes no difference between things sacred and profane and the greatest crimes passe with it as matters indifferent This love is not content with common passion he entreth into Cloysters and takes a virgin out of a Monastery who had begun to dedicate her self to God To her he addeth many others and makes a little Seraglio of his palace All France groaned to see so sudden and deplorable a change of life in their King S. Arnold is invited by some good men again to visit his young plant and to take in hand the raines of the Kings direction which he had forsaken but whether he were charmed by the sweetnesse of his solitude or whether he feared he should have no favourable admission after so solemn a leave which he with so much importunity had begged he would not hearken to it rather choosing to send his sighs to the ears of God then the Kings S. Amand determines to undertake the matter which he did with Ecclesiastick vigour and a most undoubted confidence but the sick man was too tender to endure a tongue armed with sword and fire so farre was he from disposing himself to remedies that he could not suffer so much as the presence of his Physician causing him to be sent into another countrey Pepin of Landen who was the prime man in the Court thought fit to instill some good counsel and sage words as occasion offered but the King transported with the exorbitancy of his youth told him he was a troublesome man of whom it were fit to rid the world since he was so hardy as to censure the innocent delights of his Master For which cause this great pillar of state shaken by the storm of a violent passion much tottered and was very near to have been thrown down The Reverence wherewith his virtue was honoured which proceeded almost to veneration saved him to reserve his reasons for a better disposition During this time the Queen dieth and the affections of Dagobert began to slacken either out of satiety or shame This good Councellour layes hold of his opportunity and takes him on the Biasse shewing him his honour and repose joyned with the good of the state required of him a happy posterity and that it was a very easie matter for him since he had honoured Ragintrude with his affections for her exquisite beauty and the excellent gifts wherein she surpassed that he might take her to wife and limit his love within lawfull wedlock which would draw upon him the blessings of heaven and the love of all his people This speech happily entred into the Kings heart and he resolved to follow the Counsel which was presented him by so good a hand He dismisseth all the women which had tyrannized over his affection he marrieth Ragintrude and as if in an instant some charm had been taken away he in himself by the hand of God made such a change that his life was a Rule of virtue and his conversion a miracle The Court which commonly followeth the inclinations of the Prince took with him a quite other face vice and vicious are thence banished and all virtues thither brought chastity as in triumph 16 I verily think it is many times an act as hard Rigordus and heroick to free ones self from a miery bog whereinto one by mischance is fallen as to live perpetually innocent For which cause I much esteem the resolution Great Triumph of Philip Gods-gift over himself of Philip Gods-gift who being in the beginning distasted with Engelbergue his wife after he had repudiated her and taken Mary the daughter of the Duke of Moravia out of a violent affection which long had embroiled him he was suddenly converted and laid hold of the occasion of his salvation The Complaints of the scandall he gave flew to Rome and returned with Censures and Thunders Census and Meilleur two Legates sent by the Holy Sea durst not touch this wound which they judged to be incurable Peter Cardinall of S. Mary absolutely incensed him putting the Kingdome into interdict and the King into despair who vomited nought but choller and flames Two other Legates deputed for a third triall proceeded therein with much sweetnesse which so gained the soul of Philip that he began to submit to reason Yet the charms were so violent that his reason thereby became infirm and his constancy wavering His businesse was lastly decided by a Synod and it was dangerous lest it might stirre up a storm when this Royall heart which was come to plead before the Councel and to dispose of his affections to the heighth of his contentment there wanting not to men of authority who flattered his passion was suddenly touched takes the Queen his wife reconcileth himself to her sets her behind him on his horse carries her to his Palace and caused to be said to the Legates and the other Prelates assembled that they had no more to do to trouble their heads any longer about his businesse for he had happily determined it If Henry the eighth King of England had taken the same course love would have been disarmed innovations hindered concord established and all the disasters banished out of England Lastly to conclude this discourse I verily think never woman better mannaged love then Queen Blanch mother of S. Lewis She was very lovely and among those great lights of perfection which encompassed her on all sides she wanted not beauty which was the
the night putting in his place an image in his bed The house failed not to be set upon the next morning and the Guard of Saul entring by force passed on unto the bed and found there the counterfeit Michol vvas accused hereof and chidden by Saul but she excused her self saying That her husband had compelled her to do this threatning to kill her if she would not obey and that the presence of so manifest a danger had forced her to procure this invention He ceased not to encrease his anger and to invent every day new means to destroy him whom he ought to have preserved above all men In the mean time David knew not whither to retire The life of David in banishment himself and saw himself every day amongst the nets hunted like a poor beast which caused him to passe a life so worthy to be esteemed by the whole world in very many bitternesses He would have taken the boldnesse to have gone to Samuel who was yet alive but this his interview would have been prejudicial both to the one and the other in the the mind of Saul which turned all its suspicions into fury He removed himself from thence unto the town of His arrivall at Nob causeth great disastre to the high Priest Nob to the high Priest Ahimelech who seeing him in very small equipage was somewhat amazed at his arrivall but David for to confirm him told him that he went about a certain urgent businesse which the King had given him in chaâ—ge and that it was necessary that it should be done without noise the which had compelled him to take but few people with him which were come forth very suddenly without having leasure to take order for necessary things for their journey whereby he should do him a great pleasure to give him some bread and to help him to some weapons which the haste of the businesse would not suffer him to take The Priest answered that he had no other loaves then those of the shew-bread which were consecrated but that they might make use of them if they were purified and especially if they abstained from all converse with women of which David having assured him he gave them those and having no other sword then that of Goliah which was kept in the Tabernacle for a Monument he presented it to him wherewith he was very well contented judgeing it the best of all and so went forward in his way Saul having heard a report that David had appeared entred into great forrests and going through a wood with a lance in his hand being compassed by his Captains and Officers sharply complained of the unfaithfulnesse of his servants asking them with reproach What it was that David had promised them and whether he would give them every one Lordships or make them Captains or Camp-masters that they had thus forsaken their Prince That it was a pitifull thing to behold him betrayed of his own children for to uphold a rebel which sought nothing but an occasion to get his Crown from him Hereupon Doeg master of the shepherds of Saul and Doeg accuseth the high Priest being innocent Idumean by nation and of barbarous behaviour having been at Nob when David passed by there and desirous to get favour with his Master accused Ahimelech the Priest with all his company for having helped David with weapons and Provision and having testified a good affection to his party which caused Saul to send for him presently and handle him with great anger reproaching him with villany and suspecting him of treason The other answered very wisely That he being retired from the knowledge of business at the Court and of the Bed-chamber he could not know the intents of David but knowing very assuredly the good-will that the King had testified towards him the great charges and commissions wherewith he had honoured him the favour that he had shewed to him by so neerly allying him to his house he could not nor he ought not to drive him away from his lodging having received no command from the King and not being able to understand by any the offence that David had incurred This excuse was very just and lawful But the violent Bloudy effects of the jealousie of Saul are never contented with reasons intending to be masters of the Laws although they are slaves to their brutish passions Saul commanded without any other form of proceedings to kill him with those of his company which the souldiers did very much abhorre and there was not found one that durst lift up his hand against those sacred persons But Doeg that villanous butcher which had a long time been bred up in slaying beasts having gathered together the small rable of his servants set upon the high Priest and the Priests which accompanied him to the number of 85. which were all murdered in one day and this cursed servant stretching further yet the command of his master drave on his murderers to the sacking of the town of Nob which they filled with fire and bloud What will not the jealousie of State do what will not tyranny rage and fury when they are seconded by evil servants which blow the coal able to devour both men and towns Saul the plain countrey-fellow the cordiall man the child of one year after he had suckt the breath of this serpent kills the high Priest and the Priests buries the smoking towns in the bloud of the miserable citizens A thousand poor bloudy sacrifices stretched out upon the cart pleaded sufficiently before God with the voyce of their bloud for to pull down this in humane Tyrant for whom all the furies prepared their pincers and torches Poor David having understood by Abiathar the son of the high Priest all that was past was pierced with a most bitter grief accusing himself as the cause of the death of those unhappy ones and took along with him him that brought him this sad news using him as his own brother He perceived well that the spirit of Saul David saves himself in the caves of the desert whither father and mother go to seek him was wholly envenomed and in despair of remedy he saved himself in the cave of Adulla where he thought he had been hid from the eyes of the whole world But his father and his brethren flying the persecution ceased not till they had found him therein and did wonderfully pierce his tender heart lamenting for the change of his fortune because they perceive not any more in him a David triumphant the object of all the thoughts and discourses of all tongues But he comforted them promising not to forsake them and recommended all that was dearest unto him which was the person of his father His piety towards them with that of his mother to the King of Moab until that he knew what it would please God to do with him At the same time all the banished all that fled for Banished men repaired to him safety
It is credible that Haman had an hand in that execrable design seeing that he gave so little thanks to Mordecai for having been the discoverer of it but the dissimulation that he brought to cover his fact and his mighty power that rendred him so terrible suffered him not to be involved in the ruine of those wretched men These two Courtiers had an eye to one another and sought nothing but each others ruine the power of the one being alwayes suspected by the other when God without Mordecai's thinking of it sent him a great succour by the choice which was made of his Niece to be the Kings wife The History sayes that Ahasuenus would shew his magnificence and made great feasts for the space of an hundred and fourscore dayes in which he entertained the Princes the governors of Provinces and all the Nobles of the Realm He would have the people too to have their share and for that purpose he caused to be set up at the entrance of his gardens which he was wont to dresse with his own hands abundance of great Pavilions of Sky-colour born up with marble pillars and tyed together with ribands of red silk and rings of ivory He caused also certain beds of gold and silver to be set up upon a pavement of emerald and other precious stones ranged by a proportion made after the Mosaicall fashion which had a very fine grace Thither he invited all the people of that great city of Shushan and caused them to be served in vessels of gold and of silver with most exquisite viands and delicious wine and left every one to drink according to his ability without constraining any one Vasthi the Queen on the other side made a banquet for the women in the Royall palace wherein she forgot nothing to equall the stately Grandeurs of the King her husband This merry life lasted the space of seven dayes in the last of which the King being very jolly and inflamed with wine commanded the Eunuchs that were about him to cause the Queen to come with the Crown upon her head in her most gorgeous attire to make a shew of her beauty in the presence of all the people The Queen took no pleasure in this command and refused to go in which sayes Sulpicius the wife was wiser then the husband in that she was not willing to make a spectacle of the beauty of her body to men full of meats and wine and deserved so much the more commendation as she was more constant to keep the Laws of modesty and comelinesse But this was not taken that way as that sacred Historian presents it they imagined that she had some of the disposition of beautifull women that she was a little proud and scornfull which caused that she was not so well beloved of the Grandees of the Court who as it is credible having long since a desire to do her some ill office laid hold on this occasion They caused that refusall to be reported very harshly by the Eunuchs to the King when it might have been sweetned and moderated they made use of his wine as of an instrument of their iniquity and exasperated him also by the diminution of his Authority whereof Princes are very jealous if they have not much stupidity Assoon as the answer of the Queen was published the King turned himself about to the seven principall Councellours of his State who were alwayes by his side and governed the Kingdome and demanded their advice what he should do to represse his wives pride Memuchan which was the last and the rashest made of this deniall a crime of State and said That it tended to the disorder of all the other women because that other women every one in her condition framed themselves after the example of the Queen and would draw a licentious advantage over their husbands founded upon that affront done to his Royall Majesty and that every where they would domineer which would overthrow the order of Nature and cause great troubles in all houses and therefore he was of the opinion that the Queen should be divorced by the King her husband and that an Edict should be made to be sent through all his Kingdomes touching the obedience that women owe to those that are their heads The man perhaps was ill dealt with in his lodging by his wife and under shadow of Policy would revenge his wrongs It is very true that the Law of God strictly recommends the submission of the wife towards the husband but it ought to be understood in things good and reasonable for if a wife were bound to render a blind obedience to all the extravagances of a husband that hath but little wit and much passion she should be the most miserable of all slaves There were many reasons that might make Vasthi's action be excused but because they saw that Memuchan had pleased the King by his discourse all the rest of the Councellours of State ran to servitude and condemned her to a long torment by a short sentence She was degraded and divorced which was a thing ordinary enough to those Kings who made no great account of losing a wife seing that they had so great a number of them in ther Seraglio The Edict was also made in the tearms that the other had required it and the name of that poor Queen went up and down the whole Kingdome as a sad story and a true portraiture of an abased greatnesse God permitted all this to make way for Hester whom he had destined to Ahasuerus his bed not for her self but for the safety of her people After the divorce and the disastre of poor Vasthi a new Queen must be sought out and the King comforted about his losse A great culling is made through all the Provinces of the Kingdome of the handsomest Virgins to be brought to Court This little Hester is found very delightfull being endowed with a perfect beauty and a naturall grace that surpassed all things She is carried amongst abundance of others and as soon as the King cast his eyes upon her he liked her and commanded Hegai the Eunuch that had the superintendency of his Seraglio to have a great care of that young damsel to spare nothing on her and to give her seven waiting-maids with all necessary equipage Those Virgins that were thus chosen for the Prince's bed made a novitiate of twelve moneths in which time they had all leasure to fit themselves and to learn the civilities of the Court. After this they were presented to the King who took those that pleased him most and when any one had passed a night in his chamber she was sent in the morning into a new Seraglio unto the charge of another Eunuch and returned no more to the King if she was not asked for and that by name Hester spent but ten moneths in her prepartion and was incontinently conducted to the King who liked her above all the maids that he had ever seen and declared her
that great Kingdome It was an Edict of Death not of the death and of the ruine of one man or of one City or of one Province but of a whole Nation The evil was universall and carried on all parts Menaces Bloud Slaughters Fears and Affrights from Euphrates even to Nile The terrour began at the capital city Shushan where the Edict was seen and read by all the world hanged upon the pillars and on the walls of Publick places bearing these words Artaxerxes the Sovereign Lord and King of all the Nations that are from India as farre as Ethiopia to the Princes and Governours of the seven and twenty Provinces of our Empire Greeting Since the time that I subdued the universe under my Laws it was never my will to abase the greatnesse of my Power but I have desired to govern my good Subjects with all clemency and sweetnesse making them enjoy a peace and tranquility to be wished for by all mortalls and for this purpose inquiring of the means that I might use for the effecting of this design Our most dear Haman the second person of our Kingdome which exceeds all the men of the world in capacity and fidelity hath represented to me that the Jewish people dispersed through all the Provinces of my Empire being separated both by Religion and Laws from all the other Nations despise our Edicts and cease not to render themselves troublers of the publick Quiet Which having been well and duly considered we have ordained and do ordain That they be punished according to the orders of our most dear Haman who is the Superintendent of all our Provinces and whom we honour as our true father Furthermore we will and intend that this Edict shall be put in execution the thirteenth day of the Moneth Adar the last of the year to the end that all the wicked descending into Hell in one and the same day may render peace and quietnesse to our good Subjects which they have troubled by their Factions Such is our good pleasure Given at Shushan the first of the Moneth Nisan Behold how Haman and his Complices workers of Iniquity cut their Furies Quills and dipped them in Bloud to make the King of the Persians say what ever pleased them having his Seal and Authority in their hands Poore Mordecai seeing the great Tempest that was ready to fall upon the heads of all his people having read that Edict and knowing that Haman was at the Table with the King who was not seen by any endeavoured to move the whole World to pity clothing himself with Sack-cloth and covering himself with Ashes together with all his people that wept and howl'd about him This sad Squadron marched even to the Walls of the Palace without entring in for it was not permitted not so much as to Mordecai to be seen at Court in so deplorable a Condition which would have offended the eyes of the delicater sort Bad news hath Wings to fly and abundance of Voyces to make it self be heard The frighted Maids and Eunuches fail not to tell Queen Hester of what ever had passed whereat shee was much amazed and hearing that her Uncle was at the Gate covered over with Ashes with Sack-cloth upon his back she sent him secretly a Sute of Clothes which he refused judging it not sutable to his fortune which made her dispatch another Messenger which was Athac the Eunuch that waited on her who went out of the Castle and inquired of Mordecai of all the state of so sad a businesse The other made him a short Narration of it and gave him a Copy of the Edict to present unto the Queen praying him to tell her that she must necessarily go and see the King and act powerfully with his Majesty for the deliverance of his people Athac returns readily to his Mistresse and faithfully relates to her what he had heard of Mordecai The poore Princesse was in an equall ballance greatly racked in minde Shee durst not go to the King without being sent for and to reject the intreaty of her Uncle in an accident so pressing it was another Death to her She sends Athac back again to represent again to the good Mordecai the danger of that Negotiation and to tell him that there is a Law established by the Prince that ordains That whosoever shall present himself before his eyes without being called for shall be punished with Death unlesse that by his mercy he holds out his Sceptre to him in sign of safety and that thereupon she had not seen his Majesty these thirty Dayes not knowing in what posture she is at present in his heart that if she should finde him in some ill Humour there were an end of that Life which she seeks not to preserve but for the safety of her People Notwithstanding all these Remonstrances her Uncle sends to her to go tells her that if she neglected to negotiate in so important an occasion God would find other means to save his people But she should had need to take great heed lest her Fathers House and her self also should perish by too great a care of their Preservation and that she ought to think that perhaps the Divine Providence had placed her where she was it may be for that onely reason Here one knows not what one ought to admire most whether the Authority that Mordecai took over the Queen or the Obedience that the Queen rendered to him She had no sooner heard that Reply of his but she said It is concluded I will go and sacrifice my self to Death with all my heart to obey my Uncle and save if I can my Nation Go to him Athac and bid him assemble all the Jews that are in Shushan let them keep a Fast of three dayes for the successe of this Attempt with continuall Prayers I will do the same on my side with my servants here and afterward we will adventure upon the businesse Behold how we ought to proceed in great Negotiations making God alwayes to march in the head of them who is the source of all good Successes There was then an admirable Consort of Devotions both within and without the Palace Mordecai was in the middst of his People lifting up his hands to Heaven and saying Great God whose Empire hath no limits and whose absolute will suffers no contradiction Your hands have formed both Heaven and Earth with all the beauties that are included in their bosome and there is nothing that can resist the puissance of your Arm. My God you know every thing and are not ignorant that the refusall that I have made to reverence the proud Haman proceeds of Pride or Vanity that is in me for from this present time I would kisse the ground whereon he treads for the safety of my people But I have been afraid to transferre the honour of the Creatour to the Creature and to give a companion to your Majesty and therefore I be-you O the God of our Fathers to cause one ray
all rhe Nations that are from India to Ethiopia To the Princes and Governours of the seven and twenty Provinces of our Empire Greeting Many abusing through their Pride the Goodnesse of Princes and the Honours that have been given them do not onely endeavour to oppresse People but also by a detestable Felony to attempt upon the Life of their Benefactours not being able to bear the Weight of the Glory to which they are Exalted They are not contented to be Ingratefull for Benefits and to Violate the Laws of Humanity but perswade themselves that though they runne out into so great Crimes they shall escape the Judgments of that Great God from whom nothing is Concealed Their Fury is so irregulated that though they be defiled with all sorts of Vices they Accuse those that are Innocent and observe punctually all the Justnesse of their Duty endeavouring to ruine them by the Artifices and Juglings of their Lyes And for this they surprise the Ear of Kings who have an Heart full of Goodnesse and Sincerity measuring those that are near their Persons by their own Dispositions The Proof of this may befound in Antient Stories and even in those of our Dayes too which shew sufficiently how the Good Intentions of Kings are Corrupted by the wicked Counsels of their Ministers and Servants For this Reason we ought to give order for the Peace of our Provinces and if we are Constrained to make you a Countermand know that it proceeds rather from the necessity of the Times then from the inconstancy of our Resolutions It is necessary that you should understand that Haman the son of Amadatha a Macedonian by Nation and Affection after he had been promoted by our Goodnesse to the second Place of our Kingdome hath defiled by his Cruelty the effects of our Piety and hath puffed himself up with so great an Arrogance as to have dared to attempt to deprive us of our Sceptre and of our Life For he resolved to cause Mordecai to Dye to whose Fidelity I own my preservation and to destroy with him Hester the Companion of our Bed and of our Sceptre with her whole Nation by Inventions pernicious and till this time unheard of He hoped by this means that having taken away ouâ— Conservatours he might surprise us in a Dereliction and translate the Kingdome of the Persians to the Macedonians But we have discovered that the Jews destined to death by this wicked Villain are without fault That they use good Laws and that they are the true Children of the most High most Great and Everliving God by whom the Empire is given and preserved to us And for this Reason we make void and disannul the Letters that he hath directed to you in our Name to cause them to be Murthered making you to know that the Authour of the Lye hath been hanged upon the Gallowes at the Gate of Shushan God rendering to him that which he hath deserved Furthermore we Will and Ordain that the Jews live in all our Provinces according to their Law and Ceremonies and that you assist them in bringing their Enemies to Punishment the same day that they had determined to destroy them seeing that the God Almighty hath turned to them into Joy that day of Tears and Grief And since that that is Important even for our Life and Preservation We Command that that Day be put in the number of the Feasts that Posterity may know the Recompenses of our Faithfull Servants and the Punishment of those that oppose our Will and make attempt upon our State And if there be any Province or City that refuses to solemnize that very Day with Joyes and Chearfulnesse befitting it we Will that it be destroyed with Fire and Sword and that it be made inaccessible to Men and Beasts to perpetuity to give an Example to others by the punishment of their contempt and Disobedience The Commands of the King were diligently executed and the Jews Dreaded and Honoured in all places by reason of the great Credit that Mordecai had with the King his Master It seemed that the Sunne was risen a new for these people heretofore afflicted and that Heaven powred down upon them blessings in abundance There was nothing every where but Joyes but Dances but Feasts in Testimony of so publick an alacrity But it is clear that Hester held yet somewhat of the Old Testament in the searching out of the enemies of her Nation and in the Revenge that she caused to be ex-excised every where upon them that had sworne her Ruine Haman's House was given her and ten of his Sons hanged to accompany the punishment of their Father Five hundred men were slain in Shushan for having adhered to that miserable man and through all the rest of the Cities of the Kingdome much blood was shed on the same day that had been assigned for the Massacres of the Hebrews We must avow that this History is wonderfully Tragicall and one of the most wonderfull Revolutions of Fortune that ever arrived to Great ones to make Posterity feare the Judgements of a God whose Hand is as weighty in the Chastisement of Crimes as his Eye quick-sighted in the discerning of Hearts The SOULDIERS JOSHUA JUDAS MACCABEUS IOSVE IVDAS MACHABEE HE must be ignorant of the chief and most visible of beauties that knowes not Joshua One cannot see the Sun without remembring the great commerce that this Valourous Captain had with the King of Stars All the World lift their eyes up to it but none hath ever lifted his voyce as far as it to make himself be heard and to make himself to be obeyed The Stars knew Joshua because he bore the Name of him that formed them It is he that first gave us the fore-tasts of the name of Jesus at which the Heaven the Earth and Hell do bend the knee What lovely thing had not this generous Joshua seeing one cannot name him without mentioning Salvation which is the wish and content of all men Who would think that such a spirit had been born and bred in servitude And yet he was Pharaohs slave he was as the rest in the chain that was at that time common to all his people Those were very patient that could endure it but he was far more valiant that found a means to break it When in his little infancy he played upon the banks of the River of Nile with the other prisoners he then strook terrour into all its flotes and the Angels of Egypt knew that he should tread under his feet the pride Pharaoh and carry away the spoils of that proud kingdome so many times cemented with the blood of his brethren He did every thing by Moses's orders and Moses did nothing without him If one was the eye of his people the other was the arm if one was the Conductour of them the other was the Protectour If one had the Providence the other reserved to himself the execution which is ordinarily the most difficult piece of Prudence
He sayes that it was a design of God on which they should think no more unlesse to thank him These bad brethren after their fathers death finding themselves pricked with remorse of conscience and imagining that that pardon was but a dissembling cast themselves at his feet and beseech him to lay aside all the resentments of past wrongs but he raised them weeping and promised them a Charity totally fraternall and for ever inviolable And though he was so puissant and so absolute he never advanced his own children to the prejudice of his brothers observing them and respecting in every thing the right of Eldership which nature had given them over him Certainly a man that hath such a power over himself ought to be looked upon on earth as a Starre that should descend from heaven and as the liveliest image of the divine Goodnesse he merits not onely to triumph on Pharaoh's charrets but on the Heaven of heavens and so be beheld by Angels with admiration of his desert Finally that which was glorious in Joseph for the fulnesse of this perfection was the strength and equality of an incomparable spirit he was alwayes like himself and saw all the changes of his fortune without changing He descends into the deep pit with the same countenance as he mounts upon Pharaoh's charret He complains of nothing He accuses no body He stifles all the displeasures and all the resentment of nature in him He is loved of his Mistresse without condescending to her passion He is hated of her without accusing her cruelty He is accused without defending himself persecuted without resisting So many years roul over his head without writing one onely word to his father to the disadvantage of his inhumane brothers He suffers with silence He hides his evils with industry He does good without affectation He bears upon his shoulders all the cares of a great Government without groaning under his burden He communicates his glories and his pleasures He reserves to himself onely the toils He takes the bitter and the sweet the hard and the soft prosperities and adversities as the sea that receives all the rivers without changing either colour or savour All his life is but a picture that hath alwaies the same visage and as the Deâ—ty does continually one and the same action without altering or wearying it self he continues the exercises of his goodnes without remission even to the last article of his life MOSES WHat spectacle is this here A cradle of bulrushes floating upon the River Nile and in it a little abandoned Infant for whom his own mother is constrained to make a grave of water to avoid the fury of the murderers that came to pluck him from the breast His sister follows him with weeping eyes and sayes to him Go poor child whither fortune shall conduct thee go my dear brother upon the floats of a furious Element which perhaps will be more favourable to thee then those inhumane men that seek thy life when as thou knowest not yet what 't is to live This River will have pity on thee or if it swallows up thy cradle in its waves it will lodge thy bones in its bosome and cover thy death to sweeten the bitterest of our evils which is to have eyes to look upon our misery But while that this poor maid weeps upon the bank of Nilus and mingles her tears with the water of the River Providence takes the care of that cradle she makes her self as the Pilot of that little vessel which is without mast without rudder without cordage she supplies all and does all she shews how one may find life in death and an haven in a shipwrack The daughter of King Pharaoh comes with her female train and in it is her intention to bathe her self but in God's intention that she might be made the mother of that little Infant exposed to the mercy of the waters and that since she could not be so by Nature she might be by Adoption She discovers first of all that cradle which was on the waters side and dispatches one of her damsels to take it up and bring it her that she might see what was in it she finds a very fair child which pleads his case before her by the cloquence of his tears and of his cryes and implores her mercy against the fury of the Infant-slayers Her heart is melted in compassion towards it and she gives command that it should be kept and nourished his sister standing opportunely by sayes unto her that she knew where was a good Nurse that would well acquit her self of that duty if it pleased her Majesty that she might call her whereto she having shewed some inclination she causes the mother to come that nursed with all security her dear Infant which she had exposed through diffidence This little body drawn out of the bundle of rushes is he that God hath chosen to shake all Egypt to overthrow the pride of Pharaoh's and to draw his people out of Captivity The Hebrews were already multiplied exceedingly in the Kingdome of Egypt after the death of Joseph in the space of sixty five years and began to make themselves feared of their Masters The face of the Realm was changed and he that was then upon the Throne was a Prince that remembred not any longer the obligations that the Monarchy had to the Patriarch Joseph but blamed the counsels of his Predecessours for having permitted a stranger-people to have a dwelling in his Kingdome that seeming to him according to humane Policy of pernicious consequence and thinking that that waxing stronger as it did every day might be capable to make an attempt upon the State or be serviceable to those that had a design to make a commotion and to embroil the affairs of the Kingdome He judged not ill according to the rules of Politicians and for that purpose he resoved with himself to abate and to destroy them by what means soever it was done The first was to consume them amongst stones and mortar in the structure of those prodigious Pyramids that are to be seen in Egypt The second was to command the Midwives to kill all the Male-children which they did not execute through the fear which they had of God and the horrour of that command This made him advise upon a third means and ordain that all the Boyes from the day of their birth should be drowned in the River Nile But God that would teach Princes and State-Ministers that although one should have in Idea any just and lawfull design yet one never ought to seek to compasse it by unjust and violent means permitted not this unhappy Prince that gnawed himself with cares and unquietnesse and tormented his life by so many new inventions of malice and of fury ever to bring about what he projected and his successour after a thousand scourges and a thousand disastres of his Kingdome which he saw every day fall by pieces before his eyes was buried in the red
Sea for drowning those little Innocents in the Nile The life of one onely man oftentimes costs him dear that will have it by Revenge what then do we think that it is to root out a great family or a whole Nation to satisfie one of our appetites All the veins of those that are persecuted bend themselves to resistance and God in fine taking their cause in hand overwhelms all humane Policy in a crudity of undigested designs and a shame to have try'd every thing and to have done nothing to have exhausted the sweat and the bloud of the people the gold and the steel of great Kingdomes all malices and all hell and to obtain no other thing but a remarkable Confusion through the weaknesse of ones power Seneca said to Nero that inflicted so many deaths by a jealousie of State that he killed men to good purpose indeed and that whatsoever endeavour he used he should never put to death his successour When Tyrants torment themselves without and sack smoaking cities and mow off so many innocent heads they have within that which will destroy them Pharaoh ceased not to storm and to make every day new massacres to cause him to perish that would make an attempt upon his State and in the mean while his own daughter nourishes the most capitall of his enemies that was to make his Sceptre fly in shivers and bury him in his race under the ruines of his Empire Naturall History hath observed a strange thing of the nature of the Helmet-flower that it is a plant as venomous as possible and that kills all those that eat of it and yet for all this there are little flies about that plant which are nourished with it and what is admirable serve for an Antidote against its poyson The Court is a residence very prejudiciall to Innocence and that of Pharaoh's was without doubt a School of Murders and of Massacres rather then an Academy of Honour and yet God permitted that Moses should be bred up there and that without being touched with a venome so contageous to virtues he should give a remedy to those that were offended with it He learned all the Arts and all the Wisdome of the Egyptians he considered all their Policy all their Artifices their Arms their Levies their Victuall their Souldiers the Principles of their Government the Effects the Successes the Disposition of King Pharaoh the Esteem the Credit the Capacity and the Designs of the great Ones of the Court the Means that had upheld that Monarchy and the Things that might ruine it He was respected and esteemed of all as the true son of the Princesse which gave him the liberty to know every thing and to learn the secret mysteries of the Empire not as a stranger but as an originary He shewed from his infancy some glimpse of the greatnesse and of the power to which God destined him when according to the report of the Hebrews being at play one day with the Crown of Pharaoh he threw it on the ground and trod upon it with his feet which was esteemed a very bad presage and gave much trouble to the King but when they would discern whether that action proceeded from judgement and from malice or from chance they presented to him on one side an apple and on the other a coal of fire to see to which of the two he would reach his hand now the child quitting the fruit took the fire as if he would put it to his mouth to eat it Whereupon the sages of the Nation informed the King that there was no reason to put to death an infant adopted by his daughter for an action of simplicity He was then trained up in the exercise of arms and Josephus relates that being come to maturity of age he was a great warriour and that the Ethiopians having made an inundation upon the Realm of Egypt with great forces when the State was very much troubled with them the King was counselled by his Oracles to make use of an Hebrew Captain to stop the course of those hostilities The charge of the Army was given to Moses who led it with great prudence through places that others judged inaccessible and by means of certain Birds which he caused to be carried out of Egypt purged the Countrey of the serpents that were wont extremely to annoy the souldiers In fine he chased the Ethiopians and shut them up within the walls of their city Saba which he puissantly besieged The beauty of his countenance furnished him with darts and engines to take it that were stronger then fire and sword The Kings daughter having seen him from an high tower as he gave orders for the siege was so ravished with his valour that she became passionately in love with him and causes him to be sued unto for marriage on which condition she would deliver the city into his hands which was executed and the Nuptialls followed which changed the thunders of Warre into the songs of Love The glories that this Conquerour gathered from these combats were the seeds of an enraged envy which the Egyptians had against him ceasing not to persecute his virtue so that he was constrained to get him out of Egypt Yet it is held that he was at Court till the age of fourty years without advancing any thing in that great affair of the Deliverance of his People so leasurely do mighty negotiations proceed and are like the Planet of Saturn which being the highest is the slowest too He resented his bloud and his originall and had very much ado to digest the rigours that he saw continually exercised upon his brethren yet as long as he was at Court his spirit seemed to be in an eclipse without producing the vivacity of those fair Lights that God communicated to him in the wildernesse The Wise-men lost their Starre at the Court of Herod and Moses was deprived of his high revelations in that of Pharaoh He was in a condition not to be able any longer to dissemble the evil of his Nation and in an impotence to advance the good as he would have done he made a resolution to leave that place that was so familiar to Crimes and inaccessible to Virtues The clamours that he heard and the miseries that he saw rent his heart He could not hold from making an insolent Egyptian that tormented one of his brethren feel how much his hand weighed for having already a secret magistracy from God he killed him and buried him in the sand A few dayes after as he plaid the moderatour between those of his Nation an impudent fellow rose up against him and demanded of him the virtue of his commission reproaching him with the murder of the Egyptian which he thought had been very secret yet when he perceived that it was known at Court and that Pharaoh that was a suspicious Prince took jealousies of his courage and of his sufficiency he quitted all the greatnesses and all the delights of the palace of that
Darius the Mede who knowing the Prophecy of Daniel and the freedome with which he had spoken to the King esteemed him for it and retain'd him at the Court in the quality which his Predecessour had given him a night before his death When he saw himself established in favour again he forgat not God his heart being alwayes animated with a zeal to his Religion and when he saw his King inclining to the Superstition of the Countrey his heart was much grieved at it and he endeavours to cleanse him from his errours seeing him to be of a disposition too simple and credulous to the prejudice of the truth Amongst these false Deities Bel was adored with an exquisite and sumptuous worship in as much as there were offered to him every day out of the Kings house twelve baskets of meal forty sheep and six great measures of wine and it was believed that that Idol did eat up all the offerings The King that loved Daniel so much as to make him dine sometimes at his own table desired that he would accommodate himself to the Laws of the Countrey and that he would expresse some affection to the service of that great Bell that was adored universally by all the Nation But this wise Courtier answered him freely that he would never worship any but the true living God Darius replyed That there was nothing required to be adored but to live Bel was truly the living God because he did cat and drink well and cost much to feed him Daniel smiling answered that it was a great simplicity to think that that Idol did eat up all that was offered him every day Whereupon the King was moved with a curiosity to know how all this went and having caused the ordinary viands to be offered at Bels altar carefully saw all the doors of the Temple shut and put Guards before them that no body might enter in Daniel before he went out thence with the King caused abundance of Ashes to be sown there hoping by this means to discover the Imposture The morrow after the King caused the doors to be opened that had remained fast shut with his own seal and when as he entred in he saw that all the victuals had been taken away he cryed out that Bel was a great God and that it must needs be acknowledged that he did eat excellently well seeing nothing of all those offerings was remaining But Daniel instantly made him see upon the ashes the steps of those that had entered whereat he was astonished and called for all the Priests of that Idol to whom he shewed their cheat and pressed them so eagerly that they discovered certain little doors under the Altar through which they entred to the number of threescore and ten besides women and little children to devour the sacrifice The King was ashamed at the simplicity of his belief this shame passed into wrath and wrath proceeded as far as bloud causing him to put to death all the Impostours Furthermore in the same place there was a Dragon which was yet worshiped by that superstitious people which Daniel after he had obteined the permission of the King killed by making a masse composed of pitch of grease and of hair which he made him swallow and with it choake himself This made a great commotion amongst the people that said that the King was become a Jew causing his Priests to be murthered and killing the Dragon that there was now nothing remaining but to strangle all the sense of the Antient Religion In such a manner that behold a great tempest is raised against Daniel which in the opinion of all the world threatned him with an inevitable death The Grandees of the realm endeavour to ruine him by all ways and considering that he was exact and irreprochable in his office they resolve to ensnare him in matter of Religion Under colour of gratifying the King they beseech him to make an edict That whosoever should desire any thing of the Gods or of men for the space of thirty dayes except of the King should be cast into the Lions-den which the King granted them not knowing what their malice plotted against the innocence of his Prophet and Officer of State He was watched on all sides and retired himself from the King to diminish the jealousie that men had of him for the favours he received from him All his consolation was in Prayer and in those amiable discourses which he had with God and therefore he was afflicted as much as can be expressed seeing that the King his Master let himself be perswaded to make an edict so outrageous against the honour of God as to forbid to pray unto him Yet this hindered not him from continuing his oraisons lifting up thrice a day his weeping eyes on that side whereon the Temple of Jerusalem was built and sighing in the presence of his great Master with the ardours of an heart that evaporated it self â—ll in Love The Nobles that were every day at his door falled not to surprise him and to accuse him that he had transgressed the Edict which he acknowledged freely Complaints of it were suddenly made to his Majesty whose heart was wounded for the affection that he bare to Daniel and he laboured even till the Sun set to save him neverthelesse seeing himself pressed violently by his Edict and the vehemence which the Nobles used that it should be observed he abandoned the innocent to their fury against his will This defiles the conscience of many great men who are evil-doers of their disposition and yet for all that commit great evils through the complacency that they give to the violent humours of those that are about them He had some hope that Daniel would escape and that the God which he adored would save him and therefore he made no resistance by arms but delivered him into their hands to be cast into that horrible den of the Lions that had been kept hungry on purpose that he might be the sooner devoured But O God of wonders what Prodigie is here The Lions worship their prey Daniel is visited in that Cave by a Prophet come in an instant from Judea by the Ministry of an Angel that brought him his dinner The beasts change their Nature and Nature forces her Laws for the respect of a servant of God The King that had lain down without his supper and had not slept all night for the fear that he had for his poor Daniel runs early in the morning to the Lions-den which he had caused to be shut up with a great stone put upon the mouth of it and stampt with his own Seal and there cryes out with a lamentable voyce asking of Daniel whether he were yet alive who made him see how the God that he adored had delivered him and preserved him from all evill Whereat he was so ravished that he began to look upon him as an heavenly man caused his accusers to be apprehended to be exposed to the same Lions
with a prodigious army against which there was no humane resistance He sent a certain man named Rabshakeh in an Embassage to King Hezekiah who vomited out blasphemies and proposed to him conditions shamefull to his reputation and impossible to all his powers All the people were in an affright expecting nothing but fire and sword The King covered with sackcloth implores the heavenly assistance and sends the chief Counsellours of his State to the Prophet Isaiah to turn away this scourge by his prayers The holy man in that confusion of affairs wherein one could not see one onely spark of light encourages him animates him and promises him unexpected effects of the mercy of God The Prophecy was not vain for in one onely night the Angel of God killed an hundred fourscore and five thousand men in the Army of the Assyrians by a stroke from heaven and a devouring fire which reduced them to dust in their guilded arms This proud King was constrained to make an ignominious retreat and being returned to Niniveh the capitall city of his Empire he was slain by his own children This is a manifest example of the amiable protection of God over the Holy Court who defended his dear Hezekiah by the intercession of the Prophet as the apple of his eyes He expressed yet another singular favour to him in a great sicknesse caused by a malignant ulcer of which according to the course of nature he should have died and therefore Isaiah went to see him and without flattering him brought him word of his last day exhorting him to put the affairs of his State in order This good King had a tender affection to life and being astonished at that news prayed God fervently with a great profusion of tears that he would have regard to the sincerity of his heart and to the good services that he had done him in his Temple and not to tear away his life by a violent death in the middle of its course The heart of the everlasting Father melted at the tears of that Prince and he advertised Isaiah who was not yet gone out of the Palace to retread his steps and carry him the news of his recovery He told him from God that he should rise again from that sicknesse and within three dayes should go up to the Temple ro render his Thanks-giving Further he promised him that his dayes should be augmented fifteen years and that he should see himself totally delivered from the fury of the Assyrians to serve the living God in a perfect tranquility The King was ravished at this happy news and desired some sign of the Divine will to make him believe an happinesse so unhoped for Isaiah for this purpose did a miracle which since Joshua had not been seen nor heard which was to make the Sun turn back so that the shadow of the Diall which was in the palace appeared ten degrees retired to the admiration and ravishment of all the world And to shew that the Prophet was not ignorant of Physick he caused a Cataplasme composed of a lump of figs to be applyed to the wound of the sick man whereby he was healed and in three dayes rendred to the Temple This miracle was not unknown to the Babylonians who perceived the immense length of the day in which it was done and their Prince having heard the news of it sent Embassadours to King Hezekiah to congratulate his health and to offer him great presents whereat this Monarch that was of an easie nature suffered himself to be a little too much transported with joy and out of a little kind of vanity made a shew of his treasures and of his great riches to those strangers which served much to kindle their covetousnesse And therefore the Prophet who was never sparing of his remonstrances to the King rebuked him for that action and fore-told him that he made Infidels see the great wealth that God had given him through a vain glory which would cost him dear and that having been spectatours of his treasures they had a mind to be the masters of them and that at length they should compasse their design but that it should not be in his time This Prince received the correction with patience and took courage hearing that the hail should not fall upon his head passing over his to his childrens Manasses his son succeeded him a Prince truly abominable who wiped out all the marks of the piety of his father and placed Idols even in the very Temple of the living God All that Idolatry had shown in sacriledges cruelty in murders impudence in all sort of wickednesses was renewed by the perfidiousnesse of this man abandoned of God Poor Isaiah that had governed the father with so much authority had no credit with the son this tygre was incensed at the harmonious consorts of the divine Wisdomes that spake by his mouth and could no more endure the truth then serpents the odour of the vine Yet he desisted not to reprehend him and to advertise him of the punishments that God prepared for his crimes whereat this barbarous man was so much moved and kindled with fury that he commanded that this holy old man that had passed the hundreth year should be sawn alive by an horrible and extraordinary punishment O Manasses cruell Manasses the most infamous of tyrants and the most bloudy of hang-men this was the onely crime that the furies themselves even the most enraged should never have permitted to thy salvagenesse This venerable Master of so many Kings this King of Prophets this prime Intelligence of the State this Seraphim this instrument of the God of Hosts to be used so barbarously at the Court by his own bloud after so many good counsels so many glorious labours so many Oracles pronounced so many Divine actions so worthily accomplished All the Militia of heaven wept over this companion of the Angels and the earth caused fountains to leap up to bedew her lips in the midst of her ardent pains His Wisdome hath rendred him admirable to the Learned his Life inimitable to the most Perfect his Zeal adorable to the most Courageous his Age venerable to Nature and his Death deplorable to all Ages JEREMIAH BEhold the most afflicted of Holy Courtiers a Prophet weeping a Man of sorrows an heart alwayes bleeding and eyes that are never dry He haunted not great men but to see great evils and was not found at Court but to sing its Funerals and to set it up a tomb Yet was he a very great and most holy person that had been sanctified in his mothers womb that began to prophecy at the age of fifteen years a spirit separated from the vanities and the pretensions of the world that was intire to God that lived by the purest flames of his holy love and quenched his thirst with his tears He drank the mud of bad times and found himself in a piteous Government in which there was little to gain and much to suffer After that the
dinner of Locusts and wild Honey retired in his Cabben then at the fight of the pomps and pleasures of the King of Galilee But God that is the Master of Kings and the Directour of Hermites hath thus disposed of him and willed that he should dye at Court after he had so long a time lived in the wildernesse It is not certainly known what occasion drove him to it whether he went thither by zeal or whether he was sent for by design or whether he was forced by violence Some think that the miseries of his countrey afflicted under the government of a dissolute Prince affecting him with a great Compassion He went out of the desert of his own accord to admonish the king of his duty Since that all those that came neer him and that were obliged to speak to him were mute partly by a servitude fatall to all those that are tyed to the hopes of the world and partly also being seized with fear by reason of the power and cruelty of a womans spirit that possessed Herod Others as Josephus have written that the Prince hearing every day of the great concourse of all sorts of people that went to the wildernesse to see Saint John was afraid lest under colour of piety this might make some change of State Tyrants love not men endowed with an extraordinary virtue and that have not learnt the trade of flattering their voyce is the Cock that frights those cruell Lyons their life is a flash of Lightning that dazles their Eyes their actions are as many Convictions of their Iniquity And therefore this Authour saith that without other form of processe Herod caused him to be apprehended to prevent him and break off those assemblies that were made about him Yet it is probable and more consonant to the Scripture which assures us that this Prince bare some respect to John and heard him and did many things according to his advice that he proceeded not against him at first with so much violence But the cunning Fox as he was according to the judgement that the Eternall Truth made of him seeing that Saint John was in an high esteem for holinesse and in great credit amongst the people strived to winne him and to draw him to him to make himself be reputed for a good Prince that cherished honest men and to maintain by this means his authority that was already rottering and little rooted in the true Maximes of a good Government It was thus that Dionysius the Tyrant made use of the Philosophers not for any affection that he bare them but to appropriate them to the bad intentions that he had in State and to give them some colour by the expresse or interpreted approbation of those personages that were in reputation for their wisdome But Herod did ill choose his man this was not a Court-flatterer a Tool for all Trades a Shoe for all Feet but a stiffe and austere man to whom a whole World would not have given the least temptation to do any thing against his conscience It would be a superfluous thing to enlarge ones self at length upon the rare qualities of Saint John who having been many times highly commended by the Creatour of Virtues and the Distributour of true praises who hath preferred him above the greatest of the world seems to have dryed up by his abundance the Elogies of the most eloquent Let us content our selves to say that there are abundance of excellencies in him enough to make all chaires speak and all pens write even to the end of the world He was born of the blood of Aaron the brother of Moses the first ornament of the Priesthood and the great Conductour of the People He came out of a barren Womb which he rendered fruitfull above all fecundities of the earth His birth was declared miraculously by the voyce of an Archangell He was sanctified almost as soon as conceived and virtue appropriated him to her self before that nature had brought him to the Light He was a worshipper of the word when he was yet in the bowels of his mother and received the first rayes of the everlasting day before that his eye was open to the brightnesse of the Sun Reason was advanced to him by a wonder altogether extraordinary He hath had this honour to know first after the Virgin Mary the news of that high mystery of the Incarnation and of the Redemption of the world Of all the Nativities of so many children of Adam the Church celebrates none but that of John who hath this common with our Saviour and his most holy Mother who by a speciall priviledge honoured his birth by her actuall presence So that he saw his first day under the aspect of the Mother of the Universe His name was given him by an Archangell a name of grace and favour that shewed he was placed in the ranke of the dearest delights of Heaven and the tongue of his dumb Father tyed by an heavenly virtue was loosed by its power that it might pronounce that fair name He was exempted from grievous sins and as many Divines hold even from veniall He consecrated his retirement in the Desert almost as soon as he entered into the world Farthermore he was a Prophet and more then a Prophet a Virgin a Doctour a forerunner of the Son of God the Trumpet of Repentance the Authour of a Baptisme that ushered in that which regenerates us all whereof Jesus was pleased to receive the sprinckling In fine he was the Horizon of the Gospel and the Law and the first that shewed with the finger the Lamb of God and the Kingdome of Heaven But let us make no reckoning of what I have alleaged but let us say onely that which the word hath said of him That he was not a Reed to bow at every wind nor a man that could be allured by the delicacies of the Court He spake there as a Prophet he conversed there as an Angell and at last dyed there as a Martyr The time furnished him with an occasion about which he could not speak without making much noyse and he could not hold his peace without betraying his Conscience That Herod Antipas which we are to speak of here was the sonne of the great Herod the Murtherer of the Innocents and of a Samaritan woman who after the death of his Father forasmuch as the Legitimate issue of Mariamne had been unworthily murthered to make way for unjust heirs had for his part of the Kingdome of Judea Galilee which he held in quality of a Tetrarch He was a Prince of a small courage addicted to his pleasures lascivious and loose that endeavoured to preserve himself by poor shifts having nothing stout nor warlike in his person He had a brother named Philip which held another parcell of that Kingdome of Judea dismembred and little enough considerable the Romans having possessed themselves of the best part of it after they had deposed Archelaus that had reigned as Successour of his
little corner of the earth in which I am buried alive I have that hope that his Mercy will not come to me to go beyond me and to leave me to die in this place He knoweth the time in which he will relieve those whom he pleaseth and I must leave that to his Dispensation onely I shall endeavour not to render my self unworthy of his Benefits and I will provide in some sort that his Goodnesse shall not blush to have made its approaches to me How happy O Cesar is your Clemency under whom the Banished do live more contented then Kings did heretofore under your Predecessour Behold here the finest Complement that ever proceeded from the mouth of man and he who well observes it will find nothing of sordid flattery in it And that the Reign of Claudius compared to that of Caligula doth go so farre beyond it as silver surpasseth lead Yet for all those fair words Claudius did nothing for him as long as Messalina did manage the heighth of the Affairs and till after his Polybius who suffered himself to sink into that infamy as to be The revolution at Court and the return of the banished numbred in the List of the Adulterers with the Emperesse was disgraced and condemned to death not long after which this prostituted Woman having wearied both heaven and earth with her filthinesse did incense her husbands Patience into a Rage who caused her to passe under the edge of the sword Agrippina widow to Domitius the father of Nero returned then to the Court having absented her self long from it by reason of the misfortune of her sister Julia she knew so well to cajole the Emperour that he espoused her as I have mentioned before The first action she did and for which she was praised by all the world was her revoking of Seneca to Rome from the Isle of Corsica immediately afterwards she committed the charge of her son Nero into his hands who was then eleven years of age and finding him to be a man of a choice spirit she took a resolution to make one day use of his service in the management of Seneca returns into high repute the affairs of State To speak sincerely of the manners of Seneca he had a great and a gallant soul and dispositions to a The manners of Seneca high virtue he was neither guilefull nor wilfull nor malicious nor cruel nor voluptuous and I do strongly believe that of a Gentleman he was the best man of that Age. Also Cornelius Tacitus who concealeth no evil that he knows and oftentimes doth divine on that of the which he is not throughly informed doth never speak of Seneca but with honour as a wise and sober man and moderate in his passions And Saint Hierome himself doth witnesse that he was a most continent person which may suffice to disabuse those who suffer themselves to be amazed with the Rapsodies of Dion Without all doubt he had something in his soul as religious as it was great which did not contentent it self with words but did proceed to actions And this did easily appear in his youth for when so many gentlemen of Rome did resort to the Universities of the Philosophers some for the wantonnesse of sporr others to see fashions others to carry away some fine sentence in their Table-book and by that means to get some esteem in conversation Seneca addressed himself unto them to learn and to practise virtue When he intended to speak of Riches of Solitude of Chastity of Sobriety he found his heart inflamed and he would have lived altogether a retired life if the great qualities wherewith God had indued him had not imbarked him in the Affairs of the Court. It is a wonder that amongst so great a confluence at the Court he alwayes observed that austere life which he practised in his infancy He did never eat of any delicacies which do serve onely to flatter the appetite and did content himself with the most simple viands He never drank any wine he used altogether cold baths he did not care for perfumes he oftentimes would lie on the ground upon a poor matter as where no print of his body was to be seen so hard it was He also sometimes did abstain from food and he found it good for him and all his life time he had practised it if his father had not expresly commanded him to the contrary because in the Reign of Tyberius Epist 108. there was a sect of strangers condemned at Rome who made a profession of certain Abstinences Some are of opinion that he did speak of Christians but they were neither known nor persecuted under the Emperour Tyberius For the rest all his Train were carried in one caroach which oftentimes was out of order and instead of lovely Pages and Minions he was served by men onely and small was the retinue that attended on him He received all things that were given him with facility and complained not of any thing He took no offence at the reports and slanders of men and pardoned many other inconveniencies he had an honest heart and full of love to those to whom he professed love he was tender of compassion on the behalf of the poor and a hater of covetousnesse After he had satisfied the Affairs of the Empire he took no pleasures at all but in Contemplation and Study Books being unto him as necessary as his bread His table was moderate his discourse affable his life innocent and his conversation most attractive Amongst other things he would be angry with himself for not having professed Virtue openly enough and for reflecting his thoughts on the considerations of the world and in modesty he would say that he aspired alwayes to the heighth of Virtue and neverthelesse he still found himself to be in the centre of Vices Those who condemne him without knowing what he was would think that they themselves did great penance if they should live after the manner of Seneca He was with Nero five or six years before he was made Emperour and formed his Infancy with excellent Instructions in the mean time Agrippina did the fatall act as I have spoken and poisoned Claudius her husband to devolve the Empire on her son who was elected by the generall consent of all the States It is too true that Seneca found himself overcharged with joy at so great a change and at that time a little forgat the severity of a Philosopher when he composed a railing Book on the death of Claudius which he called Apocolocynthosis as if he should have said Divinity Seneca made a Libel against Claudius acquired by the means of a Drug alluding to that he was numbred in the catalogue of the Gods being preferred to heaven by poyson Some believe that he composed that Book as well to revenge himself for the death of his dear Benefactour Julia and for the affliction of his long banishment as to tejoyce his Scholar Nero who took great pleasure
fifteenth year of her age being himself not much more indebted unto yeares than she was All things laughed at the beams of this bright Morning and it seemed that Felicity her self had with full hands poured down her favours upon a Marriage which had been made in Heaven to carry along with it the approbation of all the earth But who can dive into the secrets which Providence The inconstancy of humane affairs hath in her own breast concealed from us Or who is he that hath tears enough to deplore the condition of great Fortunes when they are abandoned to the pillage and plunder of destruction This young French King having in his way but saluted Royalty after his reign but of six moneths was taken out of the world by an Impostume in his ear All France did groan under this loss by reason of the excellent inclination of that Prince but she was more touched with the impressions which in her heart her most dear Spouse received who desired to sacrifice the rest of her dayes unto the ashes of her husband Nevertheless as the tenderness of the Kings age who was troubled besides with divers indispositions of body and the short time they were married together did not permit that any issue should be left behind him there did arise upon it a report that the young Her return into Scotland Queen should return into her own Countrey where two Crowns did attend her the one in England the other in Scotland she being the true Inheritress of them both of one of which she took possession and was deprived of her rights in the other by the injustice of Usurpation 3. Elizabeth of England now began to torment The first fire of the jealousie of Estate her self with a furious jealousie against her and had already laid the Design to stop her in her return to Scotland but God was pleased that she was gallantly accompanied with a great part of the most generous of the Nobility of France and did pass the seas very fortunately and arrived so suddenly in Scotland as if she did flie in the Air there she was received of all the good Catholicks with wonderfull entertainments of applause and joy Elizabeth who did swell with despite that she failed in her design covering her artifice with the vail of friendship did send a solemn Embassage with Presents to congratulate her arrival and to give her the assurances of an eternal Alliance The good Princess who had a heart as credulous as generous was passionately taken with this friendship and disputed with her self how she should overcome her in honour and in courtesie She took from her Treasurie a Diamond of which she made a Present to her It was cut in the manner of a heart and enriched with a verse of Buchanans who had not as yet his spirit infected with Treason In the mean time Elizabeth not unlike those Sorcerers which from the fairest mornings do produce the foulest weather did not cease under-hand to sow troubles and divisions in the Realm of Scotland endeavouring to destroy her Cousin by the fines of policy whom she durst not attach by the force of Arms. On the first arrival of Queen Mary into Scotland she found the Kingdom overspread with the factions of the Calvinists which at that time troubled all the Estates in Christendom And seeing that the youth and inexperience of her widow-hood was not compatible with the great underminings which her Enemies did daily form against her State she began after the space of five years to think of a second Marriage The small success in her first marriage made Her second marriage her suspect an alliance with strangers and those who were most near unto her did disswade her from it She did cast her eyes on her Cousin Henry Stuart the young Earl of Lenox who for the comeliness of his person was one of the most remarkable in the Kingdom of Scotland and having procured a Dispensation from the Pope she married him This affection The seed of the jealousie of love although most innocent in it self being not mannaged with all the considerations of State did bring upon her the jealousie of other Princes and was in the end attended with great disasters But to speak the truth the Earl of Murray natural brother to the Queen a pernicious and luxurious man who under-hand was the Instrument of Elizabeth of England did sow the first seeds of all these Tragedies In the beginning of these troubles he was called The Prior of S. Andrew as being ordained by James the Fifth to Ecclesiastical dignity but having drunk the air of a turbulent and furious Ambition which Knox the Patriarch of the Hereticks in Scotland had inspired in him he did not cease to affect the Quality of Regent and of King nor sparing any wickednesses to arrive to the butt of his desires As he observed that the Queen his sister being yet Ambition the beginning of all evils very young and very beautifull was sought for in marriage by the King of Spain to be married to his Son and by the Emperour to be maraied to his Brother he used the utmost of his power to divert that Design politickly fore-seeing that such alliances would tend to the diminution of his power and he failed not with most violent perswasions to represent unto her that she should enjoy neither peace nor honour in her Kingdom if she were espoused to a forreign Prince and the better to divert her from it he ceased not to advance the perfections of young Lenox which he did rather to amuse her and to possess her with thoughts of love than in earnest to bring the marriage to accomplishment The generous Princess who understood not yet what Dissimulation meant gave car unto him and overcome by his counsel she proceeded to the effects of the marriage with the Earl of Lenox who was indeed accomplished with all excellent endowments both of body and of mind but being very young had not the qualities requisite to serve him to secure himself This Murray who thought he should reign in him and by him and that having advanced him to the Royal Dignity the King should be but as the instrument of his will did find himself much deceived when he observed the King to grow cold in his behalf and to reign with an Authority more absolute than he intended His fury did proceed to that height that he drew into the field to make war against the King but having bad success therein he was constrained to retire himself into England where he began his designs to destroy his Sister He had in the Scotch Court the Earl of Morton who was unto him as his other-self to whom he gave Commission to throw the apple of Discord on this marriage of the King and Queen This he performed with incredible The effects of Envy and Ambition cunning and finding some disposition by the cooling of his affection he perswaded Lenox That he was
a King in Name onely and that the Queen signed The pernicious language of an Incendiary first in all the Declarations and did not permit that any Effigies should be stamped on the moneys but her own That of necessity he must discharge himself from the tutelage of that Imperious woman and teach her to submit to the law of Nature which allows not that Sex to command their husbands On the other side this Forger of iniquity heating two furnaces with one fagot ceased not by his complaints to set on fire the heart of the Queen telling her That she must chastise the rash young Man and retain the Sovereignty entire on her own side otherwise his unruly passions attempting to part the Crown betwixt them would take it away from them both and put all things into a confusion This was the occasion that Mary arming her heart with a manly courage would enjoy the Rights and Prerogatives of her birth and did afterwards reign in full authority 4. This young Husband who of a Subject was become The jealousie of King Henry Stuart Darley a Master could not with moderation endure his change of fortune but daily endeavoured to hold more of command than of compliance The Queen also who desired to be known the sole efficient Cause of his preferment being unwilling to lose the name of Mistress in taking that of wife did distast his importunity deferred his Coronation and did allow him but a little part in the affairs of the Kingdom She ordinarily did confer much with David Riccius her Secretary an old and a discreet man who with great honour possessed her ear and her good opinion for she cherished him rather for the necessity of her affairs than for any attractive qualities that were in him for he was but of a deformed body as they who have seen him do affirm But the calumny of the The Book of the death of the Queen of Scots printed in the year 1587. Puritans who know of every wood how to make an arrow did not forbear in their bold discourses to reflect upon the honour of Queen Mary concerning that subject although it was the most incredible and the most ridiculous thing in the world Cambden also the most sincere of all Historians of the pretended Religion and Monsieur de Castelnau have disdained to speak of it as being an out-rage which had no foundation at all of truth although the Earls of Morton and Lindsey two execrable Incendiaries who had undertaken the divorce of the Royal House following the spirit of Heresie most impudently to breathe forth the greatest lies did work a great alteration on the King in the cooling of his affections to his wife The spirit of Henrie now became furious and A spirit tormented with two great devils did perceive it self to be possessed on by two fiends The one the Jealousie of Love the other of Estate which both at one time did commit a prodigious Ravishment on his heart They made him believe that he passed for a King in fansie onely and that his Throne was no more than a meer picture whilest another was made a Partner in his bed In effect the excellent Beauties of the Queen which had given him such heats of love did now raise his jealousie to the height of those flames He was all on fire perpetually night and day and being tormented with shadows suspitions and rages with choller frenzies and with terrours he lived as on the wheel not knowing which way to turn himself His passion did suggest unto him a bloudy remedy A tragick remedy by the death of the Secretary of the Queen which was to draw the Secretary from the Cabinet of the Queen at the hour of supper and under colour of communicating some affair unto him to stab him with a ponyard in the Presence-Chamber The body being all bloudy by threescore wounds which it received fell down just at the door of his Mistress imploring Heaven and earth against those who by so black a treason had ravished his life from him in the flower of his hopes The Queen being frighted at the noise did run to the door and with his bloud received the last breathings of his soul some drops of the bloud falling on her outward garment She startled at the horrour of the sight and believed that some sprinklings of the bloud had painted on her face the opprobriousness of the act But as she made her complaint the Murderers The passion of divelish fury presented a pistol to her without any regard to the brightness of her Majesty or the bigness of her womb desiring nothing more than at one blow to destroy both the Tree and the fruit They locked her up in a chamber of the Palace taking from her all her ordinary servants and putting a Guard on her of four-score souldiers On this the Estates met and the pestilent Councel were assembled where with mouthes full of fire the Hereticks ceased not to breathe forth Rebellion Bloud and Butcheries They gave it out aloud That they ought not by halfs to do a work of so great importance and since the Queen who was a Pillar of the Papists Religion in Scotland was already shaken they ought to lay her low as the earth and utterly destroy her in giving allowance to the Libels and the Calumnies which were published against her They had attempted to have seduced the The horrible attempt of Heresie spirit of the young King promising him to put the Crown in peace upon his Head if he would maintain and support their Design to which as he shewed an inclination they began to weave an horrible conspiracy to take from him all the most eminent persons of the State and imbarque the innocence of the Queen in the common shipwrack The Earl of Murray who fled into England for having raised Arms against their Majesties returned back and came into Scotland rathers as a Triumpher than a guilty person They made him an overture of their pernicious counsels which he entertained with horrour for as yet he was unwilling that the Affairs should be carried on with such an extremity of violence wherefore in private he repaired to the Queen demanding pardon for his offences past and promising all obedience for the time to come He counselled her to recollect and rouze up her spirits and pardon the injuries passed and to take away from the Conspiratours all the apprehensions of Despair The Queen bending her spirit to the necessity of the time and her present affairs did receive him with all courtesie and told him that she was ready to perform all as he pleased She assured him that he was not ignorant that her heart was without gall having always pardoned offences even to her own destruction by her too much clemency And though she had been used by him with too much rigour for a Brother that she would not cease to cherish him and to gratifie him above all other to give him the
way capable to appease the troubles prevent the ambuscadoes or sustain the great charges of the Realm Therefore she ought to receive him for her husband and the Companion of her Fortunes and designs having both power will and courage to defend her in all conditions and that he would never suffer her to be in quiet but onely by the consummation of this Marriage This wicked man by this Counsel did promise to himself either to reign with him being his familiar friend or by this action to crie down the Queen and overthrow her Authority as afterwards it came to pass The Marriage is now to be accomplished and the Importunities of the Earl prevailed on Maries heart who married him in the face of the Church with all the ceremonies requisite to it Some have written that this virtuous Lady by reason of her beauties was strongly persecuted by diverse with daily motions concerning marriage And that the easiness of her nature which could not resist the great importunities and continual battels which love stirred up against her did bring upon her a deluge of misfortunes likewise her neighbour Princes who knew not the Artifice of her enemies did in the beginning blame her for having so easily adhered to a man who was so dangerously suspected concerning that she ought to clear her reputation from the least shadows of suspition wherewith Envy began to cloud it But who shall well consider a young widow of seventeen years of age placed in the furthest part of all the world where Heresie had over-turned all order and let loose the blackest furies of Hell for the dissolution of the State Who shall contemplate her alone as the morning Star in the midst of so many clouds without assistance without forces without Counsel persecuted by her brother outraged by the Hereticks betrayed by the Queen of England under the colour of good will sought for in marriage by force of Arms by the Princes of her own Realm he shall find that she hath done nothing improvidently in chusing those by friendship which necessity did give her by force and whether that there are times and revolutions of affairs so dangerous and remediles in which we have no other power left us but onely to destroy our selves 7. In the mean time the Lutherans and the Calvinists The persecution of the Queen of Scots by the Protestants did not cease to cry out and to bray against their Princess and having begun by in famous libels they prevailed so much by their Trumpets of Sedition that they kindled a war under the pretence of revenging the Kings death whom they had caused to be pourtrayed dead in a bloudy Standard with his little Son at his feet who demanded vengeance Bothuel who as yet was drunk with the sweetnesses of affection which he received from his new spouse was altogether amazed when he saw an Army marching in the field against him And that the clamour of the people did charge him aloud with the death of the King The Queen was struck into such a horrour at the report of the Crime that forthwith she commanded him to withdraw himself and never to see her more and although she was ignorant that his Courage and Valour were able to secure her from the tempest which was falling on her yet she chose rather to abandon her self as a prey to all the fury of her Enemies than to keep but one hour that person near her which she then onely knew to have had some ill designs on the person of the King He fled from Scotland into Denmark where after ten years tedious imprisonment he living and dying did protest that Queen Mary did never know of the conspiracy against her husband that those who gave the blow having demanded some Warrant from the Queen for their discharge she made answer that it was sacriledge to think of it so innocent a Soul she had This protestation which he made at his death before the Bishop and other Lords of the Realm was afterwards sent to diverse Princes of Europe and to Elizabeth her self who did dissemble it In the mean time the Rage of the Infidels did seize on Mary and did constrain her with execrable violence and treasons plotted under hand by the Agents of the Queen of England to resign the Kingdom to her son whom The fury and infidelity of Ambition these seditious people caused to be Crowned at one year of age to put all the Authority into the hands of Murray in the quality of Regent Not content with this they surprized her in a morning as she was putting on her cloathes and taking from her all ornaments worthy of her quality they cloathed her in a sordid habite and having mounted her upon a horse which by chance passed through a Meadow they brought her into a place out of the way and confined her to a Castle scituate on the lake of Lenox under the guard of the Earl of Douglas Brother by the mothers side to the Vice-Roy using her as a lost creature and with horrible boldness accusing her for the death of her husband and a design to invade his Kingdom In this captivity she was charged with contumacies by the Concubine of her Father a most insolent woman to whom the keeping of her was committed and by a disrobed Prior who did visite her and tendered her some Remonstrances to assist her as her Father Confessor And at that time some black and butcherly spirits did take a resolution to strangle her and to publish to the world that she had done it of her self being overcome by dispair What an indignity was this and what a confusion in nature and the laws of the world to behold that excellent Lady to whom grace and nature had given chains to captivate the hearts of the most barbarous That great Princess whom the sun did see almost as soon to be a Queen as a living creature She that was born to Empires as all Empires seemed to be made for her to be deprived of her sweet liberty to see herself severed from all commerce with mankind to be banished in a desart where nothing but rocks were the witnesses of her sufferings Nay which is more she is now become the captive of her own subjects and a servant to her slaves The poor Turtle ceased not to groan and often through the grate would look on the lake wherein every wave she conceived she beheld the waving image of her change of fortunes Not long after she entered into a deep melancholy when the evil spirit that fisheth in troubled waters did tempt her into thoughts of despair representing to her that since the air and the earth were shut from her she should make choice of the water into the which she should throw her self and end the langushment of her captivity by burying her self in a moment with her afflictions But as her pious soul was fastened unto GOD by chains not to be dissolved she fervently besought the Divine
propose three Remedies to take away the differences and to re-establish the true Queen in her Kingdom The first was That she should give assurances to the Queen Elizabeth no ways to disquiet her in the Succession of the Crown of England The Second was That she should grant an Act of Pardon and Forgetfulness to her rebellious Subjects for fear the punishment should otherwise extend to a number that was infinite The third was That the Marriage with Bothuel being condemned to be unlawfull she should consent to be espoused to some Illustrious Person in England who should be answerable in all conditions and maintain both Kingdoms in a perpetual friendship to which Queen Mary shewed a singular inclination 9. But the Queen of England was wonderfully The labyrinths of the hypocrisie of Elizabeth amazed at this Sentence and proceedings and although in publick she seemed to be much contented at the justification of her Cousin yet in secret she much raged at it and encouraged the Accusers to prosecute their complaints in full Parliament telling them They were both lazy and impertinent to begin their Suit and not to accomplish it The Process upon this was brought again to the Councel of England where the bastard Murray armed with the outragious pen of Buchanan used all his power even to the affrighting of the Agents of Queen Mary by the Authority of Elizabeth But the best sort of people began to murmure saying that it was necessary that the Traitours should be taken off and the innocent Queen re-established in her Kingdom On the one side Elizabeth ceased not to make delays and on the other she pretended that she would understand what should be the conditions of her Inlargement whether it were to appear civil and humane or whether she would sound the minds of those further whom she thought did talk with too much liberty concerning that affair In the mean time the Spirits which could not clearly enough discover the labyrinths of her dark heart conceived that Truth had now prevailed to publish the innocence of the Queen of Scotland that the Deceitfull hopes Storm was grown into a Calm and that she now began to arrive at her desired haven she now was looked on by every one with another eye and the greatest personages in England did passionately desire an Alliance with her The Earl of Liecester an intimate favourite of Elizabeths observing that his Queen had no intention to be married and that the Scepter of England did look upon this Prisoner did entertain a delicate Ambition to court her in the way of Marriage but the Transalpine humour of his most jealous Mistress did so perplex him that he durst not tell to his own heart what his own thoughts were He most passionately desired that the Queen would make some overture to him of it to submit all things to her discretion and to make her understand that this would be a happy means to take away all doubts and misapprehensions that should arise from Scotland But so it was that he durst not proceed in it so well he understood the spirit of Elizabeth who was as apt to receive an evil impression as she was cruel to revenge it The Duke of Norfolk who was President at the Treason against the Duke of Norfolk and his ruin Trial of Queen Mary was advanced above all others in Dignity and remarkable over all the Realm for his great and gallant qualities The bastard Murray did flatter him with the hope of his Sisters marriage The Earl of Liecester began to dive into his heart concerning that suit and gave him some touches of it whether it were that by that means he would know the pleasure of Elizabeth or whether he were resolved to destroy the Duke who onely was able to cast a shadow on his light Throgmorton who was a friend unto them both did first carry the message and acquainted Norfolk that Leicester had a desire to speak with him on a business of high importance which was concerning his marriage with the Queen of Scotland he told him That he spoke this unto him as of himself but counselled him as a friend to refer the further proceedings on that marriage to the Earl of Leicester who though it was thought did pretend himself to it yet he desired that his modesty would give way that the Earl might advise him because there was no great apparence of any thriving in that motion without his direction He believed this counsel and as soon as the Earl began to open his mouth concerning it he did comply unto him with all honour and submission and did express himself to be indifferent and cold enough concerning that marriage although to speak the truth her Innocence so much persecuted had kindled already the first fire of love within his heart Leicester touched with this courtesie did increase his flame and did remonstrate to him that this Marriage would highly conduce to the benefit of the State because it would prove a happy means to divert all strange Alliances which might carry the Queen of Scotland to pursue her pretensions to the Crown of England and serve absolutely to confirm her in the good opinion of Queen Elizabeth The Duke who was indued with a natural freedom of disposition and knew not how to dissemble beholding himself at one time betwixt two violent fires of Love and Honour did entertain the heat which too soon he did evaporate and besought the Earl since he pretended no more to that affair and that he himself would not proceed in it without his assurance that he would do him a courtesie worthy of the place which he had near the Queen for which he never would be ingratefull This the Earl did promise him and if men may judge by apparence very heartily which did so blow up the heart of the Lover that in thinking of it he did adore his own thoughts It was indeed a strange temptation to propose unto himself so accomplished a Beauty and so eminent a Virtue on whose trayn two Kingdoms did attend The world is not capable to be governed by two Suns and the heart of man suffers more than mortal Agonies when it sustains the shock of two violent passions who unite their forces and designs to make a war upon him The Duke beholding himself flattered with these Great passions of Love and Ambition loves by divers other Agents did write unto the Queen of Scotland with magnifick complements and offers of unparallel'd service with the greater pomp sweetness to enter into the secrets of her thoughts The Prisoner who laboured for nothing more than to break her chains asunder did desire rather to see the end of that affair than to understand the beginning of it but the experience which she had of the dissimulation and jealousies of Elizabeth did make her to go upon these considerations as on a fire covered with ashes Wherefore without being much moved at it she made answer That she must commit the
commandment Wealth and Honour were always on her side Delight and Joy seemed onely to be ordained for her Whatsoever she undertook did thrive all her thoughts were prosperous the earth and the sea did obey her the winds and the tempests did follow her Standards Some would affirm that this is no marvel at all but onely the effect of a cunning and politick Councel composed of the sons of darkness who are more proper to inherit the felicities of this world than the children of the light But we must consider that this is the common condition both of the good and the evil to find out the cause in which the Understanding of man doth lose it self David curiously endeavouring to discover the reason in the beginning did conceive himself to be a Philosopher but in the end acknowledged that the consideration thereof did make him to become a Beast The Astrologers do affirm that Elizabeth came into the world under the Sign of Virgo which doth promise Empires and Honours and that the Queen of Scotland was born under Sagitarius which doth threaten women with affliction and a bloudy Death The Machivilians do maintain that she should accommodate her self to the Religion of her Countrey and that in the opposing of that torrent she ruined her affairs The Politicians do impute it to the easiness of her gentle Nature Others do blame the counsel which she entertained to marry her own Subjects And some have looked upon her as Jobs false friends did look on him and reported him to lye on the dung-hill for his sions But having thoroughly considered on it I do observe that in these two Queens God would represent the two Cities of Sion and Babylon the two wayes of the just and the unjust and the estate of this present world and of the world to come He hath given to Elizabeth the bread of dogs to reserve for Mary the Manna of Angels In one he hath recompensed some moral virtues with temporal blessings to make the other to enter into the possession of eternal happiness Elizabeth did reign why so did Athalia Elizabeth did presecute the Prophets why so did Jezabel Elizabeth hath obtained Victories why so did Thomyris the Queen of the Scythians She hath lived in honour and delight and so did Semiramis She died a natural death being full of years so died the Herods and Tyberius but following the track that she did walk in what shall we collect of her end but as of that which Job speaketh concerning the Tomb of the wicked They pass away their life in delights and descend in a moment unto hell Now God being pleased to raise Marie above all the greatness of this earth and to renew in her the fruits of his Cross did permit that in the Age wherein she lived there should be the most outragious and bloudy persecution that was ever raised against the Church He was pleased by the secret counsel of his The great secret of the Divine Providence Providence that there should be persons of all sorts which should extol the Effects of his Passion And there being already entered so many Prelates Doctours Confessours Judges Merchants Labourers and Artisans he would now have Kings and Queens to enter also Her Husband Francis the Second although a most just and innocent Prince had already took part in this conflict of suffering Souls His life being shortened as it is thought by the fury of the Hugonots who did not cease to persecute him It was now requisite that his dear Spouse should undertake the mystery of the Cross also And as she had a most couragious soul so God did put her in the front of the most violent persecutions to suffer the greatest torments and to obtain the richest Crowns The Prophet saith That man is made as a piece of Elizabeth's hatred to the Queen of Scotland Imbroidery which doth not manifest it self in the lives of the just for God doth use them as the Imbroiderer doth his stuffs of Velvet and of Satin he takes them in pieces to make habilements for the beautifiing of his Temple 12. Elizabeth being now transported into Vengeance and carried away by violent Counsels is resolved to put Mary to death It is most certain that she passionately desired the death of this Queen well understanding that her life was most apposite to her most delicate interests She could not be ignorant that Mary Stuart had right to the Crown of England and that she usurped it she could not be ignorant that in a General Assembly of the States of England she was declared to be a Bastard as being derived from a marriage made consummated against all laws both Divine and humane She observed that her Throne did not subsit but by the Faction of Heresie and as her Crown was first established by disorder so according to her policie it must be cemented by bloud She could not deny but that the Queen of Scotland had a Title to the Crown which insensibly might fall on the head of the Prisoner and then that in a moment she might change the whole face of the State She observed her to be a Queen of a vast spirit of an unshaken faith and of an excellent virtue who had received the Unction of the Realm of Scotland and who was Queen Dowager of the Kingdom of France supported by the Pope reverenced throughout all Christendom and regarded by the Catholicks as a sacred stock from which new branches of Religion should spring which no Ax of persecution could cut down The Hereticks in England who feared her as one that would punish their offences and destroy their Fortunes which they had builded on the ruins of Religion had not a more earnest desire than to see her out of the world All things conspired to overthrow this poor Princess and nothing remained but to give a colour to so bold a murder It so fell out that in the last years of her afflicting imprisonment a conspiracy was plotted against the Estate and the life of Elizabeth as Cambden doth recite it Ballard an English Priest who had more zeal to his Religion than discretion to mannage his enterprize considered with himself how this woman had usurped a Scepter which did not appertain unto her How she had overthrown all the principles of the ancient Religion How she had kept in prison an innocent Queen for the space of twenty years using her with all manner of indignity how she continually practised new butcheries by the effusion of the bloud of the Catholicks he conceived it would be a work of Justice to procure her death who held our purses in her hand and our liberty in a chain But I will not approve of those bloudy Counsels which do provide a Remedy far worse than the disease and infinitely do trouble the Estate of Christendom Nevertheless he drew unto him many that were of his opinion who did offer and devote themselves to give this fatal blow The chiefest amongst them was
Commission with their own Names On which she demanded by what Law they would proceed against her the Canon Law or the civil Law and because she knew very well that they were no great Lawyers she conceived it would be requisite that some should be sent for from the Universities in Europe They replied That she should be tried by the civil Law of England in which they were sufficiently experienced But she who well observed that they would intangle her with a new Law on purpose against her made answer you are gallant Gentlemen and can make what Laws you please but I am not bound to submit unto them since you your selves in another case refuse to be subjected to the Salick Law of France Your Law hath no more of Example than your proceeding hath of Justice On this Hatton Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen of England advanced himself and said unto her you are accused for conspiring the ruin of our Mistress who is an anointed Queen Your degree is not exempted to answer for such a Crime neither by the Law of Nations nor of nature If you are innocent you are unjust to your Reputation to indeavour to evade the judgement The Queen will be very glad that you can justifie your self for she hath assured me that she never in the world received more discontent than to find you charged with this accusation Forbear this vain consideration of Royalty which at this present serves for nothing Cause the suspitions to cease and wipe away the stain which otherwise will cleave for ever to your reputation She replied I refuse not to answer before the States of the Realm being lawfully called because I have been acknowledged to be a presumed Heir of the Kingdom Then will I speak not as a subject but in another nature without submitting my self to the new Ordinance of your Commission which is known to be nothing else but a Malicious net made to inwrap my innocence The Treasurer on this did interrupt her and said we will then proceed to the contempt to which she made answer Examine your own consciences and provide for your Honours and so God render to you and your children as you shall do in the judgement The next morning she called one of the Commissioners and demanded if her Protestation were committed to writing And if it were she would justify her self without any prejudice to the Royal dignity Whereupon the Commissioners did presently assemble themselves in the Chamber of presence where they prepared a Scaffold on the upper end whereof was the seat Royal under a Cloath of State to represent the Majesty of Queen Elizabeth and on the one side of it a Chair of Crimson Velvet prepared for her The courageous Queen did enter with a modest and an assured countenance amongst the stern Lords thirsting after her bloud and took her place Bromley the Chancellour turning towards her did speak in these words The most Illustrius Queen of England being assured not without an extream Anguish of spirit that you have conspired the destruction of her of the Realm of England and of Religion to quit herself of her duty and not to be found wanting to God herself and her people hath without any malice of heart established those Commissioners to hear the things of which you are accused how you will resolve them and shew your innocency This Man who had spoken ill enough had the discretion to speak but little And immediately as he had given the signal the perverse Officers who were more than fourty in number did throw themselves upon her like so many mastives on a prey propounding a thousand captious questions to surprize her but the generous AMAZA did shake them off with an incredible vivacity In the end all things were reduced to the letter of Babington in which he gave her notice of the conspiracy and to the answer which she made to it exhorting him to pursue his design but most of all to the depositions of her own Secretaries who gave assurances that she did dictate the said letter as also other letters to forreign Princes to invade England with arms They did press her on these falsities which seemed to carrie some probability with them but she did answer invincibly to them as most clearly may appear by those terms which I have drawn from her several answers and tied them together to give more light to her Apology wherein the clearnes of her understanding and her judgement is most remarkable IF the Queen my Sister hath given you a Commission The invincible Apology of the Queen to see Justice done it is reasonable that you should begin it rather by the easing of my sufferings than by the oppressing of my innocence I came into England to implore succour against the Rebellion of my Subjects My bloud alliance Sex Neighbourhood and the Title which I bear of a Queen did promise me all satisfaction and here I have met with my greatest affliction This is the twentieth year that I have been detained Prisoner without cause without reason without mercy and which is more without hope I am no Subject of your Mistresses but a free and an absolute Queen and ought not to make answer but to God alone the Sovereign Judge of my Actions or bring any prejudice to the Character of Royal Majesty either in my Son the King of Scotland or his Successours nor other Sovereign Princes of the earth This is the Protestation which I have made and which I repeat again in your presence before I make any answer to the Crimes which are imposed on me The blackest of all the Calumnies do charge me for having conspired the Death of my most dear Cousin and after many circumventions all the proofs are reduced to the Letter of Babington the Deposition of my Secretaries and my sollicitations made to forreign Princes to invade England with Arms. I will answer effectually to all these Articles and make the justice of my Cause most clearly appear to those who shall without passion look upon it And in the first place I swear and protest that I never saw this Babington who is made the principal in this Charge I never received any letter from him neither had he any letter from me I have always abhorred these violent and black counsels which tended to the ruin of Queen Elizabeth and I am ready to produce letters from those who having had some evil enterprize have excused themselves that they have discovered nothing to me because they were assured that my spirit was opposite to such Designs I could not know what Babington or his accomplices have done being a Prisoner he might write what he pleased but I am certain that I never saw nor heard of any letter to me And if there be found any Answer written by me to those things which never so much as came into my imagination it is an abominable forgery We live not in an Age nor a Realm that is to learn the trade to deceive I am
against me In the third place I require that my servants who have attended on me with great fidelitie during so many afflictions may have free leave to retire where they please and enjoy those small Legacies which in my last Will my povertie hath bequeathed to them I conjure You Madam by the Bloud of Jesus Christ by the nearness of our consanguinitie by the Memorie of Henrie the Seventh our common Father and by the title of a Queen which I carrie to my Grave not to denie me these reasonable Demands but by one word under Your hand to grant me an assurance of them and I shall die as I have lived Your most affectionate Sister and Prisoner QUEEN MARY It is uncertain whether this Letter came to the hands of Elizabeth because no Answer can be found unto it whether it were that those next unto her did conceal it from her or whether through the hardness of her heart she did dissemble it In the mean time King James employed himself for The vain endeavour to delay her death the Deliverance of his Mother the Ambassadours from France Monsieur de la Mote Aigron and Monsieur del Aubispene were commanded thither upon that and other occasions and Monsieur de Belieurs did there also carry himself with great wisdom courage and fidelity as may appear by his grave Remonstrance which is to be read in the History of France Howsoever the Arrest of Death was suspended for there moneths until such time that the clamours of the Lutherans and Puritans did cause the Thunder to fall down upon that hand which desired nothing more than to strike home the blow The more advised did remonstrate unto her That it was without example to commit a Ladie the Queen of France and Scotland and the nearest Kinswoman she had in the world into the hands of a Hang-man A Queen which was not her prisoner of War but her Guest whom she had called and invited into her Kingdom and sent unto her assurances of her fidelitie That she ought to consider that what was done proceeded from her Secretaries and not from her And if that after twenty years imprisonment she should have consented to be taken from it by force it did not deserve to be punished with Death That if she should cause her to die it would open a wound from whence there would issue such abundance of bloud that many Ages could not stanch it That Italie France and Spain and all the Christian Kingdoms of the world would be offended at it and that she should bring upon her Kingdom the Arms of Christendom who would be glad of that pretence to invade her Kingdom That it would be a most remarkable affront to her Son James and all his Race who could not but be mindfull of it That it would incense the Spirits of her Kingdom and render them unreconcileable to her And in the end that it was to be feared that Heaven would arm it self against so bloudy a Design That she should use the miserable and especially a Queen who came into her Countrey for protection with more Reverence That she should hazard much in her death but could lose nothing by her life seeing she had so many Guards Prisons Bars and Walls to secure her if she had an intent to enterprize against the State But the insolent Ministers did incessantly crie out That she must put an end to her Imprisonment by putting an end unto her Life That the Queen ought to remember that she had usurped her Titles and her Name and sometimes caused her self to be proclaimed Queen of England and of Scotland and that Sovereigns never pardoned those who did so far intrench upon their Authority That the life of Elizabeth and Mary were incompatible That the onely means to take away all pretences from the Catholicks was to cut off this Root which would make all their hopes to perish That King James was instructed in their Religion and would rather look after the advancement of his own State than take vengeance for the Death of his Mother That forreign Princes were too much perplexed with the difficulties of their own Affairs and took care rather to defend their own than to invade her Kingdom That her Cousin the Duke of Guise was in a bad condition in France and that Henrie the Third would be very carefull how he did espouse her quarrels And if other Princes were so hardy to undertake it they were to understand that England had a deep ditch about it That Queen Elizabeth was mortal and if she should die there was not that calamitie to be conceived which both Religion and the State would not suffer under the reign of Marie in the revenge of her Imprisonment and other injuries she had received That she could not but remember that great personages did write things well done on the sand but did engrave their Discontents in brass The Preachers made it to be a work of Religion with their absurd Allegations out of the Bible which they did corrupt to their bloudy meaning And the Lawyers as ignorant as the Ministers were absurd did produce some Histories for the punishment of Kings which were altogether impertinent But there needed not so much labour to perswade a Woman who had in her so much vanity as once in her life to make a Princess head to fly upon a Scaffold and who did not remember that in the Reign of Queen Mary being her self accused of offending the Estate and expecting her sentence of death she did so much fear the Axes of the Hang-men in England that she was resolved to petition to her Sister to send for an Executioner to France to cut off her head Now was the Commandment given for her death and it was signified to the poor Victim who for a long time was prepared for this Sacrifice Some passionate writers do indeavour to divert this Crime from the reputation of Elizabeth taking their ground on a Letter which she wrote to the Queen of Scotland in which by a shamefull perfidiousness she doth write That her spirit was tormented with an incomparable Sorrow by reason of the lamentable Event which was arrived against her will and that she had not a soul so base as either by terrour to fear to do what was just or by cowardice to denie it after it was done But who doth not see that this is to mock and to Elizabeth entirely culpable of the death of Queen Mary traduce the Story and the belief of mankind Davison her Secretary who mannaged this sad affair as the true instrument of her malice doth express in his Attestation reported in the most faithfull Memorials of England by Cambden that after the departure of the French Ambassadour sent to prevent the Execution she commanded him to shew the Instrument for putting the Queen of Scotland to death which being done she most readily signed it with her own hand and commanded him to see it sealed with the Great Seal and
THE HOLY COURT IN FIVE TOMES The FIRST Treating of MOTIVES Which should excite men of Qualitie to CHRISTIAN PERFECTION The SECOND Of the PRELATE SOULDIER STATES-MAN and LADIE The THIRD Of MAXIMS of CHRISTIANITIE AGAINST PROPHANESSE Divided into Three Parts viz. DIVINITIE GOVERNMENT OF THIS LIFE STATE OF THE OTHER WORLD The FOURTH Containing the Command of REASON over the PASSIONS The FIFTH Now first published in English and much augmented according to the last Edition of the AUTHOUR Containing the LIVES of the most Famous and Illustrious COURTIERS taken both out of the OLD and NEW TESTAMENT and other Modern Authours Written in French by NICHOLAS CAUSSIN S. J. Translated into English by Sr. T. H. and others LONDON Printed by WILLIAM BENTLEY and are to be sold by JOHN WILLIAMS in Pauls Church-yard MDCL THE HOLY COURT DEUS EST NOBIS SOL ET SCUTUM Caeca Cupido ruit caecusque Cupido Via Regia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE HOLY COVRT dixi Dij estis et filij excelsi omnes 〈…〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈…〉 Solomon ex ad perfectum Vsque perduxit Reg. 3. G. G. sculp To the MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY OF HENRIETTE-MARIA QUEEN OF GREAT BRITTAIN A COURT adorned with virtue and sanctified with pietie is here most EXCELLENT QUEEN to your view presented which having once already in pure and Native colours received light and life from the bright eye of your Royal BROTHER would gladly at this time in a harsher language and ruder garment adventure your gracious acceptance The subject is serious the discourse usefull and proper for those who in Court so serve Princes that they neglect not an humble acknowledgement to a more transcendent Greatness It hath pleased GOD as a singular favour to this Kingdom to affoard us in your MAjESTIE a pious Queen who exemplarly maketh good what diffusedly is here handled Let then lesser lights borrow beams of radiance from your greater Orbs and persist You Glorious Example of virtue to illuminate and heat our Northern Clime with celestiall ardours Adde to earthly Crowns heavenly Diadems of Piety Here shall a HOLY COURT be found fairly delineated nor can I see how it will be in the power of persons of best eminence to plead ignorance and pretend inability they having such a Book to direct them and such a Queen to follow Lead then with alacritie most Sacred MAJESTIE and may propitious Heaven so prosper your holy desires that the Greatest may have matter to imitate and the whole Nation to admire TO THE KING OF FRANCE SIR THis Treatise of the Holiness of Courts before it be published comes forth to behold the great and divine lights wherewith God hath environed your Majestie whom he hath chosen out to sanctifie the COURT by means of two reflections which are the Example of your virtues and the Authority of your Laws As for example You supply as much as in a Prince may be desired who hath brought innocency into the Throne of Majestie as an earnest-pennie of Royaltie and whitened the very Flower-de-luces by the puritie of your heart and hands This argument in my opinion should powerfully operate in the hearts of French-men For it would be a disorder in Nature to see bad subjects under a good Prince to plant vice in the Kingdom of Virtue and to have a bodie of morter and feet of clay affixed to a head of Gold It is fit impudence should be extreamly shameless not to blush when the sparkling lustre of a Crown casteth into the eyes the glimmering flashes of so great a Pietie Where example cannot reach Kings have Laws which are given them from Heaven as hands of gold and iron to recompence merits and chastise crimes And as your Majestie SIR from your most tender years hath shewed a singular propension to the detestation of Impietie and maintenance of Justice that causeth me to say Your Majestie hath great means to make the COURT essentially holy which the disabilitie of my pen cannot express but on paper It is a work worthy of a Christian King who standeth in the midst of Kings and Nations as heretofore the statue of the Sun in the midst of publick passages Royal hands cannot be better employed than to erect the Tropheys of Sanctity That is it which all the first have done CONSTANTINE in the Roman Empire CLODOVAEUS in France RICAREDUS in Spain ETHELBERT in England CANUTUS in Denmark WENCESLAUS in Poland All those who have taken that way have been glorious in the memory of men whilest others that have prepared Altars and Tables to Fortune as saith the Prophet Isaiah erecting Monarchie on humane Maxims have built on the quick-sands of imaginary greatness which hath served them to no other purpose but to measure their fall Vice and Voluptuousness cannot immortalize men since they have nothing lasting in them but the sorrow of their infancie and the infamie of their name All the greatness and happiness of a Prince is to make in his virtues a visible image of invisible Divinitie then to imprint the same on his subjects as the Sun doth his brightness on the Rain bowe SIR Your Majestie knoweth it by proper experience God hath made you to read the decrees of good success written as it were with the rayes of your pietie By how much the more you are affected to the service of the great Master so much the more the good success of affairs hath followed your desires You have seen your battels end in bays and the thorns of your travels to grow all up into Crowns And as we are ever in this world to merit so we ought to hope that so many worthy acts will also with time take their just increase and that you shall sow new virtues on earth to reap felicities in Heaven Lastly that he who hath given you the enterance of Solomon into the Kingdom will grant you the exit of David This is the vow which offereth to God SIR Of Your MAJESTY The most humble most faithfull and obedient Subject N. CAUSSIN TO THF NOBILITIE OF FRANCE SIRS THis Work as it is composed for your sakes offereth it self to your hands without bearing any other ornament on the brow but the reflection of Truth any other recommendation than the worth of the subject It is not the abundant store of sanctity in the Courts of our Age which maketh this stiled the HOLY COURT but this Frontis-piece onely carrieth the name because this Book beareth the model which verily with more ease is moulded on paper than printed on the manners of men Yet we may affirm that God who draweth the sons of Abraham from the midst of flints and rocks doth in all places reserve Saints for himself and he that will consider it well shall find that in all times the Courts of zealous Princes have had their Martyrs their Confessours their Virgins and Hermits I have a purpose when my leisure will permit to divulge the lives of Kings Princes Lords men of state and likewise also of