obligations cannot but cut to the heart of any Captain-General yet this very sad disaster befel our glorious Patriarch in the Rebellion of Corah Dathan and Abyram who rose up before Moses with two hundred and fifty more Princes of the Assembly famous in the Congregation and men of Renown and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said unto them Ye take too much upon you seeing that all of the Congregation are holy every one of them and the Lord is also amongst them wherefore then do you lift up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord This when our dear Moses heard he fell on his face to shew his great humility and replied onely You take too much upon you you sons of Levi speaking onely then to Korah and his company but when Dathan and Abiram were sent for they tell him plainly that they will not come up to him and expostulate the matter thus by message with him Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a Land that floweth with milke and honey to kill us in the Wildernesse but thou must altogether make thy self a Prince over us Then Moses to shew his magnanimity the Text sayes was very wroth and said unto the Lord Respect not thou their offerings c. Here it is to be observed that Korah was of the same Tribe with Moses too Nay yet the Lord would bring a nearer trial to his dear servant Moses permit his own right hand and onely helper appointed to him by God and one Brother in blood to revolt against him and joyn himself with a silly woman to raise a sedition against him in his own Family but that businesse was quickly quasht by Moses his most Clement proceedings with them by whose powerful intercessions to the Lord Aaron escaped onely with a bare rebuke and Miriam was chastised with a Leprosie for seven dayes These must of necessity be very heart-breaking blows to our poor Patriarch but he that had an assured safe retreat in his own heart and the sweet repose of a clear and a quiet conscience is no more moved with those unkindnesses of kindred and unfaithfulnesses of friends than the firmament it self and serene Empyrean heaven used to be with all the clatter and combustion fury and confusion of the inferiour Orbs. The Parallel Of all the cruel unkindnesses in the World there are none that pierce so to the quick or are so deeply sensible to a Noble nature as those which it receives from persons whom it has obliged Indeed we find that those ungrateful returns of injuries for favours received do bring astonishment even to the gates of Heaven it self which caused the Almighty Father to sigh out those lamentable complaints by the mouth of the Prophet Hieremy How comes it to passe that my beloved hath committed so many outrages so many misdemeanours in my house as much as to say Have I then O my beloved lodged thee in my Temple have I nourished and bred thee up from thy Cradle with my Fatherly hand and cherisht thee in my bosome now to betray my honour and thus to defile the glory of my Altars So the Royal Prophet tells us that he could have born any thing from an enemy or a stranger but from one that he trusted or from an intimate familiar and bosom-friend to receive an injury or unworthy return was beyond his power to bear with patience and the truth is it were enough to stagger the greatest Saint Yet this was our first Moses his miserable condition as we have seen and shall find it fully parallel'd in our second Now it is manifest that it is our Heavenly Fathers constant course to put his children to the full proof and exercise of their vertues to instruct them to the highest pitch to be as near imitators as they may be of his own Divine vertues who does nothing but good to ungrateful man and receives nothing but ill from him as we shewed at large in our last Ascent And such trials as those are questionlesse very necessary for his servants for it is undoubted that his most practised servants a very Moses himself would putrifie in long prosperities as in a dead Sea which produceth nothing so that the All-wise God out of great kindnesse to his most dear servants does sometimes strike such blows as these that they as Jonathan may have their eyes still open and suck in honey from the very end of the Rod that scourgeth them and in the severe chastisement of a father finde the consolation of true children O what a goodly Theater is a good conscience and what a beautiful Arcenal it is to have the Armes of vertue still in a readinesse as our first and second Moses have had against all essayes whom no unkindnesse of unthankful friends or conspiracies of ungracious enemies could ever startle from their sweet and serene repose Now that we may make good our Parallel we must reflect a little upon the barbarous ingratitude that his late Highnesse has met withall from Persons of other obligations and Princes too of our Assembly And truly who would not have thought after so many wonderful Deliverances by the hand of our second Moses as we have seen and the beating down of all open oppositions to the destruction of the common enemy but that our miseries should have had an end and our glorious Captain-General some rest But yet I must say with a sigh and to the eternal exprobration of some persons late in power that we found no other but aliud ex alio malum one mischief to follow upon the very heels of another How many malignant parties of our own have gone about to disturb that happy peace purchased with the price of so much blood and no stone left unstirred to throw us into a second and a third and may be into more confusions and greater than the former and that by some of our Elders too as I have said and Princes of the Assembly Nay our religious brethren of Scotland too must be set on foot again by them to make their Covenant a stalking-horse for Rebellion and to renew a war in all probability more cruentous and dangerous than the former But our most Renowned second Moses being born upon the wings of that Providence which never failed him made a most happy and quick dispatch of that work putting an end to all those Kirk enchantments both here and there for the present and I hope for ever And yet after all this that by the gracious providence of God and his Highnesses great care and prudence all means of making head and imbodying themselves again was taken from them I should be infinite to tell how often those of that leven have shewed their venemous teeth against his Highnesse his happy and most godly designs to disturb him again and our peace Nay some of those that have had the greatest share in his Highnesse his Successes
Tribe and Principal Family in Israel the House of Levi. A most Noble House indeed of which the Lord himself had so high and honourable an esteem that he made it as it were his own Impropriation and Inheritance entailing upon it all his own Menial Attendancies O most unvalueable Priviledges and Prerogatives of a Family not onely to be made the sole Houshold servants of the Living God but to be set apart to eat at his own Table feed on his proper Sacrifices and to have as it were the Monopoly of Altars and all holy things O thrice happy honours of a House not onely to be as it were of the Lord of Hosts own Life-guard and have the sole charge of the sacred Arke of the Covenant committed to them but also to be adopted into the very Cabinet-counsells of Heaven by the judgement of Vrim and Thummim and to be alone permitted to have a free and frequent ingresse into the Sanctum Sanctorum it self This was in short the sacred Family selected by the Almighty Jehovah himself to be as it were his Princes Peers and onely Familiars here below the onely Grandees and Favourits of his most Magnificent Court upon Earth which was to be establisht in his most holy glorious and costly Temple at Jerusalem as is to be seen more at large in the whole course of sacred Scripture to which holy leaves I humbly refer every ingenuous Reader for a further satisfaction in all these Particulars The Parallel Indeed when we shall have duely considered the great care and holy caution the sacred Scripture it self ha's taken throughout in the recommendation of the Nobility of divers persons we may very well conclude with the Heathen Orator what may be too as good Divinity as Philosophy Deorum Immortalium munus primum videri maximum in lucem statim foelicem venire Nobility of birth is the first and greatest gift of God I say the first and greatest temporal dispensation of Heaven is to be born Noble and so soon to be within the lists of felicity as of nature why else should we find such an exact account of the Nobility of this our great Prototype Moses of the three valiant Children held in the Captivity of Babylon and that of the most valiant and renowned Eleazar and divers other persons since the universal Deluge which particulars are now too long to be insisted on Nay that Nobility of blood was in the like esteem both with God and man too before the Flood in the very first Age and Infancy of the World will be quickly made appear by the delineation of the Genealogy of Noe which the holy Spirit is pleased to deliver to us as if it intended as it were to act the part of a Herald in giving to us the large Series of all his Generations it seeming not onely to make way through all the Patriarchs from whom he was descended but to give a punctual rehearsal to us of all their Titles and Signiories of all their singular Acts and Atchievements and then concludes in the next Chapter Hae sunt generationes Noe vir justus erat atque perfectus This is the Genealogy of Noe he was a just man and a perfect If then Nobility of birth be a blessing so considerable in the eyes of the Lord and inferr'd by his holy Spirit to be of no little avail to us in the way of vertue and an apparent step to Piety and Sanctity it self It will not be I hope thought incongruous to bring our glorious second Moses to encounter the first upon this his first Ascent and as in all the rest we shall find them sweetly kissing and embracing each the other And yet I cannot say his late Highnesse was extracted from so Priestly a Family but altogether as Princely being lineally descended from the loynes of our most Antient Brittish Princes and ty'd in near alliances to the blood of our later Kings as by that thrice Noble Family of the Barringtons and divers others which to make a Petigree of would take up more paper than we intend for our Volume and make me appear more a Herald than an Historian Nay indeed should I but go about to prove his Highnesse most illustrious House Noble I should commit a sacriledge in the Temple of Honour and onely violate his most glorious Family with a more solemn infamy His Highnesse is unquestionably known to have descended from such a stem of Princely Antecessors that whole Ages which wast Rocks and wear out Elements have never altered to lessen but rather advance the honour of his great House He was derived from such a Family that we may better say of it than what was of the other ex qua nescit aliquid Mediocre nasci from whence nothing ordinary can proceed as is likewise made notoriously evident in those other mosteminent persons of Honour now living who are blest with a share of his incomparable blood who have spread their glory abroad so well as at home and built themselves such Trophies in the hearts of their very enemies that eternity it self must celebrate so no time can ever be able to demolish or reduce into oblivion And that I may not be thought to flatter so great a truth I will be bold to hasten and abruptly conclude this first point of our Mosaical Parallel with saying onely that this sublime Person his late most Serene Highnesse our second as the first great Moses came into the World like a Princely Pearl and made it appear by the quality of his Orient that if Nature pleased to equal his birth to the best of Noble-men upon Earth he would equal his vertues to his extraction as we shall see more plainly when we mount a little higher upon our Mosaical Ascents and Parallels The second Ascent MOses was from his Cradle blest with a very beautiful body for which he was most remarkable in his infancy so the sacred text tells us that he was a fair and goodly child Now that bodily beauty is an indubitable blessing and a Ray of the Divinity it self none sure but a monstrous Thersites or a Mopsus will dispute and none but an errant Apostate from Christianity a meer perfidious and profane Manichee dare deny Does not the Lord himself proclaim as he is the God of Nature that beauty and graceful comlinesse of body is entirely his gift Nay ha's he not often imployed this his own glorious dispensation to be an instrument of his mighty wonders a lightning flash of his power and as a resplendent Torch of his greatest Victories which his All-Wise Providence would never have done did he not only approve the nature of but intend to give the greatest honour to that his own dispensation Thus was the Lord pleased to make the beauty of our little Moses the cause of his miraculous preservation by affecting the heart of Pharaoh's daughter And therefore we find it to
Historie Policie RE-VIEWED In The Heroick Transactions of his Most Serene Highnesse OLIVER Late LORD PROTECTOR From his CRADLE to his TOMB Declaring his steps to Princely Perfection as they are drawn in lively Parallels to the Ascents of the Great Patriarch Moses in thirty Degrees to the Height of Honour By H. D. Esq Claud. de Theodos Solus meruit regnare rogatus LONDON Printed for Nathaniel Brook at the Angel in Cornhill 1659. To the Most Serene HIGHNESSE OF RICHARD By the Grace of God LORD PROTECTOR Of England Scotland and Ireland c. Chara Dei soboles magnum Jovis Incrementum PArdon Great Sir the compellation for though it be a piece of an Aenead some will think of flattery yet it is very manifestly your most Serene Highnesse his Birth-Right and plain prophetick truth as is made more clearly to appear in one of those Parallels that treat of your happy Promotion and Succession to the Throne where you now sit As for the imputation of flattery it is known that I have ever so much abhorred from all that and those subtile Artists of Fortune who make a Trade of it that whilst I have been conversant in the Courts of some great Princes and particularly known to many of their persons I have been alwayes most severely taxt of too much of the other extreme much lesse should I dare to offer any thing of that now to your most Serene Highnesse who are known to hold so much of the vertue of your most Renowned Father in you as to be better pleased to meet with an enemy in open field than a flattering friend in your Privy Chamber Insomuch that I am afraid to tell your Highnesse some notorious truths how all we your people look upon you as our second Joshua in the place of our second Moses as full of the spirit of Wisdom Courage and Piety as he was and that we cannot at all doubt but your successes will be likewise most proportionable to his how Walls and Cities shall fall before you Gyants wax pale Rivers retire back the Sun it self stand still and as many Kings will undergoe your yoke I am afraid to tell you Sir how we that are your people are all of us employ'd in planting more Bayes and Laurel in our Gardens to en-garland your Victorious browes before you come to a Battle In fine I am afraid to tell you how all our hearts like Roses withered upon the death of your glorious Father now begin again to bloom afresh and newly to open our selves at the benigne gentle glorious Princely Aspect of your most Serene Highnesse No I know to tell your goodnesse any thing of this would be but to offend it and to commit a sacriledge upon your most precious time So I le forbear and onely prosecute my petitions for more pardons still and Princes upon their first inaugurations seldome deny any whose crimes carry not some extraordinary atrocity with them much lesse can I doubt of indulgence from your most Serene Highnesse who are a Person so composed of Grace and Clemency it self Your pardon therefore gracious Sir again that I presume to address these poor unpolisht papers to so great a Patronage as yours Indeed mighty Sir if that the transcendency of the Subject treated on in these Discourses had not given me great encouragement I should never have dared to offer this Piece to your view much lesse to your protection but it being conscious to it self that it contains nothing but meer Commentaries upon your glorious Fathers Words and Actions it humbly conceives that your Highnesse has so great a propriety in it and that it has so near a Relation to your Highnesse that it boldly begins to challenge your most Serene Candour and particular Protection and would argue me of an extreme insolence to go about to seek for its Birth under any other favour For may it please your Highnesse to take it as a little History of your most Renowned Father who should it come to for Licence Approbation Countenance and Priviledge but your Sacred self who are the Compendium of his incomparable Life and the living Epitome of all his Perfections and are growing up very speedily to be as great a Volume May it please your Highnesse to take it as a piece of Architecture or Mosaick Work as it is erected upon the Memory of your deceased Father whom should it have recourse to for its Pillar and support but onely your Highnesse who are the moving Model of all his Great Actions And may your Highnesse please to take it as a Table or Picture of your Princely Father Who is more concerned in it than your Gracious self that are as much the lively Image of his Vertues as of the Majesty of his Person Thus then for the scope and businesse of the Book I dare affirm it to be without exception great and good and so I dare present it boldly to your most Serene Highnesse and avouch it equal to any Kings Cabinet whatsoever in the World though truly for the rusticity of its dresse which is meerly my fault it may not be for ought I know admitted by the over-curious The plain truth is and I am not ashamed to acknowledge it to your Highnesse that I have been so intent upon the maine matter that it may be I have neglected something of the form or to give it the due dresse and ornament of Language and to word it truly as it should have been would have required no lesse than the pen of a Seraphim but my comfort is that your Highnesse like your great Father in that as well as all his other Excellencies has been ever a most declared enemy to that kind of pitiful ostentation of words as well as cloathes and knows how to make a value of a pure Oriental Pearle though covered with a course shell and how to accept of a precious sweet Perfume though shut up within an abject Box. So I hope it shall not offend your Highnesse and that will suffice me not to have imitated those that preserve Oranges and Limons who neglecting the rich juice and inside of the fruit do candy and preserve the meer Rine and outside onely But yet I have another pardon to beg of your most Serene Highnesse which must be granted after all this or I am eternally ruined and that is for dareing to undertake or touch with my rude hands this most curious piece of Mosaick Work which should serve for a Monument upon your immortal Fathers Memory well knowing that no tongue which has not expressions equal to his Expeditions or a pen that cannot parallel his Sword is capable to deliver any just Character of him What Language Pen or Pensil can possibly delineate that most invincible Spirit of his that encountered Men and Devils and associating the Kingdom of his Vertues to the force of his Armes broke through all obstacles to Crown his inspired purposes how he in the hurry of War and glory of
Peace bearing thunder and olive branches throughout these Kingdomes now blest under your most Gracious Protection has happily rendered himself amiable at one time and terrible at another and yet ever prosperous and aweful in both No it is impossible for any Mortal to do it His own Acts onely can speak for him and for ever will do more than all the Panegyricks in the World can For the Rose we know is sufficiently beautified with its leaves and the Sun with its Rayes and no more can our praises arrive at his perfections than humane Arts can reach those of Nature But this piece of infinite insolence I stand now guilty of before your Highnesse and unlesse your Gracious Serenity be pleased to pardon me I must perish even in the Haven of Hope And Mighty Sir to make some satisfaction for my present audacious attempt I will hereafter strive better to resemble those devout adorers of the Sun who not being able to affixe Crowns and Garlands upon the head of his Statue burnt Flowers alwayes in sacrifice to it to make their odour mount to the Heavens So since I can never be able to Crown his deceased Highnesse his Merits with my weake humane praises I will humbly offer up to Heaven my prayers and vows for your eternall prosperities who preserve still the Idaea of his late Highnesse his Authority and Majesty as well as that of his Sacred Person here amongst us and that I le do constantly with all submission due to your most Serene Highnesse his most Heroick Sublime and true Princely Qualities as becomes Most Gracious Sir Your Highnesse his most devoted obedient faithful and loyal subject H. Dawbeny THE EPISTLE To the several sorts of READERS REaders if you are Persons any way pre-ingaged or tyed to any present Factions or Parties of the Times I am bold to tell you beforehand that I will neither ask nor expect a kindnesse from you no not so much as ordinary candour and I pray you pardon me that I salute you so plurally for I presume there will be whole Junto 's and Cabales of you soon bundled together to sit in Judgement upon censure and condemne this little Infant upon its first peeping into the World And this I cannot but conclude from the over-forwardnesse of some of you to asperse its innocency when lying in its first bed and loose sheets in the Print-house nay while some part of it remained yet in the womb of the Presse so could not be swadled up into a Volume Howsoever I shall now advise you for your own good more than mine for take it how you please I am indifferent to suspend at least so much of your partiality as may otherwise offer violence to your reason till you have heard all the Evidence read which this little Booke will exhibite in its own behalf and that you have found the Warpe and the Woof then censure on and passe your judgements how you please In the mean time give me leave as most concerned to advocate in my own Childs behalf to obviate some of your objections that you have bolted out already And the first is from you O you envenom'd Party that shoote out your Arrows even bitter words against the precious Memory of his late Mosaical Highnesse and striveing to trample on his ashes are pleased to think too much of Panegyrick said of him in the very Title-page I shall not now stain paper with any of your impure language but refer you for your further confutation to the processe of our Parallels where you will finde him to be a Person as much above your malice as he has ever esteemed you below his anger It shall suffice me to consider that if men will be now adayes so curious as to vaunt to see spots in the Moon where will they not finde a fault and if base envy will go about to shave an egg what will it not do in a Meadow It is notorious that the Almighty handy-work the Creation it self could not scape the carping of a ridiculous Momus who would needs undertake to correct the Divine Artifice and perswade the World that the All-wise Creator was very much overseen in planting the hornes of the savage Bull and other Beasts so armed over their eyes and that it had been much more accommodation for those Creatures if their eyes had been set over their hornes I should desire likewise that these our venemous Momus's would set their hornes for spectacles under their eyes and try whether they can better spy out their exceptions against our Mosaick Parallels The next sort of enemies that I hear this little Infant has encountered are indeed something more modest but as I take it they are too a little more nice than wise as our Proverb hath it the very method forsooth of this Discourse giving great scandal to their tender consciences and they are so deeply offended at it that they cry out upon it phy a Parallel or Comparison with Moses O abominable prophanation Truly I should be very unwilling to scandalize any weake Brother and more troubled not to be able to satisfie his scruple if he please to be satisfied and certainly this Piece is not the first that has gone that way we have very sufficient presidents and authority too to warrant us Have we not seen a compleate Parallel between Elias and Dr. Luther even to the Chariots of Israel and the Horsemen thereof and another betwixt his Successor Elisha and Mr. Calvin to the double portion of his spirit and many of our Modern Doctors put in scale with some of the Apostles themselves Nor has this way of comparison been taken up onely by Divines in honour of their own Function but many Parallels we finde in Print between some of our late Kings how well deserving I say not and some of those holy Princes and Prophets of Gods own people as David Solomon Josiah Hezekiah c. and one very expresse Parallel between Queen Elizabeth of famous Memory and that great Princesse and Prophetesse Deborah Then why should not our late incomparable Prince and Protector stand as well placed in line Parallel with that glorious Patriarch Moses But now I hear of a third expedition prepared against us another body of enemies much more numerous but lesse dangerous far than the former and yet they march furiously and come to storme our little Work for a meer counterscarp of flattery but they will finde it by their approaches to be a solid Brest-work of truth able to endure all their battery and that too so well lined with vertues truely flankerd and well furnished with regular redoubts and redoubted truths that they must be beaten of with losse of honour if not of themselves There is no man sure lives that dare deny the ground-work of all our Mosaical Ascents and Staires to Princely perfections to be the indubitable dictate of the Spirit of God himself and that all the foundations of our present Parallels are most unquestionable truths we
have as much certainty as any humane authority experimental knowledge or ocular evidence can possibly make out Now I would fain know how two such mortal enemies as truth and flattery are can possibly squat in the same Form Besides it is certain that no beatified thing as our second Moses is now without dispute can be a subject capable of flattery but let his late Highnesse be reduced again to his humane condition and consider his due deservings then tell me whether all our grateful acknowledgements and most extended Panegyricks can possibly reach his transcendent merits Much lesse then sure can any man over-reach so far as to have his commendations reputed flattery unlesse he should fall into prophanation or flat blasphemy which I hope the most malitious eyes in the World shall never be able to finde out upon us here He was indeed more truly that which Pliny said of his Emperour Vir hoc saeculo major dignus fabulantium miraculis vatum qui tantum super omnes posterioris aevi Principes emine bat quantum a privatis caeteri principes recesserunt He was so much above the present pitch of men that nothing but Romance can reach his Actions and he as far surpassed all other princes of this later Age as any of those Princes have out-stript private persons What panegyrick then can be too great for such a prince what humane praise can ever amount to flattery I must in the mean time acknowledge something of obligation to this sort of enemies who are pleased to think my poor pen so capable to reach that as to over-reach it so which is a Subject onely fit for the pens of Angels and whose praises ought truly to be written with a stile of fire or point of Adamant and so engraven upon the gates of the Temple of Eternity Now though I have pretty well as I hope got my self clear of a possibility of flattery yet I am now cast upon another exception of my nearest friends whose kind pity treats me more rigourously than all the enemies cruelty and I must cry out with the Poet Pol me occidistis amici indeed at once they both pity and persecute me for undertaking so difficult if not impossible a task as to carve such an Illiad in a Nut-shell or to go about to bind up in such little skins so voluminous an Argument as to give the World an account of this incomparable person from his Cradle to his Grave a thing more equal to large History than a Paneygerical one and of which as the Evangelist tells us of our Saviours Words and Works that the whole World would not be able to contain the Books that might be written Indeed Gentlemen it will not be denied by any shall be more confest by me though parcel guilty of the same crime that he who shall take presumptious pen in hand or dare any other way undertake to give the World an exact Survey of all the particular great dispensations and Divine indulgencies vouchsafed to this high Favorite of Heaven will quickly find himself overset in a Sea of Blisse It is not therefore my Design at present to sail in much lesse to fathom that Abyss or delineate the whole Series of the Almighty providence over his most precious Person in every particular circumstance from the first span that Nature measured out to him to that immensity which he afterwards so happily arrived at it being no lesse than impossible as the curious in that Art inform us to polish so much as the nailes of pieces of so great a Perfection Nor indeed is it more impossible than impertinent to go about to prove that there is and has been ever from the first minute to the last of his life a most gracious and indulgent providence over his late most Serene Highnesse his person and proceedings by all the singular foot-steps of it it being to light a Candle to the Sun to dilucidate that which is already more clear to all that do not wilfully shut their eyes than if it had been written with the Rayes of it I shall therefore satisfie my self and I hope all ingenuous Readers at present to pick up some of the most remarkable particulars that we may best moralize to our own instruction and all impudent gainsayers greater confusion and that we may learn to make this use of it above all uses that is to march out of all our old animosities and submit our selves to the gracious power that is now over us and acknowledge it to be the clear resplendent Ray reflected upon us from the infallible foundations of the eternall Law This is the uttermost of my design at present and so I will be bold to begin at the foot of the Mosaick Mount and shew you his late most Serene Highnesse tracing the steps of the great Patriarch Moses to the sacred summity of the Mount it self and highest pitch of all princely perfection and make good the parallel from their very Births to their Triumphant entries into their blessed Tabernacle of Repose and there to the happy expiration of their purified Souls upon the top of Pisgah from thence to their glorious Graves and from thence to the Magnificent Memorials and Eternal Monuments which they have erected in the hearts of all men The Ascents which these two great Personages stand parallel in amounting in all to thirty Degrees of Glory So friends farewel and enemies much good do it you if you please fall to and welcome if you like it not you may leave it and though you curse me for my cookery yet I shall continue with the Apostle to pray for you That the Lord would give you understanding in all things and me his grace in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content and that we may all meet in the unity of the Spirit and bond of perfectnesse which holy conspiracy that we may all happily agree in we must all resolve to lay by all spleens and distasts whatsoever and let them passe away with the old year and think upon nothing now but to take up new thoughts and better affections with this new one coming in we must forget all old grudges against and ungrateful misprisions of our old departed Prince and good Protector who though he was an incomparable Person yet no wonder if he could not please all men for that is more they say than God himself can do raining or shining and dispose our selves to the cordial and sincere service of this our gracious new one who is now set over us by God and his own Divine vertues and has nothing in him but celestial sweetnesse and is truly to be called if ever Mortal was the Delight of all Mankind which Great and Gracious New-Years-Gift that we may all receive from the bountiful hands of Heaven shall be the constant as it is the instant prayer of Your humble servant H. Dawbeny The First ASCENT MOses was Nobly Born extracted from an extraordinary Race the most sacred
matches that could see hatred and approbation march in couples together and I shall willingly grant so much more to our Machiavillian Politicks that some mixture of fear with love does make the most excellent composition in Government for though the strongest Citadel or Castle that a King can have be his subjects affection and their hearts his best Treasury or Exchecquer yet it cannot be denyed that love without fear quickly turns to scorn and fear without love as soon converts to hatred both equally dangerous to any Prince his estate Now though Machiavel and his crew did never know how to be so good Apothecaries of State yet our prudent Patriarch and his Parallel our late Protector we see understood full well how to make that admirable mixture for though they were great Justicers alwayes yet never forgot to be most loving Fathers of their people and in that sacred composition rests not onely the mystery but the luster of a true Statesman as the Great Gregory assures us who sayes that in every good Government there must be such a mixture made of oil and wine that the wounds of men may be healed in such sort that their minds may not be ulcerated with too much severity nor yet grow too remisse by an excesse or indulgence and lenity the rod must be used to touch and the staff to support and then they will both be comfortable to us as the Psalmist tells us The scale of Justice must be so equally carried that neither love should too much soften nor over-great rigour transport people into a despair This right Princely temper I say was perfectly understood by our gracious Patriarch Moses the first and greatest Statesman in the World and no lesse by our glorious second Moses his Parallel Behold them both burning inwardly with the fire of charity towards their people and outwardly wholly enkindled with the flames of the zeal of Justice as loving Fathers they have offered their souls to God even to the wish To be blotted out of the Book of Life to save their people and as glorious Judges they took the Sword in hand and bathed it in the blood of wicked men They have shewed themselves in all things such accomplisht Captains as became couragious Magistrates and Embassadours from God and admirable Mediators to him pleading before him the cause of their people with prayers and before the people the cause of God with their swords and though there is none which can deny but our second Moses his zeal to Justice was very great a Divine vertue in him yet we must acknowledge that his benignity mansuetude and clemency were vertues more naturall and agreeable to him which he alwayes improved too both by the pattern of his Master Moses and God himself who as the Scripture tells us Etiam iratus misericordiae recordatur In his very wroth remembers mercy and shews his anger to us more often by Thunder Lightning fiery Comets blazing Stars Storms and Tempests and the like than he makes us to feel it nor yet sends them so often as we deserve which the Pagan Poet could observe when he told us Si quoties peccent homines c. If Jupiter should spend his angry Thunderbolts so often as men deserve them he would very suddenly disarme himself but Christianly indeed we may say thus That if his Divine Majesty should disarme it self of mercy we should quickly be reduced to misery and therefore it was that he commanded our Moses to follow his example and carry the people in his bosome like sucking children and loudly proclaims in his Word that Misericordia veritas custodiunt Regem roboratur clementiâ Thronus ejus Mercy and Truth are the greatest guard for Kings and Clemency is the greatest support of their Thrones All this I say our second Moses has sufficiently shewed himself to know and follow and yet his Clemency has never exposed him to those extremes before spoken of to render his goodnesse contemptible no he happily arrived at the blessed mixture and sweet composition that we have remarkt in our first Moses and alwayes ruled us according to the holy Rule given by an ancient Father Eâ qui praeest mensurâ se moderetur quatenus arridens timeri iratus amari debeat He that is set over men to govern them ought to carry himself with that moderation so as to be feared when he is pleased and to be amiable in his very displeasure This was the very Mosaical temper of our late precious Lord Protector who had so much of that Divine Art of compounding his sweetnesse with severity that we may safely say for truth though a very prodigious one that his Justice and his Love though both they are said to be blind did yet lend one another eyes he so sweetned his Sword with his Love and so sharpened his Love with his Sword that his very severity might seem to proceed from his love and his punishments themselves put on the face of obligations Castigavit non quod odio habuit sed quod amavit As he reformed alwayes by his favours so were his chastisements still turned into true fatherly corrections The eighteenth Ascent MOses was not only an accomplisht Prince in all kinds of Pity and Piety towards the persons of his People but he did extend it likewise towards their very Purses restraining frequently their abundancies of love in all their contributions and very liberalities not onely towards himself but to God In short he kept not the course of common Policy which renders Princes little better than Publicans he exacted nothing but love from his subjects nor imposed any thing upon them but their own happinesse The Parallel We have seen at large in our last Ascent as well by the practise of our two Mosaical Masters as divers other elucent arguments that singular Axiom made good which tells us That dinturni magister officii metus esse nequit Fear alone can never contain men in a lasting duty for otherwise the Devils policy would have more influence upon the hearts of men than that of God himself It is the part of every petit Minister of Justice to use cruelty and severity but the practise of pity and clemency though it becomes all men does most properly belong to Kings and Supreme Magistrates Regia crede mihi res est succurrere Lapsis Non alia major quaeritur arte Favor Pity and Clemency are Princes priviledges and parts of their prerogative Justice it self can be but their duty at most but the onely art of Government consists in the excellent mixture before spoken of in our last Ascent And therefore Alexander being askt who was the greatest Prince upon earth answered Qui amicos donis retinet inimicos beneficiis amicos facit He that holds his friends fast by curtesies and converts enemies into friends by benefits So dealt Augustus with Cinna and made of a Traytor a true Friend And this has alwayes been the wisest Kings
we will exclude the Spirit without whose concurrence all other Teachings are ineffectual He doth speak to the Hearts and Consciences of men and leadeth them to his Law and Testimonies and there he speaks to them and so gives them double teachings according to that of Job God speaketh once yea twice and that of David God hath spoken once yea twice have I heard this Those men that live upon their Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus their Masses and Service-Books their dead and carnal Worship no marvel if they be strangers to God and the works of God and to spiritual dispensations And because they say and believe thus must we do so too we in this Land have been otherwise instructed even by the Word and Workes and Spirit of God To say that men bring forth these things when God doth them judge you if God will bear this I wish that every sober heart though he hath had temptations upon him of deserting this CAVSE of God yet may take heed how he provokes and falles into the hands of the living God by such blasphemies as these according to the tenth of the Hebrews If we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remains no more sacrifice for sin It was spoken to the Jews that having professed Christ apostatized from him what then nothing but a fearful falling into the hands of the Living God They that shall attribute to this or that Person the contrivances and production of those mighty things God hath wrought in the midst of us and that they have not been the revolutions of Christ himself upon whose Shoulders the GOVERNMENT is laid they speak against God and they fall under his hand without a Mediator that is if we deny the Spirit of Jesus Christ the glory of all his works in the World by which he Rules Kingdoms and doth administer and is the Rod of his strength we provoke the Mediator And he may say I 'le leave you to God I 'le not intercede for you let him tear you to pieces I 'le leave thee to fall into Gods hands thou deniest me my Soveraignty and Power committed to me I 'le not intercede nor mediate for thee thou fallest into the hands of the Living God Therefore whatsoever you may judge men for and say This man is cunning and politick and subtile take heed again I say how you judge of his Revolutions as the Products of mens inventions Then how much he valued the interests of God and his influence upon all his actions we may see what he sayes in the same Speech and were it not that I can make some Dilemma's upon which to resolve some things of my Conscience Judgement and Actions I should sinck at the very prospect of my Encounters some of them are general some are more special supposing this Cause or this Businesse must be carried on either it is of God or of Man if it be of Man I would I had never touched it with a finger if I had not had a hope fixed in Me that this Cause and this Businesse is of God I would many years ago have run from it If it be of God he will bear it up If it be of Man it will tumble as every thing that hath been of man since the World began hath done And what are all our Histories and other Traditions of actions in former times but God manifesting himself that he hath shaken and tumbled down and trampled upon every thing that he hath not planted and as this is so the All-wise God deal with it If this be of humane Structure and Invention and it be an old Plotting and Contrivance to bring things to this Issue and that they are not the Births of Providence then they will tumble But if the Lord take pleasure in England and if he will do Us good he is able to bear us up Let the difficulties be whatsoever they will we shall in his Strength be able to encounter with them And I blesse God I have been inured to Difficulties and I never found God failing when I trusted in him I can laugh and sing in my heart when I speak of these things to you or elsewhere Here is a piece of Divine Policy indeed and fetcht doubtlesse from the Gates of the City of God Thus was his late Mosaical Highnesse alwayes pleading to acknowledge the truth of that most excellent Maxim delivered by Augustin Cui bonum non est Deus sibi ipsi vult esse bonum suum sicut sibi est Deus He that holds not God for his greatest good would be to himself his own good as God is to himself He that thinks to escape from the bands of dependance that he has on God makes himself his own blessing and his end his God His Highnesse therefore so constantly steer'd himself and all his actions by his obedience to Divine Commands that he chose alwayes to perish with a good conscience rather than to flourish without one and though he was from the very beginning like a pure Oriental Pearle in the salt-sea so continually involved in the cruel acerbities and confusions of our times yet he alwayes kept his Noble luster in then midst of them and by his invincible affection toward and confidence in his God he arose still from them with more and more splendour and made all those his perplexities which threatned him with many an imminent ruin but higher ascents and steps to the Temple of glory Vertue and Piety he always compared to and took for the Geometrical Cube of his life which we know in Mathematicks on what side soever it be cast alwayes finds its Basis Where are you now all you I say who are the pitiful followers of Nicholas Machiavells policy poor tricks of carnal wisdom What will become now of all your mighty Maxims of hypocritical knavery Let this one example onely of our Christian Moses parallel to that of his Great Master the Patriarch which we have seen in his Ascent serve now for all to inform you That there are none but such as are perfectly blind that seek after your Principles and miserable they must be who find them the sottish who will descend to serve them and the utterly reprobate and forlorne who can stoope to tye themselves unto them but the wisdom that is of Heaven our Mosaical wisdom is so transcendently sublime above all your untrue and trivial inventions as the light of Stars surpasseth all the sparklings and petit sprey fiers of the Earth And though such humane interests and designs may possibly and will still hold the Ascendent in the hearts of some sort of people yet we finde how my Lords high holy Mosaical spirit could no more than that of his Grand Archetype condescend to steer his course or counsells that way nor yet more than those Angels now standing in glory follow the example of those Luciferian spirits which fell by such Machiavillian counsells into the pit of Perdition No our most