misfortunes, which puts me in mind of what was said less truly of Pompey the Great, "Nostrâ miseriâ magnus es." But, because the general ground of your argumentation consists in this, that all men who are the effecters of extraordinary mutations in the world, must needs have extraordinary forces of nature by which they are enabled to turn about, as they please, so great a wheel; I shall speak, first, a few words upon this universal proposition, which seems so reasonable, and is so popular, before I descend to the particular examination of the eminences of that person which is in question.

I have often observed (with all submission and resignation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence), that, when the fulness and maturity of time is come, that produces the great confusions and changes in the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine justice and predestination; and, though we see a man, like that which we call Jack of the clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reason must needs be convinced, that his hand is moved by some secret, and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of the current is then so violent, that the strongest men in the world cannot draw up against it; and none are so weak, but they may sail down with it. These are the spring-tides of public affairs,

which we see often happen, but seek in vain to dis

cover any certain causes :

-Omnia fluminis

Ritu feruntur, nunc medio alveo
Cum pace delabentis Etruscum

In mare, nunc lapides adesos,
Stirpésque raptas, & pecus, & domos
Volventis unà, non sine montium

Clamore, vicinæque sylvæ ;

Cùm fera diluvies quietos

Irritat amnes.

Hor. 3, Carm. xxix.

And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by intending and imagining to be so); but it is God that breaks up the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then, and industry of mankind, is not sufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In such a time, it was, as this, that not all the wisdom and power of the Roman senate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor the courage and virtue of Brutus, was able to defend their countrey, or themselves, against the unexperienced rashness of a beardless boy, and the loose rage of a voluptuous madman. The valour, and prudent counsels, on the one side, are made fruitless, and the errors, and cowardice, on the other, harmless, by unexpected accidents. The one general saves his

life, and gains the whole worid, by a very dream; and the other loses both at once, by a little mistake of the shortness of his sight. And though this be not always so, for we see that, in the translation of the great monarchies from one to another, it pleased God to make choice of the most eminent men in nature, as Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio, and his contemporaries, for his chief instruments, and actors, in so admirable a work (the end of this being, not only to destroy or punish one nation, which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to exalt and bless another, which is only to be effected by great and virtuous persons); yet, when God only intends the temporary chastisement of a people, he does not raise up his servant Cyrus (as he himself is pleased to call him), or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good, as vices to do harm); but he makes the Massanellos, and the Johns of Leyden, the instruments of his vengeance, that the power of the Almighty might be more evident by the weakness of the means which he chooses to demonstrate it. He did not assemble the serpents, and the monsters of Afric, to correct the pride of the Egyptians; but called for his armies of locusts out of Æthiopia, and formed new ones of vermin out of the very dust; and, because you see a whole country destroyed by these, will you argue from thence they must needs have had both the craft of foxes, and the courage of lions?

It is easy to apply this general observation to the particular case of our troubles in England: and that they seem only to be meant for a temporary chastisement of our sins, and not for a total abolishment of the old, and introduction of a new government, appears probable to me from these considerations, as far as we may be bold to make a judgment of the will of God in future events. First, because he has suffered nothing to settle, or take root, in the place of that which hath been so unwisely and unjustly removed, that none of these untempered mortars can hold out against the next blast of wind, nor any stone stick to a stone, till that which these foolish builders have refused be made again the head of the corner. For, when the indisposed and long-tormented commonwealth has wearied and spent itself almost to nothing, with the chargeable, various, and dangerous experiments of several mountebanks, it is to be sup-. posed, it will have the wit at last to send for a true physician, especially when it sees (which is the second consideration) most evidently (as it now begins to do, and will do every day more and more, and might have done perfectly long since) that no usurpation (under what name or pretext soever) can be kept up without open force, nor force without the continuance of those oppressions upon the people, which will, at last, tire out their patience, though it be great even to stupidity. They cannot be so dull (when poverty and hunger begin to whet their un

derstanding) as not to find out this no extraordinary mystery, that it is madness in a nation to pay three millions a year for the maintaining of their servitude under tyrants, when they might live free for nothing under their princes. This, I say, will not always lie hid, even to the slowest capacities; and the next truth they will discover afterwards is, that a whole people can never have the will, without having, at the same time, the power to redeem themselves. Thirdly, it does not look (methinks) as if God had forsaken the family of that man, from whom he has raised up five children, of as eminent virtue, and all other commendable qualities, as ever lived perhaps (for so many together, and so young) in any other family in the whole world. Especially, if we add hereto this consideration, that, by protecting and preserving some of them already through as great dangers as ever were past with safety, either by prince or private person, he has given them already (as we may reasonably hope it to be meant) a promise and earnest of his future favours. And, lastly, (to return closely to the discourse from which I have a little digressed) because I see nothing of those excellent parts of nature, and mixture of merit with their vices, in the late disturbers of our peace and happiness, that uses to be found in the persons of those who are born for the erection of new empires.

And, I confess, I find nothing of that kind, no not any shadow (taking away the false light of some