commonwealth has wearied and spent itself almost to nothing, with the chargeable, various, and dangerous experiments of several mountebanks, it is to be supposed, 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 understanding) 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 considera

tion, that by protecting and preserving some of them already through as great dangers as ever were passed 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 prosperity) in the man whom you extol for the first example of it. And certainly, all virtues being rightly divided into moral and intellectual, I know not how we can better judge of the former, than by men's actions; or of the latter, than by their writings or speeches. As for these latter (which are least in merit, or rather which are only the instruments of mischief, where the other are wanting), I think you can hardly pick out the name of a man who ever was called great, besides him we are now speaking of, who never left the memory behind him of one wise or witty apophthegm even amongst his domestic servants or greatest flatterers. That little in print, which remains upon a sad record for him, is such, as a satire against him would not have made him say, for fear of transgressing too much

the rules of probability. I know not what you can produce for the justification of his parts in this kind, but his having been able to deceive so many particular persons, and so many whole parties; which if you please to take notice of for the advantage of his intellectuals, I desire you to allow me the liberty to do so too when I am to speak of his morals. The truth of the thing is this, that if craft be wisdom, and dissimulation wit (assisted both and improved with hypocrisies and perjuries), I must not deny him to have been singular in both; but so gross was the manner in which he made use of them, that, as wise men ought not to have believed him at first, so no man was fool enough to believe him at last: neither did any man seem to do it, but those who thought they gained as much by that dissembling, as he did by his. His very actings of godliness grew at last as ridiculous, as if a player, by putting on a gown, should think he represented excellently a woman, though his beard at the same time were seen by all the spectators. If you ask me why they did not hiss, and explode him off the stage; I can only answer, that they durst not do so, because the actors and the door-keepers were too strong for the company. I must confess that by these arts (how grossly soever managed, as by hypocritical praying and silly preaching, by unmanly tears and whinings, by falsehoods and perjuries even diabolical) he had at first the good-fortune (as men call it, that is, the ill-fortune) to attain his ends; but it

was because his ends were so unreasonable, that no human reason could foresee them; which made them who had to do with him believe, that he was rather a well-meaning and deluded bigot, than a crafty and malicious impostor. That these arts were helped by an indefatigable industry (as you term it) I am so far from doubting, that I intended to object that diligence, as the worst of his crimes. It makes me almost mad, when I hear a man commended for his diligence in wickedness. If I were his son, I should wish to God he had been a more lazy person, and that we might have found him sleeping at the hours when other men are ordinarily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his when other men were ordinarily asleep. How diligent the wicked are, the Scripture often tells us, 'Their feet run to 'evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood, Isai. lix. 7. 'He travels with iniquity,' Psal. vii. 14. 'He deviseth mischief upon his bed,' Psal. xxxiv. 4. 66 They search out iniquity, they accom'plish a diligent search,' Psal. Ixiv. 6. and in a multitude of other places. And would it not seem ridiculous, to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and for his indefatigable industry in ranging all night about the country, whilst the sheep, and perhaps the shepherd, and perhaps the very dogs too, are all asleep?

The Chartreux wants the warning of a bell
To call him to the duties of his cell;

There needs no noise at all t' awaken sin,

Th' adulterer and the thief his larum has within.

"And, if the diligence of wicked persons be so much to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and exaggeration of their wickedness, I see not how their courage can avoid the same censure. If the undertaking bold, and vast, and unreasonable designs can deserve that honourable name, I am sure, Faux and his fellow gunpowder friends, will have cause to pretend, though not an equal, yet at least the next place of honour; neither can I doubt but, if they too had succeeded, they would have found their applauders and admirers. It was bold unquestionably for a man in defiance of all human and divine laws (and with so little probability of a long impu nity), so publickly and so outrageously to murder his master; it was bold with so much insolence and affront to expel and disperse all the chief partners of his guilt, and creators of his power; it was bold to violate so openly and so scornfully all acts and constitutions of a nation, and afterwards even of his own making; it was bold to assume the authority of calling, and bolder yet of breaking, so many parliaments; it was bold to trample upon the patience of his own, and provoke that of all neighbouring countries; it was bold, I say, above all boldnesses, to usurp this tyranny to himself; and impudent above all impudences, to endeavour to transmit it to his posterity. But all this boldness is so far