counsel and success in this business, there is nothing left to the memory of man more remarkable.  For he hath paid above an hundred millions, and the lives of above four hundred thousand Christians, for the loss of all those countries; which, for beauty, gave place to none; and for revenue, did equal his West Indies:  for the loss of a nation which most willingly obeyed him; and who at this day, after forty years war, are in despite of all his forces become a free estate, and far more rich and powerful than they were, when he first began to impoverish and oppress them.

Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state, and politic subtlety, have these fore-named kings, both strangers, and of our own nation, pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves, upon theirs, and upon their prudent ministers! and in the end have brought those things to pass for their enemies, and seen an effect so directly contrary to all their own counsels and cruelties; as the one could never have hoped for themselves; and the other never have succeeded; if no such opposition had ever been made.  God hath said it and performed it ever:  “Perdam sapientiam sapientum”; “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.”

But what of all this? and to what end do we lay before the eyes of the living, the fall and fortunes of the dead:  seeing the world is the same that it hath been; and the children of the present time, will still obey their parents?  It is in the present time that all the wits of the world are exercised.  To hold the times we have, we hold all things lawful:  and either we hope to hold them forever; or at least we hope that there is nothing after them to be hoped for.  For as we are content to forget our own experience, and to counterfeit the ignorance of our own knowledge, in all things that concern ourselves; or persuade ourselves, that God hath given us letters patents to pursue all our irreligious affections, with a “non obstante"[12] so we neither look behind us what hath been, nor before us what shall be.  It is true, that the quantity which we have, is of the body:  we are by it joined to the earth:  we are compounded of earth; and we inhabit it.  The Heavens are high, far off, and unsearchable:  we have sense and feeling of corporal things; and of eternal grace, but by revelation.  No marvel then that our thoughts are also earthly:  and it is less to be wondered at, that the words of worthless men can not cleanse them:  seeing their doctrine and instruction, whose understanding the Holy Ghost vouchsafed to inhabit, have not performed it.  For as the Prophet Isaiah cried out long ago, “Lord, who hath believed our reports?” And out of doubt, as Isaiah complained then for himself and others:  so are they less believed, every day after other.  For although religion, and the truth thereof be in every man’s mouth, yea, in the discourse of every woman, who for the greatest number are but idols