But where hadst thou that heart that gives entertainment to these thoughts, these heavenly thoughts?  These thoughts are like the French Protestants, [Footnote:  By the famous edict of Nantes, which was granted the Huguenots by Henry IV., they were allowed liberty of conscience and the free exercise of religion.  Louis XIV., grandson of Henry, after a series of arbitrary infractions of that edict by his father and himself at the instigation of the Jesuits, at length in 1685 abrogated it, and banished the Protestants from the kingdom under circumstances of aggravated cruelty.  Great numbers of them were dispersed through all the countries of Europe.  Evelyn, in his Diary, says that in 1685, “there had now been numbered to passe through Geneva onely forty thousand towards Swisserland.  In Holland, Denmark, and all Germany were dispersed some hundred thousands, besides those in England.”  In the Memoirs of the Reformation in France prefixed to Saurin’s Sermons, it is stated that eight hundred thousand were banished from France, and that they carried with them more than twenty millions of property.  The refugees charged their sufferings on the religion of Rome, for Pope Innocent XI highly approved of this persecution.  He wrote a brief to the king, assuring him that what he had done against the heretics of his kingdom would be immortalieied by the eulogies of the Catholic church.  He delivered a discourse in the Consistory in 1689, in which he said, “The most Christian king’s zeal and piety did wonderfully appear in extirpating heresy.”  He ordered the Te DEUM to be sung.  Evelyn says, “I was show’d the harangue which the bishop of Valentia on Rhone made in the name of the cleargie, celebrating the French king for persecuting the poor Protestants; with this expression in it:  ’His victory over heresy was greater than all the conquests of Alexander and Caesar.’”] banished thence where they willingly would have harbor:  how came they to thy house, to thy heart, and to find entertainment in thy soul?  The Lord keep them in every imagination of the thoughts of thy heart for ever, and incline thine heart to seek him more and more.

And since the whole world have slighted and despised and counted foolish the thoughts wherewith thy soul is exercised, what strong and mighty supporter is it upon and with which thou bearest up thy spirit, and takest encouragement in this thy forlorn, unoccupied, and singular way, for so I dare say it is with the most?  But certainly it is something above thyself, and that is more mighty to uphold thee than is the power, rage, and malice of all the world to cast thee down, or else thou couldst not bear up, now the stream and the force thereof are against thee.

Objection.  “I know my soul is an excellent thing, and that the world to come and its glories, even in the smallest glimpse thereof, do swallow up all the world that is here; my heart also doth greatly desire to be exercised about the thoughts of eternity, and I count myself never better than when my poor heart is filled with them; and as for the rage and fury of this world, it swayeth very little with me, for my heart is come to a point; but yet for all that, I meet with many discouragements, and such things as indeed do weaken my strength in the way.”