proposing white robes in confession, and purple in their sufferings, which might be prologues to crowns and immortality; but such, who followed deserted loyalty, as the people our Saviour into the wilderness for the miracle of loaves, seeking worldly advantages, might pawn their souls for trash, and sin for a morsel of bread.

It is an atheistical piece of folly to disown omnipotency, that we may gratify weak surmisers.

The custom of swearing and forswearing hath, in our unhappy land, took away the sense of perjury; by the no infrequent use of poison, it went into the opinion of such nutriment, as might scem necessary for their constitutions. In a wilderness of apes and monkies, none could dread, by an oath, to take in a spider.

That oaths may make a land mourn, we have religion to assure, and reason to instruct us; but, how they can be instruments to our rejoicing, may be an article of that creed only, which could exchange a Christ for an Adonis, and make religion truckle to every darling folly.

In such an apostasy, as might make an unhappy land sigh, and wonder at herself so soon turned leper, some believe a thundering legion to have secured our Theodosius; we received a Charles by the grace of God, not favour of men. No quirks nor intrigues of giddy politicians, but he alone, who rules the wheel of human vicissitudes, produced this happier revolution; the best of physicians, and no worm-brained mountebank of state, subvened to our distractions; when the twisting of sand by foolish combinations was found a successless folly, and the brain-sick hopes of fondest royalists might pass for phrensy. God derided from heaven, and, by dividing their councils, who were enemies to our David, turned the wisdom of our Achitophels into a rope.

When the bricks were doubled, a Moses came; our task-masters grown intolerable, God raised us up deliverers. The stars in their courses, which fought against, fight for us; the most inauspicious planets, by happier conjunctions, deposit their malevolence, and seem to have friendly aspects for loyalty, by a more propitious revolution. Sure this was the Lord's doing, and should be marvellous in our eyes. God scattered the men who took delight in war, and, by a bloodless victory, gave us peace; the prayers and tears of a poor and distressed party, the weapons of the church militant, prevailed over the loud-crying blasphemy and perjuries of their enemies.

The war begun from Scotland, a nation fatal to princes. A re. gion of darkness can give light; and the north, infamous for ill, must be celebrated for good, since from that place we received the first part of our cure, to which we owed the beginning of mischief.

The lord, who, being a general, gave way to a prince's ruin, without which it could not have been effected; now a private man

opens a way for a general, which led for a king's restoration, without which it might have been vainly hoped.

The dragon's tail, which gave royalty the fatal wound, cures it by an antimonarchical note; by secking to introduce a plurality of generals, brings in one king.

The members, which an army secluded, an army restores. Now better restored to their senses, than to believe a king, though intitled to the name of a Solomon, when he called them all princes, they could not now fancy the members eternal (who, by the loss of that unhappy head, which, intrusted with power for its own ruin, might find themselves mortal); they could no longer dream of being omnipotent, when, as a debt due to vengeance for denying the just tribute of allegiance, they had encountered the curse of curses, been servants of servants, and, what might be the highest aggravation, enslaved by their own vassals.

An antesignane of schism seems a precursor of loyalty. He, who, by imposing on factious cars, had justly lost his own, now might seem worthy of the reserved head, which, in its lucid intervals, could be so beneficially sober.

Loyal reason was such a miracle from the self-contradicting author, as could produce a self-denying ordinance, which might be as instrumental to a happy restoration, as that was to the utter extinguishing of faint and glimmering loyalty.

The Sampsons, who had been bound and blinded by deceitful Dalilahs, false oaths, and foolish engagements, though with their own dissolution, can be coutent to pluck down the house of the Philistines so long devoted to the idol's folly.

A sober council met; the heart of the kingdom votes for an head, that it might be no longer a senseless nation: by whose returned command a loyal body is legally summoned, which may truly hear patriots, restorers, an healing senate, sanctuaries, not slaughter-houses of innocents; who, by contributing religious and loyal votes, have expiated there the cruel follies, where irreligious and disloyal suffrages changed an happy land into a field of blood.'

The merry Dr. Collins desired his taking of the covenant might be deferred till the day of judgment, when it would be clearly known what became of covenanters.

Wise men will suspend rash censures; while the curtain is drawn, the best of prophets are but probable conjecturers.

Nothing of earthly glory hath been wanting to grace our hero, even to the Apotheosis of an emperor.

Our patron George interred, a solemnity was intended to a tutelar saint of the name; which had it been performed, an hotbrained zealot, who had perused a Tertullian, or a St. Cyprian de Spectaculis, might be more dangerously troublesome, to the discomposure of weak and scrupulous noddles, than the poly-pragmatick lawyer in his less significant and more ridiculous misquoting of them against stage-plays. That, which is not evil in itself, may be sometimes not well advised.

The order of the garter may defend itself by its motto, Evil to him who evil thinketh.'

Theognis will have Jupiter neither with rain, nor without it, to please all men. Neither a close fist, nor an open hand, can want a misconstruction. What was wanting to nearest relations was cons ferred on the general, without whom all might seem unavailable for

a crown.

Wise men can be pleased with the most excellent gratitude, and fools can be gratified with the gaiety of the sight.

It was the custom of heathens to destroy the living, under pretence of honouring the dead; not a few, made close mourners by a civil death, seemed to follow the corpse of an usurper.

Some can fancy, that an Essex, Ireton, and a Cromwell lay in their beds of blasphemed honour with more fond state; none are supposed to have equalled his funeral-pomp, inferior alone to that of princes by a diadem. The defects of earth may heaven supply, by changing a fickle coronet into a never-fading crown.

Mars, in most opinions, is best pictured reeking in blood; a general rendered inglorious, if not exposed in the purple of war; to bring in our hero with the white robes of a confessor, and disengaged from the bloody camps of a rebellious schism, to make a soldier of the church militant, which can only lead to the truly triumphant paths of glory, if an error is more venial than by intitling to the craft to bestow on him the prey of foxes; a great, rather than a good renown, unworthy of a Christian champion. Let Mahometans glory in praises common to wolves, bears, and tygers, who expect in Paradise no pleasure above that of goats, by the enjoyment of brutish sensuality.

Foolish historians, like fond heralds, make the most savage of beasts supporters to the arms of the highest grandeur; butcheries and debaucheries the prime parts in the tragedies of their heroes. What, but named, might turn Christians blood into a congealed cake of ice, is affixed to the story to make a more horrible Polyphemus.

Discretion should lay aside the bloody shirt. The famed conqueror of the East, who, instead of all the vain pomp of proud funerals, would have a shirt carried aloft in triumph, to shew how small a portion was left a Saladine, after his mighty acquisitions, surely had a cleanly shift, and no bloody emblem exposed of human inconstancy. The cruel piece of duty, which sacrificed a man to revenge for an injured father, though some can fancy generous, heroick, and a prophetick action, which first made the soldier, who was to restore the common parent, may it ever be forgot, whilst the bloodless conquest, for a country's father, never wants a grateful commemoration.

May the bloody atchievements in a Belgick, Irish, Scottish war be ever silenced, and after so honourable a death, be introduced by no puny historian, who, while he fancies the erecting of trophies, by accumulating the dangerously acquired conquests of an

hero, exposes a brutish valour, and baffled reason, for marks of honour, by a mistake of objects, affixes indelible notes of infamy. While the lion is forgot, may the triumphs of the lamb be celebrated, who unlearned us the fierceness of savages, and by attending to the voice of peace, became a Gratioso to a most peaceable prince on earth, and hath the promise of the blessing which attends upon peace-makers, and thus may be intitled a favourite to the King of Kings, who disdains not the title of the Prince of Peace.

It was no cruel victory to which our hero owed his honours, and three nations their preservation. God appeared not in the thunder and lightning of war, but in the soft whisperings of peace, for the most happy of restorations.

The general can never want the encomium of a Fabius, will be ever intitled, by delays, the restorer. To attribute our restoration to the church's prayers, though an heterodox, can be no culpable opinion, which cannot dishonour God by ascribing all to his mercies, nor the king to have his cause owned by heaven, nor the general, by being made an instrument in the hand of the Almighty, when his own arm was withered by the loss of strength in a commission.

The Psalmist's fool said in his heart there was no God; and he said that all men were lyars. May wars, plagues, nor fires, be the cruel remembrancers to instruct that truth, which we are so apt to forget! To God only belongeth salvation.

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us but to thy name be the glory. Who would rob God of his glory on earth, may fall short of being glorified in heaven.

To God alone, as ever due, be ever glory, whose fame only can make an history everlasting.

TWO LETTERS

WRITTEN BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDWARD EARL OF CLARENDON,

LATE LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND:

One to his Royal Highness the Duke of York: The other to the Duchess, occasioned by her embracing the Roman Catholick Religion.

As these Letters serve to rescue the Memory of the worthy Earl, their Author, from all Imputation of Popery, or of being Popishly affected, and, as I can find, no where recorded, they are deservedly thus preserved from the Injury of Time, in the Vindication of that noble Personage.

SIR,

HAVE not presumed in any manner to approach your royal presence, since I have been marked with the brand of banishment; and I would still with the same awe forbear this presumption, if I did not believe myself bound by all the obligations of duty to make this address to you. I have been too much acquainted with the presumption and impudence of the times, in rai. sing false and scandalous reproaches upon innocent and worthy persons of all qualities and degrees, to give credit to those bold whispers, which have been too long scattered abroad, concerning your wife's being shaken in her religion. But when those whispers break out into noise, and publick persons begin to report that the duchess is become a roman catholick: When I heard that many worthy persons, of unquestionable devotion to your royal highness, are not without some fear and apprehension of it; and many reflexions are made from thence, to the prejudice of your royal person, and even of the king's majesty; I hope it may not misbecome me, at what distance soever, to cast myself at your feet, and beseech you to look to this matter in time, and to apply some antidote to expel the poison of it. It is not possible your royal highness can be without zcal, and intire devotion for that church, for the purity and preservation whereof, your blessed father made himself a sacrifice; and to the restoration whereof, you have contributed so much yourself, and which highly deserves the king's protection and yours, since there can be no possible defection in the hearts of the people, whilst due reverence is made to the church. Your wife is so generally believed to have so perfect duty, and intire resignation to the will of your highness, that any defection in her, from her religion, will be imputed to want of circumspection in you, and not using your authority; or to your connivance. I need not tell the ill consequence that such a mutation would be at