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. "They search out iniquity, they accom'plish a diligent search,' Psal. lxiv. 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 impunity), 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

from being a sign of manly courage (which dares not transgress the rules of any other virtue), that it is only a demonstration of brutish madness or diabolical possession. In both which last cases there use frequent examples to appear of such extraordinary force as may justly seem more wonderful and astonishing than the actions of Cromwell; neither is it stranger to believe that a whole nation should not be able to govern him and a mad army, than that five or six men should not be strong enough to bind a distracted girl. There is no man ever succeeds in one wickedness, but it gives him the boldness to attempt a greater. It was boldly done of Nero to kill his mother, and all the chief nobility of the empire; it was boldly done, to set the metropolis of the whole world on fire, and undauntedly play upon his harp whilst he saw it burning. I could reckon up five hundred boldnesses of that great person (for why should not he, too, be called so ?), who wanted, when he was to die, that courage which could hardly have failed any woman in the like necessity.

"It would look (I must confess) like envy, or too much partiality, if I should say that personal kind of courage had been deficient in the man we speak of; I am confident it was not: and yet I may venture, I think, to affirm, that no man ever bore the honour of so many victories, at the rate of fewer wounds and dangers of his own body; and. though his valour might perhaps have given him a

just pretension to one of the first charges in an army; it could not certainly be a sufficient ground for a title to the command of three nations.

"What then shall we say that he did all this by witchcraft? He did so, indeed, in a great mea→ sure, by a sin that is called like it in the Scriptures. But, truly and unpassionately reflecting upon the advantages of his person, which might be thought to have produced those of his fortune, I can espy no other but extraordinary diligence and infinite dissimulation; and believe he was exalted above his nation, partly by his own faults, but chiefly for

"We have brought him thus briefly (not through all his labyrinths) to the supreme usurped autho rity; and because you say it was great pity he did not live to command more kingdoms, be pleased to let me represent to you, in a few words, how well I conceive he governed these. And we will divide the consideration into that of his foreign and do mestick actions. The first of his foreign, was a peace with our brethren of Holland (who were the first of our neighbours that God chastised for having had so great a hand in the encouraging and abetting our troubles at home): who would not imagine at first glimpse that this had been the most virtuous and laudable deed, that his whole life could have made any parade of? But no man can look upon all the circumstances, without perceiving, that it was purely the sale and sacrificing of the greatest advantages

that this country could ever hope, and was ready to reap, from a foreign war, to the private interests of his covetousness and ambition, and the security of his new and unsettled usurpation. No sooner is that danger past, but this Beatus Pacificus is kindling a fire in the northern world, and carrying a war two thousand miles off westwards. Two millions a-year (besides all the vails of his protectorship) is as little capable to suffice now either his avarice or prodigality, as the two hundred pounds were, that he was born to. He must have his prey of the whole Indies both by sea and land, this great alligator. To satisfy our Anti-Solomon (who has made silver almost as rare as gold, and gold as precious stones in his new Jerusalem) we must go, ten thousand of his slaves, to fetch him riches from his fantastical Ophir. And, because his flatterers brag of him as the most fortunate prince (the Faustus, as well as Sylla, of our nation, whom God never forsook in any of his undertakings), I desire them to consider, how, since the English name was ever heard of, it never received so great and so infamous a blow as under the imprudent conduct of this unlucky Faus tus: and herein let me admire the justice of God in this circumstance, that they who had enslaved their country (though a great army, which I wish may be observed by ours with trembling) should be so shamefully defeated by the hands of forty slaves. It was very ridiculous to see how prettily they endeavoured to hide this ignominy under the great