Through labor and endurance. This deep world Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst Thick clouds and dark doth heaven's allruling Sire Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, 265 And with the majesty of darkness round Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar, Mustering their rage, and heaven resembles hell! As he our darkness, cannot we his light 269 Imitate when we please? This desert soil Wants not her hidden luster, gems and gold; Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise Magnificence; and what can heaven show more? Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements; these piercing fires As soft as now severe, our temper changed Into their temper; which must needs re In doing what we most in suffering feel? Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need With dangerous expedition to invade Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, Or ambush from the deep. What if we find Some easier enterprise? There is a place To be created like to us, though less That shook heaven's whole circumference confirmed. Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn What creatures there inhabit, of what mold Or substance, how endued, and what their 356 And where their weakness, how attempted best, power, By force or subtlety. Though heaven be shut, And heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure In his own strength, this place may lie exposed, 360 The utmost border of his kingdom, left To their defense who hold it; here perhaps Some advantageous act may be achieved To waste his whole creation, or possess 365 All as our own, and drive, as we were driven, The puny habitants; or, if not drive, Seduce them to our party, that their God May prove their foe, and with repenting hand Abolish his own works. This would surpass 370 Common revenge, and interrupt his joy And, so refused, might in opinion stand Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice Forbidding; and at once with him they rose. 477 With awful reverence prone; and as a god Extol him equal to the Highest in heaven. Nor failed they to express how much they praised 480 That for the general safety he despised Their specious deeds on earth, which glory excites 484 Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal. Thus they their doubtful consultations dark Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief. As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o'er the darkened landscape snow or shower; 491 If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds 494 and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and ablest judgment have beer persuaded that even the school of Pythag oras and the Persian wisdom took be ginning from the old philosophy of this island. And that wise and civil Ro man, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Cæsar, preferred the nat ural wits of Britain, before the labored studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Tran sylvanian sends out yearly from as fa as the mountainous borders of Russia and beyond the Hercynian wilderness not their youth, but their staid men, tc learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this the favor and the love of Heaven we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her as out of Sion should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wyclif, to sup press him as a schismatic and innovator perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther, 01 of Calvin had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbors had been completely ours. But now, a our obdurate clergy have with violenc demeaned the matter, we are becom hitherto the latest and the backwardes scholars, of whom God offered to hav made us the teachers. Now once agai by all concurrence of signs, and by th general instinct of holy and devout mer as they daily and solemnly express thei thoughts, God is decreeing to begin som new and great period in his church, eve to the reforming of Reformation itself what does he then but reveal himself t his servants, and as his manner is, firs to his Englishmen; I say as his manne is, first to us, though we mark not th method of his counsels, and are un not despair the greatest design that could be attempted to make a church or kingdom happy. Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and 5 sectaries; as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men who would not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither can every piece of the building be of one form; nay, rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure. Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual architecture, when great reformation reformation is expected. For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great prophet may sit in heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our seventy elders, but all the Lord's people, are become prophets. No marvel then though some men, and some good men too, perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weakness are in agony, lest those divisions and subdivisions will undo us. The adversary again applauds, and waits. the hour, when they have branched themselves out (saith he) small enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches; nor will beware until he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude (honest perhaps though over-timorous) of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to persuade me. worthy. Behold now this vast city: a First, when a city shall be as it were besieged and blocked about, her navig |