An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) by John Evelyn
page 21 of 61 (34%)
page 21 of 61 (34%)
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them, as now we behold in all that goodly tract of the _Turkish_
dominions: And what was the cause of all this, but the giddinesse of a wanton people, the Schisms and the Heresies in the church, and the prosperous successes of a rebellious _Impostor_, whose steps we have pursued in so many pregnant instances; giving countenance to those unheard of impieties, and delusions, as if God be not infinitely merciful, must needs involve us under the same disasters? For, whilst there is no order in the Church, no body of Religion agreed upon, no government established, and that every man is abandoned to his own deceitfull heart: whilst learning is decried, and honesty discountenanc'd, rapine defended, and vertue finds no advocate; what can we in reason expect, but the most direfull expressions of the wrath of God, a universall desolation, when by the industry of _Sathan_ and his crafty Emissaries, some desperate _enthusiasme_, compounded (like that of _Mohomet_,) of Arian, Socinian, Jew, Anabaptist, and the impurer _Gnostick_, something I say made up of all these heresies, shall diffuse it self over the Nation, in a universall contagion, and nothing lesse appear then the _Christian_ which we have ingratefully renounced? _For this plague is already beginning amongst us, and there is none to take the Censer, and to stand between the living and the dead, that we be not consumed as in a moment; for there is wrath gone out from the Lord._ Let us then _depart from the tents of these wicked men_ (who have brought all this upon us) _and touch nothing of theirs, lest we be consumed in all their sins_. But you will say, the King is not to be trusted: judg not of others by your selves; did ever any man observe the least inclination of revenge in his breast? has he not betides the innate propensity of his own nature to gentlenesse, the strict injunctions of a dying father and a _Martyr_, to |
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