An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) by John Evelyn
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page 25 of 61 (40%)
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attend it; you have wasted our treasure, and destroyed the Woods, spoyled
the Trade, and shaken our properties; a universall animosity is in the very bowells of the Nation; the Parent against the Children, and the Children against the Parents, betraying one another to the death; in summe, if that have any truth which our B. _Saviour_ has himself pronounced, _That a Kingdome divided cannot stand_, it is impossible we should subsist in the condition we are reduc'd to. Consider we again, how ridiculous our late proceedings have made us to our neighbours round about us. Their _Ministers_ laugh at our extream{4} giddinesse, and we seem to mock at their addresses: for no sooner do their _Credentialls_ arrive, but behold the scean is changed, and the Government is fled, he that now acted King, left a fool in his place, and they stand amazed at out _Buffoonery_ and madnesse. What then may we imagine will be the product of all these disadvantages, when the Nations that deride and hate us, shall be united for our destruction; and that the harvest is ripe for the sickle of their fury? shall we not certainly be a prey to an inevitable ruine, having thus weakned our selves by a brutish civill war, and cut off those glorious _Heros_, the wise and the valiant, whose courage in such a calamity we shall in vain imploar, that would bravely have sacrificed themselves for our delivery? Let us remember how often we have served a forraign people, and that there is nothing so confident, but a provoked God can overthrow. For my part, I tremble, but to consider what may be the issue of these things, when our iniquities are full, and that God shall make inquisition for the bloud that has been spilt; unlesse we suddainly meet him by an unfained repentance, and turn from all the abominations by which we have provoaked him; And then, it is to be hoped, that he who would have compounded with the _Father of the faithfull_, had there been but ten |
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