auxiliaries too. My lords, the children of Israel were makers of
brick before they were builders of a commonwealth; but our brick
is made, our mortar tempered, the cedars of Lebanon are hewed and
squared to our hands. Has this been the work of man? Or is it in
man to withstand this work? 'Shall he that contends with the
Almighty instruct him? He that reproves God, let him answer it.'
For our parts, everything is so laid that when we come to have
use of it, it is the next at hand; and unless we can conceive
that God and nature do anything in vain, there is no more for us
to do but to despatch. The piece which we have reached to us in
the foregoing orders, is the aristocracy. Athens, as has been
shown, was plainly lost through the want of a good aristocracy.

"But the sufficiency of an aristocracy goes demonstrably upon
the hand of the nobility or gentry; for that the politics can be
mastered without study, or that the people can have leisure to
study, is a vain imagination; and what kind of aristocracy
divines and lawyers would make, let their incurable running upon
their own narrow bias and their perpetual invectives against
Machiavel (though in some places justly reprovable, yet the only
politician, and incomparable patron of the people) serve for
instruction. I will stand no more to the judgment of lawyers and
divines in this work, than to that of so many other tradesmen;
but if this model chances to wander abroad, I recommend it to the
Roman speculativi (the most complete gentlemen of this age) for
their censure; or with my Lord Epimonus his leave, send 300 or
400 copies to your agent at Venice to be presented to the
magistrates there; and when they have considered them, to be
proposed to the debate of the Senate, the most competent judges
under heaven, who, though they have great affairs, will not