been reserved opportunely to this occasion.

For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to
declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best covenant
of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on
your proceedings. His highest praising is not flattery, and his plainest
advice is a kind of praising. For though I should affirm and hold by
argument, that it would fare better with truth, with learning and the
Commonwealth, if one of your published Orders, which I should name, were
called in; yet at the same time it could not but much redound to the
lustre of your mild and equal government, whenas private persons are
hereby animated to think ye better pleased with public advice, than
other statists have been delighted heretofore with public flattery. And
men will then see what difference there is between the magnanimity of a
triennial Parliament, and that jealous haughtiness of prelates and cabin
counsellors that usurped of late, whenas they shall observe ye in the
midst of your victories and successes more gently brooking written
exceptions against a voted Order than other courts, which had produced
nothing worth memory but the weak ostentation of wealth, would have
endured the least signified dislike at any sudden proclamation.

If I should thus far presume upon the meek demeanour of your civil and
gentle greatness, Lords and Commons, as what your published Order hath
directly said, that to gainsay, I might defend myself with ease, if any
should accuse me of being new or insolent, did they but know how much
better I find ye esteem it to imitate the old and elegant humanity of
Greece, than the barbaric pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness.
And out of those ages, to whose polite wisdom and letters we owe that we
are not yet Goths and Jutlanders, I could name him who from his private
house wrote that discourse to the Parliament of Athens, that persuades