Page:A Discourse of Constancy in Two Books Chiefly containing Consolations Against Publick Evils.pdf/272

Chap. 20. Never Langius so long as I am Master of my reason; for what former age (if you rightly consider it) was ever so calamitous as this of ours, or what after one shall be? What Nation? What Country ever endured,

As we Belgians do at this day? You see we are involved in a Warr; not in a forreign one only, but a civil; and that in the very bowels of us. For there are not only parties amongst us, but (O my Country what hand shall preserve thee) a subdivision of those parties. Add to this the Pestilence, add Famine, add Taxes, Rapines, Slaughters, and the height of all the Tyranny and Oppression, not of our Bodies only, but our Souls too. And in the rest of Europe what is there? Either Warr or the expectation of Rh