Page:Gondibert, an heroick poem - William Davenant (1651).djvu/47

 (who are many) a jurisdiction against which they readily rebel; because it rules severely, yet promiseth no worldly recompence for obedience; obedience being by every humane Power invited with assurances of visible advantage. The good (who are but few) need not the power of Religion to make them better, the power of Religion proceeding from her threatnings, which though mean weapons, are fitly us'd, since she hath none but base Enemies. We may observe too, that all Virtuous men are so taken up with the rewards of Heaven, that they live as if out of the World; and no government receives assistance from any man meerly as he is good; but as that goodness is active in temporal things.

The Sword is in the hand of Justice no guard to Government, but then when Justice hath an Army for her own defence; and Armies, if they were not pervertible by Faction, yet are to Common-wealths like Kings Physitians to poor Patients; who buy the cure of their disorder'd bodies at so high a rate, that they may be said to change their Sickness for Famin. Policie (I mean of the Living, not of the Dead; the one being the last rules or designs governing the Instant, the other those laws that began Empire) is as mortal as States-men themselves: whose incessant labours make that Hectick feaver of the mind, which insensibly dispatches the Bodie: and when we trace States-men through all the Histories of Courts, we find their Inventions so unnecessarie to those that succeed at the Helm, or so much envi'd as they scarce last in authoritie till the Inventors are buried: and change of Designs in States-men (their designs being the weapons by which States are defended) grows as distructive to Government, as a continual change of various weapons into Armies; which must receive with ruin any sudden assault, when want of practice makes unactiveness. We cannot urge that the ambition of States-men (who are obnoxious to the people) doth much disorder Government; because the peoples anger, by a perpetual coming in of new Oppressours is so diverted in con-