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62 suffered, nor yet avoid those wherewith it is still threatened, unless by some very remarkable effect of your singular goodness and protection.

And, as for me, who cherish it as the work of my hands and the miracle of my life, I protest to you ingenuously, that, since that stroke of thunder—which was cast from the heaven of your justice upon a piece so rare, so beautiful, so excellent, and which I have by my watches and labours brought to such perfection as none can morally desire a greater—I have been so extremely astonished, that if the same cause which once made the son of Croesus, though naturally dumb, to speak, did not now