Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 3.pdf/51

 you have authority of books? Look on the collections of the committee for religion; there is too clear an evidence. Will you have records? See then the commission procured for composition with the papists in the North? Note the proceedings thereupon. You will find them to little less amounting than a toleration in effect, tho upon some slight payments; and the easiness in them will likewise show the favor that is intended. Will you have proofs of men? Witness the hopes, witness the presumptions, witness the reports of all the papists generally. Observe the dispositions of commands, the trust of officers, the confidence of secrecies of employments, in this kingdom, in Ireland, and elsewhere. They will all show it has too great a certainty. And to these add but the introconvertible evidence of that all-powerful hand which we have felt so sorely, to give it full assurance! For as the Heavens oppose themselves to us, it was our impieties that first opposed the Heavens.

For the second, our want of councils, that great disorder in a State with which there can not be stability, if effects may show their causes, as they are often a perfect demonstration of them, our misfortunes, our disasters, serve to prove it! And (if reason be allowed in this dark age, by the judgment of dependencies, the foresight of contingencies, in affairs) the consequences they draw with them confirm it. For, if we view ourselves at home, are we in strength, are we in reputation, equal to our ancestors? If