person, for delivery whereof I did more study, and undertake further than any of these my accusers. And as concerning your government, how could or can I envy that which most I have worked for, and for which, as my weak memory will suffer, I render thanks unfeignedly to God, to wit, that it hath pleased Him of his eternal goodness to exalt your head which sometime was in danger, to the manifestation of His own glory and extirpation of idolatry. And as for my offence which I have committed against England, either by writing that book, or by any other work, I will not refuse that moderate and indifferent men judge and discern betwixt me and those that accuse me. Whether of the parties do most hurt to the liberty of England; I, who affirm that no woman may be exalted above any realm, to make the liberty of the same thrall and subject to a strange, proud, and cruel nation; or they that approve whatsoever pleaseth princes for the time.

If I were as well disposed to accuse as some of them to their own shame have declared themselves, I nothing doubt but that in few words I should let reasonable men understand, that some who this day lowly crouch and bow to your Majesty, and labour to make me odious in your eyes, did in your adversity neither show themselves faithful friends to your Majesty, neither yet so loving and careful of their country, as they would be esteemed; but omitting the accusation of others for my own purgation and your Majesty's satisfaction, I say that nothing contained in my book is or can be prejudicial to your Majesty, providing that you be not found ungrate unto God.

Ungrate you will be proved in the presence of His throne (however that flatterers justify the fact), if you transfer the glory of that honour in which you now stand to any other thing than to the dispensation of His mercy, which only maketh that lawful to your Majesty which nature and law denieth to all women, to command and bear rule over men. Neither would I that your Majesty should fear, that this your just humiliation before God should in any case infirm or weaken your Majesty's just

and lawful authority. Nay, madam, such unfeigned confession of God's benefits received, will be the establishment of the same not only to yourself, but also to your seed and posterity; where contrariwise, a proud conceit and elevation of yourself will be the occasion that your reign will be unstable, troublesome, and short. God is witness, that unfeignedly I both love and reverence your Majesty; yea, I pray that your reign may be prosperous and quiet, and that for the quietness which Christ's members before persecuted, have received under you.

But yet if I should flatter your Majesty I were no friend, but a deceitful traitor; and, therefore, in conscience I am compelled to say, that neither the consent of the people, the process of time, nor multitude of men, can establish a law which God shall not approve; but whatsoever He approveth by His eternal word, that shall be approved and stay constantly firm; and whatsoever He condemneth shall be condemned, though all the world travail for the justification of the same.

And therefore, madam, the only way to retain and keep the benefits of God, is to render unto His mercy and undeserved grace the whole glory of this your exaltation; forget your birth and all title which thereupon doth hang, and consider deeply how, for fear of your life, you did decline before God, and bow to idolatry, going to mass under your sister Mary, in her persecution of God's saints.

Let it not appear a small offence in your eyes that you have declined in the day of battle. Neither would I that you should esteem that mercy to be common and vulgar which you have received-viz., that God hath covered your offence, hath preserved your person when you were most unthankful; and in the end, hath exalted and raised you up not only from the dust, but from the ports of death, to rule above His people for comfort of His kirk.

INTERVIEW WITH QUEEN MARY.

BUT yet (said the Queen) you have taught the people to receive another religion than their princes can allow, and

how can that doctrine be of God, seeing that God commandeth subjects to obey their princes?

Madam, said I, as right religion took neither original nor antiquity from worldly princes, but from the eternal God alone, so are not subjects bound to frame their religion according to the appetites of their princes; for oft it is that princes are the most ignorant of all others in God's true religion, as we may read in the histories as well before the death of Christ as after it. If all the seed of Abraham should have been of the religion of Pharaoh, to whom they had been for a long time subject, I pray you, madam, what religion there should have been in the world? Or if all the men in the days of the Apostles should have been of the religion of the Roman emperors, what religion should have been on the face of the earth? Daniel and his fellows were subjects to Nebuchadnezzar and unto Darius, and yet, madam, they would not be of their religion, neither of the one nor of the other, for the three children said, "We make it known unto thee, O King, that we will not worship thy gods." And Daniel did pray publicly to his God expressly against the commandment of the king. So, madam, ye may perceive that subjects are not bound to the religion of their princes, albeit they are commanded to give them obedience.

Yea, quoth she; but none of these men raised their sword against their princes.

Yet, madam, quoth he, ye cannot deny but they resisted; for they that obey not the command do in some sort resist.

But, said she, they resisted not with the sword.

God, said he, madam, had not given them the power and the means.

Think ye, said she, that subjects having power may resist their princes?

If princes do exceed their bounds, quoth he, madam, and do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, there is no doubt they may be resisted even by power. There is neither greater honour nor greater obedience to be given to kings and princes, than God hath commanded to

be given to father and mother; but so it is, that the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in the which he would slay his children. Now, madam, if the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword or other weapon from his hand, and finally bind his hands and keep him in prison till his frenzy be overpast, think ye, madam, that the children do any wrong? Or think ye that God will be offended with them that have stayed their father from committing wickedness? It is even so, madam, said he, with princes that would murder the children of God, that are subject to them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a very mad frenzy; and, therefore, to take the sword from them and to cast them into prison till that they be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but just obedience; because that it agreeth with the word of God. At these words the Queen stood as it were amazed more than a quarter of an hour; her countenance altered so that the Lord James began to entreat her and to demand, what hath offended you, madam? At length she said, Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall only obey you, and not me, and shall do what they list, not what I command.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, soldier, statesman, courtier, and poet, was born A.D. 1554, and died from the effects of a wound received at the battle of Zutphen, 1586. His chief prose works are A Defence of Poesy and Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. An extract from each is quoted.

THE END OF EARTHLY LEARNING.

THE senate of poets have chosen verse as their fittest raiment: meaning as in matter they passed all in all, so in manner to go beyond them, not speaking table-talk fashion, or like men in a dream, words as they chanceably

fall from the mouth, but piecing each syllable of each word by just proportion according to the dignity of the subject. Now therefore it shall not be amiss, first to weigh this poetry by his works, and then by his parts; and if in neither of these anatomies he be commendable, I hope we shall receive a more favourable sentence.

This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to what end soever it be directed, the final end is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of.

This, according to the inclinations of man, bred many fond impressions; for some thought this felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be so high or heavenly as to be acquainted with the stars, and so gave themselves to astronomy; others persuading themselves to be demi-gods, if they knew the causes of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers. Some, an admirable delight, drew to music; and some, the certainty of demonstration to the mathematics; but all, one and other, having this scope, to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying of his own divine essence. But when by the balance of experience it was found that the astronomer, looking to the star, might fall into a ditch; that the inquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; that the mathematician might draw forth a straight line from a crooked heart; then, lo! did proof, the overruler of opinions, make manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private end to themselves, so yet are they all directed to the highest end of the knowledge, which stands, as I think, in the knowledge of a man's self in the ethic and politic consideration with the end of well-doing and not of well-knowing; even as a saddler's private end is to make a good saddle, but his further end is to serve a nobler faculty, which is horsemanship; so the horseman's to soldiery, and the soldier

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