LETTERS FROM THE CABALA. 21 



others to be confident upon you, and you to be confident 

 upon the cause, the goodness and justice whereof is such as 

 can hardly be matched in any example, it being no ambitious 

 war of foreigners, but a recovery of subjects, and that after 

 lenity of conditions often tried ; and a recovery of them 

 not only to obedience, but to humanity and policy, from 

 more than Indian barbarism. There is yet another kind of 

 divination familiar in matters of state, being that which 

 Demosthenes so often relieth upon in his time, where he 

 saith, that which for the time past is worst of all, is for the 

 time to come the best, which is, that things go ill not by 

 accident but by error ; wherein though your lordship hath been 

 a waking censor, yet you must look for no other now, but 

 &quot; medice, cura teipsum ;&quot; and although your lordship shal] 

 not be the blessed physician that cometh to the declination 

 of the disease, yet you embrace that condition which many 

 noble spirits have accepted for advantage, which is, that you 

 go upon the greater peril of your fortune, and the less of 

 your reputation ; and so the honour countervailed the 

 adventure : of which honour your lordship is in no small 

 possession, when that her majesty, known to be one of the 

 most judicious princes in discerning of spirits that ever 

 governed, hath made choice of you merely out of her royal 

 judgment, (her affection inclining rather to continue your 

 attendance,) into whose hands and trust to put the com 

 mandment and conduct of so great forces, the gathering in 

 the fruit of so great charge, the execution of so many councils, 

 the redeeming of the defaults of so many former governors, 

 and the clearing the glory of so many happy years reign, 

 only in this part excepted. Nay farther, how far forth the 

 peril of that state is interlaced with the peril of England ; 

 and therefore how great the honour is to keep and defend 

 the approaches of this kingdom, I hear many discourse ; and 

 indeed there is a great difference, whether the tortoise gather 

 herself into her shell hurt or unhurt : and if any man be of 



