The Decades of Henry Bullinger, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

Your Majesty would, I know right well, most royal king, admit a stranger to talk with your grace, if any new guest should come and promise, that he would briefly out of the sentences and judgments of the wisest men declare the very truest causes of the felicity and unhappy state of every king and kingdom :and therefore I hope that I shall not be excluded from the speech of your Majesty, because I do assuredly promise briefly to lay down the very causes of the felicity and lamentable calamities of kings and their kingdoms so clearly and evidently, that the hearer shall not need to trouble himself with over-busy di Ugence to seek out my meaning, but only to give attentive ear to that which is spoken. For, by the help of God, I will make this treatise not to be perceived only by the wit and true judgment of learned heads, but also to be seen as it were with the eyes, and handled as it were with the hands, of very idiots and unlearned hearers; and that too, not out of the doubtful decrees and devices of men, but out of the assured word of the most true God. Even the wisest men do very often deceive us with their counsels, and greatly endamage the followers thereof: but God, which is the Light and eternal Wisdom, cannot any time either err, or conceive any false opinions or repugning counsels; much less teach others any1 Bishop Hooper urged Bu Uinger to dedicate one of his wi-itings to King Edward at this time. Original Letters, Parker Soc. pp. 73, 78. Interesting particulars concerning the conveyance, presentation, and reception in England of this Volume occm, in chronological order, in the same Original Letters, as follows i pp. 662, 560, 665, 269, 88. See also Strype, Eccles. Mem. Book i. chap. 30, Vol. ii. part 1, p. 390, Oxf. 1822. 2 Idiots :uneducated persons. See Vol. i. p. 71, n. 3.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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