ommitted;
to make themselves and their issues masters of the world? And yet
hath Babylon, Persia, Syria, Macedon, Carthage, Rome, and the rest,
no fruit, no flower, grass, nor leaf, springing upon the face of
the earth, of those seeds: no, their very roots and ruins do hardly
remain. "Omnia quae manu hominum facta sunt, vel manu hominum
evertuntur, vel stando et durando deficiunt": "All that the hand of
man can make, is either overturned by the hand of man, or at length
by standing and continuing consumed." The reasons of whose ruins, are
diversely given by those that ground their opinions on second causes.
All kingdoms and states have fallen (say the politicians) by outward
and foreign force, or by inward negligence and dissension, or by a
third cause arising from both. Others observe, that the greatest have
sunk down under their own weight; of which Livy hath a touch: "eo
crevit, ut magnitudine laboret sua":[4] Others, That the divine
providence (which Cratippus objected to Pompey) hath set _down_ the
date and period of every estate, before their first foundation and
erection. But hereof I will give myself a day over to resolve.

For seeing the first hooks of the following story, have undertaken the
discourse of the first kings and kingdoms: and that it is impossible
for the short life of a Preface, to travel after, and overtake far-off
antiquity, and to judge of it; I will, for the present, examine
what profit hath been gathered by our own Kings, and their neighbour
princes: who having beheld, both in divine and human letters, the
success of infidelity, injustice, and cruelty; have (notwithstanding)
planted after the same pattern.

True it is, that the judgments of all men are not agreeable; nor
(which is more strange) the affection of any one man stirred up alike
with examples of like nature: but every one is touched most, with that
which most nearly seemeth to touch his own private, or otherwise best
suiteth with his apprehension. But the judgments of God are forever
unchangeable: neither is He wearied by the long process of time, and
won to give His blessing in one age, to that which He hath cursed in
another. Wherefor those that are wise, or whose wisdom if it be not
great, yet is true and well grounded, will be able to discern the
bitter fruits of irreligious policy, as well among those examples that
are found in ages removed far from the present, as in those of latter
times. And that it may no less appear by