not their fruits but upon importunity: some trees
require incision, and pruning, and lopping; some men must be intimidated
and syndicated with commissions, before they will deliver the fruits of
justice: some trees require the early and the often access of the sun;
some men open not, but upon the favours and letters of court mediation:
some trees must be housed and kept within doors; some men lock up, not
only their liberality, but their justice and their compassion, till the
solicitation of a wife, or a son, or a friend, or a servant, turn the
key. Reward is the season of one man, and importunity of another; fear
the season of one man, and favour of another; friendship the season of
one man, and natural affection of another; and he that knows not their
seasons, nor cannot stay them, must lose the fruits: as nature will not,
so power and greatness will not be put to change their seasons, and
shall we look for this indulgence in a disease, or think to shake it off
before it be ripe? All this while, therefore, we are but upon a
defensive war, and that is but a doubtful state; especially where they
who are besieged do know the best of their defences, and do not know
the worst of their enemy's power; when they cannot mend their works
within, and the enemy can increase his numbers without. O how many far
more miserable, and far more worthy to be less miserable than I, are
besieged with this sickness, and lack their sentinels, their physicians
to watch, and lack their munition, their cordials to defend, and perish
before the enemy's weakness might invite them to sally, before the
disease show any declination, or admit any way of working upon itself?
In me the siege is so far slackened, as that we may come to fight, and
so die in the field, if I die, and not in a prison.

XIX. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a
God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain
sense of all that thou sayest? but thou art also (Lord, I intend it to
thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy
diminution), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God too; a God in
whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such
peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions,
such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of
hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and so reserved
expressions, so commanding persu