ded calamities.

"O Thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking
the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless
revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were
quite breathless of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of
covenant with us; and, having first well-nigh freed us from
anti-Christian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic Empire to a
glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about
her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our
half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of
sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat
through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive
spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom:
that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for
us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered
with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw
of Hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction,
ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast.

"O how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear,
when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest
miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest happiness to
come? Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from
the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes, now unite us entirely
and appropriate us to Thyself, tie us everlastingly in willing
homage to the prerogative of Thy eternal throne.

"And now we know, O Thou, our most certain hope and defence, that
Thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great
whore, and have joined their plots with that sad, intelligencing
tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies
thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas:
but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought;
let them decree, and do Thou cancel it; let them gather
themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be
broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for Thou art with us.

"Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may
perhaps