ties and flourishing kingdoms by that means are desolate, the whole
body groans under such heads, and all the members must needs be
disaffected, as at this day those goodly provinces in Asia Minor, &c. groan
under the burthen of a Turkish government; and those vast kingdoms of
Muscovia, Russia, [480]under a tyrannizing duke. Who ever heard of more
civil and rich populous countries than those of "Greece, Asia Minor,
abounding with all [481]wealth, multitudes of inhabitants, force, power,
splendour and magnificence?" and that miracle of countries, [482]the Holy
Land, that in so small a compass of ground could maintain so many towns,
cities, produce so many fighting men? Egypt another paradise, now barbarous
and desert, and almost waste, by the despotical government of an imperious
Turk, _intolerabili servitutis jugo premitur_ ([483]one saith) not only
fire and water, goods or lands, _sed ipse spiritus ab insolentissimi
victoris pendet nutu_, such is their slavery, their lives and souls depend
upon his insolent will and command. A tyrant that spoils all wheresoever he
comes, insomuch that an [484]historian complains, "if an old inhabitant
should now see them, he would not know them, if a traveller, or stranger,
it would grieve his heart to behold them." Whereas [485]Aristotle notes,
_Novae exactiones, nova onera imposita_, new burdens and exactions daily
come upon them, like those of which Zosimus, _lib. 2_, so grievous, _ut
viri uxores, patres filios prostituerent ut exactoribus e questu_, &c.,
they must needs be discontent, _hinc civitatum gemitus et ploratus_, as
[486] Tully holds, hence come those complaints and tears of cities, "poor,
miserable, rebellious, and desperate subjects," as [487]Hippolitus adds;
and [488]as a judicious countryman of ours observed not long since, in a
survey of that great Duchy of Tuscany, the people lived much grieved and
discontent, as appeared by their manifold and manifest complainings in that
kind. "That the state was like a sick body which had lately taken physic,
whose humours are not yet well settled, and weakened so much by purging,
that nothing was left but melancholy."

Whereas the princes and potentates are immoderate in lust, hypocrites,
epicures, of no religion, but in show: _Quid hypocrisi fragilius_? what so
brittle and unsure? what sooner subverts their estates than wandering and
raging lusts, on their subjects' wives, daughters? to say no worse. That
they should _facem praefe