; so is the Conjuncture, and the steps by which you are happily
ascended to it, Miraculous, and alltogether stupendious: So that what the
former Ages might produce to deprecate their fears, or flatter the
Inclinations of a Tyrant, we offer spontaneously, and by Instinct, without
Artifice to your Serene Majesty, our just and rightfull Soveraign. And if
in these expressions of it, and the formes we use, it were possible to
exceed, and so offend your Modesty; herein only (great Sir) do we not fear
to disobey you; since it is not in your power to deny us our rejoycing,
nor indeed in ours, to moderate. Permit us therefore (O best of Kings) to
follow our genius, and to consecrate your Name, and this dayes exaltation
to that posterity which you alone have preserved, and which had certainly
seen its period, but for your happy Restauration; so that your Majesty
does not so much accept a benefit from, as give it to your Subjects. For
though the fulness of this Dayes joy, be like the seven years of plenty;
yet, is that bread far more sweet, which is eaten with remembrance of the
past Famine (too bitter, alas! to be forgotten on the suddain) especially,
when it may serve to illustrate our present felicity, and conduce to your
Majesties glory: For so the skillful Artist, studious of making a
surprising peice, or representing some irradiated Deity, deepens the
shadowes sometimes with the darkest touches, and approaching to horrour
it self, thereby to render his lights the more refulgent, and striking in
the eyes of the Spectator.

Let us then call to mind (and yet for ever cursed be the memory of it)
those dismal clouds, which lately orespread us, when we served the lusts
of those immane Usurpers, greedy of power, that themselves might be under
none; Cruel, that they might murther the Innocent without cause; Rich,
with the publick poverty; strong, by putting the sword into the hands of
furies, and prosperous by unheard of perfidie. Armies, Battails,
Impeaching, Imprisonment, Arraining, Condemning, Proscribing, Plundring,
Gibbets and Executions were the eloquent expressions of our miseries:
There was no language then heard but of Perjury, Delusion, Hypocrisie{7},
Heresie, Taxes, Excises, Sequestration, Decimation, and a thousand like
barbarities: In summe, the solitudes were filled with noble Exiles, the
Cities with rapacious Theives, the Temples with Sacrilegious Villains;
They had the spoiles of Provinces, the robbing of Churches, the