artily, sir, I desire to know,
If it would please you for to show,
Of what manner a thing?

_1st Prophet._ Were it mystical unto your hearing,--
Of the nativity of a king?

_2nd Prophet._ Of a king?
Whence should he come?

_1st Prophet._ From that region royal and mighty mansion,
The seed celestial and heavenly wisdom,
The Second Person, and God's one Son,
For our sake is man become.
This godly sphere, descended here,
Into a virgin clear,
She undefiled,
By whose work, obscure our frail nature
Is now beguiled.

_2nd Prophet._ Why, hath she a child?

_1st Prophet._ Ah, trust it well,
And never the less,
Yet is she a maid even as she was,
And her son the king of Israel.

_2nd Prophet._ A wonderful marvel, How that may be,
And far doth excel--
All our capacity,
How that the trinity,
Of so high regality,
Should joined be,
Unto our mortality.

_1st Prophet._ Of his one great mercy
As ye shall see the exposition,
Through whose humanity all Adam's progeny
Redeemed shall be
Out of perdition;
Sith man did offend, who should amend,
But the said man and no other;
For the which cause he,
Incarnate would be,
And live in misery
As man's one brother.

_2nd Prophet._ Sir, upon the Deity, I believe perfectly,
Impossible to be, there is nothing;
Howbeit this work, unto me is dark,
In the operation or working.

_1st Prophet._ What more reproof is unto belief
Than to be doubting.

_2nd Prophet._ Yet doubts ofttimes hath derivation.

_1st Prophet._ That is by the means of communication,
Of truths to have a due probation,--
By the same doubts, reasoning.

_2nd Prophet._ Then to you, this one thing,
Of what noble and high lineage is she,
That might this verible prince's mother be?

_1st Prophet._ Undoubted she is come of high parrage,[234]
Of the house of David, and Solomon the sage,
And one of the same line joined to her by marriage
Of whose tribe, we do subscribe
This child's lineage.

_2nd Prophet._ And why in that wise?

_1st Prophet._ For it was the guise
To count the parent on the man's line,
And not on the feminine,
Amongst us here in Israel.

_2nd Prophet._ Yet can I not espy, by no wise
How this child born should be without nature's prejudice.

_1st Prophet._ Nay, no prejudice unto nature I dare well say,
For the king of nature may
Have all his one will,
Did not the power of God, make Aaron's rod
Bear fruit in one day?

_2nd Prophet._ Truth it is indeed.

_1st Prophet