have received is great, so must God's
justice require of you a thankful heart; for seeing that His mercy
hath spared you being traitor to His Majesty; seeing, further, that
among your enemies He hath preserved you; and last, seeing that
although worthy of Hell He hath promoted you to honour and dignity,
of you must He require (because He is just) earnest repentance for
your former defection, a heart mindful of His merciful providence,
and a will so ready to advance His glory that evidently it may
appear that in vain ye have not received these graces of God--to
performance whereof of necessity it is that carnal wisdom and
worldly policy (to the which both ye are bruited too much inclined)
give place to God's simple and naked truth--very love compelleth me
to say that except the Spirit of God purge your heart from that
venom which your eyes have seen to be destruction to others, that ye
shall not long escape the reward of dissemblers. Call to mind what
you ever heard proclaimed in the chapel of Saint James, when this
verse of the first Psalm was entreated, 'Not so, oh wicked, not so;
but as the dust which the wind hath tossed, etc.' ... And this is
the conclusion of that which to yourself I say. Except that in the
cause of Christ's Evangel ye be found simple, sincere, fervent and
unfeigned, ye shall taste of the same cup which politic heads have
drunken before you."

This manner of approaching a powerful statesman whose good offices might
be of the uttermost consequence both to the writer and his party, is
highly characteristic. There is something almost comic, if we dared to
interpose such a view between two such personages, in the warning
against "carnal wisdom and worldly policy to the which both ye are
bruited too much inclined," addressed to the great Burleigh. It is
difficult to imagine the outburst of a laugh between such a pair, yet
grave Cecil surely must have smiled.

The man who wrote this epistle and many another, leagues of letters in
no one of which does he ever mince matters, or refrain to deliver his
conscience before conveying the message of State with which he is
charged--is often wordy, sometimes tedious, now and then narrow as a
village gossip, always supremely and absolutely dogmatic, seeing no way
but his own and acknowledging no possibility of error; and the extreme
and perpetual movement of his ever-active mind, hi