Ardeat, & mundi moles operosa laboret?
[♦] “operosa” replaced with “excelsaque” per Errata
What shall we do? Do now, that none of these things may come upon us unawares? We are wisely and diligently providing for our defence against one enemy: with such a watchful wisdom and active diligence, as is a comfort to every honest Englishman. But why should we not shew the same wisdom and diligence in providing against all our enemies? And if our own wisdom and strength be sufficient to defend us, let us not seek any further. Let us without delay recruit our forces and guard our coasts against the famine and murrain and pestilence; and still more carefully against immoderate rains and winds, and lightnings and earthquakes and comets: that we may no longer be under any painful apprehensions of any present or future danger, but may smile
“Secure amidst the jar of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds!”
But if our own wisdom and strength be not sufficient to defend us, let us not be ashamed to seek farther help. Let us even dare to own, we believe there is a God: nay, and not a lazy, indolent, epicurean deity, who sits at ease upon the circle of the heavens, and neither knows nor cares what is done below: but one who as he created heaven and earth, and all the armies of them, as he sustains them all by the word of his power, so cannot neglect the work of his own hands. With pleasure we own there is such a God, whose eye pervades the whole sphere of created beings, who knoweth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names: a God whose wisdom is as the great abyss, deep and wide as eternity:
“Who high in power, in the beginning said,
Let sea, and air, and earth, and heaven be made,
And it was so. And when he shall ordain
In other sort, hath but to speak again,