The devils banquet described in four sermons [brace], 1. The banquet propounded, begun, 2.…The deuills banket described in foure sermons [brace], 1. The banket propounded, begunne, 2.…

Shall all complain of lost labours, and we brook the greatest loss with silence? Merchants wail the shipwreck of their goods, and complain of Pirates. Shepherds of their devoured Flocks by savage ⟨p. 237⟩Wolves. Husbandmen of the tired earth, that quits their hope with weeds. And shall Ministers see and not sorrow the greatest ruin (the loss of the world were less) of mens souls. They that have written, to the life, the downfall of famous Cities, either vastate by the immediate hand of God, as Sodom; or mediately by man, as Jerusalem: as if they had written with tears in stead of Ink, have pathetically lamented the ruins. Aeneas Syluius reporting the fall of Constantinople, historifies at once her passion, his own compassion for it. The murdering of Children before the Parents faces, the slaughtering of Nobles like beasts, the Priests torn in pieces, the Religious flayed, the holy Virgins and sober Matrons first ravished and then massacred; and even the Relics of the Soldiers spoil, given to the merciless fire. Oh miseram urbis faciem! Oh wretched show of a miserable City! Consider Jerusalem, the City of God, the Queen of the Provinces, tell her Turrets, and mark well her Bulwarks, carry in your mind the Idea of her glories: and then, on a sudden, behold her Temple and houses burning, the smoke of the fire waving in the air, and hiding the light of the Sun, the flames springing up to Heaven, as if they would ascend as high as their sins had erst done; her Old, Young, Matrons, Virgins, Mothers, Infants, Princes, and Priests, Prophets and Nazarites, famished, fettered, scattered, consumed: if ever you read or hear it without commiseration, your hearts are harder then the Romans that destroyed it. The ruin of great things wring out our pity; and it is only a Nero, that can sit and sing whiles Rome burns. But what are a world of Cities, nay the whole world it self burning, as it must one day, to the loss of mens souls, the rarest pieces, of Gods fabric on earth? to see them manacled ⟨p. 238⟩with the chains of Iniquity, and led up and down by the Devil, as Baiazeth by that cruel Scythian, stabbed and massacred, lost and ruined by rebellious obstinacies and impenitencies; bleeding to death like Babel, and will not be cured, till past cure they weep like Rachel, and will not be comforted:

Shall all complaine of lost labours, and we brooke the greatest losse with silence? Merchants waile the shipwracke of their goods, and complaine of Pyrates. Shepheards of their deuoured Flockes by sauage