Christian meditations upon eight Psalms of the prophet David. Made and newly set forthChristian meditations vpon eight Psalmes of the prophet Dauid. Made and newly set forth

¹²12 But what? yet am I not out of heart, O mighty and eternal God, when I consider that thou art for ever the same, and that it can not be otherwise, but the memory of thy renown must be ever durable. For, this presupposed, albeit thou art not underpropped but of thy self,¹³ and that nothing may be put too, or taken from thee: Yet, sith it hath liked thee to chose from out of the unworthiest creature, to wit, man, a certain number, which is thy Church, there to make thine infinite glory for ever to shine: I conclude with my self, that of necessity (howsoever it seems sometimes otherwise) as thou hast been cast down in thy Church, now ⟨image 48⟩lying on the ground, so wilt thou raise again thy self, in uprearing her, and all for thy great pity and compassion sake. In deed, Lord, thou hast so promised, and many a time effected it. For, into what straits was thy Church brought during that horrible slavery of Egypt, their pilgrimage in the wilderness, their calamities befalling them under the Judges, the captivity of thine Ark, the renting of Judah and Israel, the dreadful destruction by Babel, when there remained not one stone upon another: thine holy Temple was made an heap of dust, the sacred vessels were sacrilegiously ravined, carried away, and profanely abused: thy sacrificers murdered, the crown of David tumbled to the ground, all the land dyed with blood, ⟨image 49⟩without regard of age, sex, or degree: the small residue dragged into bondage among all the nations of the world, under so many calamities, among the Syrians and Egyptians: and above all, when thy temple being reedified, thou departedst out of it, and gavest room as it were to Idols in thine own palaces: and when thy law, I say, thy most sacred law was so villainously interdicted, torn, and burnt, and as it were, quite abrogated by consent of most part of thy people justly abandoned of thee? Now after this horrible and dreadful destruction of mine ancient children thus cut off, and when thou gavest me a new generation, alas, of what rages and cruelties had I experiment for the space of three hundreds of years one after another?

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