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On Saturday, March gth, X566, Riccio, Mary's Italian secretary, was murdered, almost before the Queen's eyes, in the Palace of Holyrood. In this brutal crime. Henry Stuart, Earl of Darnley, had borne a part, which might well have turned to hatred Mary's love for the handsome, but dissolute husband on whom she had conferred the title of king. Even the birth of their son, three months later, could scarcely restore an affection thus outraged, especially as Darnley ostentatiously absented himself from the child's baptism. Nor was his subsequent conduct, sullen and wayward as it was, likely to heal the breach. Yet, though the circumstances create suspicion, Mary's connivance at Darnley's assassination is not absolutely proved. His insolence and caprice had made
him many enemies among the haughty nobles who attended the Scottish Court.
In the winter of 1566-7, Darnley lay sick at Glasgow, from some mysterious and apparently infectious malady. When he was slowly recovering, Mary visited him, and husband and wife were outwardly reconciled. At the end of January, 1567, though still suffering from the disease, he was removed in a litter to Edinburgh, and lodged, not in the Palace of Holy- rood, but in a house which stood on a space of ground called Kirk-o'-Field.
The Kirk-o'-Field, situated where now stands the north- eastern corner of the old University buildings, lay close to the town-wall, which was built after the battle of Flodden to pro- tect the Cowgate. Through this wall, on the south side of the open space, led a postern gate. To the north ran a row of mean cottages, called Thief Row. On the east stood the ruined, roofless Church of Our Lady-in-the-Field, wrecked by the English invaders. On the west was a quadrangular building, also partially in ruins, which had belonged to the Dominican Friars. It was in the western wing of this con- vent that Darnley was lodged.
The rooms in this wing were not many; but they were occupied as a dwelling-house, and were detached from the rest of the building, having a separate staircase and door which gave access from without. The wing contained a hall, and a bedroom on the ground floor; above these were another bedroom, a wardrobe, a cabinet, and a corridor. There was also a cellar below the hall. These rooms had been prepared for Damley's reception, and furnished with a touch of regal splendour. The hall was hung with tapestry, and fitted with a chair of state, and a dais of black velvet fringed with silk. Darnley's bedchamber on the first floor was hung with tapestry, and carpeted with the rare and costly luxury of a little Turkey carpet. A chair of purple velvet, two or three cushions of red velvet, a small table covered with a green velvet cover, a bed, hung with brown velvet, "pasmented with cloth of silver and gold," and embroidered with cypress and flowers, formed the furniture. The bed had belonged to Mary's mother. The cabinet was of "yellow shot taffeta, fringed with red and yellow silk." The wardrobe was hung with tapestry, figuring, by a grim irony, a rabbit hunt. Never was wild animal more helplessly trapped and at the mercy of his pursuers, than was Darnley in the hands of his enemies. In the bedroom on the ground floor, immediately beneath Damley's chamber, was a bed of red and yellow damask, with a coverlet of marten's fur. Here the Queen slept on Wednesday, February 5th, and on Friday, February 7th. Here, also, she was to have slept the following Sunday.
About ten o'clock, on the night of Sunday, the Queen with her attendants was seen passing along the Blackfriars Wynd, lighted by torch-bearers, on her way from Holyrood to visit Darnley at Kirk-o'-Field. Arrived at the house, she went straight to her husband's room, without entering her own chamber. There she sat for two hours, talking with the sick man. At midnight she rose, placed a ring on Darnley's finger, kissed him, bade him good-night, and left him. That after- noon, Sebastian Paiges, one of the Court musicians, had been married to one of Mary's waiting-women, and in honour of the event, there was given at the Palace a masked ball, which Mary had promised to attend. At the door of the king's chamber, she turned, and said to Darnley, " It is eleven months to-day since Riccio was slain." So Mary departed, returning as she came, by the light of torches to Holyrood. On her way, she sent back her page to fetch the furred cover- let from her room.
Darnley, still a mere boy, only twenty years old, was left alone with his page, Taylor, who slept in his room, and two servants. Nelson and Symonds, who slept in a corridor outside his chamber. Two grooms also slept somewhere in the house. When Mary had gone, Darnley turned to Nelson, and said, " She was very kind; but why did she speak of Davie's slaughter ? " Her parting words sounded ominously in his ears. The place was a solitary one, among the ruins of churches, the graves of dead men, and the lurking comers of thieves. " It is very lonely," he said. Restless and wakeful, weak with his long illness, chilled by a sense of his loneliness and a vague foreboding of evil, he opened the Book of Psalms. Perhaps the wayward boy, who, in the days of his short-lived power, had made so many enemies by his imperious insolence, had learned to turn to them for comfort as he lay on his bed of sickness. He opened the pages at the 55th Psalm, which was one of the portions appropriated in the English Prayer- book for the day that was dawning. They were the last words that he read on earth. With what force must their words have struck into his heart, if he suspected his impend- ing doom, and his wife's complicity in the crime !-
" My heart is disquieted within me; and the fear of death is fallen upon me.
"Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me; and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me.
" And I said, 0 that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest.
" For it is not an open enemy that hath done me this dis- honour ; for then I could have borne it.
" But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend.
" The words of his mouth were softer than butter, having
war in his heart; his words were smoother than oil, and yet be they very swords."
An hour later he went to bed, with his page at his side. All that follows is shrouded in mystery. At two o'clock on Monday morning, a terrific explosion startled the sleeping citizens from their beds. Nelson, alone of those who slept in the house, escaped alive. The bodies of Damley and his page were found, side by side, many yards away, with no sign of fire upon them. Near the king, who was in his nightgown, lay his fur pelisse and slippers. The probability is that he and his page, aroused by the noise which the murderers made in arranging the powder, escaped from the house into the garden, and were there seized and strangled. So sudden and wide-spread was the alarm created by the explosion, that the murderers had no time to place the bodies near the ruins, but fled for their lives.
Twenty years later, Mary, Queen of Scots, was herself executed at Fotheringay. Even her bitterest enemies could not deny that she met her fate with dignity. At daybreak, on the morning of February 8th, 1587, she desired Jane Kennedy to read aloud to her from her favourite book, The Lives of the Saints. After dressing with unusual care, she retired to her oratory. There she remained till the appointed hour, when, with tranquil composure, she took her seat upon the scaffold. The commission for her execution was read by the Clerk to the Council, to which she briefly replied, declaring her innocence. Throughout the long harangue of Dr. Fletcher, the Protestant Dean of Peterborough, who exhorted her to abandon her religion, she remained silent, absorbed in her own thoughts or devotions. It was only by the intervention of the Earl of Shrewsbury, that she was relieved from the divine's ill-timed pertinacity, and allowed to pray according to the forms of her own faith.
Her prayers ended, she put off her black satin robe and long white veil of lawn, and appeared in a bodice and petticoat of crimson velvet. The executioner, on his knees, begged her forgiveness. " I forgive all," she replied. Then, with a hand- kerchief tied over her eyes, she " kneeled downe upon the cushion resolutely, and, without any token of feare of deathe, sayde allowde in Lattin the Psaime, In te Domine, confido (Ps. xi.). Then groaping for the block, shee layde downe hir heade." Another authority states that she said aloud several times, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit." The Latin lines, which she is supposed to have written before her execu- tion, seem to be based on the Psalms, and especially on Psalm Ixxi.:
" 0 Domine Deus, speravi in te:
0 care mi Jesu, nunc libera me:
In dura catena, in misera poena Desidero te!
Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo. Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me ! "
Meanwhile Spain was preparing the expedition which was designed to crush Protestant England. The invincible Armada lay off Lisbon ready to sail. One hundred and thirty galleons, carrying 30,000 men, covered the broad waters of the Tagus. No crusade against the Saracens had ever created greater enthusiasm than did this Holy War against the heretic, this final effort of authority against freedom. Treasure had been lavished like water ; high and low had given their money, according to their means. For three years prayers had been said daily for success. Each noble family in Spain sent a son to fight for Christ and Our Lady. The ships were named after apostles and saints ; the crews were to abstain from vice and evil-speaking ; at sunrise the Buenos Dias, at sunset the Ave Maria were to be sung on board. The standard, which flew from the flag-ship, as the San Martin led the way to sea in May, 1588, unrolled the motto, " Exsurge, Deus, et vindica causam tuam"-"Awake, and stand up to judge my quarrel: avenge Thou my cause, my God, and my Lord' (Ps. xxxv., verse 23).
In the space of a few weeks, the great fleet was scattered and destroyed. Victor Hugo, in his Legends des Siecles, imagines the little Infanta of Spain standing by a fountain in the gardens of the Escurial. In her tiny hand the child holds a rose in which her laughing face is buried, till the damask of cheek and flower can scarcely be distinguished. Suddenly an evening breeze sweeps the petals into the basin of the fountain, and dashes the Smooth waters into miniature waves, on which the scattered leaves toss like disabled hulks. "What does it mean?" asks the wondering, half-frightened child, in whose hand only the bare stalk is left. "Madame," replies the Duenna, " to princes belong all that is on earth, save only the wind."
It was in a psalm (Psalm iii., " Lord, how are they increased that trouble me") that the English nation expressed their fears of impending invasion, as, five centuries before, they had, with the same words, invoked divine aid against the Norse- men. In a psalm (Ps. Ixxvi., " In Jewry is God known "), they gave voice to their gratitude; with the same words the citizens, led by the great preacher, Robert Bruce, celebrated the triumph at the Market Cross of Edinburgh; and from a third Psalm (Ps. cxlvii., verse 18), is taken the motto which was engraved upon the coins struck to commemorate the victory: Afflavit Deus.
The defeat of the Invincible Armada saved England from
the horrors of invasion; but it did not end the war. The victory was only an episode in that religious struggle which gave to Great Britain the sceptre of the sea, and laid the foundations of her colonial empire. In those " spacious times," when men were endowed with a variety of gifts and qualities, any one of which, in later days, would distinguish its possessor, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney were conspicuous figures as gallant knights, courtiers, and scholars. On Raleigh, in the midst of his adventurous career by sea and land, the Psalms had laid their spell. From Jerome's cave at Bethlehem to Raleigh's dungeon in the Tower their influence passes with- out breach of continuity, although, in the lapse of twelve centuries, scarcely any aspect of human life remained un- changed-except that human nature to which they remain eternally true. In his History of the World, the bold explorer and learned student writes:
" For his internal gifts and graces, David so far exceded all other men, and, putting his human frailty apart, he was said by God Himself to be a man according to His own heart. The Psalms which he wrote instance his piety and excellent learn- ing, of whom Jerome to Paulina: ' David,' saith he, ' our Simonides, Pindarus, and Alcseus, Horatius, Catullus, and Serenus, playeth Christ on his harp, and on a ten-stringed lute raiseth Him up rising from the dead. And being both king and prophet, he foretelleth Christ more lightsomely and lively than all the rest."
Spenser's version of the Penitential Psalms has perished. But the metrical translation of the "Psalmes of David," "begun by that noble and learned gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney, Knight, and finished by The Right Honourable the Countess of Pembroke," has been preserved. It was printed in 1823, and a portion was edited by Ruskin in his Bibliotheca Pastorum (1877). The fact that Sidney should have set himself the task, is itself significant; but his version is specially noteworthy in its mingled familiarity and dignity. It has the energy of the times, the fixed effort to reach the heart of the meaning and make it unmistakably clear. As Ruskin says, " Sir Philip Sidney will use any cowboy's or tinker's words, if only they help him to say precisely in English what David said in Hebrew; impressed the while himself so vividly by the majesty of the thought itself, that no tinker's language can lower it or vulgarise it in his mind."
Nor was it only to courtiers and learned scholars that the Psalms appealed. To them also, even simple mariners turned for strength in peril from enemies or shipwreck.
In 1586, five Turkey merchantmen, equipped for trade and not for war, encountered on the high seas eleven Spanish galleys and two frigates. The English ships were summoned by the Spaniards to surrender. On their refusal, a fight
began, which is thus described by Philip Jones. <( Although," he says, "our men performed their parts with singular valure according to their strength, insomuch that the enemie as amased therewith would oftentimes pause and stay, and consult what was best to be done, yet they ceased not in the midst of their businesse to make prayer to Almighty God, the revenger of al evils, and the giver of victories, that it would please him to assist in that good quarell of theirs, in defending themselves against so proud a tyrant, to teache their hands to warre and their fingers to fight (Ps. cxliv., verse i), that the glory of the victory might redound to his Name, and to the honor of true Religion, which the insolent enemie sought so much to overthrowe." At the end of four hours, the Spaniards drew off, and the English merchantmen pursued their voyage unmolested.
On the i6th day of August 1593, " the Tobie of London, a ship of 250 tunnes, manned with fiftie men, set sayle from Black- wall." She was cast ashore on the Barbary coast, and broke up so fast that there was no time to make a raft. Climbing up into the shrouds, the crew hung there for a time. "But seeing nothing but present death approch, we committed our selves unto the Lord, and beganne with doleful tune and heavy hearts to sing the 12 Psaime: 'Heipe, Lord, for good and godly men,' &c. Howbeit, before we had finished foure verses, the waves of the sea had stopped the breathes of most of our men .. . and only twelve, by God's providence, partly by swim- ming and other meanes of chests, gote on shoare, which was about a quarter of a mile from the wracke of the ship."
Yet another incident connects the Psalms with the progress of the same war. In 1598 the question of peace with Spain was hotly debated in Elizabeth's Council. The Earl of Essex, supported by the envoys from the States-General of Holland, warmly urged the continuance of the war. Burghley as strongly pleaded for peace. In the midst of the debate, he drew from his pocket a Prayer-book, and read to Essex the verse, " The bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days " (Ps. lv., verse 25). Three years later, on Wednesday, February 25th, 1601, Essex was led to the high court above Caesar's Tower, in the precincts of the Tower of London, and there beheaded.
Like the queen herself, and like her first archbishop, her greatest statesman
was a lover of the Psalter. All his life Burghley had been a diligent student of
the Psalms. In his declining days, as a friend and contemporary writes of the
great minister, " there was no earthly thing wherein he took comfort but in ...
reading, or hearing the Scriptures, Psalmes, and Praieres." His will, dated
October 2oth, 1579, disposes of his lands and goods in a manner that he hopes
"shall not offend God, the giver of them all to me; considering,
as
it is in the Psalm, (Ccelum coeli Domino, terram dedit filiis hominum'" (Ps. cxv., verse 16, " All the whole heavens are the Lord's; the earth hath he given to the children of men ").
The genius of Bacon is one of the glories of the Elizabethan age. He also studied and quoted the Psalms. In his essay " On Atheism," he comments on the ist verse of Ps. xiv., that the fool who said in his heart, "there is no God," "saith it rather by rote to himself, as that he would have then that he can throughly believe it or be persuaded of it." Another verse quoted in Bacon's Essays (" Nature in Men ") is Ps. cxx., verse 5, "My soul hath long dwelt among them that are enemies unto peace." Like Sir Thomas Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Queen Elizabeth, James L, and Phinehas Fletcher, Bacon was himself a versifier of the Psalms. His Certaine Psalmes written in sickness, published in 1624, and dedicated to George Herbert, are so unmelodious, that it is difficult to imagine that he could ever have been a poet. It was on a psalm (Ps. ci.), known as the " Mirror for Magistrates," that he founded his advice to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. He bade him take that psalm for his guide in promoting courtiers. " In these the choice had need be of honest faithful servants, as well as of comely outsides who can bow the knee and kiss the hand. . . . King David (Ps. ci., verses 6, 7) propounded a rule to himself for the choice of his courtiers. He was a wise and good king, and a wise and good king shall do well to follow such a good example; and if he find any to be faulty, which perhaps cannot suddenly be discovered, let him take on him this resolution as King David did, ' There shall no deceitful person dwell in my house' " (Ps. ci., verse 10).
In stormy scenes of violence or peril, in dramatic incidents on which great events have turned, in episodes in the lives of rulers of the earth, the power of the Psalms has been noted by historians. On masterpieces of Elizabethan literature the same power may be traced. Whether Shakespeare, for example, was indeed "untutored in the lore of Greece and Rome," may be open to dispute; but none can doubt his familiarity with the Psalms. " Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all: all shall die." So says Justice Shallow to Silence, alluding to Psalm Ixxxix. 47, " What man is he that liveth and shall not see death?" When Queen Margaret asks, in the Second Part of " Henry the Sixth,"
" What! Art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf? Be poisonous too, and kill their forlorn Queen ";
or when Hector tells Paris, in "Troilus and Cressida,"
" Pleasure and revenge Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice Of any true decision,"
the allusion is to Psalm Iviii. 4.
Buckingham's words in " King Henry the Eighth " refer to Psalm cxli. a, " Let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice ":
" And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me, Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, And lift my soul to Heaven."
Antony's prayer in " Antony and Cleopatra "-
" Oh, that I were Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar The horned herd! for I have savage cause "-
plainly refers to the Psalmist's " hill of Basan " (Psalm Ixviii., 15) and the "fat bulls of Basan" (Psalm xxiL, 12). The prayer of Adam in � As You Like it"-
" He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, Be comfort to my age! "-
is partly founded on Psalm cxlvii. 9, " He feedeth the young ravens that call upon Him." In "King Henry the Fifth," where the king sings his " Non nobis, Domine!" in thanks- giving for his victory at Agincourt,-
" 0 God, Thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to Thy arm alone Ascribe we all,"-
he only paraphrases the " Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name, give the praise," of Psalm cxv. i. So the description of God, in "Richard II.,' as the "widow's champion and defence" is taken from the Psalmist's " Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the cause of the widow" (Psalm Ixviii., 5). When the king in " Hamlet" asks,
" What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow ? '
he refers to Psalm li. 7, " Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." The description of the approach of Alcibiades in " Timon of Athens "-
** Who, like a boar too savage, doth root up His country's peace "-
suggests Psalm Ixxx. 13, " The wild boar out of the wood doth root it up." The address of Romeo to Juliet, where he compares her to " a winged messenger of Heaven,"-
<( When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air,"-
recalls such sentences in the Psalms as " Magnify Him that rideth upon the Heavens, as it were upon an horse" (Ps. Ixviii. 4), or, "Who maketh the clouds His chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind " (Ps. civ. 3), or, "He came flying upon the wings of the wind " (Ps. xviii. 10).
u See how the morning opes her golden gates, And takes her farewell of the glorious sun! How well resembles it the pride of youth, Trimmed like a younker, prancing to his love,"
is a reminiscence of Psalm xix., verse 5, where the sun rejoices "as a giant to run his course." Finally, in the speech from the Second Part of "King Henry the Sixth," addressed by the king to Humphrey, Duke of Gloster,-
" Stay, Humphrey, Duke of Gloster; ere thou go Give up thy staff; Henry will to himself Protector be: and God shall be my hope My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet;
And go in peace, Humphrey,"-
Shakespeare makes use of such passages as, " truly my hope is even in Thee" (Ps. xxxix. 8); " but the Lord was my stay " (Ps. xviii. 18); " our guide unto death " (Ps. xlviii. 13); and, " a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my paths" (Ps. cxix. 105).
On the quieter influence of the Psalms over daily conduct, or by peaceful deathbeds, history is comparatively silent. Yet three instances may be quoted to illustrate this aspect of the subject. In his dying moments, the thoughts of Richard Hooker, the pride of English theologians, dwelt on Psalm cxxx., the De Profundis, on which Luther has founded one of his best known hymns, and Phinehas Fletcher has meditated in the lines:
" As a watchman waits for day,
And looks for light and looks again, When the night grows old and gray,
To be relieved he calls amain;
So look, so wait, so long my eyes
To see my Lord, my Sun arise."
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity by its massive dignity still retains its place in theological literature. But Bishop Jewel's Apology for the Church of England (1562), as a vindication of the doctrine and discipline of the Reformed Church, was in its day equally famous, and circulated throughout Europe when the Council of Trent was still sitting. Jewel himself died a peaceful death, at Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire, on September 23rd, 1571. On his deathbed, he desired that the
7ist Psalm might be sung. At the words, " Thou, 0 Lord, art my hope and my trust, from my youth up," he cried out:
" Thou, 0 Lord, hast been my only hope." When they reached the passage, "Cast me not off in time of age," etc., he exclaimed: " Every one who is dying is, in truth, old and grey-headed, and failing in strength." The Psalm ended, he broke forth into frequent ejaculations: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace"-'(Lord, suffer Thy servant to come to Thee"-"Lord, receive my spirit"-and so died.
Great though Hooker and Jewel were as theologians and apologists, George Herbert (1593-1632) was, in temperament and character, more typical of the Elizabethan age in which he was bom. A man of saintly piety, at once an ascetic and a mystic, he had also the courtly grace and refined instincts of the high-bred gentleman. Men of his type, who both venerated the Church of the Fathers and inherited the culture of the Renaissance, were unintelligible to the Puritans.
Retiring from Court, and taking holy orders, Herbert spent his closing years as a parish priest among the green meadows of Bemerton, in view of the tapering spire of Salisbury Cathedral. It was in something of the Psalmist's spirit that he poured out his soul in verse, adorning his poetry with the quaint conceits and fancies of the Elizabethan age. To him, as has been already mentioned. Bacon dedicated his Certaine Psalms. His hymn, " The God of Love my Shepherd is," is one of the most popular versions of Psalm xxiii. The motto of his Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, published at Cambridge in 1633, is, " In his temple doth every man speak of his honour" (Ps. xxix., verse 8), and the same verse suggested for his book the title of The Temple. " Thou shalt answer for me, 0 Lord my God " (Ps. xxy-viii., verse 15), is the burden of his admirable poem, "The Quip." The poet, flouted by all that this world holds dear-Beauty, Money, brave Glory, quick Wit and Conversation-takes refuge in the comfort ministered by the words of the Psalm:
(< Yet when the houre of Thy design
To answer these fine things shall come, Speak not at large; say, I am Thine,
And then they have their answer home."
In 1632, he died at Bemerton, dwelling, like Jewel, with his latest breath, on the text, " Forsake me not when my strength faileth " (Ps. Ixxi., verse 8), and committing his soul to God in the familiar words, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi., verse 6).
Instances of the influence of the Psalter on uneventful lives, or on everyday actions, are, perhaps, uninteresting to note. But the point needs no labouring. The power of the Psalms
has been instinctively felt in the conduct of countless men and women whose careers were obscure, unpicturesque, unknown. It is here, though unrecorded, that their teaching, their encouragement, their warning, their consolation have been most widely felt. Here their sway has been so general as to be almost universal; here, also, it has been so enduring as to be practically everlasting. From age to age, from hand to hand, across the centuries, has passed their torch of truth, the flame burning bright and steady, ever pointing the way through the darkness, ever exploring the mysteries of the Divine dealings with mankind, always lighting up the recesses of the human heart. It was the sense of this continuous influence of the Psalms that roused Richard Hooker from his absorbing studies to a noble outburst of feeling. Yet, here again, not only by his eloquence but by its source, the universality of the Psalms, and their superiority to religious differences, are strikingly illustrated. Hooker's words are little more than a paraphrase from the exposition of Torque- mada, the Dominican Inquisitor. The passage is familiar enough : " What is there necessary for man to know, which the Psalms are not able to teach? They are to beginners an easy and familiar introduction: a mighty augmentation of all virtue and knowledge in such as are entered before, a strong confirmation to the most perfect amongst others. Heroical magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact wisdom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience, the mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the terrors of wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of Providence over this world, and the promised joys of that world which is to come, all good necessarily to be either known or done or had, this one celestial fountain yieldeth. Let there be any grief or disease incident into the soul of man, any wound or sickness named, for which there is not in this treasure-house a present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be found. Hereof it is that we covet to make the Psalms especially familiar unto us all. This is the very cause why we iterate the Psalms oftener than any other part of Scripture besides; the cause wherefore we inure the people together with their minister, and not the minister alone, to read them as other parts of Scripture he doth."