with us, for we were speaking of the affairs of Christendom at this day; wherein we would be glad also to have your opinion. POLLIO. My lords, I have journeyed this morning, and it is now the heat of the day; therefore your lordships discourses had need content my ears very well, to make them intreat mine eyes to keep open. But yet if you will give me leave to awake you, when I think your discourses do but sleep, I will keep watch the best I can. EUPOLIS. You cannot do us a greater favour. Only I fear you will think all our discourses to be but the better sort of dreams; for good wishes, without power to effect, are not much more. But, Sir, when you came in, Martius had both raised our attentions, and affected us with some speech he had begun; and it falleth out well, to shake off your drowsiness; for it seemed to be the trumpet of a war. And therefore, Martius, if it please you, to begin again; for the speech was such, as deserveth to be heard twice; and I assure you, your auditory is not a little amended by the presence of Pollio. MARTIUS. When you came in, Pollio, I was saying freely to these lords, that I had observed, how by the space now of half a century of years, there had been, if I may speak it, a kind of meanness in the designs and enterprises of Christendom. Wars with subjects, like an angry suit for a man's own, that might be better ended by accord. Some petty acquests of a town, or a spot of territory; like a farmer's purchase of a close or nook of ground, that lay fit for him. And although the wars had been

for a Naples, or a Milan, or a Portugal, or a Bohemia, yet these wars were but as the wars of heathens, of Athens, or Sparta, or Rome, for secular interest, or ambition, not worthy of the warfare of Christians. The Church, indeed, maketh her missions into the extreme parts of the nations and isles, and it is well but this is "Ecce unus gladius hic." The Christian princes and potentates are they that are wanting to the propagation of the faith by their arms. Yet our Lord, that said on earth, to the disciples, "Ite et prædicate," said from heaven to Constantine, "In hoc signo vince." What Christian soldier is there that will not be touched with a religious emulation to see an order of Jesus, or of St. Francis, or of St. Augustine, do such service, for enlarging the Christian borders; and an order of St. Jago, or St. Michael or St. George, only to robe, and feast, and perform rites and observances? Surely the merchants themselves shall rise in judgment against the princes and nobles of Europe; for they have made a great path in the seas, unto the ends of the world; and set forth ships, and forces, of Spanish, English, and Dutch, enough to make China tremble; and all this, for pearl, or stone, or spices but for the pearl of the kingdom of heaven, or the stones of the heavenly Jerusalem, or the spices of the spouse's garden, not a mast hath been set up: nay, they can make shift to shed Christian blood so far off amongst themselves, and not a drop for the cause of Christ. But let me recall myself; I must acknowledge, that within the space

of fifty years, whereof I spake, there have been three noble and memorable actions upon the infidels, wherein the Christian hath been the invader: for where it is upon the defensive, I reckon it a war of nature, and not of piety. The first was, that famous and fortunate war by sea, that ended in the victory of Lepanto; which hath put a hook into the nostrils of the Ottomans to this day; which was the work chiefly of that excellent pope Pius Quintus, whom I wonder his successors have not declared a saint. The second was, the noble, though unfortunate, expedition of Sebastian king of Portugal upon Africa, which was atchieved by him alone; so alone, as left somewhat for others to excuse. The last was, the the brave incursions of Sigismund the Transylvanian prince, the thread of whose prosperity was cut off by the Christians themselves, contrary to the worthy and paternal monitories of pope Clement the eighth. More than these, I do not remember. POLLIO. No! What say you to the extirpation of the Moors of Valentia? At which sudden question, Martius was a little at a stop; and Gamaliel prevented him, and said: GAMALIEL. I think Martius did well in omitting that action, for I, for my part, never approved it; and it seems, God was not well pleased with that deed; for you see the king, in whose time it passed, whom you catholics count a saint-like and immaculate prince, was taken away in the flower of his age and the author, and great counsellor of that rigour, whose fortunes seemed to be built upon the rock, is ruined: and it is thought by some, that

the reckonings of that business are not yet cleared with Spain; for that numbers of those supposed Moors, being tried now by their exile, continue constant in the faith, and true Christians in all points, save in the thirst of revenge. ZEBEDEUS. Make not hasty judgment, Gamaliel, of that great action,which was as Christ's fan in those countries, except you could shew some such covenant from the crown of Spain, as Joshua made with the Gibeonites; that that cursed seed should continue in the land. And you see it was done by edict, not tumultuously; the sword was not put into the people's hand. EUPOLIS. I think Martius did omit it, not as making any judgment of it either way, but because it sorted not aptly with action of war, being upon subjects, and without resistance. But let us, if you think good, give Martius leave to proceed in his discourse; for methought he spake like a divine in armour. MARTIUS. It is true, Eupolis, that the principal object which I have before mine eyes, in that whereof I speak, is piety and religion. But, nevertheless, if I should speak only as a natural man, I should persuade the same thing. For there is no such enterprise, at this day, for secular greatness, and terrene honour, as a war upon infidels. Neither do I in this propound a novelty, or imagination, but that which is proved by late examples of the same kind, though perhaps of less difficulty. The Castilians, the age before that wherein we live, opened the new world; and subdued and planted Mexico, Peru, Chili, and other parts of the West

Indies. We see what floods of treasure have flowed into Europe by that action; so that the cense or rates of Christendom are raised since ten times, yea twenty time told. Of this treasure, it is true, the gold was accumulate, and store treasure, for the most part but the silver is still growing. Besides, infinite is the access of territory and empire, by the same enterprise. For there was never an hand drawn, that did double the rest of the habitable world, before this; for so a man may truly term it, if he shall put to account, as well that that is, as that which may be hereafter, by the farther occupation and colonizing of those countries. And yet it cannot be affirmed, if one speak ingenuously, that it was the propagation of the Christian faith that was the adamant of that discovery, entry, and plantation; but gold and silver, and temporal profit and glory so that what was first in God's providence, was but second in man's appetite and intention. The like may be said of the famous navigations and conquests of Emanuel, king of Portugal, whose arms began to circle Afric and Asia; and to acquire, not only the trade of spices, and stones, and musk, and drugs, but footing, and places, in those extreme parts of the east. For neither in this was religion. the principal, but amplification and enlargement of riches and dominion. And the effect of these two enterprises is now such, that both the East and the West Indies being met in the crown of Spain, it is come to pass, that, as one saith in a brave kind of expression, the sun never sets in the Spanish domi