As when we cannot attain to look upon a cause, we commonly wonder at a new effect, so when we know the cause, we look down with a certain derision on those who remain in wonder. And I indeed wondered once how the Roman people had, without any resistance, been set over the world; and looking at it superficially, I thought that they had obtained this by no right, but by mere force of arms. But when I fixed deeply the eyes of my mind on it, and by most effectual signs knew that Divine Providence had wrought this, wonder departed, and a certain scornful contempt came in its stead, when I perceived the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the Roman people:--when I see the people imagining a vain thing, as I once used to do; when, moreover, I grieve over kings and princes agreeing in this only, to be against their Lord and his anointed Roman Emperor. Wherefore in derision, not without a certain grief, I can cry out, for that glorious people and for Cæsar, with him who cried in behalf of the Prince of Heaven, "Why did the nations rage, and the people imagine vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were joined in one against the Lord and his anointed." But (because natural love suffers not derision to be of long duration, but, like the summer sun, which, scattering the morning mists, irradiates the east with light, so prefers to pour forth the light of correction) therefore to break the bonds of the ignorance of such kings and rulers, to show that the human race is free from _their_ yoke, I will exhort myself, in company with the most holy Prophet, taking up his following words, "Let us break their bonds, and cast away from us their yoke."--_De Monarch._ lib. ii. p. 58.