“While I find in myself what a felicity it is to salute you by this name, and in every face, anointed as it were with the oil of gladness, a full and sufficient testimony of the like sense, to go about to feast you with words, who are already filled with that food of the mind which, being of pleasing and wholesome digestion, takes in the definition of true joy, were a needless enterprise. I shall rather put you in mind of that thankfulness which is due, than puff you up with anything that might seem vain. Is it from the arms of flesh that we derive these blessings? Behold the Commonwealth of Rome falling upon her own victorious sword. Or is it from our own wisdom, whose counsels had brought it even to that pass, that we began to repent ourselves of victory? Far be it from us, my lords, to sacrifice to our own nets, which we ourselves have so narrowly escaped! Let us rather lay our mouths in the dust, and look up (as was taught the other day when we were better instructed in this lesson) to the hills with our gratitude. Nevertheless, seeing we read how God upon the neglect of his prophets has been provoked to wrath, it must needs follow that he expects honor should be given to them by whom he has chosen to work as his instruments. For which cause, nothing doubting of my warrant, I shall proceed to that which more particularly concerns the present occasion, the discovery of my Lord Archon’s virtues and merit, to be ever placed by this nation in their true meridian. “My lords, I am not upon a subject which persuades me to balk, but necessitates me to seek out the greatest examples. To begin with Alexander, erecting trophies common to his sword and the pestilence: to what good of mankind did he infect the air with his heap of carcasses? The sword of war, if it be any otherwise used than as the sword of magistracy, for the fear and punishment of those that do evil, is as guilty in the sight of God as the sword of a murderer; nay more, for if the blood of Abel, of one innocent man, cried in the ears of the Lord for vengeance, what shall the blood of an innocent nation? Of this kind of empire, the throne of ambition, and the quarry of a mighty hunter, it has been truly said that it is but a great robbery. But if Alexander had restored the liberty of Greece, and propagated it to mankind, he had done like my Lord Archon, and might have been truly called the Great. Alexander cared not to steal a victory that would be given; but my Lord Archon has torn away a victory which had been stolen, while we went tamely yielding up obedience to a nation reaping in our fields, whose fields he has subjected to our empire, and nailed them with his victorious sword to their native Caucasus.