But if they are such, as many of them evidently are, whose service has been not only fully but lavishly recompensed with honours and preferment, theirs is an ingratitude without parallel; they have destroyed their former merits, disowned the cause for which they fought, belied their youth, dishonoured their age; they have wrought themselves out of present enjoyments for imaginary hopes, and can never be trusted by their new friends, because they have betrayed their old. The greater and the stronger ties which some of them have had, are the deeper brands of their apostacy; for archangels were the first and most glorious of the whole creation; they were the morning work of God, and had the first impressions of his image, what creatures could be made; they were of kin to eternity itself, and wanting only that accession to be deities. Their fall was therefore more opprobrious than that of man, because they had no clay for their excuse; though I hope and wish the latter part of the allegory may not hold, and that repentance may be yet allowed them. But I delight not to dwell on so sad an object; let this part of the landscape be cast into shadows, that the heightenings of the other may appear more beautiful. For, as contraries, the nearer they are placed are brighter, and the Venus is illustrated by the neighbourhood of the lazar, so the unblemished loyalty of your Grace will shine more clearly, when set in competition with their stains. When the malady which had seized the nobler parts of Britain threw itself out into the limbs, and the first sores of it appeared in Scotland, yet no effects of it reached your province; Ireland stood untainted with that pest; the care of the physician prevented the disease, and preserved the country from infection. When that ulcer was rather stopped than cured, (for the causes of it still remained,) and that dangerous symptoms appeared in England; when the royal authority was here trodden under foot; when one plot was prosecuted openly, and another secretly fomented, yet even then was Ireland free from our contagion. And if some venomous creatures were produced in that nation, yet it appeared they could not live there; they shed their poison without effect; they despaired of being successfully wicked in their own country, and transported their evidence to another, where they knew it was vendible; where accusation was a trade, where forgeries were countenanced, where perjuries were rewarded, where swearing went for proof, and where the merchandize of death was gainful. That their testimony was at least discredited, proceeded not from its incoherence, for they were known by their own party when they first appeared; but their folly was then managed by the cunning of their tutors; they had still been believed had they still followed their instructors; but when their witness fell foul upon their friends, then they were proclaimed villains, discarded and disowned by