ROYAL PSALMS, OR, SOLILOQUIES OF D. ANTHONY, KING OF PORTUGAL. Wherein the Sinner confesseth his Sins, and imploreth the Grace of GOD.  
Translated into French By P. DURIER.  
Into English by Baldwin St George, Gent.  
LONDON, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop at the Prince's Arms in S. Paul's Churchyard. 1659.   

A Tres-Haute et Tres Illustre PRINCESSE Francois de Lorraine, Duchesse DE VENDOSME.  
MADAM,  
IL me semble que ces Pseames, qui sont sortis d'une main Royale, ne pouvient r'entrer en de plus illustres mains que les vostres, Ils ont esté Composez par un Roy, & Je les presente à une Princesse, dont la vertue n'est pas moins estimable que les sceptres & les Courronnes. Je scaybien que n'ayant pas cet'esprit de pieté qui est si necessaire pour faire valoir les ouvrages de cette nature, Je n'ay pû aussy leur donner cette ardeur salutaire qui touche les pecheurs, & que leur premier autheur leur a si utilement donnee, mais c'est Assez que l'on scache que vostre Grandeur ne les a pas ded'aigne pour croire qu'ils seront profitables. Ainsi, Madame, je les ay seulement comencez, en leur donnant des paroles pour les faire entendre en nostre Langue & j'espere que vous les acheverez par vostre approbation, Je ne chercheray point icy d'artifice pour obliger vostre Grandeur de les recevoir favorablement, Je suis assuré, Madame, que vous n'y verrez rien qui ne vous plaise, puis que vous n'y verrez rien qui ne réjouisse les Anges Mesmes. C'est un pecheur qui se repent de ses fautes qui implore la miserecorde de son dieu, & qui fait de sa conversion, la plus grande felicité qu'il puisse trouver sur la terre. Il ne parle pas de langage de la cour, parce qu'il scait bien que ce n'est pas le langage de dieu. Il aime mieux concevoir de bons desirs, que de prononcer de belles paroles; & pour-veu qu'il puisse dire qu'a pecche, ill croit estre assez eloquent, Je m'imagine done,  
Madame, que vouz aimerez le pecheur en ce glorieux estat & que vous vous divertirez quelquesfois à luy voir répandre des larmes, dont le repentir est la source. C'est un divertisement, qui n'est jamais desagreable aux ames vertueuses & sainctes, & y est en cette occasion qu'on peut legitiment souhaiter de voir souspirer son pro chain. Jesuis  
Madame, De vostre Grandeur le tres-humble, tres-obeissant, & tres-fidelle Serviteur, DURYER.   

To the truly HONOURABLE, Noble, and most virtuous Lady, The Lady ANNE INGOLDSBY.  
MADAM,  
MY apprehensive quill drew-in its bashful Ink, at the presumption to frontispiece so mean a present, as a Translation, with an Inscription to a Person of so much Honour, so much worth, so thronged an Inventory, and so complete a Synopsis, of all Perfections. But emboldened, first, by the Precedent of the French Translator; secondly, encouraged by the Piety of the Subject; moved thirdly, by the Nobleness of the Author: It hath distilled some obliged drops towards this Dedication to your Ladyship of a French treatise, done into the English dialect, to an unparallelled Mistress in both, of a Pious subject to a pious Patroness, of a Noble Author to a Noble Lady. Madam, you shall here behold a Royal Convert: The Angels rejoice at the Conversion of a sinner; and, as your virtues entitle you to their Fellowship, and something above mortal in your beauty to their resemblance, you must necessarily partake of their Joy, and fill up the choir of that Celestial Hierarchy with your Allelujahs. And seeing nothing but a little Clay (which although in reference to your Ladyship's amiable Symmetry, is stamped with a preparative Angelical Impress) detaineth you from the present enjoyment of their blessed Society; you cannot nevertheless but be alike moved with them, and will (I hope) afford the Gracious Influence of your Protecting beams to the unworthy Interpreter of these welcome Tidings, and crown him (which is the highest aim his ambition levels at) with a Crown, studded and enammelled with your smiles. As this Consideration seemed to extenuate my boldness; So, the Universal engaging sweetness of your disposition, the obliging Prodigality of your favours to me in particular, and the deep sense of gratitude to your noble family and relations, Warranted the Inscription, and Commands the Subscription of  
Madam, Your ladyship's most humble and vowed Servant. B. St. George.   

ROYAL PSALMS: OR, SOLILOQUIES OF D. ANTHONY, KING OF PORTUGAL.  

Wherein the Sinner confesseth his Sins, and imploreth the Grace of GOD.  
WHence shall I exhale tears enough to pay a deluge for the strayings and disorders of my soul? When I throw my Considerations on the pasttrod paths of my life, and cast a speculative optic on the passages of my youth, horror and sadness arrests my survey. This reflection on myself reverberates to my soul nothing but trembling, nothing but condemnation, nothing but despair, nothing but confusion. I know what I have been, I have known what I ought to have been, I know not now what I am. I apprehend what I shall be: And the less my sorrow is for offending God, the more the apprehensions of it, is enlarged.  
Why cannot I repent more, that I may fear less? Alas! I have been long under thy scourge (O Lord) and the heaviness of thy hand makes me feel the weight of my transgressions; yet cannot I fix a repentant kiss to that Rod. Long hast thou lured me, yet I remain still unreclaimed; long hast thou raised and played thy Batteries to force a passage to my heart; yet I, so much my own enemy, deny an amicable Interveiw to one who brings and offers life. A thousand evils cast up their trenches round about me, death threateneth me in the van, flank, and rear; and although I am stormed with all sorts of calamities and afflictions, yet my soul hath not one hostage-teare to ransom my salvation. These ills have not only ataqued mine age; my life and sufferings comenced together, from my youth I am a man of sorrow: In fine, I may on the counters of my dysasters, cast up the single moments of my life; and now I suffer, because suffering taught me not repentance for my faults. O the admirable prudence of the heavenly and great Physician! O the immense goodness of the King of kings the Sovereign of heaven and earth! O the bountiful openness of that hand that stroweth about its favours! O my God, thou underbladdersed me with griefs, that I may not sink in pleasures, that I may learn to rejoice, without making my Joys criminal, thou delegates sorrows finite, to atone for sorrows Infinite; thou dismantles my body of comforts, to clothe my soul with salvation. The wounds that thou inflicts, are but to open an easier expedient to my cure; and thou endangerest not my present life, but as a preservative to a life more happy, more glorious, more triumphant. But alas! what is necessary for me, falls so little under my cognizance, that I check at the physic of thy merciful prescripts, I dread those afflictions, whose rigorous violence ought to instruct, and aught to be received as effects rather of mercy then of choler: so that I fail in distinguishing the counter-poisons thou tenderest: and how shall I distinguish them, being not to be cured but by affliction? yet I desire to be freed from an affliction so wholesome. To conclude, can there bud any hopes of a cure but from griefs? Seeing sickness and disseases are the fruits of pleasure, let me suffer them, (O Lord my God) but to the end that my sorrows may be converted into joys, and I rejoice with thee; teach me how my sufferings may meet with thy divine pleasure and my own salvation.   

PSALM II.  
TIme with a swift current tides away years and days, yet my unhappiness still fixeth my condition; I am still a sinner, still call down the vial of my God's Indignation. Having been constantly wracked on the wheel of so many afflictions, so many miseries; they have not forced from me so much as one good thought, one sensible detestation of my sins, the sole Axletree whereon my misfortunes turn. I regard not how I lend an advantageous foot to each days sinful trips, but have not regard to recover my foils; I still patch up my old iniquities with new offences, and step from petty trespasses to capital; how shall I entertain the stroke of my last hour? how shall I fly? where shall I conceal my guilty head, when Judgement summons to an appearance, and I am cited to bring in my audit for my manifold receipts? at what a blush will my inexcusable sloth & negligence, tonguetied stand, when I shall behold the awe of thy enthroned Majesty, and must pass a strict scrutiny for the least peccadilloes in my behaviour and concernments? I will reply then, my God, I am overcharged, O let thy mercy be an advocate in my cause: who am I and where shall I find eloquence to make my tongue fertile with a rejoinder to thy Justice? but what shall I do if thou urge a plea? I must with a trembling bashfulness wrap my face in confusion and acknowledge I have not improved the stock wherewith I was entrusted, I must confess I have misdisbursed it in vanities, and that it hath served as an exchequer to maintain my lusts, and that I have lavished it in living sinfully. Alas? did I say [in living]? it is not an expression fit to  that condition; I should rather say in dying. I imagined I lived in the days of my voluptuousness, but now a thorough-conviction lies upon my soul I was dead, because I lived without Thee, the only true life. How should I live when my memory affords not one instance that I have lived with thee: In fine, (O my God) since the life of a sinner is death; I may truly conclude, my death anticipated my life; as yet I am not acquainted with life, but still remain in an empty channel cut off from my God the head and fountain of life. My corrupt inclinations still. impregnated my tender age with occasions of offending thee, I was scarce enfranchised from the womb, when I sell into the bondage of sin: At my nativity, my cheeks were bedewed with tears for sins I was conceived in and knew not. And I had scarce dried up the tears for the sins of another, but I began to commit sins myself which I did know, yet have not lent them one tear. I have delighted myself in the sins of my infancy, and with my impurities profaned the innocency of that age which nature intended the Sanctuary and sacred treasury of all the purity of this life. I have breathed nothing but concupiscence, I have been the shameful triumph of my base and sinful affections, and a web so thick hath spread itself over the eye of my understanding, that I could not discern between light and darkness, between the smooth calmness of the mind, and the tempestuous Billows of sensuality. In an age so ignorant and so little studious of good, I have given a quicker care to the world then to heaven, I have been driven down the swift torrent of a deceitful voluptuous stream; and, as if I had been carried away more with the love of torments than rewards, I have acted here on Earth whatsoever might further my inevitable precipice into hell. From a corrupted infancy I have proceeded to a debauched puberty; my sins have shooted up with my years and have grown whilst I grew. My vain and vicious loves, put on me the shape of a madman or barbarian; and at the same time I was philtred and enchanted, by their luscious witchcrafts. I became mine own enemy, and willingly ran into the fatal embraces of my own ruin. The days of my puberty were graduates in the schools of sin. Through the course of sinning I passed to the degree of my Youth, which has left behind it no other tracts but the soils and sullying of vice; every moment that adds to my age adds to my sins. I have been young, I have attained the viril consistency of a man, and disseising vice hath always held the signiory of my Soul which owed allegiance unto virtue. Age hath swan-plumed my elder head, yet it so little maturates my judgement, that I tread not in the paths of thy heavenly directions; and as if I were a child, at a double Jubilee of years, old and crazy as I am, yet do I the actions of a Child. What time hath been so unprivy to my faults that it may encourage the least plea of Innocency? Alas! my God if thou shouldst gratify me, to expect until I picked out one moment of Innocency in my whole life, to move in arrest of Judgement; what advantage could I take of that favour, since my life affords not one minute but loaden with a sin? Thou art Just (my God,) thy Judgements are Justice itself; thy decisions match the merits of the cause. When I seek for appeasing inducements, I find in me nothing but provoking motives. All my accounts carry the justice of a merited fear, And I cannot reckon them without summing up my transgressions. I have been always active in iniquity, I have constantly footed the dances of the wicked, their instructions have been always my charming music. I have wallowed in vices like a swine in the mire, whose repast is ordure and filth; nor have I fancied myself, in other than in things vain, detractious, and blasphemous; whatsoever was wholesome became nauseous; and that only had the gust to tickle my wanton palate which was mortiferous, my Bosome-councell were the wicked. I had no enjoyment but in the society of the reprobate; my ambition was to aim at the wretched grandeur of an eminent sinner. I was dextrous in excusing, slow in accusing myself. To steel; and harden my heart, was the butt of my bended endeavours; and the not-acknowledging myself a sinner, the more aggravation it heaped on my sins, the less minorations is left my excuses, I was negligent in procuring Balsam for my wounded soul, slighted all recipes, and grew enraged against those beyond the limits of all reason and respect who forced a seasonable Chirurgy. I have knit my fists at the instructor, and opened my arms to the flatterer; my ears have not admitted-in thy peace-propounding-trumpets, but given audience to those that came without thy orders. In fine, (my God,) the vanity of the world hath been the whole course of my studies. All my discourses were lies, in the addresses of all my affairs, I have courted darkness before light. See here the landscape of my actions, see the card of my whole life! Where is there any thing to be found but provocatives of thy just indignation? So that I will answer thy interrogatories with nothing but humble confessions; and since thou hast taught me, selfe-accusation proves the most acceptable excuse, I will sue out my Justification with the bare acknowledgement of my crimes; race out from thy memory the disorders of my youth, and indite me not at the Bar of thy Justice. It is impossible for man to be justified before thee: but, if I must pass through thy judgements, turn me over (O God) to the Bench of thy Mercy, and remember I am the workmanship of thy own hands, although a sinner. If my sins provoke, let thy mercy appease; let its intercession merit the repentance of him that adores thee; let it bound thy justly-incensed wrath; In fine, let it snatch me out of the fiery embraces of hell, to the end my soul may echo forth thy praises, and trump, throughout all the corners of the earth, the effects of thy clemency.   

PSALM III.  
WHat an aggravated unhappiness is it, to have incensed the author of happiness, to have offended the purchaser of Salvation, and to have despised so superciliously his precepts? I have willingly quitted the paths of felicity, and like a stray sheep wandered and straggled within the shot and command of all occasions, that might gape after and design my destruction; I have roved every where, and every where been assailed by troops of sorrows, griefs, and misfortunes. I have been wildred in the Meanders of perdition and iniquity. I have left no place unbeaten, that I might spring to myself repose and consolation; but I retrieved them not, because I minded not Thee, my God. Without enquiring after the territories of peace, I have traveled through a Barren land, the demeansns of death and sin, where horror and pain encamp, and where the Soul lies sentenced to the marshalsea of everlasting torments. Whilst I glittered in pomp and dignity, I was dazzled with their coruscancy; and as if I had been Nabucadonosered into a beast, Woods and Caves were my shelters. Whilst I was mired in pleasures, I was plunged in troubles, my couch was prepared on a precipice; at the same instant both sleep and ruin crept upon me; such a mist interposed the beams of my reason, that I expected anchorage in the midst of so many storms, and so many perils. What course shall I steer, in what creek shall I secure myself, being beaten on a lee-shore, amidst the shelves and shoals of encompassing dangers? The hopes that convoyed my youth are dispersed and vanished, and I am become like to one shipwracked, who having lost his vessel sends a watery eye after his floating treasures: scourged hither and thither by the tyrannous winds and no less imperious waves, I am fare from harbours, can ken no land that gives hopes of escape, I let myself be driven on the rocks where I must most miserably perish. The Enemy hath planted his Ambuscadoes and I never mistrusted, I have walked without fear or suspicion over the pitfalls he hath covered for me; and, as if I were accessary to my own perdition, I have clapped an extinguisher on the light that should guide to their discovery. I have soothed myself in my sins, nor could I fasten in my Imagination the least opinion of homage due from my youth to the Signiory of death. Thus my Soul being overreached by the vanity of that false position, gave entertainment to all extravagant appetites. I held forth a willing arm to ushering sensuality, and was carried wheresoever her policy and tyranny led me. Why, said I, (disputing with myself) should I dream of death? why should I fix my thoughts on the end before the middle hath taken up my considerations; life enough is left unspunne to meditate a recollection, a sudden conversion waits on my will at all seasons. Thus have I grown old in my impieties, thus are my ill customs become habitual, and thus as a Galleyslave to sin, chained to its oar, I must obey. I am like unto a lunatic that hates both life and body, and arms his fury against the one and the other, until his totally sopited and besotted reason leaves to command his actions. But alas, the bent of my hate is of a nature more strange, more pernicious! The lunatic fastens on his body, bends but his fist and blows against clay: but my obdurateness in sin makes me fasten on my Soul, and conclude its wounds in murder. Having thus climbed by degrees to the top of Iniquity, day after day I irritate my God, and my obstinacy calls upon the justice of his fury and my perdition. I have been often forced to smother the inveterate and wicked flames that prey upon me. But it is impossible to secure my heart from them; their fuel is in me, they are lodged in my bones. O my God, spread thy gracious wings over me! I am not able to quench this destroying fire, but with the saving fire of thy divine love. I have not strength enough to cast off the yoke of sin: thy assistance must work my disengagement, and thy succours must prove the reserves to my weaker forces. My deserts (I must confess) dare not move for these favours; but, since thy goodness causeth the sun to comfort the good and bad with the radiancy of an equal Influence; and that thou layest thy obligations on the unworthy, and on those that beg them not at thy hands; I cannot conceive thou wilt be so thrifty of thy spiritual riches towards one that begs with the vehemency of so Intent an ardour, and with the deep sense of so much sorrow for his offences. Move thy compassion towards me, give ear to the humble suit of a poor wretch, thou that art rich in mercies thou that gloriest in the facility of pardoning, thou that washest away the evil habits of the will, thou that hearkens to the complaints of the captives, thou that breakest the Nets we pitch for ourselves, thou that buyest our liberty when we sell ourselves to slavery, and employ the false liberty (men think they enjoy without thee) against thee: stretch forth thy hands that the work of thy hands may not perish, that I may not fall into the bottomless pit that affords not one drop of water to quench the everlasting flames that tortures sinners: deliver me from the Jaws of the roaring Lion who searcheth me for his prey, and will not leave off his bloodthirsting scent: thou, who art my Protector, and in whose mercy all my hopes cast anchor, let the effects of thy mercies answer the hopes of them; because I have hoped in thee my God, I shall not be confounded; and having in the conclusion tasted the returns of my prayers, I will bear a part to thy glory with the heavenly Quires of Angels and blessed Spirits.   

PSALM IU.  
MY nightly couch hath been curtained about with melancholy; fear and terror have given their unwelcome attendance to my fancy, my conscience makes mortal and reiterated thrusts, nor am I dexterous enough to ward its passes; and the least wound I receive, is from the tuck of an Enemy. I cannot allay my disquieting thoughts; hover Illusions interrupt my sleeps, instead of affording its natural repose, it ministers to my inquietude. It is an impossibility, sleep should attaque my eyelids; if a weariness stroke my temples with the hopes of a slumber, a restlessness in me frustrates its blanditions. I feel a late, what devouring fire creeps through my entrails which receivs recruits from my watch. The food disrelisheth that relished before. I mingle tears with my Beverage, my forehead is bound about with confusion, shame spreads itself over my face. When I ruminate on my offences towards my God, and in how many sundry ways I have abused my own abilities and his favours. The study of vanity hath Ingross'd the sum of my days, I grow pale with cares opposite to my good, permitting myself to be carried away with the extravagancy of my conceits and the Injustice of my desires: my loss is become Irreparable, I have let slip the time destined for the working forth of my salvation, I fed my Imagination with dreams, my eyes seemed to entertain nothing but realities, and they proved mere delusions. In fine, I have deceived myself; my vanities and rave have conspired my ruin, my aims reached heaven, and the depth of Hell received me; and since my veterane sins teem new offences, and one abyss draweth another Abyss, my soul enervated by vice is become feeble, and I am now as rottenness in the Nostrils of men. My wishes catch at impossibilities, and the imaginary possession of them renders me not unlike to one, who dreaming golden dreams, at his awaking is seized with a regretfull corrosive for his vanished treasure. I am but a worm, (my God) yet such a stranger to myself I have had an aspiring boldness rearedme over the tops of others heads; all my discourses have been tipped with fastuous affectation, I conceived the elixir of wisdom to consist in that pride. I became intolerable to those resembled me, a fantastic groundless choler hath often hurried me on to be injurious. This cruel passion was so innate, my soul itself nursed it without the least encouragement of a provocation: so long as it reigned in me, not only myself, servants, and relations, but I myself participated the fury of its tyranny. And, without consideration how God upraided me not with the Immensity of his favours, I hit my friends in the teeth with scarce obliging civilities. I have murmured under the pressure of my misfortunes, I have placed my hopes in man, and waved my confidence in God. I entertained truth with deafness, wholesome documents with offence, the instructor with anger, the pilots of salvation with dislike; my genius hath been abusive. I have courted vengeance for the least affront or punctilio, and anticipated the prerogative of God, whose prerogative it is to revenge. I have been disrespectful to the Maintainers of a good cause. Retorts, although seasoned with sweetness and humility, moved my choler: what was good in the good squared not with my humour, Brawls and contentions made up my divertisements, I was a skilful pioner in undermining the friendship of Brothers, and in manuing discord and hatred amongst them to the best advantage: good instructions have touched my theory, but were never welcomed by my practice; they have knocked at my ears, but were not admitted into my heart. I have carressed evil counsellors, whose endeavours were to please, they have filled a choice place in my savour. But I fancied not a telltruth, nor those that with a wholesome freedom both hinted at my imperfections and pursued them with a pious correction. I have not stretched forth my hand to those in distress, and who snatched at my needful assistance. I have not shared my morsels with the poor, whom death had beleaguered with famine and necessity. I have turned mine eyes from the beggar and the sick, lest a sensible compassion should triumph over my avarice and engage an Alms. I have had no care to discharge my debts, nor to restore the depositums to those who confided in me; with the greater facility. To answer my unlimited desires, I have bankruped my neighbour by borrowing what I never restored: I groped after wealth, but as an easier expedient to sin. I have appeared rich upon a vain and sinful account, but always poor upon a charitable one. I wanted nothing to entertain my concupiscence, I wanted every thing to treat piety. I have banished moderation from my trencher, & with horrid excesses overcharged nature that is satisfied with a little, and is the very schoolemistris of temperance. I have paid a strange Idolatry to my Belly, I have built my glory upon an earthly foundation, which could threaten nothing but destruction. The most exquisite rarities have been searched for to furnish out my table, I have feigned inconveniencies to excuse my niceties; necessity hath been often urged as a pretext for my gluttony: my complacency hath been with addultresses, I have loved the conversation of the incontinent. My impurities have arrived to such a pitch that I have not confidence to express what I have had confidence to commit. I have bound out my ears and tongue apprentices to vanity; with a  attention I have sucked in flatteries; and when in my opinion my praises came short, I have made them up with them of my own mintage. When an occasion of applause has been offered, I have been tickled with applauding myself and with the applause of others. In terrestrial delicacies I have forfeited the cates of heaven; if at any time the apprehensive horror of death and Judgement dreweth me forth of that pit which the entregues of worldly pleasures hath sunk for us, at the same instant I slip back again, I am like to a dog that returns to his vomit. I am dead as to good works, I still live in sins, and although a near borderer on the frontiers of death, nevertheless undismaied with the terror and dreadfullnesse of its approaches, I run upon it, But (O my God) let thy great compassion antevert that great day, that fearful day, that day of tears and groans; prepare me by death to the commencement of life, that I may fill the whole creation with encomiums of thy mercy. Behold (O Lord,) behold the posture of my soul, behold the straits my concupiscence hath brought it in, behold the stripes of that Fury; preserve me from the power of an enemy that will prove inconquerable, unless thy auxiliary forces intervene. Knock off the shackles & bolts of death, (O my God) that I may chain myself to thee, who alone art the true life; and that having cast away the care of all things, I may follow thee, who art more considerable than all things. Lord my God, God of mercy and salvation, whisper to my soul, I am thy safeguard, thy prayers are accepted, let it be done unto thee according to thy petition; let such a voice (my God) draw my attention, that following thee I may encounter thee, encountering thee I may never departed from thee until thou returns me whole. For where shall I find physic for my griefs, if I repair not to thee my God; and who can prove a more expert physician for my infirmities than he who hath stooped from heaven for the reparation of mankined, and to apply remedies to his maladies? who can better bestow life than he, in whose hands is both life and death? who can be a better pledge for my salvation amongst the gulfs and precipices of this world, than my God and my Saviour? Save me then, enlighten me then, thou art both the author of salvation and life, to those repose their trust in thee. And as thy power (my God) had no alpha, let thy glory have no omega; that we may magnify thee, that we may adore thee, that we may erect immortal trophics to thy honour and render everlasting thanks to thee, who art the eternal fountain of mercies. I have been estranged from thee, and although my estrangenesse was an act of my own will, thou hast not failed to answer the beginning of my invocations with a timely assistance: The quick applications of thy remedies have even prevented my complaints, the very will to be cured perfects the cure, and to will life is a motive sufficient to thy goodness that we receive it; the extent of thy bounty is so large, thy graces commonly anticipate the prayers of a repenting sinner. I will confess, my God, and that will be a satisfactory allay to thy indignation, how that I am conscious of my Iniquities, how that I am acquainted with my evil do, and do will a present cure. Yea, my God, it is necessary I know them, that the horror I have may be implanted in my bones, and that my soul may be affrighted at the terrible Image my memory copieth forth. I discover to thy Divine Majesty my imperfections and my sins, to the end thy Mercy may raze and pumice them forth, and thou mayest enlighten the dark capacity of my soul that misleads me to a rebellion against thee. As thou wilt not the Iniquity, so thou desires not the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live: the dead shall not praise thee (my God) none but thee living, none but we shall be thy Panegyriks', Choristers, and Trump, through all ages, the fullness of thy mercies and the tenor of thy bounties.   

PSALMS, V.  
BEfore thee (my God) have I summed up my miseries, not for thy information, not to make known the Condition wherein I stand, nor the paths I trace in the world; because already they are fallen under thy eternal prescience, and from eternity thou hast numbered my footsteps. Thou piercest through the obscurity of darkness, thou disclosest all closerts, there is nothing can withdraw itself from thy sight, to thee are all things present, thou dive'st into the Cabinet-counsells of our hearts, our most secret thoughts to thee are patent. I will therefore lay open my miseries that thou mayst uncover thy mercy, and spread over me thy protecting wing: I will reveal my secrets that thou mayest conceal them, that thou mayest be satisfied with the humility and brokenness of my heart, that by a sacrifice so propitiatory, I may invite a plenary expiation of my offences. I have hitherto cast up an audit of things horrible, yet the reckoning falls short of what I have committed. My conscience alarms me with continual assaults, continually represents the horrid Ideas of my trespasses, and engenders in my soul a worm that bites and corrodes without intermission, but why may not the knawing corrosive of this worm consume all impurities, and in consuming them consume itself? My God, let it not so feed that it may live eternally, let it feed that it may die, and that, by feeding, by degrees it may leave to feed. But alas! how deplorable is my case. I believed the latitude of my confession had circumscribed my sins, but I must confess it admits of larger bounds, my memory still affords fresh instances of a deserved fear from thy Justice; and as it swells with the whole iniquity of my life, it is no sooner delivered of one particular, but it groweth big with particulars more heinous, more criminal. Were the sand of the sea multiplied into figures it were an arithmetic too scant to cast up my transgressions. Were my tongue centupled it were still impossible to count one of a million: so that my grief is the more intense by reason all my impurities come not within the compass of my memory, because the wedgery of new offences drive and peg out the old ones. But (my God) those I will not wrap up in silence my remembrance hath bundled up, I will remove my affection from them, that I may the more firmly settle it on Thee, that thou weighing the humility of my soul and an eye floating in tears, thy severity may be abated, and thy tender sweetness encouraged. Thou who art the real sweetness, the sweetness that entraps not, the blessed sweetness, the sweetness most assured and permanent. I have entertained kindness with envy and malice, charity with disrespect. King's Princes and the ministers of the Gospel have been under the lash of my tongue, with outrageous murmur I have scandalised them; encomiums of the good received reproof, the actions of the wicked approbation; if at any time the just were justly applauded, at the same time my endeavours were to sully their reputations with impostures. I have sifted out their most hidden failings. I have been so censoriously rigid towards them, into grand crimes have I aggravated their petty trespasses: on the contrary, if the wicked received their due salary of a just infamy, and consequently fell into disrespute and discredit with the world, I have immediately backed them, I have extolled their imaginary virtues, and preferred them before the just; and perhaps have proved the ultimate cause to their perdition. I have combined with the thief in purloining my neighbor's goods; and that nothing may be wanting to complete my iniquity, I have fathered the scandal on the son of my mother; my friends and relations could not secure themselves from my frauds, nor shelter themselves from my calumnies. What inundations of miseries and misfortunes was possible to break in upon mortals, my malicious wishes poured on my neighbor's head. In his death have I often laid the foundation of my hopes. I have not spread a protecting wing over the innocent; and as if the dysasters of the unfortunate were a pleasing harmony to me, with inhuman reproaches I have tuned their afflictions, to the highest key.  
The greatest part in the world hath suffered in the rashness of my judgement, I have condemned for sins things without the evidence of the least suspicion, I have perceived the moat in my brother's eye without seeing the beam in my own, I have been lulled in sloth and Idleness, shunned honest labours and virtuous exercises, I have drowned my time in a voluntary lethargy. My God, my thoughts were never busied about thankful returns for thy favours; nor hath thy laws and thy power taken up my meditations. Thou knowest (O God) how sleep hath often quitted its nightly quarters on my eyelids, and my mind that entertained the thought of every thing else, was only unhospitable to the thought of thee. It hath flown every where, but never perched on thee. I have prepared for bed, I have settled myself to sleep, I have awaked without dreaming of thee. I have been always without thee because I dwelled so much with myself; nor pursued I any thing but dark passions which constantly widened the distance from thee. If at any time ejaculatory thoughts soared towards thee and pried into the wonders thou hast perpetrated for mankind, before they were yet flegg I smothered them. I have permitted myself to be philtred by the sweet poison of the world's vanity The endeavours I use to teach my speculations thy grandeurs, are not unlike the endeavours used toward that of sleep, which when the enchanting flattery of it once overcomes, there ensueth none more sound. I have voted often the settlement of my conscience, but still adjourned it till the morrow; the hopes to amend one day hath cut off all hopes of amendment. I have placed my felicity on a tottering and deceitful basis, I leaned on a reed, a broken staff, when I thought my footing most sure, I miserably dropped into the fire; and nothing but my fall could convince me of the feebleness of my support. My ambition hath snatched at unlawful honours, I burned with an imoderate desire of hoarding up riches and squeezing profit out of every thing. These uncurbed lusts have bogued me in sinful plunges and troubles. I have shaken hands with all the wicked, with all the unrighteous, and all those whose lives were irregular and disorderly. I have dishonoured friendship, that sacred tye, that aught to oblige to none but the virtuous: yes (my God) I have disgraced it with concupiscences, and have profaned its sanctity with the impurity of my affections, I have fancied myself in pastimes wherein lodged the cause of my perdition, and the fuel to that fire which consumed me; and instead of blocking up the passages to obstruct the inroads of death, I have opened him fresh avenues. All my members have been so many portals to receive him into my soul. When I have been sullied with new offences, I have not been cleansed from my old iniquities: on the contrary they have rather been the seeds of so many crimes which estranged me from thy face. That is the reason I have been deprived of the consolation, thy presence affords, and that I wander like a desparado, a stranger to his own paths. But alas! what will betid me if I depart from thee? who will throw his eyes on me if thou avert thine, and as a reprobate deny me the favour of thy aspect? No doubt I shall prove odious to men, both a subject of scorn and derision, when they shall demand of me, Where is thy God? why hath he eclipsed his face from thee? What shall I do when outlawed from thy Protection? whither shall I go hemmed in on all sides and deserted of thee? With tears and sobs will I search thee out, I will implore thy mercy, I will beseech thee not to abandon me, and that thy just indignation may not move thee to draw off thy looks from the guard of thy servant; because my enemies pursue me, as if I fled before them, they pursue me (My God) to enslave me and to carouse my blood. It behoofs me therefore to take covert under thee, to fly to thy Protection from whom I have so long fled. Thou art my strength (O God) my refuge, my assurance. It is thy power alone can countenance me, thy consolation which can cheer me in the day of my miseries and afflictions. As there is no God but thee, there is no Saviour but thee, Thou my God to whom my miseries and infirmities are patent, before whom Hypocrisy is unvailed, forget both my old and my new offences; let thy mercies divert the pursuites of my enemies; file off the bolts I have so cruelly been shackled with: there is none my God can do it but thee, who crowneth with salvation those that put their trust in thee, and renders the poor and weak triumphant over the proud; and the mighty shade not the divine radiancy of thy looks from me. Disdain me not (O God) be unto me a salvation and assurance, a redeemer. I am poor and miserable, thou art accustomed to glad the poor and the miserable with the splendour of thy rays. If thy justice hunt to unkennel me, let thy mercy earth me; defend me through thy goodness that makes thee patiented and me penitent. Thou art meek, thou art patiented, thy mercy overpoiseth thy wrath, there is nothing more proper to thee, than to compassionate the miserable, to pardon sinners: the whole world hath tasted of thy loving kindness because thou art omnipotent, thou connives at the transgressions of mortals that thou mayest be pleased with their repentance, thou forgives because thou loves the world because it is the architecture of thy own hands. Dart thy saving glances on me, that I may turn towards thee, disengage my afflicted soul from the desperate extremities it is reduced to, that my lips may overflow with thy praises, and that I may break forth and say, Blessed be the Lord, who hath not permitted me to fall into the hands of my enemies: they had destroyed me, had not thy timely succour prevented; my soul was like to a bird entangled in the snares of the fowler. The nets are broken, and I am delivered.   

PSALM VI.  
WHat shall I do, a miserable and unfortunate object? The monster, sin, spawn of the bottomless pit, hath stained his jaws with the slaughter of my soul. I have been led a sad spectacle of my enemy's triumph. My God he hath stripped me of all those habiliments, wherewith thou didst  me; I am now abashed to lay open my nakedness before thee, I issued out of thy hands, accomplished with all the graces and riches might furnish out a complete happiness; and without seriously weighing the slenderness of my guard to secure them, I have picquered with all occasions, that might dismount me, and cast me into perdition. The Blazon of my soul is char-cole-sable, it hath forfeited the livery colour of innocency, and hath bartered for poison, celestial viands. That I might habit myself in the mode of a sinner, I have cast off thy precious equipage and accoutrements. I have been to myself both a defacement and a destruction; methinks I am moulded into the absolute portraiture of the first man's disobedience. In fine, (my God) sin hath so miserably metamorphosed my condition, thou wilt scarce discern in me the stamp of thy creating impression: Is it not justice then, like a rotten sheep, to exclude me the flock? If an awful trembling creep through the heavens at thy sight, what confidence can lead me into thy presence, who am nothing but impurity? If from sinfulness I am lapsed to brutishness, what impudence can brazen me, to discover my face amongst the Elect? I will nevertheless return to thee, although fear and shame struggle within me; I will lay hold on that fatherly bounty wherewith thou embraces all men, as a guide to conduct me into thy bosom, as the affection of a parent pursues his runaway child, and meats with usury his submissive return: So I hope (my God) as thy love was abundant in my flight, my reclaiming will give it increase. But alas! want of force and ability lameth the will I have to return; I feel the resistance of a cruel power, that stays me. I feel not the interruption of chains and cords; but the interruption of my own will, wherewith my enemy hath forged fetters impossible to be knocked a sunder. My shelter is fare from thee, because thy Salvation is far from sinners. I shall expire in this so wild a bondage, unless thy heavenly supplies sally forth, and my God have an eye over me; I am plunged in the mire and have no strength to recover myself; a Harricane of temptations doth no less wrack my soul then the foaming waves of an enraged sea buffets a miserable Bottom. All hope of disingagement from these encompassing dangers fades, if the hopes of thy protection blossoms not. Alas! the more I essay to preserve myself from Shipwreck, the more I strike upon the rocks and flats. Both within and without to myself, I am my own fatal foe: domestic enemies are every where embattled against me; I throw me eyes on every side, and discover not one in whom to repose a trust: a Lackey, Fear, waits at my heels; and wheresoever I go, not one faithful friend answers the diligent scrutiny of my search: but how should I find faith? why should I challenge it from men, when I have forfeited mine to God? In my miseries and afflictions, I have appealed to every one for comfort, I have found none amongst those that filled the van in my affliction, that would lend me any consolation. I have never been happy in a true friend, such have been numerous that were nothing but air, and smoked forth volleys of vain promises; they have been rather dumb (my God), because they vented nothing concerning thee, and because their words were so many sins. I have met with men void of charity, who swollen my faults with aggravations that I might burst into despair, who outrageously loaded me with detractions and endeavoured that my soul might sink under their malice as well as my reputation; the impious swum in my favours: and declining the right paths, I have been a proselyte to their profaneness. I am by little and little arrived to that pitch of irregularity, that although through the interposition of thy grace, I have not bid farewell to religion, yet have I taxed many things in it, as frivolous and worthy of disdain. In fine, my God I cannot borrow an excuse from any Consideration, I have known thee in truth, but worshipped thee neither in truth nor in spirit, on the contrary I have turned truth into lies, I have obeyed the creature before the creator, I have fished for delight in things deceitful and transitory, instead of diving for it in truth eternal. But (O my God) since thou hast informed my knowledge with thy true religion, shake off that drowsiness, my iniquities hath hung upon me: so guard my eyes that it may resist the sleep of death, which invades my soul, enlighten my eyes draw them up towards thee, to the end that through thy light they may behold thee who art the light eternal, which is never deficient, never extinguished; which comprehends whatsoever can be imagined sweet and delectable, that they may greedily feast themselves on the vision of thee, that they may runover with joy, that they may wish for nothing but thee, that they may be convinced thou alone art truly amiable. Thou art the true light that conveys light to all that come into the world. Dart one of thy rays, that it may dissipate the gloomy darkness is gathered about me; work in me a disposition to come under thy wholesome laws, to the end that my soul, inflamed with the fire of thy love, may languish after none but thee, and seek for no pleasures, but what thou reaches to her O Lord. I say, my soul let me say, Thine, thine it is by creation, mine only by gift and donation; preserve a creature thou hast framed according to thine own image, of whom thou wert pleased to become both the moulder and the model. Let not the precious gift wherewith thou hast endowed me, wherewith thou hast honoured me with precedence above all the works of thy hands miserably perish, and become a prey to the mouth of Hell. Stigmatize me in every part, let corroding ulcers and putrefactions creep through my flesh, let worms and noisome vermin consume me; do but thou pardon my soul, and stretch not forth thy hand towards it armed with tempests; conduct me into thy paths before our Hemisphere do leave off the departing sun, who (being now upon his last compliment) add force to thy call and compels me to thee: force me (o God) with all the Artillery of violence, that I may surrender myself to thee and not perish. Supplant my heart of marble with a heart of flesh, let thy spirit wield the sceptre there, that thy precepts may oblige my footsteps and thy commands my observance: let not anything in me (my God) be the motive of these savours, whose unworthiness in the abuse of so many mercies hath wholly incapacitated, but thy holy and venerable name alone. I must acknowledge the tardiness of my arrival at thee, and to me it is punishment enough it was no timelier. But, my God, I am satisfied thou streightens not the time and limits it to those would come and find thee out; with an equal acceptancy thou receives the tardy and the early. Although sin be an object of thy hatred, it overskips the sinner; nor dost thou rejoice at his perdition. Although the delay be tedious, yet thou expects with patience. (My God) sweet and taking is that expression, wherewith thou revives the already drooping hopes of my soul. Although (sayest thou) thy other loves have merited my jealous indignation, return yet unto me, and I will enfold in mine arms. What a pleasing charm is couched in that saying which influenceth the sinner with an encouragement, although the weakness of his forces bring diffidence and despair? If the wicked do penance, he shall induce the acquittal of his transgressions; he shall live and not die. Can it be imagined then (sayest thou) that the death of a sinner is the effect of thy will? It fills me with consolation to hear thee parabolize how the Shepherd finding his lost sheep with joy, heaved it on his shoulders; and how the woman who had found her piece of silver which she had lost, prepared a congratulatory Gossoping for her neighbours. When I turn over thy holy Writ, an inundation of joyful tears breaks forth; when I encounter the story of the father and the prodigal son, strike the organs of my ears with that sound which rouzeth souls from their dead slumbers. Let it not only find a receptacle in mine ear; but enlighten me also with those divine Rays, which convey to men's understanding, the horror of their sins, and at the same time overpower the darkness of them, let thy voice always echo in my heart, say unto my drowsy soul, How long wilt thou permit the lethargy of death to sit pale upon thy temples? how long shall those cruel bonds retain thee captive? It is time that thou arise, that thou tread better paths, that thou return to me who hath ransomed thee. Return, return, Shunamite, return that I may have a respect for thee. Return, cut of all delays, pluck off all remoras and hasten to me, because I am thy Lord, I am thy God, who calleth thee, who wipeth away sins, and wraps in oblivion things past. My God, when my ears are solaced with this divine rhetoric, with assurance I will conclude and say, let thy hopes my soul warrant repose, because thy Lord load's thee with his bounties, lay aside all fear and go in quest of him, and although the weariness of so many evil journeys hang on thee, nevertheless hasten thy steps as thou intends to accelerate thy content, let not the sense of thy sins discourage thee. When thou shalt be as scarlet, thou shalt become as white as snow, thy sins shall be crossed out, they shall vanish as a small cloud, startle not at the censure of Bold and Presumptuous, seeing thou falls rather under the praise of Obedience. My soul, dispatch, go to him, he comes not to call the just but the sinful. The God offended by thee, the same will be thy saving God, the God that will cause thee to triumph over sins thy mortal enemies. Why trembles thou to set forward? It is not a severe judge citys thee before him but a merciful father that beckons, who would give thee a test of his kindness: Go, go freely whither mercy calls, lest one day a court of justice summon thee. In thee, I now cast anchor, my Saviour and my God, to thee I will confess my sins without the least bashful tincture of a Blush, because the committing of them before men & the rebelling against thee never covered my face with a just confusion. Let the grumbling pharisee murmur, Who can pardon sins but God alone. This is the voice of my God, the effects of whose breath is never abortive. This God that calls me overflows with gracious sweetness, his wrath dams not up the current of his mercy; My Saviour! relying on thy promises it shall not be a feigned return to thee. Thou art my Anchorage, and I hope thou wilt prove my Inheritance in the land of the living. Prostrate before thy majesty, I will leave to fear, because thou hast pleased to call me: but lest thy eyes should nauseate my impurities, I will buck them in my tears, they shall flow continually, my couch shall bear a watery testimony of my sorrows; and that I may render me acceptable to thee, I will be less acceptable to myself. In conclusion, my God, I will endeavour not to abuse the graces thou hast lavished on me with so prodigal a liberality; and since I feel thy motions working in me I will repent myself of my sins to the end that purified by repentance from a refined and cleansed heart I may sing thy praises, and say with thy prophet, Who is like to thee? How glorious shall thy praises hang on the lips of a sinner, and of him who having sown in tears shall reap in Joy.   

PSALM. VII.  
I Am mouldy with afflictions, cankered with troubles, rustyed with miseries unexpressible: Gilled me (my God) with the Beams of thy Compassion. The Torrents of iniquity rise upon me, they have over-flowed the confines of my Soul, like the proud streams of a swelling current. My sins, banked up by dissimulation, not unsluced by confession, nor laved forth by amendment, are grown to such a height, they have usurped over my head, they have bowed my understanding and my will to the dominion of concupiscence, or rather to the servitude of the Devil. Alas! on every side, are mortal sally-ports to my Soul, from the bottom of my foot to the top of my head there is nothing which is not overspread with serping ulcers; my enemy hath tripped up my heels, and like a barbarous Incensed Tyrant he hath sequestered me of all things, but my understanding; to the end that the consciousness of my evil and ruin, might hang more weight on my sorrows. It had been an act of favour to have devested me of all the functions of my Soul; but alas he hath spoilt me of them as to good, and left me them as to evil. He hath rocked my Soul into so deep a slumber; although its wounds fall under its discovery, they fall not under so much sense as to wish a cure and urge a remedy. When what was necessary called upon mine ears, than a deafness choked them up. I locked out the revelations of thy Truth; but when a necessary unattention should shut out things unprofitable, and the follies of the World; then my ears gaped and sucked them in, with a greedy thirst. The taste of things celestial was unsavoury, with a loathing Antipathy I nauseated whatsoever might nourish virtue in my Soul, nothing slid more deliciously off my palate then Terrestrial Gusto's. I have not made the works of my God the prospect of contemplations, upon this Account I have shared more of the beast then of the man: on the contrary, the vanities of the earth, have dallied my Speculations with pleasure; with a lust unsatiable I have been enamoured to them. The old Enemy of mankind hath not only surprised the five Ports of my senses, to cut off the passages of Salvation; but likewise secured to himself all the members of my body. He hath so well placed his ambuscado's, it was impossible to decline them. When I was most Industrious to disappoint him, I have miserably dropped into his clutches: my Seeing has been criminal and my notseeing; my understanding, and my not-understanding; my discourse and my silence; my standing and my sitting, my sleeping and my waking, my walking and my reposing. In fine, (my God) I have perverted the use of my senses and all my members to actions shameful and destructive; unchaste desires scorched me up; there was neither law natural, divine, or humane that I have not been a trepasser against, I have only observed the law of sin. Alas, would I could not say I had observed it, but that I would observe it no longer: but because I am the very same, and feel no alteration, I pursue worse principles and tread in paths more perilous: my will shakes a Sceptre over me, my Soul is gangreen'd with corruption, and is itself the cause and core of its own evil. I often quarrel with myself, that it should be irksome to me to live, but not to sin; my understanding is privy to my folly, which adds the more to my confession, and in my own censure justly casts me, Thou who embraces pleasures with such a pathetic dotage, why wallows thou so long in the mire, wherein thy concupiscences have bogged thee? Why do the affairs of the world goad thee with such pricking cares? Why huntest thou with such a ravenous sent after things transitory and perishing? Why miscalls thou those things good thou purchases with so much pain; yea often at the price of thy salvation, things which with fear thou possessest and must quit with sorrow. Why (my soul) dost thou forget thy race and the nobility of thy extraction, why art thou not ashamed, with so much cowardice and pusillanimity to submit to the power of thy body and senses, which were placed under the Legiance. Why givest thou entertainment to the charms of the deceitful promises of the world's witchcraft? How art thou ignorant that the emblem of the greatest good is but an exhaled meteor that radiates for a while and instantly vanisheth. Blush, blush then miserable sinner because thou hast declined the Creator to divert to the creature; that in the end, with a judgement rectified, thou may'st discern the delusions that abuse thee. Behold how thou wearies thyself in the pursuit of a false good, and like to the Issue of a metamorphosed Arachne, who spins her own entrails and weaves them into subtle nets only to mesh flies in; so toylest thou with many labours and troubles in the search of a small prey, not considerable in any thing but in its train of torments, wherein it will engage thee. Once more blush that thou hast ploughed that, whence thou couldst reap no profit. Deplore the time thou hast mis-husbanded, to the end that out of the very shame of it, thou may'st at least glean some harvest. Pay thy heart to God, and thou discharges a due debt. Verily when I ruminate these discourses my indignation is kindled against myself, that I should not bequeath that to heaven which I so freely bestow on earth. I am offended with myself when the reproaches of my conscience alarm my considerations, when I compare the loss of so great riches with the little advantage of so small gains. The knowledge of good leads me not to it, but the light of evil allures me. My enemy hath schooled my will, and adapting me to his desires, he hath rendered me almost as detestable as himself. He loads me with Irons, and commits me to the black Rod of sin. But, my God, since thou art the God of might and of power, and holds jurisdiction over my life, dislodge not thy auxiliary bands fare from me. Draw them forth in my aid, shade me under the umbrella of thy wings, that my adversaries may not have the view of my ruin; and that my enemy, proud of my destruction, may not have cause to boast, he hath triumphed over me. Break the cords that spansel me and hinder my pace towards thee. Knock asunder the chains of sin I am so strongly fettered in, give my enemy a taste of thy might, let me have cause to make thy altars smoke with the sacrifices of joy, and sing with thy saints, What expression is large enough to clothe the power of the Lord? Who is capable of the praises of God, who hath plucked my soul out of the nets and gins of death, who hath elbowed me for falling, and preserved me out of the throat of the lion in my miseries. At whose ears shall my Invocations knock, if not at thine (my God,) whom our forefathers Invocations have so profitably moved? if not at thine ears (my God,) who never frustrated the hopes built upon thee? Take me then under thy protection and let the whole world combat me, nothing shall dismay me; I will fling a scornful eye on the assaults and approaches of my enemies, as long as thou embraces my quarrel and stands by me. Sift my heart, sift my affections, and winnow out all that is conrary to thee. Cast my soul in a new mould, create in me a second faith, to engraft thy graces, that they come not within the possibility of withering; so that, having bid adieu to the vanities of the world, and its deceiving pleasures, even the sinner himself may be allowed praise for the purity of his desires. My wishes aiming only at thee (my God), let my petitions and supplications find audience. Then will I say with assurance, My soul, o Lord, is in travail with no desires but what thou father'st. I am convinced, we cannot pray unless thou quicken our prayers with wholesome inspirations, we cannot ascend to thee without thou lend a pulley. Draw me then (O Lord) enlighten my Theory, that it may mend my Practice, that beginning well I may end well: draw me, my God, before my old Inveterate habits smother my new resolutions; and my perverted will and confirmed in evil, overmaster this day's designs for my good: Seeing I purpose what is just, let me not relapse into my former Injustices. Capacitate thee for thy grace and my salvation, spread thy rays over me, dispel thy darkness which envellopes me. Invest me in those precious garments which make me acceptable to thy eyes, dismantle me of those fatal robes wherein sin hath clothed me. In conclusion, (my God) burden not thy remembrance with my transgressions. Work an universal change in me, that becoming a new man I may bring to thy service a new soul, new fervours; and that constantly pursuing thee I may have relish in nothing but in Jesus my Saviour and my Master. Laus Deo.   
FINIS.