THE ATHEISTICAL POLITITION OR A BRIEF DISCOURSE CONCERNING Ni. Machiavelli.  
nouemb: the 23th 1642  
Nicholas Machiavelli is cried down for a villain, neither do I think he deserves a better title, yet when I consider he was not only an Italian but a Courtier, I cannot choose but commiscrate his fortune, that he in particular should bear the marks, which belong to the wisest Statesmen in general.  
He that intends to express a dishonest man calls him a Machiavillian, when he might as justly say a Straffordian or a Cantabirian; We embrace the first apparition of virtue or vice, and let the substance pass by untouched.  
For if we examine the Life of Lewis the 11th of France, we shall find he acted more ill, than Machiavelli writ, or for aught we know ever thought; yet he hath wisdom inscribed on his Tomb; And had he not kissed his Crucifix ever after the doing a dishonest thing; pronouncing a sentence or two that discovered the complexion of his heart, he might have passed for as honest a man as all wise Ancestors or any Prince living in his time, who now lie quiet in their Graves; A favour this man is denied by ignorant and ungrateful posterity.  
He was Secretary to the state of Florence, of which he hath written an excellent and impartial History, he had lived in the days of Pope Alexander the sixth, been familiar with his Son Caesar, and what these Princes were is sufficiently known.  
No time was fuller of action, nor shown the instability of worldly honours than the occurrences that happened in Italy at this time; Now from a man wholly employed in Court affairs, where it was thought madness to look beyond second causes; worse things might have been with better reason expected, than these so bitterly condemned; which are indeed but the History of wise impieties, long before imprinted in the hearts of ambitious pretenders, and by him made legible to the meanest understanding, yet he is more blamed for this fair expression, than they are that daily commit fare greater impiety, than his or any penelse is able to express.  
It was his profession to imitate the behaviour of Princes were it never so unseemly; Nay Religion cannot condemn the speculation of ill in Ministers of State without laying herself and professors open to all injury.  
For upon how great disadvantage should a good Prince treat with a bad Neighbour; if he were not only familiar with the paths of wickedness, but knew other ways to shun them; and how to counterminde their treacherous practices:  
Do any blame Albertus for writing obscenely, nay do they not rather call him the Great, because he hath so plainly set open the Closet of Nature? Indeed if any can pretend a just quarrel to Machiavelli, they are Kings; for as it is the ordinary course of light women, to findefault with the broad discourse of that they maintain their power by; So Statesmen may best blame the publication of these Maxims, that they may put them in practice with more profit and security.  
The unjust Steward is commended for his worldly wisdom; and what doth he say more of Caesar Borgia, than that he was a politic Tyrant? and if without leave of the Text he propose him for an Example, yet it is of ill; And who is more fit to be a Pattern to a Villain than one of the fame coat.  
Most of the Estates in Italy did then voluntarily, or were compelled to change their masters, neither could that School teach him any thing more perfectly than the way to greatness, nor he writ a more acceptable Treatise than Aphorisms of State.  
He saw the Kingdom of Naples torn out of the house of Angieu by Ferdinand, & the people kept in Tyranny both by the Father and the Son; he saw the no less mad than disloyal ambition of Lodowick Duke of Milan, who took the government upon him out of the hands of young Galeas with as much treachery and cunning as Francis Sforca father to Galeas had done from the Dukes of Orleans; he beheld Charles the 8th King of France brought into Italy by the said Duke of Milan to keep the people at gaze, whilst he poisoned his Nephew, who was to expect the Dukedom when he came of age; He saw the descent of Charles winked at by Pope Alexander the sixth, in hope to raise a house for his Son Caesar out of the ruins of some of the Princes, in which he was deceived; For the French King made himself Master of all Italy, entered Rome twice, put the holy Father to take Sanctuary in the Castle Saint Angelo, and there to subscribe to such conditions as the victorious King was pleased to prescribe him; upon which his Holiness came out: And though Charles in show of reverence did kiss his foot, yet he took his Son Caesar for hostage, to secure the performance of his promise, though he covered it with the name of Embassage ever to reside with the King in token of Amity; and after Caesar had made an escape the Holy Father contrary to his oath made a league against the French King.  
He was an eyewitness of an Amity contracted between the Vicar of Christ and his known enemy the Turk; with whom he agreed for money to poison his brother, who was fled into Christendom for fear of Bajazet then reigning, and was under the Pope's protection at Rome; And might have been of excellent use to any Prince that would have invaded the Turk, had not his holiness observed his promise to this monster, which he seldom kept with the best of men.  
After all this he saw the French King lose all Italy with the same dexterity he had gained it, And Pope Alexander and his son both overthrown by own draught of poison, prepared by themselves for others, of which the father died presently but the son by reason of youth and antedote, had leisure to see what he had formerly gotten, torn out of his hands; And he forced to flee to his father in Law the King of Navarre in whose service he was murdered.  
To these ambitious practices of princes, may be added the domestical impiety of the Pope, who was a corrival with his two sons in the love of his own daughter the Lady Lucretia; whom they all three enjoyed; which bred such a hatred between the brothers that Caesar being jealous that the other had a greater share in her affection; killed him one night, & threw him into Tiber; Nay it could not be discerned when the head of the Church spoke truth or falsehood but by the extraordinary execrations he used when he meant to deceive.  
Neither are these only the commodities of Italy but the usual traffic of all the Courts in the world, for the mark that God hath set upon jeroboam (who according to our dialect) may be styled the Machiavelli of the jews,) cannot scare most Princes out of his path; For how many Kings have failed to set up Altars, both at Bethel and Dan, when they think their power may be weakened by the people going to Jerusalem; Saul being a private man went to the Prophet to ask after his Father's Asses, But being a King went to the Devil to know the success of a battle.  
Christ himself saith, not many great, not many mighty are called; Men in soft raiment may be found at Court but their consciences are commonly scared and hard.  
This makes me think the wise men that came from fare to see our Saviour, thought him an earthly Prince and not the King of heaven, else they would never have sought him in the Court of Herod from whence nothing could come but cruelty and oppression.  
The Church of Rome that did anciently deserve honour of all the world; After it came to be a Court grew fruitful only in impiety; and though we do acknowledge her still to be a Church because she hath all the liniament of Religion in her, yet they are so blended in superstition, pomp and cruelty, that it is no easy task to find the truth amongst them. For as a good fruit-tree leaves not to be the same it was before, though covered and embraced with ivy and ill weeds, the natural daughters of time, which neither spare things sacred nor profane, so Rome may be called a Church still, though covered with trash and idle ceremonies; in which the Pope and the Cardinals shroud themselves, so as if knowledge occasioned by the elumination of God, had not houted them out of some corners of the world, they had not only made good, by an unquestioned prescription those errors in being, but brought in more, and being themselves masters of all temporal estates, and were there nothing else against them but greatness and impiety, it were enough to convince them, of falsehood and novelty, pride is acknowledged by all to be the root of ill, now where doth it prosper so well or grow so strong as in Princes and such as do attend on their affairs, the effects of which sin, can be contained in no narrower compass, than the whole mass of impiety that is apt to commit, for it made Phocas kill his Master, Caesar to overthrow the liberty of the bravest Commonwealth that ever the world did or is likely to behold, it prompts the hand of children to pull unseasonably the pillows from under the heads of their dying fathers, it is this that fills heaven and hell with souls, the earth with blood, this pride made Charles the fifth to arm himself against his own Pope, that very year in which God had done him the honour to take one of the greatest Monarches in christendom prisoner, it caused his son Philip to mingle the blood of his own child with the infinite quantity hespilt upon the face of Europe, yet his thirst could not be quenched, though he set a new world abroach in America, which he let run till it was as void of people, as he was of pity.  
Is a Prince named in any Chronicle, but in read letters, nay what are chronicles registers of blood and projects to procure it, yet none blames them that writ them I do not intent to make an Apology for him; being so well acquainted with the miseries of those, that are so unhappy as to fall under the government of such principles, all I aim at is, to prove that if he were justly arraigned he could not be condemned by men in like place, who ever were his peers if not worse, because advice without execution hurt only the giver.  
Yet Machiavelli saith, what Prince had not rather be Titus than Nero, but if he will needs be a Tyrant he shows him the way that is least hurtful to his temporal estate, as if he should say thou hast made thyself already an eenimie to God and thy people, and hast nothing to hope for, beyond the honour of this world, therefore to keep thee from the fury of men be sure thou art perfectly wicked, a task not hitherto performed it being yet beyond example that any Tyrant should perform all the mischief, that was requisite for his safety no more than the best Kings, did ever all the good; and of this he makes Caesar Borga Alexander the 6 son a pattern, who removed all the impediments that stood between him and his desires, and provided against all cross accidents but his own, being sick at the time of his father's death, which hindered him so as he had no leisure to attend his business, which was to make one suoceed in his father's place, that might at least have favoured his projects; But I verily believe, as I see by daily experience, that those which go on in the same tract, though they have brought their purposes to as happy a conclusion, yet they shall not want impediments, or discontents, that shall out-talk the pleasure of their Ambition, but since it is oftentimes the will of God to give success to ill means wise contrived, who can advise better than this Florentine a member of the Roman Church, and is in that regard to be less blamed, because he had as much Religion as the Pope then in being; with whom all impieties were as familiar as the air he breathed in.  
Neither are these rules he speaks of omitted in the best Kings, if they be wise; for which of them doth not dispatch his ungrateful actions by deputies; and those that are popular, with his own hands? do any observe their promise so exactly as not to fail when they ee the profit greater than can be expected at another time? and all this he saith only to a Prince. For had he given those documents to a Son, or any other that had filled any narrower room than a kingdom; he might with juster reason have undergone all censure; but being to make a Grammar for the understanding of Tyrannical government, is he to be blamed for setting down the general rules of such Princes? Now if falsehood and deceit be not their true dialect, let any judge that reads their stories? Nay cozenage is reduced into so necessary an art amongst them; that he that knows not how to deceive, knows not how to live. That breach of faith in private men, is damnable, and dishonerable, he cannot deny. But Kings seem to have larger Charters by reason of their universal commerce, and as Ambassadors may be excused if they lie abroad for the good of their Country; because they represent their Master's persons; with fare greater reason may they do it than they that employ them, provided they turn not the edge of these qualities towards their own people to whom they are tied in a more natural, and honest Obligation.  
For a Commonwealth is like a natural body, and when it is all together shows a comely structure, but search into the entrails from whence the true nourishment proceeds, and you shall find nothing but blood, filth, and french; the truth is, this man hath raked too fare in this, which makes him smell as he doth in the nostrils of ignorant people; whereas the better experienced know, it is the wholesome favour of the Court, especially where the Prince is of the first head.   
FINIS.