Mercurius Militans, With his Hags haunting Cruelty, and his Bays crowning Clemency; Historically suited to our long wished Peace.  By Hieron: Philalethes. 
Printed in the Year 1648.  
I Believe that as nothing so degenerates man into a Wolf and a Tiger, yea into a Devil, as Cruelty, according to the phrases, Homo homini lupus, homo homini Demon, now commented and writ in the bloods of millions of Innocents', devoured by that worst of wolves called Rebel in Ireland, as also in England, with as much voracity, truculency, and barbarous inhumanity, as the three Herod's in josephus and our Richard the third exercised against their Nobles and Consanguinity; Ahab and jezabel against Naboath, Elias Michah and the best Prophets; the bramble Abimeleck against his Brethren, the 70 sons of Gideon: Orcanes the Turk against all his Butchered Brethren, the sons of the great Ottoman: or as ever Busiris, Periander, Emanuel, Paleologus, exercised with numerous moe in their specified cruelties by Melancton in his Gronocles pag. 178, 188. by Tholosanus in his six book of his Commonwealth, cap. 19 p. 380 381. & 1498. By Valerius, lib. 9 cap. 14. and by Antimatchavil. lib. 3 p. 519, 562, 563. The rage of these our civil uncivil Wars being so great, that against the dictate both of Reason and Religion, against the Light both of Grace and Nature; blood hath not spared blood; Brothers being divided in as great hostility as Cain against Abel, Absalon against Ammon, Romulus once against Rhemus, Cambyses against Smerdis, Brennus against Brentius, and the Popish Alphonsus against his Protestant brother Diazius, who, as needs running, whom the Devil drives, came as far as Rome to Germany to murder him: so besides the Furies and Hags, and horrors of their Consciences, which haunt them as the worst of spirits and ghosts, as is historified in Nero after he had massacred Peter and Paul, and his Master Seneca, and his mother Octavia, and in Caligula after his Butcheries creeping into Corners in any Lightnings and Thunders; and in Herod after his slaughter of the Bethlem Infants, his two sons Alexander and Ari●tobulus, his wife Mariana, and the Synedrim of the Jews, and in Alexander after he had burnt Persepolis, and slain his dear friends Clitus and Calisthenes; with many moe extracted from josephus and secular Authors by Strigellius. lib. 1. Ethic. p. 7, 9.155, 159. and by Patritius, l. 5. de regno. tit. 8 p. 313. with the wonderful aggravations of the gnawing of this worst of worms, the stinging of this worst of serpents, the excruciations of this worst of beasts, an Evil Conscience; to be read in that ze●l us Melander Luther in his Comment on Genesis. cap. 31. p. 486 & cap. 43. p. 652. & cap. 45. p. 671. And in Pezelius comment in 〈…〉 Genesis, cap. 37, pag. 714. & cap. 41. pag, 794. 789. & cap. 45. pag. 835. & cap. 50. page 971. So even in this life; Plagues follow cru●l Princes and Peers at the heels l●ke Lackeys, and haunt them as Brutus his ghost: Besides the exangeration of conscience which, as is feigned of Titius & Promethius, eats their very Hearts and Livors as the Fl●sh Wolf that fl●sh in which it breeds.  
Their first plague is, That they are no better loved then the Siracusans loved their three Dionisii, as an old woman told one of them, or than Lambs love Wolves, being daily more cursed then the Fox by Country Beldame's devouring Poultry. O derunt dum metuunt: Feared they may be as Witches fear their Devils and Familiar, which suck their bloods, but never loved better than Brutus loved the Tarquins, or Felton that Frenchified Duke, who felt the sharpness of his stabbing Knife.  
Secondly, They are always plagued with a Domestic Devil, called jealousy; with a bosomed Snake, c●lled Suspicion, even of their best Friends whom they seem most to love, and whom they have most honoured and advanced; which jealousies are seldom quenched but with their blood, chief when their Favourites grow popular, then Herod makes his Aristobulus, the Nephew of Hircanus the High Priest, shorter by the head; as Sejanus was so lopped in the like case by Tiberius (apud dionem in vita) yea the famous Mustapha in Knolls his Turkish History, by the Tyrant his Father.  
Thirdly, They are usually possessed, as with so many tormenting spirits, with servile and slavish Fears, most of them complaining, Multa miser timeo, quia feci multa proterve. 
Much have I done, base, bloody, vile, and Evil,  
And much I fear to suffer like the Devil.   
Which fears so possessed Dionysius, that he feared every Barber's Knife to shave too near his throat, Tyrants usually doubling their Guards as the worst Popes their Guards of Swissers, and the worst Erench Kings those of Feench and Scots: the servile fears of Tyrants seldom or never cured but by a Julip or red caudle of the blood of those they fear; as many instances are given in this kind in Claudius Caesar, Valentinian, Wencestaus the son of Charles the fourth Emperor, Caius, Caligula, Nero, and many more, by Dion Cassius, Plutark, Melancton, in locis, pag. 118, in Chron. lib. 4. pag. 457. and by Antimatchavil, lib. 3. pag. 476, 477, 478 These panic Terrors, as hellish Hags, usually possessing them, in these Battles, in which they embark themselves from a bad Cause, and with a worse Conscience being the main Cause that oft a few Soldiers bed by a Lion (as the just are hold as a Lion) are oft victorious over redoubled and trebled oumbers of those whose hearts are in their heels, led by a Hart or a Hare, as Leonides used the Simile; of which abundant instances are given by Pezelius in Gen. cap. 35.669. by Strigellius, in Psal. 9 p. 71. by Pontanus in his first book of Fortune, c. 25. and by Patritius lib. 5. de regno, tit. 4. p. 305. in those Terrors which God cast into the hearts of the Midianites, Judg. 7. And of the Canaanites and those of Jericho in Joshuahs' time: And of the Philistines in jonathans' time, 1 Sam. 14. And of the Quadi in Antoninus his time, and into the host of 100000 Ethiopians in Asa's time, 2 Chron. 16. And into the host of cruel Attila, near the City Anrelia; And into the host of Benbadad in Ababs' time, 1 King. 20. And into the host of Arbogastus, and Eugenius encountering with good Theodosius; of which Claudian could sing, O nimium dilecte deo cui fundit ab antris Aeolus armat as acies, cui militat Aether. 
O Darling to thy God, for whom the Air  
And windrs do fight thine enemy's troops to fear.   
And when such Terrors, as God sends oft into the hearts of Multitudes, fight with handfuls, according to his Commination, Deut. 28. do so work, that sometimes three hundred Lacedæmonians, in the advantage of a scrait, killing twenty thousand of Zorxes his Army; sometimes a Forbius with ●hirty thousand quelling of the Gauls two hundred thousand; sometimes a Greek Milti●d●s, with eleven thousand, roving and executing a hundred thousand foot of the Persians, and ten thousand horse: An Abraham with three hundred and eighteen pursuing and conquering four Kings of Cilicia, Persia, Babylon and Assyria, Gen. 14. A David with four hundred quelling the Amelekites which lay like Grasshoppers scattered upon the earth, 1 Sam. In these cases we must say there is concurring with digitus Dei, the finger of God: Such panic fears as are described with their effects by Erasmus in his Adages, Chil. 3. Cent. 7. Adag. 88 by Politian in his Mesellanean History. by Pontanus lib. 1. fortunae, p. 57 and by Danaeus in his politic Aphorisms, p. 163, & 204. Much also is attributed to this panic fear by Polybius lib. 5. in fine. in the Macedonian Philipp, weighing up anchor on a sudden, and with hoisted sails flying with his great Navy rigged for Illyria, when he conceited the Roman Navy nigh, which was faroff: And Heroditus, lib. 4. p. 108. shows what it wrought on the Sicilian slaves when their Masters left their swords, and fought with them with such whips as they were wont to lash them with: And much I saw with my eyes in this kind, not only at Melon grange, amongst the Bogs near the water, but chief at the battle at Kilrush, (Kil-rouge, Kil-rebel,) when scarce two thousand Foot and five hundred Horse, led valiantly by the great Ormond, and that thrice worthy Coute, the resolute Scourge Kern, routed nine thousand out of their Trenches of the Irish Rebels, flying as Hares before Hounds, (faster then lately twenty thousand Blue Bonnets before nine thousand True Blades) into Tyrones old Forts, their adjacent Bogs not shaked so much with their Doe-like tripping, as their more boggy hearts shaked by trembling. Deut. 28. Leu. 26.  
A fourth plague which hangs over the head of Tyranny, as the sword of Dionysius once over the head of Damocles, is this, Their Thrones, if Monarches, their Seats, if Magistrates, are so slippery with blood, that they as soon ship out of them (as some Popes by an Italian Fico out of St Peter's poorly pretended and proudly usurped chair,) as every one that hath read Livy and Plinny can till, how the Tarquins were hurried out of Roms; Hippias out of Athens; and the worst of the Dionisians out of Siracusa, to change his Sceptre into a Schoolmasters Ferula: The great Monarchy also of the Chaldeans being translated by Cyrus from the Babylonians to the Persians, after that Balthasar in hunting had slain the son of Gobrias: Others in this nature being related by Melancton in his Chronologies, p. 605, 606.  
The Wrath of God and Man, the justice of Heaven and Earth, do oft so concur, in the cutting them off, in a retaliating vengeance, that pledging at last those Innocents' in that bloody cup they have caused them to quaff, that as it is as rare a thing to see an aged Tyrant, as a black Swan; a selfdenying just-accounting Officer, and unplundering Soldier, and an honest free, loving, liberal-hearted Usurer; so it is as rare to see or hear, that they quietly die in their beds; but to be cut off, as David prophesied, in the Spring or Summer, the beginning or midst of their days, by some tragical and violent Death as seized on Pharaoh, Ahab, Jezabel, Athalia, Adonizebeck, Senacharib, and Herod in the Scripture; on Antiochus, Epimenes, Nicanor, and Holofernes in the Apochrypha: and in Ecclesiastic Hictory on Nero, Decius, Domitian, Caligula, Julian the Apostate, and all the Roman Emperors: In the Pagan, on Attila, Totilas, Gensericus, Theodorick, recorded by Victor and Procopius, in the Arrian; and on john de Roma Minerius: On Gardener, Bonner, Morgan, Friar Alphonsus, with others, in our Papal persecutions: with all the Tragedies of Phocas and Zimri, the murderers of their Masters; of Pompilius the second, and Boleslaus the second, both Kings of Poland: of Hatto the Bishop of Ments, and the cruel King Popiel, both eaten with rats: of Alexander, Phereus', and Francis a Viscount of Milan, baiting men to death in the skins of wild beasts; are extracted and contracted out of Ecclesiastic and secular Authors by Strigellius, lib. 1. dialect. p. 495. by Philip Melancton in locis Manlii, p. 630, 631. By Peucer in his Lectures, anno 1575. die 9 julii; and by Antimatchavil lib. 3. p. 546. chief by the learned Arniseus de Tirannide in exercitio, and by junior Brutus de vindice, which some say now speaks English.  
Sixthly They have lived so little desired, and died so little lamented, that as though they were terrae inutile pondus, such men Monsters, or lutum sanguine commixtum, such clays commixed with blood, that the world might well spare them as a sixth finger; that amongst other honours, some (as Harmodius and Aristogiton) had Statues and Images erected to them for ridding Kingdoms of such sanguinolent bloodsuckers, who have not fed the sheep, but fed and preyed upon the sheep (Ezek. 33.) apud Strigellium, part. 2. locorum, pag. 210. at least they have been opposed, if not deposed, and have had as troublesome reigns as King john, King Steven, Richard the third, and Edward the second here in England, who either out of their own Native Dispositions to Cruelty (born as it were with teeth like Cham and Zoroastres) to by't and devour men in pernitiem humani generis, as was said of Nero to the destruction of men, or their tolerable good natures abused by evil Counsellors (as May, the most pleasing month in the year, is oft embittered, like furious March, by the rising of the Malignant Pliades) if once detected to be Wolves though in sheep's clothing, they have had much ado to live quiet, and peaceable, and sedentary lives, like Tityrus Milibeus Alexis, with their Deus nobis haec otia fecit, but Dirus Daemon haec negotia; their oaten musical pipes have turned into martial pikes, that have not been as Homer terms Agamemnon frugi pastors, good shepherds, pecus tondentes non deglubentes, shearing their sheep by subsisting subsidies, not tearing them by spunging sanguinolencies; Neither is it long fair weather with their weak or wicked Counsellors, but the storms, which they have raised against others, fall oft upon themselves in showers of blood, such as we know fell on the head of Haman the wicked Syrian, counselling Darius to second his powder plot against Mardochens, Esther, and all the Jew, and on Achitophel strangling all his golden hopes from Absalon in his own Halter; the like fate or a worse befalling Doeg whom David so prophetically cursed; on whom Mathesius reflecteth, in Seracidem, c. 4, p. 20. and on one Contaeus, who lived (in disgrace) but one year, as was presaged of him, after he had counselled Charles, the furious Duke of Burgundy, to cut off three hundred Innocents', whom he kept as pledges, contrary to the merciful disswafions of Imbercortus Ambianus, as his bloody baseness, with the end of it, is related by that worthy Comineus in his commented Gests betwixt the French Lewis and that Duke, lib. 2. p. 57.58, 59.61, 66. And what end Steven Gardiner made the cruel Counsellor to Queen Mary, in her quinquennium against all the Protestants, but especially against Queen Elizabeth, I refer you to a foreign Author Michael Beutherus, in his Appendix to Sleidan, lib. 8. p. 87. But however the bad Crounsellors of Princes, making and moulding bloody bolts for them to shoot, may fly away (as the Persians and Irish after they have cast their darts) like Woodcocks in a mist, or a Goldfinch on windy banks, and save themselves for a time: yea may return again into a Kingdom to do more mischief, as Rams going backward, come on with the greater push; raising new Ward and Commotions after their Exiling, Banishments and prescriptions: (as Catiline and Marcus Coriolanus did in Rome; Sertorius in Spain, after his siding with Marius, Dio against Dionysius in Siracusa, with other Exiles, stirring up the like broils in Tigure, Belgia, and elsewhere, in all which, with others, any may be further satisfied by the relation of Pencer in his Cronocle Lectures, anno 1572, die 4. Octob. and by Bodin in his 4 book the rep.. p. 615. and by Antimatchavil, lib. 3. p. 400. and by Polybius lib. 4. p. 336, 337. And he may be informed further, what Firebrands they usually are in kindling new Commotions, by the Verdicts given of them by Patritius de rep, tit. 5. p. 393 Dan●…us in his Political Aphorisms, p. 141. And by Melancton in Cordiali Bucholcheri p. 145. Yet nevertheless what ever become of such in their conversion or confusion; as fiercest winds blow down the sturdiest Oaks, the greatest Cedars of Libanus, and the highest Pines of Ida, the just God copes with cruel Tyrants, the Executioners of bloody Counsels, so fiercely, that the axe of his wrath cuts of both them and their seed, both root and branch, so visibly in most Ages, that its proverbial, Tyrannus non habet tertium heredem, A Tyrant hath scarce a third Heir, nay any Heir at all, more than Dionysius the elder, who left never a successor to the Kingdom of Sicily: or Pisistratus, whose sons Hippias and Hipparchus were exiled and slain, as Strigellius observes lib. 2. Chron. p. 54. and Melancton in many before recited: yea so generally in all, that with him, est propemodum regulare, it's a Rule and a Cannon, Tyrannus expulsos esse de terra, Tyrants to be spewed out of the earth, as Canaan did her Inhabitants; yea purged out as the Sea her froth to the shore: or as new wines work out injected poisons: in Postillis part. 4. p. 551, & 577. As a Warning piece shot off to our truculent, unjust, and tyrannical Times, where in peace, and mildeness, and Mercy, each of them like the Poets Astraea, terras reliquit, hath left the earth, and with love, justice and conscience, are fled to Heaven to complain their worse than Tom D●●ms entertainment here below, as a Monitor to every bloody Nimrodian hunter in our worst of Wars, like Cynthius, aurem vellens, pulling him by the sleeve, and whispering, in me inetuens pius esto. 
Look upon me, believe my Creeds,  
Blood calls for blood, such crops, such seeds.   
On the contrary, I believe with the same Melancton, That, Moderati, boni & benifici princepes habent diucturniorem & tranquilliorem gubernationem, Mild, moderate, good and benign Princes (as he instances n Augustus Caesar p. 551. and in Frederick the Duke of Saxony, p. 553. And we may instance in our late English Deborah, Spencer's Eliza, and our far famed late Platonical rex Pacificus,) have their Governments both more calm and peaceable, and more firm and fixed; yea as a corrola●y to this Article of my moral Creed, in an Historical faith. I believe, that humility, modesty, moderation and clemency in a Conqueror, makes him a constant and a more perpetual Conqueror by love, than Caesar was a dictator by power; yea since fortius est qui se, quam qui fortissima vincit, as it is the greatest Conquest for a Conqueror to conquer himself (as the best study to study men and himself) to conquer his irascible passions which Alexander could not: and his concupiscible which Hercules could not do, so vassalized by his jowl, his Omphale, his Deianira, to him, Dei Ira; that the Poet scoffs him with his Laenam non potuit, potuit superare leaenam. 
He Gacus Cerberus and Hydra slew:  
Lions, not Lusts and Drabs he could subdue.   
This moderate and clement temper in a Conqueror, thinks Danaeus, in his political Aphorisms, p. 123, 135, 177. in many expressions, hath such an Adamantine and attractive force upon the hearts of men, that it makes way and breaks the Ice still to further Trophies and Honours, both in Wars and in Peace: as there was nothing that more dignified Caesar then the pardoning of Tully and others, who sided with Pompey, in weeping over Pompey's head, in warring with Ptolemy his viperous friend, who had betrayed him, and in jugulating Achilles Photinus who had beheaded him: Caesar dando sublovando gloriam adeptus est: his bounty in giving to his Commilitones, his fellow Soldiers, leaving (like that Pelean youth) little to himself but hope, and his clemency in forgiving joined to his prowess, as a pearl in gold, so honoured him, even among his enemies: So what dignified Alexander more than all his desired Persian Honours (in aiming follishly to be deified,) but in using King Porus his captive Regaliter so regally: the Mother and Daughter of Darius so chastely and honourably: in revenging so justly and nobly the base assassinating of the great Darius his enemy on Bassa, and his confederate murderers: in sparing the besieging and sacking of Jerusalem, upon the reverend regard he had to jaddus the high Priest: As full relation as made of all these by Plutark, and Curtius in his life; and also of some of them by Patritius, lib. 8. de regno, tit. 12. p. 528. and of the last by josephus lib. 11. So what more ingratiated David in the hearts of his people, then in burying Abner his whilom enemy, not with the burial of an Ass, like jehoakim, but honourably, 2 Sam. in making his encomiastic and Funeral Sermon over his grave: In revenging his death, as well as Amasaes, on the bloody head of Joab: In pardoning reviling Semei, though a blatrant beast, yet sparing him as a noble Lion, when he was prostrate before him 2 Sam. 16. Oh that these precedents and thousand more, sacred and secular, might preach now to us Acts of Oblivion of Injuries writ in dust and Friendships in brass, for a firm and cordial peace; never to break out as wounds skinned over, rankling at the bone.   
FINIS.