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THE UNIVERSAL REFORMATION. 47
cause mankind hath so shamefully abandoned those holy
laws which God gave them to observe when he bestowed
the whole world upon them for a habitation ; nor did he
place the French in France, the Spaniards in Spain, the
Dutch in Germany, and bound up the fowl fiend in hell for
any other reason but the advantage of that general peace
which he desired might be observed throughout the whole
world. But avarice and ambition (spurs .which have
alwaies egged on men to greatest wickedness), causing
nations to pass into other men's countries, have caused
these evils which we endeavour to amend. If it be true,
as we all confess it is, that God hath done nothing in vain,
wherefore, think you, hath His Divine Majesty placed the
inaccessible Pyrenean mountains between the Spaniards
and Italians, the rocky Alpes between the Italians and
Germans, the dreadful English Channel between the French
and English, the Mediterranean Sea between Africa and
Europe ? Why hath he made the infinite spacious rivers
of Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, and the rest, save only that
people might be content to live in their own countries by
reason of the difficulties of fords and passages ? And the
Divine Wisdom, knowing that the harmony
of universal
peace would be out of tune, and that the world would be
filled with incurable diseases, if men should exceed their
allotted bounds, added the multitude and variety of lan-
guages to all the fore-mentioned impediments, without
which all men would speak the same tongue, as all
creatures of the same species sing, bark, or bray after
one and the same manner. 'Tis then man's boldness in
bearing through mountains, passing over the broadest and
most rapid rivers, arid even manifestly and rashly hazard-
ing himself and all his substance by crossing the largest