Nevv epistles of Mounsieur de Balzac. Translated out of French into English, by Sr. Richard Baker Knight. Being the second and third volumes

To Mounsieur the Master Advocate in the Par∣liament. LETTER. XXXVIII.

SIR, I have too great a care of your reputa∣tion, to seeke to have you be found a liar. It shall not lie upon mee, that you be not a man of your word; and that your friend is not contented; and seeing it is expected to see this present day what I have written of his compa∣nie; It is not fit to put off till to morrow the effect of your promise: or that hee should lan∣guish in the expectation of so small a thing. It is true my Booke is not here, and my memory is not now so faithfull, that I dare trust it to deliver that I gave it to keepe: yet I conceive after I have stined it up in your name, which is so deare unto me, I shall finde enough to satis∣fie your desire, and receive from it this good office. I seeme therefore to remember I said, that after so many yeares, that the Christian Muses have beene in France: hee is the onely man hath entertained them with honour; and hath built a Pallace for this soveraigne science to which all other are subject and inferiour. He hath drawne her out of an obscure and close mansion, where like the poore Socrates she discoursed in prison of the supreme felicity, to place her in a seate worthy of her, and to set

up a stately and sumptuous race for the exercise of her children. From hence wee may appre∣hend the dignitie and merit of our Sorbone: for which a man the fullest of businesse in all the world, hath yet had so particular a care amidst the most violent agitation of his thoughts, that the designe of the house hee crects for her, hath found place in his breast, amidst the Forts and Rampires of Rochell. If our predecessors the Gaules next to their gods, gave the second place of honour to their Druides, who shewed them but a dimme and confused light of the state of our soules after this life; what respect then, what reverence can be too great for those venerable Fathers, who teach us by a knowledge most infallible; what the chiefe and supreme good is; who dis∣cover to us in certainty, the things that are a∣bove the heavens, who make us true relation of that admirable commonwealth of happie citizens that live without bodies, and are im∣materiall; and who deliver to us the wounders of the intellectuall world, more pertinently and more directly, than wee relate to blinde men the ornaments of this visible world. With them are had the springs of pure D•…•…ctrine; where with others, but onely Brookes and Streames; with them are had resolutions of all doubts, remedies for all poysons: with them Time wrongs not antiquitie; nor doth old age either neede painting, or feare tainting: with them this sixteenth age of the world, behold Christianity preserved and kept in its first

lustre. Seing the memory of the most part of the Romane Lords is perished together with their Baths, their Aqueducts, their Races, their Am∣phitheaters; whereof the very ruines are them∣selves ruined and lost; I find that M. the Cardi∣nall understands more than ever they did, and goes a straighter way to eternity, travelling in a place where his travell can never perish & lea∣ving the care of his name to a company that of necessitie shall be immortall, and shall speake of his magnificence as long as there shall be spea∣king of Sinne and Grace, of good and evill Angells, of the paines and rewards of the life to come. I assure my selfe I have not spoken too much; and I thinke I could not have spo∣ken lesse: it is lawfull for us to set a price upon our owne; and if an antient writer said, that more worthy men came forth of Isocrates Schoole; then out of the Trojan Horse: why may not we say as much of Albertus Magnus, and of Saint Thomas? Me thinks I know not how to speake to our countrimen, but of the Lycaeum and of the Academy: and it is now five and twenty yeares that I have beaten my braines about the Gymnosophists the Brach∣manes and the Rabbins: but when all is done, wee should remember that wee are Chri∣stians; and that we have Philosophers that are nearer to us, and ought to be dearer to us then all they. I am glad occasion hath beene offered me to put my opinion hereof in writing; and thereupon to let you know I make no myste∣rie of my writings; and specially with you, to

whom I have opened my very heart; and whose I am wholly without reservation,

Sir,

Most humbly, &c.

At Paris. 4. July. 1633.