Kaina kai palaia Things new and old, or, A store-house of similies, sentences, allegories, apophthegms, adagies, apologues, divine, morall, politicall, &c. : with their severall applications / collected and observed from the writings and sayings of the learned in all ages to this present by John Spencer ...

[ 469] The great danger of security in times of danger.

DIodorus Siculus writeth,* 1.1 that in Aethiopia there is a people of that quality, that they are not at all moved with the speech of them who sayl by them, or with the sight of strangers approaching to them, but onely looking upon the earth, they use to stand unmoveable, as if their senses took knowledge of no man; If any, saith he, should strike them with a drawn sword, they fly not, but bear the blows; nei∣ther is any of them moved with the vvounds or hurts of another,* 1.2 but oftentimes they behold their Wives and Children slain before their faces vvithout any re∣luctancy at all; An insensible sort of people surely they are, if any such there be which hardly can be believed; yet are not vve the same? Many years last past, the sword hath been glutted vvith eating of flesh, and drinking of German blood,

and what the sword left, famine seized on; Which of us vvere then affected with those things, or remembred Joseph in those his sad affictions? Who did think that his part was in that Tragedy, his share in that bargain, or that ever that cup should come to him to tast on; but so it is, that we who were then idle spectators, are now made sad Actors; we that were like so many Gallioes, as it were, men caring not for those things, as men unconcerned, are now encompassed on all sides, and ripe for destruction, if God in mercy prevent not.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Antiquitat. lib. 43.
• * 1.2

  Geo. Abbot. Cant. lect. on Ionah.