XIV. RECOVERED.

TYRANNUS was a good word at first, importing no more than a king; the pride and cruelty of some made the word to bear ill, as it doth in the modern acceptation thereof.

Providence, as good a word as any in divinity, hath suffered so much in the modern abusing thereof, that conscientious people begin to loathe and hate it. For God’s providence hath been alleged against God’s precepts. King’s bare word was never in our land produced against his broad seal. Yet success (an argument borrowed from the Turks) hath been pleaded as the voice of God’s approbation against his positive and express will in his word.

But God hath been pleased to vindicate his own honour, and to assert the credit of providence, which is now become a good word again. If impulsive providence (a new-coined phrase) hath given the late army their greatness, expulsive providence (a newer phrase) hath given them their smallness: being now set by, laid aside as useless; and not set by, so far from terrifying of any, by few they are regarded.