I. ALL AFORE.

A DEAR friend of mine (now I hope with God) was much troubled with an impertinent and importunate fellow, desirous to tell him his fortune. For things to come, said my friend, I desire not to know them, but am contented to attend Divine Providence; tell me, if you can, some remarkable passages of my life past. But the cunning man was nothing for the preter tense (where his falsehood might be discovered), but all for the future, counting himself therein without the reach of confutation.

There are in our age a generation of people, who are the best of prophets and worst of historians; Daniel and the Revelation are as easy to them as the ten commandments and the Lord’s prayer: they pretend exactly to know the time of Christ’s actual reign on earth, of the ruin of 239the Romish Antichrist, yea, of the day of judgment itself.

But these oracles are struck quite dumb, if demanded anything concerning the time past; about the coming of the children of Israel out of Egypt and Babylon, the original increase and ruin of the four monarchies; of these and the like they can give no more account than the child in the cradle. They are all for things to come, but have gotten (through a great cold of ignorance) such a crick in their neck, they cannot look backward on what was behind them.