XL. One of the most common effects of infamous policy, is, the author’s
own maxims being often turned upon, and brought to militate against
himself. Jeroboam, when the kingdom of Israel was divided, having made
himself master of the ten tribes, spun, as it appeared to him, a most
exquisite fine thread of policy; for observing, that from a religious
motive, the hearts of his subjects were attached to the Temple of
Jerusalem; and that, if he could not separate them from the Jews in
point of worship, he was not secure in the possession of his portion of
the empire; he raised two idols, and insisted the ten tribes should
worship them, forsaking the true God, who was worshiped in the Temple
of Jerusalem; but this keen piece of policy, as we read in the Book
of Kings, was the very cause, which deprived his posterity of the
succession to the crown; his son Nadab in consequence of it, having
lost the kingdom and his life by the hands of the rebellious General
Baassa. In the death which the Jews inflicted on our Saviour, they
pretended, that political precaution made it necessary they should
deprive him of life, for otherwise, the Romans would demolish them for
having acknowledged any other King but Cæsar; but for their having
carried this cursed maxim into execution, heaven ordained as their
punishment, that these very Romans, should afterwards be the people to
destroy them.
XLI. Thus Providence disposes, that the very same means which
Machiavilian politicians apply for their exaltation, or their security,
become the instruments of their destruction. Haman, is hang’d on the
same gallows, which he prepared for Mordecai. Perillus, is burnt in the
same brazen ox, which he fabricated to indulge the cruelty of Phalaris.
Callipus, tyrant of Sicily, has his throat cut by the same knife, with
which he took away the life of the generous Dion. Isaac Aaron, a Greek
by nation, whose eyes were put out by order of the Emperor Emanuel
Comenus, as a punishment for his evil deeds, afterwards advised the
usurper Andronicus, not only to put out the eyes of his enemies, but
to cut their tongues out also; because, that after being deprived of
their sight, they could do mischief with their tongues. The Emperor
Isaac Angelo, succeeded Andronicus, and ordered, that the tongue of
the infamous counsellor who had before lost his eyes, should be cut
out likewise. Perrin, Captain General of Geneva, the great persecutor
of the Catholics, when in the year 1535, that republic changed their
religion, caused the stone of the great altar in the Cathedral to
be transported to the place of execution, that it might serve as a
scaffold to dispatch delinquents on; and father Maimburgus, in his
History of Calvinism, tells us, that the blood of Perrin, who was
beheaded for his crimes, was the first which stained the stone. Thomas
Cromwell, whom Henry the Eighth, when he erected himself into head of
the English church, constituted his supreme vicar in all ecclesiastical
matters, was a man extremely false, cruel, and avaricious. To furnish
pretences for persecuting the ecclesiastics, that he might enrich
himself with their spoils, he prevailed on Henry to make that most
iniquitous law, that sentences of death, and confiscations, pronounced
on people for high treason, should be good and valid, although they
had not been heard in their defence; but Cromwell himself, was the
first man this law was put in practice against; Henry having caused
him to be beheaded, without his being heard or permitted to make any
defence:
_--------Nec lex est æquior illa,_
_Ut necis artifices arte perirent sua._
XLII. Finally, and to sum up the whole, if we search history, we shall
hardly find one among a thousand of those politicians, who have sought
to exalt themselves by means of wicked arts and practices, that have
not come to an unhappy end. Thus it has ever been till this time, and
so it will ever continue to be from henceforward. What blindness then
is it, to persevere in following a path, by pursuing which, you can
only by a miracle of chance avoid a precipice? What can this be but
delirium, the infallible symptom of the fever of ambition? which is
a flame that cannot burn with violence in any man, without his being
affected with a phrensy of the brain.