The Lord, the God of Gods, the world doth call,
Euen from the sunn's vprisinge to his fall;
From out of SION doth the Lord appeare,
And shewes the brightnes of His beauty cleare.
In trihumph, not in silence come shall Hee,
His vsher fire, His guard a storme shall bee.
Hee by His summons heauen and earth will call,
That Hee [may][237] judge at once his creatures all.
To Mee, saith Hee, let all My saints repaire,
Which worshipp Mee with sacrifice and prayer;
God's justice shall from heauen declarèd bee,
For Who is judge of all the world but Hee?
Harke ISRAELL! I am Thy God, giue eare;
I will against thee speake and witnes beare.
Not for the dailie taske of sacrifice,
Or that burnt-offerings shine not in Mine eyes:
I want them not, nor will I take at all,
Goat from thy fould or bullocke from thy stall;
All beasts are Mine within the forrest wide,
And cattle on a thousand hills beside;
I knowe all fowles which in the aire doe fly,
And see all beasts which in the feild doe lye.
If I were hungrie would I begg of thee,
When all things in the world belong to Mee?
Art thou O man, soe simple as to thinke
That bulls' flesh is My meat, goats' blood My drinke?[238]
[Footnote 236: The MS. begins here with 'and': but is struck out. G.]
[Footnote 237: I have filled in 'may' as evidently overlooked, and as
it is the word of the prose version: a later hand has written 'will'
and another 'for' in the place of 'That.' G.]
[Footnote 238: The Manuscript thus far is in one handwriting: and since
the prefatory Note to these Psalms was written, I have discovered
among the Harleian MSS. a very remarkable document by Sir John Davies,
viz. his "Plea spoken at the Bar of the House of Lords" on "the King's
power to impose Ship-money," (126. B 10-4266) and it is _identically
the same holograph with that of these Fifty Psalms_, presenting
precisely the same forms and contractions throughout. So that the
Scribe of the one must have been the Scribe of the other: no doubt
one of Sir John's Secretaries or 'men,' as he himself calls them. I
shall give above important historical Paper--which never has been
published, or even referred to, so far as I am aware--in my edition
of DAVIES' Prose Works. Meanwhile I need not point out how
valuable is this additional verification of the Davies authorship of
our Manuscript--that is in so far as the Psalms up to L. are concerned.
I stand in doubt of his authorship of the remainder; but see our
Memorial-Introduction on this.
The Psalms that follow have interposed a half-page and one leaf, blank,
and another leaf, filled with the secular Poems that succeed them: but
it was deemed better to place all the Psalms together. These other
Psalms have the same orthography: but the hand-writing is different
and plainer. It will be noticed that Psalm L. _supra_, is
imperfect, extending only to v. 13. G.]