Historical and Political Notes on the Life of Oliver Cromwell

as to attribute the decrees of the fates to chance, or to compare them to a river flowing proudly with received rains and laying waste to everything in its path; and just as its force can be restrained by valleys and dikes, so men can resist the fates by prudence, and rivers are only strong in open fields, and fates only urge peoples who are destitute of virtue and counsel. But I embrace the middle and Royal way of these extremes: divine permission. For since this is the sum of Divine judgment, that it either punishes, or chastises, or rewards, under which the anxious fear of mortals, or the trust of those imploring mercy, and minds erected to either just or unjust hope are contained: in the first two, GOD permits that the worst sometimes insult those whom Divine Nemesis has either handed over to be punished or has decreed to be tried thoroughly under the anvil of afflictions, or has decreed that His own most beloved be chastised. All victory is from GOD, but in a very different respect. GOD has granted victories against His own elect people to the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and nations known for nothing but vices; He sent the Turks and Tartars against His Church until either the sword of Divine Justice raged or the chastising rod was restrained by the repentance of His own. But who will attribute to infidels either piety or the love of GOD from that? Certainly, divine lashes will eventually be burned with unquenchable fire, and the Divine long-suffering that winks at sin will compensate for the slowness of punishment with most severe atrocity. But lest I wander beyond the olive trees and put my own sickle into the harvest of the Theologians, I assert at least this: one will not deserve praise for his predestination, any more than if some politician wishes to pass judgment from the event and thereby estimate the mind and the Justice of the cause of princes and peoples colliding with one another. For while the fates sin, the councils of men fail, and when they lay a hand on those same things, the senses of men are wont to be dulled and blunted.

The outcome proves the deeds, I wish that he may lack success
Whoever thinks that facts are to be noted from the event. A quotation from Ovid, Heroides 2.85.

To §. 5.

I do not quite grasp what the author intends here and of what conjunction he speaks. For a long time now, those three nations, the English, the Scots, and the Irish original: "Hyberni",