And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
Ver. 12. And all nations shall call you blessed] viz. For the abundance of outward comforts and commodities, by the which the nations measured man's happiness, saying, "Blessed is the people that is in such a case," Psalms 144:15. Cyprus was for this cause anciently called Macaria, that is, the blessed country, as having a sufficiency of all things within itself; and England was called Regnum Dei, the kingdom of God, or the Fortunate island, and Englishmen Deires, as that were set safe, de ira Dei, from the wrath of God. In the time of Pope Clement VI (as Robert of Avesbury testifieth), when Lewis of Spain was chosen prince of the Fortunate Islands, and for the conquest thereof was to raise an army in France and Italy; the English agent at Rome, together with his company, departed and got home, as conceiving that the prince was bound for England, than the which they thought there was not a more fortunate island in the world. Of the island of Lycia, Solinus saith that all the day long the sky is never cloudy but that the sun may be seen there, Lyciam Horatius claram dicit. Semper in sole sita est Rhodes, The Rhodes is ever in the sunshine, saith Aeneas Sylvius. And of Alexandria in Egypt, Ammianus Marcellinus observeth, that once in the day the sun hath been seen to shine over it. I confess the same cannot be said of England. I remember also what I have read of a certain Frenchman, who returning home out of England, and being asked by a countryman of his that was bound for England, what service he would command him into this country? Nothing but this, said the other; when you see the sun have me commended to him; for I have been there two months and could never see him in all that time: Per duos enim menses quibus ibi fui, Solem mihi videre non licuit (Garincieres de tabe Anglica, p. 84). Likely he was here in the deep of winter. For at summer solstice Tacitus, in the Life of Agricola, hath observed that the sun shineth continually in Brittany, and neither setteth nor riseth there; but passeth so lightly by us by night that you can scarce say we have any night at all, Ut finem atque initium lucis exiguo discrimine internoscas. But if we speak of the sunshine of God's grace and favour, either for spirituals or temporals, as Delos is said by Solinus to have been the first country that had the sun shining upon it after the general deluge, and there hence to have had its name, Nomenque ex eo sortitam (Polyb. c. 17), so was England one of the first islands that both received Christ and that shook off Antichrist. And for temporal blessings, all nations shall call us blessed, and count us a delightsome land indeed, a land of desires, such as all men would desire to dwell in, for the exceeding fruitfulness and pleasantness of it; it being the court of Queen Ceres, the granary of the Western world, as foreign writers have termed it, the paradise of pleasure and garden of God, as our own chronicler. The truth is, we may well say of England, as the Italians do of Venice, by way of proverb: He that hath not seen it cannot believe what a dainty place it is, and he that hath not lived there some good time cannot understand the worth of it. Our Mr Ascham, schoolmaster to Queen Elizabeth, had lived there some time, and had soon enough of it; for though he admired the place, he utterly disliked the people for their loose living. And the like, alas, may be too truly affirmed of us. We live in God's good land, but not by God's good laws; we eat the fat and drink the sweet, but we sanctify not the Lord God in our hearts, we live not as becometh Christians. Our hearts, like our climate, have much more light than heat, light of knowledge than heat of zeal; our lukewarmness is like to be our bane, our sins our snuffs, that dim our candlestick, and threaten the removal of it. O si fiat id in nobis (saith one) quod in sole videtur, qui quibus affulserit, iis etiam calorem et colorem impertire solet! Oh that the Sun of righteousness would so shine upon us, as to warm us, and transform us into the same image from glory to glory, as by his Spirit! Oh that he would set up his own kingdom here more and more among us! Then should we be more happy than the Israelites were under the reign of King Solomon, or the Spaniards under their Ferdinand III, who reigned thirty-five years, in all which time there was neither famine nor pestilence in the land.