CHAPTER X

OF THE NECESSITY FOR THIS HISTORY, AND ITS VALUE IN A MORAL POINT OF VIEW

HOWEVER, hard as it is to speak worthily of this blessed character, and though silence were the safer and less perilous course, nevertheless it is incumbent on me, if I would escape the charge of negligence and sloth, to trace as it were a verbal portraiture, by way of memorial of the pious prince, in imitation of the delineations of human art. For I should be ashamed of myself were I not to employ my best efforts (feeble though they be and of little value), in praise of one who honoured God with such surpassing devotion. I think too that my work will be on other grounds both instructive and necessary, since it will contain a description of those royal and noble actions of which God, the universal Sovereign, is pleased to approve. For surely it would be disgraceful that the memory of Nero, and other wicked and impious tyrants far worse than he, should meet with diligent writers to embellish the relation of their worthless deeds with elegant language, and record them in voluminous histories, and that I should be silent, to whom God Himself has vouchsafed such an emperor as all history records not, and has permitted me to come into his presence, and enjoy his acquaintance and familiar intimacy.