First then, be pleased to look North-wards upon your Brethren the Scots, who (being first instigated by that crafty Cardinal Richlieu to disturb the groth of the incomparable Church of England, and so consequently the tranquility of a Nation, whose expedition at the Isle of Ree, gave terrour to the French) made Reformation their pretence, to gratifie their own avarice, introduce themselves, and a more then Babylonish Tyranny, imposing upon the Church and state, beyond all impudence or example. I say, look upon what they have gotten, by deceiving their Brethren, selling their King, betraying his Son, and by all their perfidie; but a slavery more then Egyptian, and an infamy as unparallel’d, as their treason and ingratitude.
Look neerer home on those whom they had ingaged amongst us here, & tell me if there be a Person of them left, that can shew me his prize, unless it be that of his Sacriledg, which he, or his Nephews must certainly vomite up again: What is become of this ignorant and furious zeal, this pretence of an universall perfection in the Religious and the Secular, after all that Blood and Treasure, Rapine and Injustice, which has been exhausted, and perpetrated by these Sons of Thunder? Where is the King, whom they swear to make so glorious, but meant it in his Martyrdome? Where is the Classis, and the Assembly, the Lay-elder; all that geare of Scottish discipline, and the fine new Trinkets of Reformation? Were not all these taken out of their hand, while now they were in the height of their pride and triumph? And their dull Generall made to serve the execution of their Sovereign, and then to be turn’d off himself, as a property no more of use to their designes? Their riches and their strength in which they trusted, and the Parliament which they even idoliz’d, in sum, the prey they had contended for at the expence of so much sin and damnation, seizd upon by those very instruments, which they had rais’d to serve their insatiable avarice, and prodigious disloyalty. For so it pleased God to chastise their implacable persecution of an excellent Prince, with a slavery under such a Tyrant, as not being contented to butcher even some upon the Scaffold, sold divers of them for slaves, and others he exild into cruell banishment, without pretence of Law, or the least commiseration; that those who before had no mercy on others, might find none themselves; till upon some hope of their repentance, and future moderation, it pleased God to put his hook into the nostrills of that proud Leviathan, and send him to his place, after he had thus mortified the fury of the Presbyterians. For unlesse God himself should utter his voice from Heaven, yea, and that a mighty voice, can there any thing in the world be more evident, then his indignation at those wretches and barefac’t Impostors, who, one after another, usurped upon us, taking them off at the very point of aspiring, and præcipitating the glory and ambition of these men, before those that were, but now, their adorers, and that had prostituted their consciences to serve their lusts? To call him the Moses, the Man of God, the Joshua, the Saviour of Israel; and after all this, to treat the Thing his son with addresses no lesse then blasphemous, whose Father (as themselves confess to be the most infamous Hypocrite and profligate Atheist of all the Usurpers that ever any age produc’d) had made them his Vassalls, and would have intaild them so to his posterity for ever?
But behold the scean is again changed, not by the Royall party, the Common Enemy, or a forreign power; but by the despicable Rumpe of a Parliament, which that Mountebanke had formerly serv’d himself of, and had rais’d him to that pitch, and investiture: But see withall, how soon these triflers and puppets of policy are blown away, with all their pack of modells and childish Chimæras, nothing remaining of them but their Coffine, guarded by the Souldiers at Westminster; but which is yet lesse empty then the heads of those Polititians, which so lately seemed to fill it.
For the rest, I despise to blot paper with a recitall of those wretched Interludes, Farces and Fantasms, which appear’d in the severall intervalls; because they were nothing but the effects of an extream gyddiness, and unparallel’d levity. Yet these are those various despensations and providences in your journey to that holy land of purchases and profits, to which you have from time to time appeal’d for the justification of your proceedings, whilst they were, indeed, no other then the manifest judgments of God upon your rebellion and your ambition: I say nothing of your hypocriticall fasts, and pretended humiliations, previous to the succeeding plots, and supposititious Revelations, that the godly might fall into the hands of your Captains, because they were bugbears, and became ridiculous even to the common people.
And now Sr. if you please, let us begin to set down the product and survey the successe of your party and after all these faces and vertigo’s tell me ingenuously, if the single chastisment which is fallen upon one afflicted man, and his loyall subjects, distressed by the common event of war, want of treasure, the seizure of his Fleet, forcing him from his City, and all the disadvantages that a perfidious people could imagine; but in fine the crowning him with a glorious Martyrdome for the Church of God and the liberty of his people (for which his blood doth yet cry aloud for vengeance) be comparable to the confusion which you (that have been the conquerours) have suffered, and the slavery which you are like to leave to the posterities which will be born but to curse you, and to groan under the pressures which you bequeath to your own flesh & blood? For to what a condition you have already reduced this once flourishing kingdom, since all has been your own, let the intolerable oppressions, taxes, Excises, sequestrations confiscations, plunders, customes, decimations, not to mention the plate, even to very thimbles and the bodkins (for even to these did your avarice descend) and other booties, speak. All this dissipated and squandred away, to gratifie a few covetous and ambitious wretches, whose appetites are as deep as hell, and as insatiable as the grave; as if (as the Wise-man speaks) our time here were but a market for gain.
Look then into the Churches, and manners of the people, even amongst your own Saints, and tell me, if since Simon Magus was upon the earth, there were ever heard of so many Schismes, and Heresies, of Jewes and Socinians, Quakers, Fifth-monarchy-men, Arians, Anabaptists, Independents, and a thousand severall forts of Blasphemies and professed Atheists, all of them spawned under your government; and then tell me what a Reformation of Religion you have effected?
Was there ever in the whole Earth (not to mention Christendom alone) a perjury so prodigious, and yet so avowed as that by which you have taken away the estate of my L. Craven, at which the very Infidels would blush, a Turke or Sythian stand amaz’d?
Under the Sun was it never heard, that a man should be condemned for transgressing no law, but that which was made after the fact, and abrogated after execution; that the Posterities to come might not be witnesses of your horrid injustice: Yet thus you proceeded against my L. Stafford. How many are those gallant persons whom after articles of war, you have butchered in cold-blood, violating your promises against the Lawes of all Nations, civill or barbarous; and yet thus you dealt in the case of my L. Capel, Sr. J. Stawel and others.
Is not the whole nation become sullen and proud, ignorant and suspicious, incharitable, curst, and in fine, the most depraved and perfidious under heaven? And whence does all this proceed, but from the effects of your own examples, and the impunity of evill doers?
I need not tell you how long Justice has been sold by the Committees, and the Chair-men, the Sequestrators and Simoniacall Tryers, not to mention the late Courtiers, and a swarm of Publicans who have eaten up the People as if they would eat bread.