Will you come now to the particular mis-fortunes, and the evident hand of God upon you for these actions (for he has not altogether left us without some expresse witnesses of his displeasure at your doings,) Behold then your Essex and your Warwick, your Ferfaix, and your Waller, (whom once your Books stiled the Lord of Hosts) Cashiered, Imprisoned, Suspected and Disgraced after all their Services. Hotham, and his Son came to the block; Stapleton had the buriall of an Asse, and was thrown into a Town Ditch; Brookes and Hamden signally slain in the very act of Rebellion and Sacriledge; your atheisticall Dorislaw, Ascam and the Sodomiticall Ariba, whom though they escaped the hand of Justice, yet Vengeance would not suffer to live: What became of Rainsborough? Ireton perished of the Plague, and Hoyle hanged himself; Staplie ’tis said, died mad, and Cromwell in a fit of raging; and if there were any others worthy the taking notice of, I should give you a list of their names and of their destinies; but it was not known whence they came which succeeded them; nor had they left any memory behind them, but for their signal wickednesses, as he that set on fire the Ephesian Temple to be recorded a Villain to posterity. Whereas those noble souls whom your inhumanity, (not your vertue) betrayed, gave proof of their extraction, Innocency, Religion and Constancy under all their Tryals and Tormentors; and those that dyed by the sword, fell in the bed of honour, and did worthily for their Country; their Loyalty and their Religion will be renowned in the History of Ages, and pretious to their memory, when your names will rot with your Carkasses, and your remembrance be as dung upon the face of the Earth. For there is already no place of Europe where your infamy is not spread; whilst your persecuted brethren rejoyce in their sufferings, can abound, and can want, blush not at their actions, nor are ashamed at their addresses; because they have suffered for that which their Faith and their Birth, their Lawes and their Liberties have celebrated with the most glorious Inscriptions, and Everlasting Elogies.
And if fresher instances of all these particulars be required, cast your eye a little upon the Armies pretended Plea, which came lately a birding to beat the way before them, charm the ears of the Vulgar, and captivate the people; That after all its pseudo-politicks and irreligious principles, is at last constrained to acknowledg your open and prodigious violations, strange and illegal Actions, (as in termes it confesses) of taking up Armes, Raising and Forming Armies against the King, fighting against his Person, Imprisoning, Impeaching, Arraigning, Trying and Executing Him: Banishing his Children, abolishing Bishops, Deans and Chapters; taking away Kingly Government, and the House of Lords, breaking the Crowns, selling the Jewells, Plate, Goods, Houses and Lands belonging unto the Kings of this Nation, erecting extraordinary High Courts of Justice, and therein Impeaching, Arraigning, condemning, and Executing many pretended notorious Enemies, to the publick Peace; when the Lawes in being, and the Ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them: By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and not at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes, But by certain diabolical principles of late distilled into some person of the Army, and which he would entitle to the whole, who (abating some of their Commanders, that have sucked the sweet of this Doctrine) had them never so much as entred into their thoughts, nor could they be so depraved, though they were Masters only of the Light of Nature to direct them. For Common sence will tell them, that whoever are our lawful Superiours, and invested with the supreame Authority, either by their own vertue, or the peoples due Election, have then a just right to challenge submission to their precepts, and that we acquiesce in their determinations; since there is in nature no other expedient to preserve us from everlasting confusion: But it is the height of all impertinency to conceive, that those which are a part of themselves, and can in so great a Body, have no other interests, should (without the manifest hand of God were in it to infatuate all your proceedings) fall into such exorbitant contradiction to their own good, as a child of four years old would not be guilty of; and as this Pamphleter wildly suggests in pp. 6. 11. 27, &c. did they steer their course by the known laws of the Land, and as obedient Subjects should do, who without the King and his Peers, are but the Carkass of a Parliament, as destitute of the Soul which should inform and give it being. And if so small a handful of men as appeared in the Palace-Yard, without consent of a quarter of the English Army, much lesse the tenthousand’th part of the Free-people that are not clad in red, shall disturb and alter your Government when it thinks fit to set aside a few imperious Officers, who plainly seek themselves, and derive their Commissions from superiours to whom they swear obedience; how can you ever hope, or live to see any government established in these miserably abused Nations? Behold then with how weak a party you are vanquish’d, even by those very instruments you had so long flatter’d with the title of the Free-people; imputing all the direful effects of your depraved principles to their desires, when as I dare report my self to the ingenuity of the very Souldiers themselves, if they, who have effected all these changes by your wretched instigations, and blind pretences, imagine themselves the People of this Nation, but [are] a very small portion of them, compared to the whole, and who are maintained by them to recover, and protect the Civill Government, according to the Good old Lawes of the Land; not such as they themselves shall invent from Day to Day, or as the interests of some few persons may engage them.
But if the essential end of Rulers be the Common peace, and their Lawes obliging as they become relative: Restore us then to those under which we lived with so much sweetness and tranquility, as no age in the World, no Government under Heaven could ever pretend the like. And if the People (as you declare) are to be the Judges of it, summon them together in a Free Parliament, according to its legal Constitution; or make a universal Balott, and then let it appear, if Collonel Lambert and half a dozen Officers, with all their seduced Partizans, make so much as a single Cypher to the Summe Total. And this shall be enough to answer those devious Principles set down in the porch of that specious Edifice; which being erected upon the Sand, will (like the rest that has been daubed with untempered mortar) sink also at the next high wind that blowes upon it. But I am glad it is at last avowed, upon what pretexts that late pretended Parliament have pleaded on the behalf of themselves and party, their discharge from all the former Protestations, Engagements, solemn Vowes, Covenants, with hands (as you say) lift up to the most high God, as also their Oaths and Allegiance, &c. because I shall not in this discourse be charged with slandering of them, and that the whole World may detest the Actions of such perfidious Infidels, with whom nothing sacred has remain’d inviolable.
But there is yet a piece of Artifice behind, of no less consequence then the former, and that is, a seeking to perswade the present Army, that They were the men, who first engaged thus solemnly to destroy the Government under which they were born, and reduce it to this miserable condition: whereas it is well known by such as converse daily with them, that there is hardly one of ten amongst them, who was then in Armes; and that it was the Zelots under Essex, and the succeeding Generals, who were the persons whose [perfidiousness] he makes so much use of, and that the present Army consists of a far more ingenuous spirit, and might in one moment vindicate this aspersion, make their conditions with all advantage, and these Nations the most happy People upon the Earth, as it cannot be despaired but they will one day do, when by the goodness of Almighty God, they shall perfectly discern through the mist which you have cast upon their eyes, lest they should discover the Imposture of these Egyptian Sorcerers.
And now, Sir, if after all this injustice, and impiety on your parts, you have prosecuted that with the extreamest madness, which you esteemed criminal in your enemies, viz. To arrogate the supream power in a single [person;] condemn men without Law; execute, and proscribe them with as little: Imprest for your Service, violate your Parliaments, dispense with your solemn Oaths; in summe, to mingle Earth and Heaven by your arbitrary proceedings: All which, not only your printed books, this pretended plea; but your Actions have abundantly declared; have you not justified the Royal party, and pronounced them the only honest men which have appeared upon the stage, in Characters as plain, that he which runs may read, whilst yet you persecute them to the death? Therefore, thou art inexcusable, O Man, that perpetratest these things; For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thy self, seeing thou that judgest doest the same things. But thinkest thou this O Man, that thus judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the vengeance of God? I tell ye nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
Truly, Sir, when I compare these things together, and compare them I do very often, consider the purchases which you have made, and the damnation you have certainly adventured; the despite you have done to the name of Christ, the Laws of Common humanity which you have violated, the malice and the folly of your proceedings; in fine, the confusion which you have brought upon the Church, the State, and your selves; I adore the just and righteous judgment of God; and (howsoever you may possibly emerge, and recover the present rout) had rather be a sufferer among those whom you have thus afflicted, and thus censure, then to enjoy the pleasures of your sins for that season you are likely to possess them: For if an Angel from Heaven should tell me you had done your duties, I would no more believe him, then if he should preach another Gospel, then that which has been delivered to us; because you have blasphemed that holy profession, and done violence to that Gracious Spirit, by whose sacred dictates you are taught to live in obedience to your Superiours, and in Charity to one another; covering yet all this Hydra of Impostures with a mask Of Piety and Reformation, whilst you breath nothing but oppression, and lye in wait to deceive. But O God! how long shall the Adversary do this dishonour, how long shall the Enemy blaspheme thy name, for ever? They gather them together against the soul of the Righteous, and condemn the innocent blood. Lo these are the ungodly, these prosper in the World, and these have riches in possession: And I said, then have I cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. Yea, and I had almost said as they; but lo, then I should have condemned the generation of thy Children. Then thought I to understand this, but it was too hard for me, untill I went into the Sanctuary of God; then understood I the end of these Men. Namely, how thou dost set them in slippery places, castest them down and destroyest them.
O how suddenly do they consume, perish, and come to a fearfull end!
We have seen it, indeed Sir, we have seen it, and we cannot but acknowledge it the very finger of God, mirabile in oculis nostris; and is that, truly, which even constrains me out of Charity to your Soul, as well as out of a deep sense of your Honour, and the Friendship which I otherwise bear you, to beseech you to re-enter into your self, to abandon those false Principles, to withdraw your self from these Seducers, to repent of what you have done, and save your self from this untoward Generation: There is yet a door of Repentance open, do not provoke the Majesty of the great God any longer, which yet tenders a Reconciliation to you. Remember what was once said over the perishing Jerusalem. How often would I have gathered you together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her winge, and ye would not? Behold, your House is left unto you desolate.—For do not think it impossible, that we should become the most abandon’d, and barbarous of all the nations under heaven. You know who has said it: He turneth a fruitfull land into a Wildernesse, for the iniquity of them that inhabit therein. And truly, he that shall seriously consider the sad Catastrophe of the Eastern Empire, so flourishing in piety, policy, knowledg, literature, and all the excellencies of a happy and blessed people; would almost think it impossible, that in so few years, and a midst so glorious a light of learning and Religion, so suddain, and palpable a darknesse, so strange and horrid a barbarity should over-spread them, as now we behold in all that goodly tract of the Turkish dominions: And what was the cause of all this, but the giddinesse of a wanton people, the Schisms and the Heresies in the church, and the prosperous successes of a rebellious Impostor, whose steps we have pursued in so many pregnant instances; giving countenance to those unheard of impieties, and delusions, as if God be not infinitely merciful, must needs involve us under the same disasters? For, whilst there is no order in the Church, no body of Religion agreed upon, no government established, and that every man is abandoned to his own deceitfull heart: whilst learning is decried, and honesty discountenanc’d, rapine defended, and vertue finds no advocate; what can we in reason expect, but the most direfull expressions of the wrath of God, a universall desolation, when by the industry of Sathan and his crafty Emissaries, some desperate enthusiasme, compounded (like that of Mohomet,) of Arian, Socinian, Jew, Anabaptist, and the impurer Gnostick, something I say made up of all these heresies, shall diffuse it self over the Nation, in a universall contagion, and nothing lesse appear then the Christian which we have ingratefully renounced?
For this plague is already beginning amongst us, and there is none to take the Censer, and to stand between the living and the dead, that we be not consumed as in a moment; for there is wrath gone out from the Lord. Let us then depart from the tents of these wicked men (who have brought all this upon us) and touch nothing of theirs, lest we be consumed in all their sins.
But you will say, the King is not to be trusted: judg not of others by your selves; did ever any man observe the least inclination of revenge in his breast? has he not betides the innate propensity of his own nature to gentlenesse, the strict injunctions of a dying father and a Martyr, to forgive even greater offenders then you are? Yes, I dare pronounce it with confidence, and avouch it whith all assurance, that there is not an individuall amongst you, whose crimes are the most crimson, whom he will not be most ready to pardon, and graciously receive upon their repentance; nor any thing that can be desired of him, to which he would not cheerfully accommode, for the stopping of that torrent of blood, and extream confusion, which has hitherto run, and is yet imminent over us. Do but reason a little with your self, and confider sadly, whether a young Prince, mortified by so many afflictions, disciplin’d by much experience, and instructed by the miscarriages of others, be not the most excellently qualified to govern and reduce a people, who have so succeslesly tried so many governments, of old, impious and crafty Foxes, that have exercised upon us the most intollerable Tyrannies that were ever heard of?