What good will it doe you, deare Countrymen, to live without lives, to enjoy England without the God of England, your Kingdome without a Parliament, your Parliament without power, your Liberties without stability, your Lawes without Justice, your honours without vertue, your beings without wel-being, your wives without honesty, your children without morality, your servants without civility, your lands without propriety, your goods without immunity, the Gospel without salvation, your churches with
out Ministery, your Ministers without piety, and all you have or can have, with more teares and bitternesse of heart, than all you have and shall have will sweeten or wipe away?
Goe on therefore Renowned Gentlemen, fall on resolvedly, till your hands cleave to your swords, your swords to your enemies hearts, your hearts to victory, your victories to triumph, your triumphs to the everlasting praise of him that hath given you Spirits to offer your selves willingly, and to jeopard your lives in high perils, for his Name and service sake.
And Wee your Brethren, though we necessarily abide beyond Jordan, and remaine on the American Sea-coasts, will send up Armies of prayers to the Throne of Grace, that the God of power and goodnesse, would incourage your hearts, cover your heads, strengthen your arms, pardon your sinnes, save your soules, and blesse your families, in the day of Battell. Wee will also pray, that the same Lord of Hosts, would discover the Counsels, defeat the Enterprizes, deride the hopes, disdaine the insolencies, and wound the hairy scalpes of your obstinate Enemies, and yet pardon all that are unwillingly misled. Wee will likewise helpe you beleeve that God will be seen on the Mount, that it is all one with him, to save by many or few, and that he doth but humble and try you for the present, that he may doe you good at the latter end. All which hee bring to passe who is able to doe exceeding abundantly, above all we can aske or thinke, for his Truth and mercy sake in Jesus Christ.
Amen. Amen.
A Word of IRELAND:
Not of the Nation universally, nor of any man in
it, that hath so much as one haire of Christianity
or Humanity growing on his head or beard,
but onely of the truculent Cut-throats,
and such as shall take up Armes
in their Defence.
These Irish anciently called Antropophagi, man-eaters: Have a Tradition among them, That when the Devill shewed our Saviour all the kingdomes of the Earth and their glory, that he would not shew him Ireland, but reserved it for himselfe: it is probably true, for he hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old Fox foresaw it would eclipse the glory of all the rest: he thought it wisdome to keep the land for a Boggards for his unclean spirits imployed in this Hemisphere, and the people, to doe his Son and Heire, I mean the Pope, that service for which Lewis the eleventh kept his Barbor Oliver, which makes them so blood-thirsty. They are the very Offall of men, Dregges of Mankind, Reproach of Christendome, the Bots that crawle on the Beast taile, I wonder Rome it self is not ashamed of them.