Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	act_n	king_n	parliament_n	3,554	5	6.8839	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96744	A cordial confection, to strengthen their hearts whose courage begins to fail, by the armies late dissolving the Parliament. It is wrapt up in an epistolary discourse, occasionally written to Mr. Ro. Hamon, merchant, by Geo. Wither, Esq; about a week after the said Parliament was dissolved; and is thus communicated by a copy thereof, as very pertinent to these distracted times, and tending to preservation of the common-peace. for (other things of publick concernment, being inter-woven) it truly states the peoples cause (in plain expressions, suitable to the vulgar capacities) and frees it from many scandals. It contains an expedient, (hitherto not heeded, or neglected) whereby Charles Stuart may be settled in peace, if he please: whereby, we may have a better Parliament then we lost, or ever had: whereby, our armies may be kept constant to order, whilst they are needful, and in a short time quite disbanded: whereby, the peoples just freedoms may be recovered and perpetuated: whereby, not onely these nations, but all Christendome also, may be established in a righteous peace; and it hath neither destructive inlet, outlet, or false bottom.	Wither, George, 1588-1667.	1659 (1659)	Wing W3151; Thomason E763_13; ESTC R207097	68,046	43

Those three Employments gave me opportunity to observe how our Parliaments our Protectors our Councils our Armies our Committees our Ministers and the People behaved themselves toward GOD and each other in the management of their Cause And to speak truth without lying for them or against them if I had been a stranger to their Cause and the Kings and must have judged whether had been most righteous by the manners and actings of the men I should have given judgement against the Peoples Cause For the Royal Party whom we call Cavaliers prosecuted their Evil Cause like men and like such men as they made shew to be But the Parliament Party some few excepted whose burthens and vexations were the greater and makes them worthy to be the more pitied and honoured managed their Good Cause like like like to tell you truly like I know not what for I can devise nothing under heaven and above ground whereto I may liken them and it is no wonder that so many thousands fall off dayly from them and that our Enemies judge of our Cause and of Us as I hear they do I should not have thought it possible that men professing and pretending so much good should have been so evil if GOD had permitted me to have lived so obscurely in a Country Village as I much desired where I should have known no more of the one Party or of the other then common Fame had informed to whose rumours I give little credit And knowing me so well as many of those men do if they had not been infatuated they would have done me Justice though not for Justice sake to have sent me thither being resolved to do as they have done where I should not have had means to be a witness against them for that injustice and partiality which I have observed I engaged for the Parliament out of conscience else I might have had as good means to know experimentally the manners of the Kings Party whereof I am informed but by report onely For being by some of them thought more considerable then I am by those to whom I voluntarily adhered I was invited to that side by two Letters from the Lord Butler which I think are yet among my papers who thereby engaged to settle immediately upon me half his Estate and that it should be but an earnest of a far greater gratitude in future from the King if I would come unto him then at Oxford yet I constantly adhered to the Parliament and do not repent it in this day of our confusion though in requital of my faithfulness in adventuring my Life Credit and all my Estate for it they have exposed me and my Family to scorn and poverty as well by other injuries done as by neglect of Justice and by not making good their Securities and Engagements which occasioned my Engagements to other men I mention these things that being some way brought to their Consideration it may prepare them to be capable of another extraordinary Mercy in this their greatest need and not out of revenge For I know Vengeance belongs to GOD and that I shall but burn my own Fingers by endeavouring to pull down hot Coals upon the heads of mine Oppressours Therefore my smitings are but friendly blows and my corroding Expressions applyed but to eat out the dead flesh which may hinder the operation of a healing Balsame and it is very needful for by all those Parties afore particularized and even by us who pretend to the best Cause many things have been acted or connived at which were so imprudent so unjust so unmerciful and indeed so barbarous that we are a plague to each other and a laughing-stock to all our Neighbours round about us and instead of repenting and endeavouring to amend what is amiss in a rational and possible way we behave our selves like Whores in a City-Alley They first fall to scolding railing belying impeaching and abusing each other by all opprobrious words then to tear and scratch and at last to grow so mad that they set each others houses on fire to the undoing of themselves and their neighbours We and our Enemies instead of looking to our own ways and prosecuting that which might deliver us out of those confusions and streights whereinto our sins and follies have brought us do spend much of our time in sowing seeds of discord and in scandalous Imputations as if that justified our several Causes It is written that Michael the Arch-Angel when he contended with the Devil as bad as the Devil was durst not bring a railing Accusation against him but said onely The LORD rebuke thee Such Accusations I confess were even these of mine as were not allowable if they were untrue and no better though they be true if I intended them maliciously to bring any one to destruction or shame and not in true Charity to save men from shame and destruction by repentance We on both sides cannot be contented to object matter of Fact so far as we know or believe it to be true in justification of our Causes but endeavour also to make it seem good by doing that which is evil and affirming that which is untrue or so doubtful that it ought not to be peremptorily averred yea we sometimes make bold to intrude into GOD's secret Judgements to disparage our Adversaries Cause or to justifie our own thereby and often-abusively mis-apply GOD's Word to our own wicked purpose Our Antagonists think to justifie their Cause by an Argument drawn from our unstableness boasting that they have not been so fickle and disobedient to their Governour or Government as we have been to ours but that they have in all his and in their own dangers and troubles continued constant both to their first Principles and to their King which is partly true to our shame but not much to their honour and no whit to the justifying of their Cause For mans corruption makes him to adhere more firmly to that which is evil then to that which is good And it is not so much their vertue as their necessity perhaps which keeps them constant They have no other means of safety and subsistence for the most part else as many of them have done who had another Resuge they it may be who brag of their Constancy would have deserted him also ere this day Moreover many of them are the persons whose evil Counsels was the undoing of their King and of his Father and of themselves They had gotten thereby great Estates and Titles of honour which they could not else have obtained and which being now lost cannot be re-possessed but by adherence unto him until his condition grows desperate or until they can be better provided for so their faithfulness and perseverance doth probably proceed rather from self-respects then from love to their King or from the justness of his Cause But indeed the greatest stumbling-block and stone of offence which will obstruct my Expedient in taking good effect among the Common

He is our Supreme yea sole Judge in all causes triable by Combate and by the Sword of war in a peculiar manner and none who love Righteousness need be affraid of his doom This will be a sweet comfortable Cordial to those innocent and honest men who through humane infirmity are frighted by the Distractions of these times and dread what our Army may do if their professions should be hypocritical or if they who are yet sincere should fall from their uprightness and this being well considered will terrifie them who trust in an armed power and hoped that would protect them in all their Falshoods Oppressions and Wicked Designes This will also be unpleasing to them who would by their own power their own way and to their own ends establish a Government at this time among us and no less disgust them who ascribe Divinity to Kings or make Idols of Parliaments as many have done and some yet do among us and of which superstition I my self being educated under a Tyranny which kept me ignorant of what I was born to have hitherto been guilty as may appear by many staggering and dubious Expressions scattered here and there in my Writings which I am content should remain upon Record to testifie that I think not my self infallible and that I do not impose my Assertions Magisterially with expectation that they should be subscribed unto without due examination Nevertheless let not that which will ' bide the Test be rejected As there are many among us who cry out for Kings again thinking them to be more then of humane Extract or Institution because they neither know that they were the Peoples Creatures made originally but to be their principal Servants to see those Laws duly executed which they themselves made nor take notice how by degrees they have made them who were their Masters to become their Slaves nor do remember how they have oppressed them nor consider how much more they intend to oppress them nor how they will again oppress them if they be re-admitted nor that they were the cause of all those Burthens which at this time lye upon them and for which they clamour against those who would remove them In like manner many do as inconsiderately cry out for Parliaments which if they be not well constitute may be more destructive then their Kings But they would have Free Parliaments and such they call Free as should be formed of the wisest and honestest men among us as near as is possible made Members thereof at the choyce of all persons who have a considerable interest in the Commonwealth freely admitted to elect which would be such a Parliament as may possibly be hereafter when a Foundation whereon to fix it and an orderly Medium for such Elections is provided but such a Parliament was never yet in being if before my remembrance Knights Citizens and Burgesses in Parliament were elected as they have been in many places within the time of my knowledge and it is the great Mercy of GOD considering how many were brought in by the Court-Faction for their ends and how many screw'd in themselves for their own ends that so much of our Spiritual and Temporal Freedoms is yet left That which is now interrupted and against whose imperfection and unlawfulness so many have lately clamoured was as good and legal a Parliament all things considered even when it was at worst as any heretofore to all intents and purposes whilst it had being and power and every Act thereof till it be repealed by its own or by another absolute Power is as binding as the Acts of any other Partiaments For a powerful being in the Members thereof gives it Essentiality according to the nature of that being for which it was ordained as truly as the reasonable Soul in a Body of flesh gives being to a man who whether he be lawfully or unlawfully begotten or born with too many or with too few Members or whether he be maimed by others or by his own default is nevertheless a Man whilst the Soul and Body continue together Whilst power which is the Soul of a Parliament or at least that by which a Soul is know to be in it remained in that which was lately interrupted if not totally destroyed it might have performed what would have been necessary for the present to supply those defects which may else destroy the Body whom they represent and during the time vouchsafed by GOD for their second Probation it might if not again interrupted have been a help to prepare a more perfect Medium toward establishing a Government then yet we have any and which might have given unto future Parliaments a Constitution more likely to preserve it then ever they had heretofore For all our Parliaments formerly convened were constituted by Tyrants or Princes little better They were their Creatures and not the Peoples They were called prorogued and dissolved at their pleasure were made up of such Persons and of such a Number as they listed were chosen by and for such places and out of such orders of men as they priviledged to that purpose and were originally ordained for no other intent but to preserve the Peace of other men so long and so far forth onely as it might uphold their Grandeur and make the people Instruments to enslave themselves thereunto though through GOD's Mercy the People have by degrees acquired means in Parliaments to recover some part of their lost Liberties much against the wills of their Kings and Creators But their Liberties will never perfectly be recovered until a Foundation be laid by the Power of the Peoples own Sword in the hands of faithful Trustees whereupon a just Government may be erected with out-works to defend it from Innovators and whereby Parliaments may be so regulated that the peoples Civil Natural and Spiritual Proprieties and Freedoms may be preserved without violation as much as possible What would be the effects of giving Liberty at this present as it is by the greatest number desired for any man to chuse or to be chosen a Member of Parliament but the destroying of Propriety Morality and Piety together with all the just Liberties of the people which they have so dearly paid for and were likely to recover when almost quite lost For the worst men are most numerous and the greater part of them consisting of those who by conniving at or complying with Tyrants and Oppressours under whom they shall enjoy most Licentiousness were the chief Causers and Continuers of our late and present Troubles and these having still their hearts wholly inclined to renew them how easie will it be for them by indirect means to bring into a Parliament Members like themselves more then enough yea doubly to over-vote those who are elected by that part of the People who ought to have chief Benefit of that Conquest which GOD lately gave them For do we pursue and apprehend Theeves and Murderers who have robbed and slain honest men to make them

though their hearts were not right and their cries proceeded more form a sense of their Oppressions then of their sins yea though they cryed and prayed but as Ahab once did and as I fear most of us have often done yet they had temporary deliverances and they returning to their sins the punishments again returned increasing from seven years bondage to seventy years captivity and we starting aside as they did like a warped Bow are in danger of the like Chastisements For our verbal profession of trusting in GOD our loud vocal Prayers and sometimes a days abstinence from food prevails very little except there comes therewith a still voyce from the heart which cries for mercy as Abels blood cryed out of the earth for vengeance To tell the greatest part of men that they must trust in God is in their apprehension though they seemingly receive it as good counsel as if they were plainly told that there is no hope of their deliverance For they feel their hearts cannot trust in him except we shew them some other thing left wherein they might trust if GOD should fail their expectation as they fear he will when he looks into their hearts and sees that they trust him no longer then those outward things continue whereon they placed their confidence If we cannot trust GOD with our Army who is the LORD of Armies except we may be assured our Armies will prove trusty or unless we see some other earthly reserve to rely upon if that should be false we must then suffer for our unfaithfulness without remedy and may be likened to a foolish man who having an excellent stout Horse able to bear him to the Lands end is afraid he may miscarry in a Journey of ten miles unless he hath also a wooden Hobby-horse to be a Reserve He that could cast down the VValls of a strong City with the sound of Rams-horns can save us without an Army and in despight of the most puissant Armies in the world and he hath deserved better of these Nations then to be distrusted by them For what People under Heaven hath had more Experiments of GOD's timely assistance in all extremities then hath been vouchsafed by him unto us both in times past and within our remembrance Nay what Histories record a Mercy vouchsafed to any Nation since the beginning of the world like that which we enjoy at this present amidst our Confusions We are a living active Body without a Head A burning Bush that is not consumed A People without a Government yet not embrewed with each others blood which I believe though few of us heed that mercy is a wonderment to all our Neighbours round about us and is a token undubitable that GOD is yet in the Bush and will gather us together as Chickens under a Hen to be brooded by him if we were not wilful for if I should enumerate beside our three late signal Changes without Bloodshed those other late mercies which but I my self have taken heed of in my time have been so extraordinarily linked to each other that we had been utterly destroyed if any one of those Links had been broken off it would amount to a large Volumn or if I should commemorate how many of those outward trusts have failed us whereon we relyed it would appear that all other Dependencies are empty vanities I will particularize a few of them that we may be more mindful how we have been deceived by those other helps wherein we trusted and learn henceforward to think GOD's Protection is all-sufficient We had a King of whom we had great hopes as appeared by our mourning for his long absence in Spain when he was Prince and by our extravagant rejoycings at his return and many had an extraordinary confidence in him when he first assumed the Regal Authority yet he became our Oppressour soon after and much was designed which might have more opprest us We had afterward a Parliament on which we so much depended that we made an Idol of it and were no less oppressed thereby We had many eminent Persons among us whom we thought such true Patriots that we almost deifi'd them and supposed they should have been our Deliverers from the servitude which we groaned under but many of them apostatized from our Cause and other some were taken away by death whom we thought most sincere and both failed in our greatest need We had a Protector whom some did compare unto nay prefer before Moses and Joshua and he made such fair shews of Piety that we much trusted in him and thought it impossible he should deceive us yet in him alse there was no trust Then the Parliament being restored we again reposed our confidence therein and were again deceived many have trusted in themselves in their power in their estates in their own piety in their policy and all those things vanish away also like Smoke some other at this present trust in our Armies in the strength of men and horses in Forts and Fleets with such like and now begin to distrust them feeling not onely our late hopes of them to be shaken but our Fears likewise to be by them in creased and what should all this teach us but to relic on him onely who is immutable He hath Wisdome enough to know what is best for us Power enough to effect it for us Love enough to vouchsafe it Faithfulness enough to perform his promises and Ubiquity and Eternity to be present with us at all times in all places and in all extremities yea he hath freely engaged by his Word and Promises to do all this for us if we have but Faith enough to believe him and will also give us that Faith if we heartily ask it If we think not this a sufficient Reserve to secure us though our Armies and all things else in the world should be false and helpless we are worthy to be deserted and can have no security until we search out the Cause of our diffidence and then endeavour to remove it which Cause is our many great unrepented sins and in special our hypocrisie our gross partiality our self-seekings and remissness in doing Justice and in mercifully relieving the oppressed the Widows the Fatherless and the Friendless which sins were the principal causes of the Desolation of all Kingdoms and Republicks heretofore destroyed in former Ages Our Sins have been the sole Cause that our Kings our Parliaments our Protectors our Armies our Navies our Counsels our Cost our Conquests and that we our selves have been destructive to our selves to each other and to a happy progression toward the settlement which we have long expected Therefore until these sins are more truly repented all the wisdom and power upon earth shall not avail us but every day will encrease our troubles until there be a final extirpation of all that which now hinders GOD's work For if our Armies reconcile to each other an unarmed power shall break them in pieces If by their

People are those Events which have ensued upon mis-understanding our Cause and upon our mis-proceeding therein and those obstructive Objections are cast in and raised partly by the Royalists and partly by some ignorant and malevolent persons among our selves who perceive not from whence those Events do more naturally proceed To make the Peoples Cause appear unjust and therefore their prosecutions thereof unpleasing to GOD and to make the vulgar sort think the Kings claim to be righteous they object that therefore we can settle upon no Government without him and that we have no good and lawful Foundation to build upon and that therefore GOD blasteth all our endeavours from time to time whereas that issues not from the evilness of our Cause but from the imprudence or self-mindedness of the Prosecutors To fright ignorant persons into a belief or suspition of the goodness or lawfulness of our Claim they tell them of one Parliament-man that hanged himself how these and these came to such and such Tragical ends and what befel to some other eminent persons who were Patrons thereof as if that proved the Cause which they owned to be unquestionably evil all which are but Childish Bug-bears and Fanatick Hob-Goblins which are easily charmed into nothing What a ridiculous Argument is it to prove the unjustness of a Cause to alledge that one of the Prosecutors thereof hanged himself There were but twelve Apostles and one of them hanged himself doth that any whit disparage the Apostolick Faith perhaps as these do the malitious Jews made use of it to the like purpose though by his own confession they knew that Judgement fell upon Judas not because he was one of Christs Followers but for that he was a Traitor to his Master and had betrayed an Innocent into their hands There were above 400 Parliament-men of which but one made away himself and we knowing not upon what secret Motive what can be thereupon inferred Indeed if all the 400 or so many of them as owned the peoples Cause had banged themselves except one we might have concluded as our Adversaries do The Conjurers up of those delusive Apparations do not remember that those 18 persons upon whom the Tower fell and they whose blood-Pilat mingled with their Sacrifices were no greater sinners then other men and that they who conceived hardly of them should also perish unless they repented nor do they take notice that the like ends have happened to as many or to more of their own party and that it would be as valid an Argument against their Cause as against ours Nor do they know or else will not know as we do who have observed their actings deportments that most if not all of them on our side who have been particularized as men pursued by Divine Vengeance suffered not by the hand of Common Justice or by a secret Judgment in outward probability for their deserting the Kings Cause or for being instrumental in removing him but for that they were Traytors to them by whom they were trusted and false to the peoples Cause which they seemingly owned and either betrayed it or would have betrayed it if they had not been timely cut off And whereas the many extravagancies relating both to Religion and the depravation of Manners in these times are objected as effects of our evil Cause it is to be considered that those are the usual products in times of War of that licentiousness which is in men of corrupt minds and principles who then discover that pravity which lay hid in them formerly and not from the Cause in Controversie For my part I am not a whit out of heart by the present distractions by the scandalizing of our Cause by the Obstructions it hath met withal by the hazards it is now in by the multitude of powerful Adversaries or by the failings of those that manage it Nor do I judge the goodness of any mans Cause to be more or less by Events whether prosperous or unprosperous at the first lest as David said I may condemn the Generation of the Righteous or justifie the Wicked nor do I judge of any thing by the outward pomp or base aspect which it hath in the eye of the world nor by the continuance which it can plead by Prescription For Tyranny hath been ever since Nimrods raign The Mahumetans Impostures which is an usurped Antichristian power without the Pale of the Church hath tyrannized almost a thousand years The Roman Hierarchy which is the Antichrist in the visible Church of Christ hath persecuted above six hundred years our Norman bondage hath continued above five hundred The Children of Israel when they were brought out of Aegypt where they had been enslaved above three hundred years and then advanced in hope to be made Possessors of a Country inhabited by powerful Nations were doubtless as much derided for that Attempt as we are by our Neighbours and by some among our selves who in derision and scorn call our The Good Old Cause They had as many longings and lookings back toward Aegypt as the greatest part of this people hath at this day to return to their old Task-masters to their Garlick Onyons Flesh-pots and such other Carnal Accommodations as those which we prefer before our Birth-rights and value less then a Mess of Porrage They tempted GOD and provoked him by their Idolatries Fornications Murmurings Rebellions Avarice Backslidings and Self-seekings as we do So they mutined against their Superiors so they discouraged each other by mis-reporting that Good Land to which GOD was carrying them by representing formidably the strength of the high-walled Cities and the mighty Giants who were therein and those discouragements proceeded from some of the most eminent persons among them even from no less then six to one of those who were chosen to spy out the Land so also were they for their unfaithfulness and other sins wasted and delayed as we have been even forty years in the Desarts as we have been almost twenty years already as it were in a Wilderness of Confusions for our prevarications and mis-belief and our Faith and Patience is at this present exercised with many Fears Doubts Wants Troubles and Powerful Adversaries in the Passage toward the recovery of our long-lost Freedoms and yet as theirs was our Cause is nevertheless that Good Old Cause of which we should neither be ashamed or distrustful If we may censure the Righteousness of a Cause by the mean beginning by the outward despicableness by the tedious and difficult progressions by the contemptibleness of the Prosecutors or by the unprosperous successes during many years no Cause in the world might be so●lyable to mis censure as our Christian profession which for many Ages together was the scorn not of the base and foolish but also of the noblest and wisest persons in the Worlds esteem The Professors of it were no better thought of then as Fanatick Dreamers at best and as Vagabonds hunted through all Nations and Countries by ten

A Cordial Confection To strengthen their Hearts whose Courage begins to fail by the Armies late dissolving the Parliament It is wrapt up in An Epistolary Discourse Occasionally written to Mr. Ro. Hamon Merchant by Geo. Wither Esq about a week after the said Parliament was dissolv'd and is thus communicated by a Copy thereof as very pertinent to these distracted times and tending to preservation of the COMMON-PEACE For other things of Publick Concernment being interwoven it truly states the Peoples Cause in plain Expressions suitable to the Vulgar Capacities and frees it from many scandals It contains an Expedient hitherto not heeded or neglected whereby Charles Stuart may be settled in Peace if he please whereby we may have a better Parliament then we lost or ever had whereby our Armies may be kept constant to Order whilst they are needful and in a short time quite disbanded whereby the Peoples just Freedoms may be recovered and perpetuated whereby not onely these Nations but all Christendome also may be established in a Righteous Peace and it hath neither destructive Inlet Outlet or False Bottom Psal 11.3 When the Foundations are overthrown what shall the Righteous do Printed at London by James Cottrel 1659. A CORDIAL CONFECTION Against the fainting of the Heart in these distracted times BEING The true Copy of an Epistolary Discourse written occasionally by Major George Wither to Mr. R.H. Merchant in relation to the hazardous unsettlement of this Commonwealth by the late dissolving of the Parliament October 13. 1659. and composed the 24 day of the same October Psam 39. and Job 32. I said I would keep my mouth with a Bridle while the wicked are before me I held my peace even from good till my sorrow was stirred and till my heart was hot within me and then my musings burned within me and I spake with my tongue Hear me therefore for as Job 32. I will neither accept any mans person nor will I flatter lest my Maker take me away suddainly SIR I Have learned that he who judges a matter before he hears it is culpable of that Folly which makes him liable to shame Therefore when you lately demanded my Judgement concerning the Armies dissolving the Parliament on Thursday last was sennight and what Consequences I thought would probably ensue I told you That I would not answer to those Questions until I heard what Reasons they themselves alleaged for their Justification and what prosecutions they thereupon intended neither of which being to me known I am not warranted to declare my opinion in relation to those Demands nor have I so high a conceit of my own Judgment as to think I shall then be able to give a satisfactory answer For though I rightly pre-conjectured of many things heretofore upon foregoing symptomes which made it easie enough for any rational man to discern their Consequences without an extraordinary Revelation yet my fore-sight at this time is very dimme as to conjecturing what that Action will produce and it will require a Metaphysical Apocalypsis Nevertheless lest before that shall be divulged by the Army whereon rational Conjectures and Conclusions may be grounded for I pretend no higher the Common-peace or your private Tranquillity may be disturbed by things feared or prosecuted the mean while I will hereby give you an Accompt upon what considerations I keep my own heart quiet and from rendring those things worse by prejudicacy which I cannot make better by censuring what is acted or purposed beyond my sphere how irregular or unwarrantable soever they do appear This moderation I think my duty binds me unto until I know certainly upon what Principles or upon what Necessities they are voluntarily executed or unwillingly constrained especially when they are done by persons who have considerable Interests to hazard and a repute of being conscientious rational moral pious and prudent men and more especially in such prevaricating times as these wherein the sincerity of some and the Hypocrisies and Apostacies of others do as it were compel GOD and Men to dispense with their ordinary Laws and when ancient Foundations are made destructive to those ends for which they were first ordained even to be hinderances to the injoyment of humane society to the true worship of GOD and to the safety of the people through the petulancy or arrogance of some in power who by their adding of unsound Principles or perverting of those which are sound for a wrong use or by disguising their Form with unbeseeming dawbings or by raising upon them burdensome Superstructures do employ themselves for their private advantage in patching pulling down and re-building as their self-interests incline them though it be to the overthrowing or endangering of their well and safe being for whose sakes onely those Foundations were laid What induced them thereto who were Actors in the late Innovation or what they now designe to prosecute and by what Rules or Means they hope to accomplish it we shall know when GOD and they please if it be known to themselves whereof I am somewhat doubtful But whether they have done rashly or advisedly warrantably or unwarrantably the evident hazards wherein the Commonwealth is at this present being made greater then they were as well by the distractions which that Breach hath unhappily occasioned as by those preceding it to the encouraging of Domestick and Forraign Adversaries obligeth every Lover of his Country to apply himself rather to those endeavourings which are healing and may probably secure it from their malicious intendments who unquestionably seek the total destruction thereof then to contribute to those mischievous Designes by weakning our selves through dividing our Power and wasting it in opposing those who have been approved Friends to the same Cause which we own and I hope will so continue though they have wheeled about into an Extravagancy For it may be they have discovered some Stratagems or Ambuscadoes not appearing to us which may destroy them and the peoples interest also if not speedily prevented and thereupon conceived themselves necessitated to that diversion and to prosecute a defence and settlement of the Common Cause in another manner then heretofore upon justifiable Considerations If this be their Judgement in sincerity as the experience I have had of some of them inclines me to hope they are at least excusable if not altogether Blameless and as our Affairs now stand I think it safer to keep our Friends by palliating their failings then to make them our enemies by Exasperations though we have another way whereby we may be safe notwithstanding the Army should quite desert us as I shall demonstrate unto you hereafter But I will first expostulate and offer to consideration some things concerning Them and us which their late attempt hath occasioned me to weigh in my own heart If it shall be objected that they have heretofore been changeable and do now again proceeed both contary to Order and to their own Engagements Declarations Votes Professions and Resolutions thereby rendring

many even of their best Friends to be jealous doubtful of their sincerity and constancy to that Cause which they have heretofore owned and vindicated which is true enough An Answer in part to that Objection may be implyed toward the Extenuation thereof by asking what other Party or Persons impowred to serve the Publick in Place and Affairs of high Trust hath not as much failed in like manner and receded from former Votes and Resolutions with connivence when either they who should have called them to an accompt for it were as much guilty or when it could not be done without hazarding the Common Peace in regard of the Delinquents power Whether also it be not more agreeable to Justice and a good Conscience to vary our Purposes or counter-counter-act to our former Engagements then to prosecute them when we find they will destroy that end for which we first engaged And whether we have not more cause to confide in those without suspect who are changeable upon that score then in them who foolishly think it a point of honour wilfully to persevere in what they have promised right or wrong though it be destructive to them unto whom their promises were made yea and to the Popular safety against which no Promise or Engagement is obliging What persons intrusted have not been sometimes inforced to mutability either by emergent accidents or by disagreement among themselves or by the counter-actings of those to whom they were subordinate or with whom they were co-ordinate or by some other distinct power But though neither their Judgment nor their Conscience nor a real necessity inclined the Officers of the Army to what hath been lately done but that a Souldier-like Indignation onely provoked by the apprehension of some undeserved affront or disrespect had rashly transported them yet their and the publick interest are so complicated that they being considered as men in whom humane infirmities are to be expected and then at this time as Causa sine qua non the persons who have now the most visible power of this Commonwealth in their hands it would at such a Juncture of Affairs evidence more madness in my judgment then prudence not to comply with them in an amicable manner to secure that which IS rather then to destroy it by quarrelling about that which IS NOT and which was likely enough as in effect it did to have destroyed it Self the Army and many other if it had much longer continued I will not defend any mans arregular actings of whose Irregularities I know not the Motives nor will I absolutely condemn them For though it be my Principle not wilfully to act contrary to Rule because I never had Motive internally nor warrant externally so to do by any compulsive necessity or otherwise Nevertheless I know there have been heretofore and that possibly there may be now and hereafter when the people of GOD are in extraordinary streights such impulses of spirit inducing other men at some times to extraordinary Executions that I dare not judge them to be performed with an evil conscience or without Divine approbation because I am not privy to the secret passages which are or may be betwixt GOD and the Prosecutors and because also I finde that the Holy-Ghost hath justified many in undertakings of that nature as Phineas Rahab Jael and others remembred in Holy Scripture who were active so repugnantly to common Rules of just proceeding and to the literal sence of Laws morally and ordinarily obliging that I should have thought them worthy to have been condemned for Murther Treason Truce-breaking and barbarously infringing the Law of Hospitality if the Spirit of GOD had not by Sacred Writ informed me that those Prosecutions were effects of their Faith The example which many do take from these aforenamed to precipitate themselves into the like actings by a deluding Spirit working upon their Corruptions who read the Scriptures with an unsanctified heart is nevertheless to be carefully heeded and a voyded and there are many Symptomes and concemitant Circumstances observable some of which I have enumerated in one of my private Addresses heretofore made to Oliver late Protector upon occasion offered whereby every man may discern infallibly whether a good or an evil Spirit hath inclined him to such undertakings and I do believe that there have been in these latter days as well as heretofore good causes why GOD should vouchsafe extraordinary dispensations For I have been an Eye-witness and according to my understanding a diligent Observer of what GOD and Men have done in these latter times by being constrained to reside most part of my life where Affairs of publick Concernment were managed and was bound to that attendance which gave opportunity to be assured of what I have heard and seen as also to be thereupon moved to publish Remembrances bearing witness for this and for future Ages as I believe touching the Controversies which GOD had with these Islands during the Reigns of King Charles and his Father with Memorials of the Prevarications that then were of the Interchanges of Judgements and Mercies whereby GOD visited them with timely Fore-warnings of what hath since befallen that Family and these Nations in many particulars wherein GOD's Justice is evident with what mind soever it was prosecuted by the Executioners thereof I have likewise for the most part been continually Resident ever since the beginning of the Parliament last sitting and lately dissolved where I might and did take notice of their most signal Transactions not without being made sensible of some of them I was personally known to the greatest number of them as likewise to very many of the following onventions called Parliaments and had so many occasions to know them that few private persons of my degree hath had experimentally a more perfect cognizance of what they were or of what they did And I do profess in the fear of GOD that I conceived the few right-principled and conscientions men among them were able to do so little good and the rest to act so much evil that as I have sometimes publickly intimated I expected nothing from them but an encrease of Confusions likely to produce inevitable Destruction until the late Restoration of the first Parliament on whom I for a while hoped GOD's extraordinary Mercy to them vouchsafed might have so wrought that it would have produced extraordinary good effects But that miraculous Restoration was forgotten so quickly by too many of them that it produced little of that fruit which was expected though just prosecutions were as I believe seriously intented and endeavoured by some among them Their needless neglect of common Justice to distressed Suppliants ready to perish and their gross partiality was so apparent their time so wasted by impertinencies their proceedings otherwhile so slow and another while so rash the Notions of some so metaphysical and of othersome so meerly carnal their Results so wavering or contradictory interferings so frequent and their puzlings so many to

been a King and not a Tyrant and would have raigned in Righteousness as by the Laws of GOD and Nature he was obliged to do For it cannot be reasonably imagined but that those were the implicite conditions of all their Protestations and Engagements But he so obstinately persevered in his wilfulness even when there was a Treaty for Reconcilement that he disobliged them from all their promises and compelled the prosecution of that which afterward ensued and was not at first intended And I do here to the Glory of GOD aver though I know it may be to my personal disadvantage that GOD's doom was justly executed upon him for his own sins and the sins of his Fathers house with what intent soever and with what juglings soever it was prosecuted by men and that the Peoples Cause was and is a Righteous Cause though it was not so prudently and righteously managed as it might and ought to have been and I believe it is too evident that some of both Parties by seeking to screw in personal advantages to themselves at the Treaty and at other times were the Causers of all that mis-befel both to the King and to the People I may rationally believe this because I had opportunities to discover much of their sinister actings on both sides tending to the trapanning of each other if I am not mis-informed which justly provoked GOD and occasioned Confusions to the insnaring of many well-meaning men to the involving them in guiltiness troubles and hazards from which they will not easily be delivered I many times adventured not without danger to my self to inform the King what I had observed and when he was Prisoner in the Isle of Wight signified by what means he might then unquestionably have made his peace both with GOD and Men as I have done without regard to his Successours but he adhered still to his evil Counsellours or rather to his own wilfulness which was enough to have depraved them if they had been good and instead of complying with his Parliament so endeavoured even when he was their Prisoner by corrupting the Scots and a great number of the Parliaments Members with large Promises that he was likely by plowing with their Oxen either to have cheated them of all the Peoples Freedoms or to have plunged the three Nations into a new War and this caused the Armies first extraordinary attempt at which the Royal Party and their Confederates have so much railed as a high breach of the Parliaments Priviledges and of the Peoples Freedoms whereas they could not at that time have been any other way preserved in humane understanding And therefore then and not before that part of the Parliament which was true to the trust reposed in them by the People did with the Assistance of their Army seeing as I conceive no way else but removing him out of the world to prevent the treacheries of their corrupt Members and the Kings Destructive Designes carried on by their complyance they out-witted him at his own game and Stratagems being as lawful against an Enemy as Force got possession of his person brought him to a Legal Tryal and condemned him to death A Legal Tryal was it you will say perhaps by what Law or by what Authority Truly I was heartily sorry for him when he was condemned and so far from having any hand therein or assenting thereto that I drew a Petition to the Parliament to forbear from executing the sentence of the Court by reason the rarity of such an Act made me then abhor it but no Member daring to present it and I having thereby opportunity to consider better of my intention was satisfied in my Conscience that he was Legally condemned by that Law which makes it Treason for a Servant to seek the destruction of his Master who had trusted him that he was no more but a principal Servant to the People justly questionable for breach of his Trust and that by the same Authority whereby the People might raise any one from among themselves to be their Supreme Officer they might for his ingratitude and violation of the trust reposed in him judge depose or condemn him to death as his Crime and the necessity of preserving the Common Peace or Safety should require and the Son of him whose Predecessours had for many Generations been Steward of a Princes Family and who was executed for his Treason thereto may as justly claim that he and his Posterity should be still Stewards thereof because his said Predecessours had been injurious and false unto it for many Ages together as Charles Stuart may claim to be King by inheritance over these Nations Upon these Considerations it seemeth to me and may appear to others that the Peoples Cause hath been unjustly scandalized and that a false opinion derived unto the late King from his Progenitors settled in him by long Usurpation and confirmed by the Flatteries of his Courtiers Chaplains and other Parasites made him believe that GOD had given him a right to all that which he claimed though it were contrary to the positive Law whereby he had commanded Kings to be regulated and repugnant also to that Law which was written in his heart until he had blotted it out For none but they who are more worthy to be made Beasts then Men can imagine that our ever-wise just and most merciful GOD except by permission when a Nation depraved by their own vanity foolishness and slavish mind desires it would have constituted such a destructive Monster as an unlimited Governour and advance a few men in every Generation yea and sometimes the vilest out of the vilest among them to subject all the rest to his lust and ambition upon a just Title as if all the residue of man-kind had been created for the sake of Tyrants Doubtless no reasonable Creature can imagine this or think it impossible as in appearance many do that they cannot be well governed without such a gay Bable as they usually make of it or that it is displeasing to GOD that when he hath given them power and opportunity so to do a People should endeavour to shake off their Fetters and establish such a Government as may preserve their Temporal Rights and Freedoms without admitting such Disturbers of humane society for the time to come These and such things as these must be well considered by Charles Stuart to prepare his heart before my Expedient will be pertinent and profitable unto him As I had means to be rightly informed of the Kings Cause so I had of the Parliaments also by being thereby called to a Military Command in their first Army to the execution of Civil Magistracy in the Commonwealth and by being inforced to attend almost 18 years at the latter end of my life in hope to obtain Justice from them or their Interruptors For by these means I knew the greatest part of them so far forth as Trees are known by their Fruits which may accidentally be made better or worse