Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	great_a	think_v	4,338	5	3.9369	3	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

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-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

and their Abettors sharers in the goods they catried away when they are again recovered Or do we make them keepers or disposers of our persons or estates Did Gideon make them to be partakers of his Victory when he overcame Zeba and Zalmunna who when he was in pursuit of them derided him instead of relieving his fainting Army with bread Verily they ought to be rewarded like them who have opposed the Common Cause by their hands tongues or pens and even they also who have not therein assisted their brethren rather then to be vouchsafed partnership in their Freedoms And it would not only manifest these Nations to be very imprudent if without good assurance of their being better affected to their just Cause then heretofore they do admit them both to an equal enjoyment of that and all other Freedomes with themselves and to a capacity upon their imprudent claim thereof to be their Lawgivers the Keepers of their Liberties and Disposers of their Estates and Persons But it would imply also a high contempt of GOD's late Dispensations to communicate the benefit of them to his Opposers The right of chusing and of being chosen Members of Parliament is now in those onely who have gotten it by Conquest the Law of Conquest is paramount to all their humane Laws it is nor onely Municipal but Catholick and gives just Liberty to the Conquering Party to make new Laws as they please and to continue suspend abrogate or reform all other humane Laws within their own Territories as they conceive them to be helpful or a hinderance to their Common Welfare It is that Law by which the LORD of HOSTS hath decided our Cause as I said before it is that by which all the most famous Monarchies of the world in all Ages were first constituted and settled before they could safely lay the Sword aside to be governed by other Laws and they who are dissatisfied with that settlement are not to be regarded That therefore which the Parliament should have done in my judgement when the power of the Sword was in their hands and that which their late Successours ought to have prosecuted when for the Parliaments failings the same power was translated to them was not to employ their Authority and the Revenues of the Commonwealth thereby grasped that they might advance themselves build up what GOD hath broken down trifle away precious opportunities and consume the publick Treasure in making an Image of the BEAST formerly adored or in patching up that which was useless and not possibly repairable and would more encrease then diminish the Peoples Grievances They ought not under a pretended Zeal to the Common Welsare instead of contriving a Government whereby Justice might be indifferently and impartially administred to all and every man been thereby equally made capable of honour and profit according to his merit for an encouragement to Vertue to have plotted how to model it so as that Employments and Dignities whereby the publick Honour and Safety may be most advanced or hazarded should be continued to themselves conferred on their nearest Relations and derived to their Posterity But on the contrary they should have improved GOD's appearing for us and the power thereby acquired like magnanimous Conquerers to settle in despight of opposition such a Government as GOD would have given them a pattern of had they sought it and whereby Justice and Mercy should have been duly administred They should have exercised that power in making as it were a new Heaven and a new Earth by establishing the Superior Orbs in motions tending to Pious and Righteous Dispensations and by confining every part of their inferiour Globe to such Rules of obedience to their Governours and to such Agreements among themselves that good Influences might reciprocally descend and ascend to preserve the honour and well-being of both Which by prudent men having courage fearing GOD and hating covetousness might have been effected by the power which they had once yea oftentimes in their hands and made up these three Nations into one well-tempered Body though consisting of many thousands disagreeing in Judgements Manners and Affections some good some evil some indifferent so that they might have peaceably been made serviceable to GOD and to each other as a skilful Apothecary makes a wholsome confection by mixing many Simples of contrary qualities even of Vipers Serpents and some Drugs poysonous in their own nature which in Composition make the best Ingredients the more vertuous To this end was an Arbitrary Power put into their hands by the Sword which if they had known how they should have used it would have been a comfort to good men and a terrour to the wicked partial self-seekers onely to whom it hath been hitherto most advantageous We fought to preserve our Freedoms which were left and to recover those we had lost yea we fought for our Laws but not for those which were imposed upon us by their prevailings who had corrupted or over-voted our Trustees by a Party of their own and established wickedness for a Law by which means our Laws that are magnified by some as if it were more haynous then Sacrilege to seek to have any of them reformed are become in their execution at least more oppressive then the Sword For I am confident that the needless expences thereby yearly occasioned do amount to much more then all that which is yearly charged to maintain the States Fleets and Armies and that as many if not more are impoverished thereby every year as were in any one year by plundering during the late War It would fill a Volume to enumerate the Practises and Formalities occasioning the vast expence and intolerable Vexations whereto men plunged into that misery are liable especially such as are compelled to travel above 200 miles four or five times in a year from their habitations Yea even our Trials by Juries which is applauded as one of these most equal ways of determining Controversies is no less injurious then any by reason of the Ignorance and Corruption of Juries packt by as corrupt Officers as also by the shortness of the time whereto a great number of Causes at times of trial are limited both at London and Westminster as also at the Assizes in the Counties where by the straightness of the place otherwhile and by other considerable defects Trials are frequently so superficially and hastily slubber'd over Parties and Witnesses on whose Testimony the whole Livelyhood of Persons and Families depend so thronged interrupted discountenanced or negligently heard and examined that a Cast at Dice would have given a cheaper and a more righteous Verdict then is passed in some Causes But this is beside my Text and not added out of any disaffection to our Laws or Lawyers for I honour the Laws and the Professors thereof who are unreproveable It may be for these and other Oppressions of that kind whose removal some grand Gown-men are thought to obstruct GOD hath stirred up the Sword-men to

are Enemies to themselves The Good Old Cause and this being duly considered Charles Stuart hath in my understanding no more Legal Right to these Islands then I have to France and Spain He cannot justly be admitted hither but on such terms as may preserve the Peoples Interest unless GOD in wrath admit him for a punishment of our sins and to be a plague to those who desire it in contempt of his dispensations which otherwise neither our present divisions or the power of all his Confederates beyond the Seas would be able to effect notwithstanding the Superlative sottishness of some among us who seem fit to be governed by none but a Tyrant and by whom Charles Stuart himself would be sufficiently plagued whether he be tyrannically inclined or not if the Government of them should be on him imposed For though some desire his coming it is not in love for his own sake but in hope to enjoy under him a licentious Freedom and upon the least failing of their expectations in that hope they would cry Crucifie him the next day after they cryed Hosanna and wish for those again whom they now revile For many of them are the same persons who opposed reviled and pursued his Father even to his death and against him who should rule over them piously and righteously they would be much more exasperated This is not a rash censure founded upon passion or conjectures but a probable conclusion on that long experience which I have had of the giddiness malice and bruitish condition of that inconsiderate Rabble which makes the loudest Clamours and who are transported with the greatest madness No private interest makes me a verse to Charles Stuarts admittance neither have I any disaffection to his person for I never received in jury by him But my averseness is meerly in relation to my Country which in my understanding cannot enjoy a happy Peace together with his person as affairs now stand in relation to Him to his Confederates and to this Commonwealth I desire nothing by endeavouring to bar him or any other from that which he or they ought in Justice to possess and though I may suspect that my Actings against him for preservation of the Common Liberties will render me liable to his fury and to the rage of his Party I shall be no more afraid of him though re-admitted to morrow then he is now of me though he should come both with an unrestrained Power and a revengeful Mind because I have discharged a good Conscience even in doing that which may most offend him Nay upon Considerations of another nature I shall have no cause to fear him or to think I shall be more cruelly dealt withal by him then I have been by those in power among whom I now live though he should take away my Life For though I have served the late Powers faithfully with my Estate Person and Credit yet by their long neglect of Justice in some things and by their actual Injustice in some other things they have so exposed me to contempt and so nigh ruined me both in my Estate and Credit without which Life is little worth that Charles Stuart cannot be so unmerciful to me as they have been except when I am quite deprived of my Livelyhood and Reputation he should suffer me to live until I saw likewise the destruction of my Family and the Commonwealth whose welfare is to me more precious then Life though for all my Contributions and Services to the endangering of my Life Estate and Credit I could not obtain so much favor toward the relief of my Oppressions as to have one Petition read in her Grand Assemblies during above nine years continual Sollicitations In brief as in relation to my self I have no reason to respect any one of the former Powers more then the other for as the Porter said Whosoever were King he should be but a Porter so I may say if they who shall come hereafter be not more righteous then they who ruled heretofore I am sure to have but little Favour and much Mischief and as for Charles Stuart in particular if he comes hither by that passage which we are likely to make for him at this time and shall walk in ways no better then his Progenitors and our late Governours have trod I cannot have so much cause to dread him as he will have to be afraid of himself and I shall do him better service perhaps if I live to see him here in power then any one of them who most desire his coming For as I did to his Father and his Successours I will make bold though with as little thanks or belief to tell him plainly and truly what will befal him and his Posterity and then I think my work will be at an end and I shall leave the Stage Now I have done with Charles Stuart unless GOD's indignation sends him thither and then I must endure the Storm as well as GOD shall enable me which will issue from that Mountain and I verily believe that will be well enough because though I affect them not I am usually safest in Storms and thrive best by GOD's mercy when my greatest Enemies think they shall irrecoverably undo me I perceive that neither such peaceable Gales as many expect are likely to proceed thence nor such dreadful Tempests as are by some feared if we make them not great by our own defaults and therefore I will turn toward the next Mountain the late dissolved Parliament if I know where to finde it which will he a very hard matter for the Father of it is dead the Mother upon which it was begotten knows not whither it is departed and in the place where it was born lived and acted I find here and there a Limb but of so many united as may make them a Parliament I cannot hear any news no nor so much as a Paper from any one Member laying claim to their lost power All I hear of it is but Ecchoes which signifie little or some raging sounds implying that wrathful indignation which will never accomplish the will of GOD or else scurrilous Invectives scattered by we know not whom without names and raised perhaps from private Suppositions conducing onely to an inlargement of the late Breach as if designed by the Common Adversary to that end and by such as are accessary to that endeavour GOD who raised up Lazarus when he was dead buried stunk may if he please once again restore it and what he will do no man knows but in common Reason we can have little hope of it or of having any Deliverance from our hazards by that whereto we can make no Address and which had not power enough to save it self when it had a visible Authority The Horses which drew their Chariot like those in the Fable of Hippolitus being frighted hath overthrown it dasht it into pieces and so scattered their Members that should Aesculapius undertake the cure he could not set

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

together with that Moral Law which was universally obliging And as GOD and the People had then a concurrence in the Election of their Magistrates so it will be when the Kingdom of CHRIST is settled among us LORD Hasten the coming of it and let not the many struglings of thy people in these Nations at this time to make way for it be altogether in vain You must pardon my Immethodical Ramblings to remove such Obstructions as I conceive may hinder my Expedient and bear with my suddain stepping aside otherwhile from the matter in hand to do that which I think pertinent to my purpose whilst it is in my remembrance for the disorders of these times do not afford me leasure to order my own musings but having expressed as much as I can at present think on by way of Preparative I will now apply my Expedient to those whom it may concern I am grieved to perceive how witty most men are to raise Arguments against Truth and their own Peace and should be glad that our greatest Enemies might be reducible to that happiness which they have lost and that they who are exposed to many Temptations by dwelling in Mesech and sojourning in the Tents of Kedar might have a more comfortable habitation For I believe some among them who opposed our Cause acted in their understanding upon a principle of Justice or Honour which they thought obliged them unto what they did which makes me much pity their misfortune I never heard any dishonourable mention of the two Brothers of Charles Stuart or that they acted against this Commonwealth maliciously but were active onely so far forth as they thought themselves in Conscience Alleageance and Natural Affection obliged to their Brother and I wish they might enjoy the Conveniences whereof they are deprived with our safety and though their Brother hath acted upon his own accompt and yet prosecuteth such things as are destructive to our Peace and though by that which we are informed of his inclination we have cause to be suspitious that those prejudices and affections which are settled in him will never be so clearly removed as to make him capable of any Expedient which may bring him hither in Peace and to the advantage of these Nations yet not knowing how that GOD who hath all mens hearts in his hand may please to sanctifie his afflictions and thereby prepare him to what seems else impossible and considering that all the other Parties aforementioned are as unable as he to perform of themselves the conditions of my Expedients without special grace they shall have a Latitude as well to comprehend him respectively as any other whom they may concern that he or they who shall first conform thereto may first have benefit thereby without respect of persons I have declared what Prejudicacies must be removed before they can be effectually entertained and therefore now I come to the Expedients themselves which I communicate to you in private rather then by Publication because what I have heretofore offered of that nature hath been little regarded and because I know that if any of the Parties aforementioned shall be capable of them GOD will either by you or by some other hand cause them to be seasonably brought to their Cognizance or direct them thereunto by his immediate grace All those Parties in general must resolve in the fi●st place to deny themselves and act more for GOD's Glory and for the Publick Welfare according to his revealed Will to the Dictates of a rectified Conscience so must Patriots in particular more faithfully then they have done for the most part heretofore among which I have less hope of them who by their deportment words and actions seem to call out as Jehu did to Jehonadab Come see my zeal for the LORD c. Governours by what Title soever they are called who desire to be at peace with their Neighbours and their Subjects over whom they reign or to recover that Dignity and Authority which they have lost or to be made happy and contented without it must consider that GOD the LORD of HOSTS who is Soveraign Paramount over all Kingdoms and Republicks in the world beholds all their unrighteous Designes proceeding from Ambition Lust or Avarice that notwithstanding all their hypocritical Pretendings to Religion and Justice he knows when they regard it no further then it may advance their corrupt interests that he heeds their bruitsh bustlings and dissembled complementings one with another their barbarous and inhumane devastations of their own and other Countries to satiate their revenge or to uphold their pomp by Fire Sword and Rapine to the destroying of Humane Society and to the making millions of men miserable who might have lived comfortably if they who were advanced for their Weal had not made themselves a plague to Man-kind by tyrannizing no less over their Consciences then their Estates and Persons under pretence of being GOD's Vice-gerents whereas they do rather make true the Devils vaunt who boasted that all the Kingdoms of this world were at his dispose which implies that they are then his Vice-roys and Deputies They must also consider that GOD's Long-suffering permits their extravagancies not as prerogatives justly due unto them but that every thing should for a time onely manifest it self in its own nature to be purged in its own fire that evil men may be mutual Corrections for their own sins that by inter-wrangling Judgements and Mercies he may bring them if possible to timely repentance and amendment and that if they bring not forth fruits at last answerable to his expectation he may be glorified in executing Justice call them to a strict account and with his Iron Mace break them in pieces like a Potters Vessel which can never be set together again as lately and often heretofore he hath done to other Tyrants and Oppressours Having duly considered these things with such like they must then resigne to GOD his Throne in mens Consciences and permit his People to enjoy the Liberties due to them by the Laws of Grace and Nature ruling for the future in Righteousness By practising this Expeent and continuing constant therein they shall be established in Power and Peace both at home and abroad as Vice-roys and Vice-gerents to the King of kings and Lord of lords with more honor then a Tyrant can acquire by an Universal Monarchy and unlimited Prerogatives yea if they can but get hearts willing to embrace this Expedient after they are irrecoverably cast out of their Governments or Kingdoms they shall be as happy and as well contented as if they were again restored This is my Expedient for all Governours in general and it will be pertinent to Charles Stuart in particular But there may somewhat more be added which will specially belong to him and I could wish it might be to him so seasonably and respectively communicated that not being entertained as a jeering of him in his affliction which baseness my Soul abhors he