to the very throne of God and pluck down his vengeance upon these generally acknowledged perfidious false people that maugre all overtures on our side for prevention vvill yet be the causes of so many renewed mischiefes amongst us Alas If the Lord understand and regard the crying petitions of the yong Ravens in their nests vvill he not hear his people vvho incessantly solicite him humbly demauding only a reason of the insufferable injuries which have been done them If the bloods voice of Abel ascended up to him shall the blood of an Innumerable number of poor Christians vvhich is again like to be shed out by these Cainish brethren be dumb vvithout making any noise at all shall the complaints the imprecations and the last dying groanes of the dear English hearts that fall by the sword in Scotland and their Fathers Mothers Brothers Wives and Sisters sighs here in England for them be utterly quite lost The Lord the avenger of perfidy and of the violated truces of brethren of one faith will he alwaies suffer religion and Covenant pretences to be made an Instrument for the introducing of tyranny and that this only should be made use of to cheat the vvorld and to seduce poor innocent ignorant ones Tantum Relligio potuit suadere malorum If the Lord count our hairs will he not have regard of the sighs of his Saints will he not gather up their tears will he despise their prayers that so wrastle with him No No let us be confident our God is for us and that the astutious perfidy of our loose brethren is not hid from his eyes We have had many sure signs that the Lord is on our side concerning the certainty of which it is not lawfull for his people to doubt If the Lord had not decreed in his everlasting determinate will powerfully to succour and go along with his people to releive them now in these last times from their long bondage and oppression if the Lord had not a desire to make us overcome if he would have deferred the Term of our libery he would not surely all along so miraculously have shewn himself a man of war in those incredible appearances he hath been pleased to discover for the good of his people and the happiness of this Age verily the Lord could no longer refuse the struglings and necessities of his Saints that had such great need of his help and deliverance By the help of our God there is now nothing so difficult before our eyes but we may be confident of that he will ere long bring to pass for his Glory and names sake Ah then good Sir cease all of you to take distaste at the holy designs of our just Governours let not their enterprizes for the Lords sake be an occasion of jealousie to any soul all that look upon them without a blind-folded prejudice though but at a great distance must needs acknowledge them to be self-denying and not self-seeking justiciaries surely they have consecrated their hands and hearts to the Lord their Arms protect none but the Lords cause and the most refractory of England will be constrained in time to confess that they are like the targets which fell from heaven to guard the Romans which gathered them up Ah let mothers now rejoice at their fertility and bless the Lord because they may now rest confident if the Lord continue his goodness unto us that they shall procreate children that shall be more happy then ever their poor ignorantly blind fathers were and who shall even henceforth live in a blessed liberty by the benefit of our Common-wealth Verily Sir we Englishmen may look upon our Governors as the resolved Enemies of wicked prophane and ungodly men and meerly the protectors of the godly party alas they seek for no other fruit from the great victories the Lord is pleased to accumulate upon them but his glory and the security of Englands Common-wealth Nor do they post up and down in a restless toile those dear instruments of the Lord their Army and indefatigably turmoile themselves but to procure its deliverance from that ancient Tyranny and thraldom which for these many hundred years under splendid titles we have been confounded and involved into truly we have just cause to hope and believe that they have soundly learnt that rule of the Apostle To do good to all men but especily to those of the houshold of faith and hereby they will serve as a kind of animated law to those that are gently allured led on by their godly conversation certainly this exemplariness of theirs is a kind of command which not only we their religiously well-affected friends but even the most Traiterous Apostates amongst ye cannot rationally disobey Alas Sir by them we now really possess what the bowels of our sad Progenitors so much and long but in vain yearned after we all confess with you Sir that a good King is good if there were the world over such a thing to be found in Rerum natura yet the maxime tells us that it is much more glorious to restore liberty to a Common-wealth then to be so how much more is it then Renownedly glorious to alter and convert the Tyrannies of a bad King into the liberties of a free Common-wealth and those even so pretious ones that we cannot hardly now contemplate any thing of so great esteem unto us which we may not hope they will in time procure for us As for me kind neighbour whether it be that I am passionate for that liberty and freedom in my walkings with God the sweetness whereof I have already tasted or whether the transparent light of present felicities somewhat over-dazels my ravisht intellect or that the meer love of truth makes me thus write most assured it is they are the promptings and guidances of the Spirit of God overflowing me Secunda Pars. ANd now Sir my next task is to make good that promise of mine in the superscription I have something to say to the seduced Scotch as well as the blind English Presbyter what is this our old brother Scotland stands agast at He stands affrighted and seriously I cannot much blame them at the very approach of our Cromwel what pitty t is to see how they refuse and deny that good fortune which comes to find them their consent is only askt to take the greivous yoke of Tyranny off their necks that where godly men suffer or weak men groan they may be released set free Alack they are so timerously aguish they will cherish their disease they have not the courage though they have the strength to take Physick and make use of proffered remedies what fatall and wretched stupidity is this in them have they not eyes to see the inundation of miseries which are over-rushing them and ready to swallow them up is not that common bruit in Rome and France and most Catholick kingdoms of Europe of their yong Kings turning Papist able to awaken them from their sordid
carnally minded as to predicate this to be a certain constancy in him which verily it should seem was a meer natural implacability incident to Princes and inherent in him who when he once hated any man as he did us equal with the Independent he would never be perfectly reconciled to him nor would he you know be moved to take the Lords Covenant by our perswasions in the I le of Wight though never so convincing and for his servility to those whom he loved for his own ends we are satisfactorily perswaded the Novice is in the right Certainly a Digby could make him forsake his own judgement and a Rupert his knowledge Yet verily I do not approve of that expression of the Novices when he says that by the art of Dissimulation which he had in him he could when he saw occasion close with the most mortall of his enemies in good truth Sir this is not so for at our great Treaty with him nor at Holdenby before that we could not make him yield to us we were glad you know for some secret reasons of State and for fear of stooping to our fellows and so to loose the best end of the staff to subscribe unto him in most things I grieve to speak it which were prejudicial yea truly diametrically opposite to our promised Reformation then certainly if I am not much out the Novices meaning herein must be this his running to the Scots Again verily it is a bitter wipe given us in laying it to the charge of us who are the Lords Ministers and of that honest godly party who once would not treat with him upon any terms till he acknowledged himself the great murtherer of all the dear Saints and Servants of God which have fallen and perished since the commencement of England and Irelands civil wars which no question according to the Novices computation do amount to above the number of five hundred thousand poor Christians Page 2. That now we because not imployed in the business and that the Lord did not call some of us but some of our Brethren to be actors in that glorious unparalleld piece of justice cry him up in our Pulpits for a Saint and a Martyr and the Lords instrument of Justice for Regicides and murtherers Nay says he and I would some of us had given him the lye and not such occasion to say so that we scarse allow him second to Jesus Christ Truly Sir you must help me to evade this Dilemma whether it be righteously done of us I say to force our King if innocent to confess an infinite guilt of most horrid murthers or when guilty after he hath received the due justice of a murderer to proclaim him innocent and denounce his must just Judges murderers Well Let us now pass on to the Argument of Polemo's Story as it begins This King of ours it seems went to the Scots there are some and indeed a great summ can testifie this but to what end can a man imagine he should be induced to cast himself rather on the Scotch then the English Bottom Certainly quoth Polemo he well hoped to have out-witted out-deceited them perchance he did not think that worthy the term of Fraus which was done but Fallere fallentes But what says he further to this No he went not to them as imagining they were more true or generous then the English but because he knew they were more easily wrought upon and divided from their fellow Covenanters then are we English Ah Sir Consider I beseech you what a Byter this is to our Brethren Alas do we not see this fulfilled in their unrighteous present transactions and ungodly accord with him whom we have great cause to fear with a godly jealousie hath even yet a Design against the Covenant of God and every one of the godly Party let him be Independent or Presbyterian that was in the least manner an enemy to the abominations of his wicked father who is now dead and gone I profess Sir I am not satisfied in his orall submission nor that extorted Declaration t is a difficult thing for our Brethren to answer that one Objection of our Parliament That This day they should proclaim him a follower of and a goer on in all the evill of his fathers foot-steps and To morrow forsooth in one nights sleeping declare him sufficiently purify'd an absolute Convert Dear Sir I fear jugling and selfishness to be crept into the hearts of our Brethren Ah that the Lord would infuse a discerning spirit into them that they may not be given over to beleeve lyes Ah that they may not be drawn aside by inchanting Court-spells ah that they may give over to fall out about Empire and the Lord grant that they may yet at last desire amicably to compose such triviall concernments as may accidentally intervene between the fellow-Saints of God that so once again a way may be mâ—de open for us to go on hand in hand in the prosecution of a Blessed Reformation But next the story leads me off from our selves to that good old friend of ours the Catholike A quawm should seem comes generally over their stomacks and they were weary of any longer marching o' the Royal score meerly because they say Monarchy I will not say Tyranny and not so much as pretence of Religion was aym'd at by the King and his Cavies And here first Sir Polemo calls a friend of yours and mine Oxford to witness the truth of his subsequent Relation and having told us the factions and fractions of the Great ones there he descends strangely to particularize the persons offices characters and forreign negotiations of some men as particularly the pilgrimage of one Sir John Kempsfield to Rome and from thence hastily dispatcht by the Pope in a secret employment to Ireland and yet he sayes he dares not divulge all he knows of the persons of some men now acting for the Restauration not of Charls but the c. yet a horrible large Catalogue we shall shortly have O that we could see it once of Devils in mens shapes yea he sayes in Ministers too crept in to undermine us Ah Sir I am weary of sighing all the day long when I consider a Jesuite may more safely and covertly walk under the guize of a Presbyter then any other borrowed shape he can assume Ah that there should be such an hole in the holy Covenant to let him creep through into the Pulpit amongst us assuredly dear Sir I begin to be fearful and am almost of opinion that many whom we now deem to be zealous for our cause of God and conscientious adherers to the Covenant of God and their Principles that many of those I say whom we take to be faithful dispencers of the Lords mysteries and whom the enemy term Rigid Ones are if the truth were known and the Lord enable this Polemo to make it out unto us according to his promise very Agents to and Instruments for the Pope Truly
Mutatus Polemo REVISED BY Some Epistolary Observations of a Country Minister a Friend to the Presbyterian Government Sent up to a Reverend Pastor in London Whereunto is annexed A Large TRACTATE Discussing the CAUSES betwixt Presbyter SCOTLAND and Independent ENGLAND As it was sent in a Letter inclosed to the REVISER And Penned by C. H. Esquire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian Factiosus odit plus quà m duos Wisdom begins at the end London Printed for Robert White 1650. The Printer to the Reader Judicious Reader SVch I conceive only fit to peruse this following Piece I lately printed a Book entituled Mutatus Polemo or The horrible Stratagems of the Jesuits during our Civil wars c. In which there is promised a second grand Discovery which is by many far and neer very much enquired after and which I understand will be ready for the Press as soon as the Author is returned from his Circuit which in short time is expected and hearing that there were some sheets relating to that Book in the custody of some worthy men I forthwith made strict enquiry after them being not only much desirous to know what they might import but I thought also I might have been disappointed of having the second Copy at last I happily met with a Friend who not onely helped me to the sight hereof but moreover told me he could wish it were made publique which Courteous Reader I have now done partly for his desire but principally for thy satisfaction And I have been bold also to entitle it Mutatus Polemo Revised which to my judgement seems very proper for the first subject it being the pro and con arguings of an able Countrey Minister concerning that Book But for this second Piece here I dare say it will speak for it self thou canst not rightly understand either unless thou hast read Mut. Pol. yet I recommend them to thy perusall because I am confident it will wonderfully inform thee in many great mysteries and passages of these times to thy great contentment Read consider and be wise I for my part have all I lookt for if the Book selling well I shall herein have advantaged the Publique mine own and thy private good which is the earnest desire and studious endeavour of 13. Novemb. 1650. Thy well-wishing Friend R. W. Worthy Sir and dear Fellow-Labourer in the Lord JESUS CHRIST NO sooner had I cursorily run over this Book which herewithall I send you but forthwith a great controversie arose in the discourse of my minde concerning many matters as first What should ail Mr. my Stationer to send me down that piece which he knew would scarce obtain a perusal at my hands and secondly when indeed I had first scan'd it it could not by and by work upon me that it was any other but the fictitious vanity of some idle Wit yet a while I suspended that my conceit till I had once again warily con'd it over And first of all for the Title so far must I display mine own weakness to the world I profess I do not understand that Aenigma of Mutatus Polemo happily it may be a pretty conceit of the witty Novice and worth the enquiring after I beseech you Sir let us see one line of your London interpretation in your next At the first view of the Frontispiece verily I was for the present much startled when I found the Jesuite to be clos'd with the godly party of the Presbyterie and all to draw on the old Catholike Cause but turning over leaf and finding it dedicated to the Lord President I began to resolve it was meerly an invented and composed thing of some of their own party yet when again in the Epistle I finde him gravely acknowledging his deserts of a Rope and Death its true it a little stumbled me not much I confess all might be jugling yet for all this But Sir when he comes to his Reader in good sooth he grapples shrewdly with my belief and does assure us that some of our greatest Statsmen knew the reality of these thing◠already and so shall we also in another Discovery of his now fitting for the Press c. Certainly Sir the man is not mad to engage the Publike State and his particular reputation whom he sayes we shall be acquainted with hereafter and all for the confirmation of a Novell Invention But Sir let us speak impartially I profess I am personally convinced of the truth of the generality of his discovery when I see he sticks not to tell us whose Convert he was even that incomparable Divine as he indeed fitly calls him and I may add moreover that sometimes worthy friend and acquaintance of mine Mr. G. of C.C. in Oxford now in that House a Principal of which I my self was once a mean member And to be brief Sir its some little satisfaction to me that he is really a Novice as he pretends but I mean in Independencie because truly if you mark he is somewhat too acutely facete he is not sufficiently initiated in their Tone and Dialect and besides his description of Places and his so home-particularizing of so many sundry eminent persons both French Welch English and Scotch makes me think otherwise of it then a Romance Truly then if so be as he promises he will speedily undertake the Ministery I am confident he will not as indeed he may not be ashamed of the great service he hath done to the Church of God wards and his Countrey in this pithy and in my second thought serious Relation of his And now Sir let me ask leave to extract out of that piece of his some sad Observations which too nearly relate unto us who have all along been profess'd parties of the Presbyterie In truth they lye very heavy upon and oppress my spirit and concerning which good Sir I earnestly desire and in the Bowels of Jesus Christ conjure you to send down your serious and unbiassed opinion that so we of your friends in the Country by your judicious holdings forth and the workings of the Lords Spirit upon us may be rightly informed in that which we are too willing to stand in doubt of Page 1. For indeed as the Novice begins here are things discovered to my sence which have lain long buried in deep vaults below the guesses of ordinary men And now first Sir Though I could willingly pretermit and neglect that same shrewd Character which he very homely bestows on the late King and which in very truth our Brethren as well as the Independent may acknowledge to be too too like him yet I cannot but call to minde his obstinacie as he calls it especially against the Reformation and Covenant of God even during the time the Lord was pleased to make us his instruments of affliction unto him I mean all the imprisonment contempt and hardships he endured at our hands before Providence gave us power not longer over him No doubt some of his Sycophant creatures have been so
bulwarks and raise their Forts against us under no other shadow or blind but that base one of Presbytery even those are now turned Enemies who are maintained and have grown great and most opulent under the protection of these our defenders they have in very warm places been nourished yea in the very Bosomes of our Governors Certainly we hope it was not the weakness but without question it is the overmuch clemency of the Masters that have been the cause of the daring aspirings of these underling servants The Parliament have hitherto but a little softly prun'd the disorder of these outragious ones by gently touching its branches and slips but if ever they mean to continue a Free state oh may they pardon my boldness they must resolve and that speedily to lay the Ax close to its trunk and root for every rational man must now conclude That more mercy to the obstinate Presbyter will be meer cruelty to our present Common-wealth They must no longer be soothed in their Villanies but chastized for their Treacheries for indeed we stand upon a ticklish vertical point and t is a choice piece of discretion in State-Governours to be able as well to know when to punish severely for an evill as to reward justly for a good service hereby they will avoid a dangerous lenity and not fall into a Timerous weakness for they must as well banish all softness as rashness in the administration of justice this is the way which they must make when they can find none else this points them out their deliverance from present hard passages and is the only means to stay up our state from point of falling which these men hope they have reduc't it to So that if ever this Government whereof these troublesome fellows have suffered us hitherto to see but the Picture should shoot forth and appear yet more transparently glorious to all the world which it will do when these selfish Remora's are once removed it would certainly ow the main part of its birth and vigor to that most necessary piece of justice of cripping and cutting off these superfluous-hasty overgrowing branches And I cannot but wonder what makes these men all abroad awake to dream so as they do of Empire and dominion certainly they are very unfit ones to bear rule for we see so far would they have been from being good Masters that they will not be so much as tolerable servants verily they must give us better examples of obedience before we intend to submit to them if their hopes should come to pass as God forbid to be our Dominators The truth on 't is they are not valiant though they now seem so fool-hardy there 's nothing in the world hath made them thus malapertly desperate but the goodness of our Parliament In a word they are the superfluities of a Common-wealth Members I cannot brook to call them but if they be they are fit to be cut off from a Common society and of all men in the world most fit to people and set up their Dagon discipline amongst wild Bores in a Desart And yet the Image and shadow of this their new stampt Form of Religion is that wherewith they hope they shall in time be able to cheat all the world to speak truly they are the Pharises of the earth they make clean the out-side of the Cup the shell of Religion but are full of Pride Avarice and Filth within They make a fairer shew with their wickedness then some do with reall goodness it self To what end think ye have those Pulpit-squawlers of theirs heretofore so much exclaimed against the Prelatical-lawn sleeves but that their Giddy-Duncery would not permit them to be of the number of those vaunting yet learned Bishops and thus they seemed to despise the others vain-glorious insolence yet not out of a pious humility but an emulating Pride For I challenge the whole rabble of those Rabsheka Rabbies and all consciously obedient meek-spirited men to witness whether the Generality of these Priestly-Presbyter-Lurdanes above fifty to one are not a company of seditiously covetous insolently proud wretchedly lecherous and non-sensically dull Idols There is scarce a Priest of them that is not either a Traytor to his country a gryping usurer or a ridiculously Proud ignorant and yet for all this there are a company of honest Godly and yet seduced poor souls that make a judgement of the sanctity of these impostors meerly from the out-side and external appearance of their feigned humility and sniffling Hypocrisy but let them look upon them with an unbyassed judgement and observation and they shall soon find them to be the stirrers up of Rebellion and Mutiny workers of iniquity powerful in their malice daring to lift up their polluted hands to heaven imploring what Why that God would be pleased to send another more bloody war amongst his poor people Monstrum horrendum horresco referens and what is it makes them so impiously mad I le tell you when they were permitted to eat some of their elder-brother-Bishops fat-Cathedrall morsels t was all well it went down sweetly but since authority hath converted it to better more pious and publick uses what say they to 't now nothing but Church robbing and sacriledge is heard in their mouths Though they would have the name Bishop confounded into Presbyter yet the large maintenance they concieve very fit to be still kept up I le undertake if the yong man will but make them a promise of being Abby-lubbers that they shall be all Bishops Deans Canons Archdeacons c. they shall then Roare up his most sacred Majesty in their Pulpits ten degrees above their most holy Covenant or Kirk and anathematize all that do not sincerely acknowledge him the Lords annointed and the next if not equal to Jesus Christ such as these they are and yet they cease not with all their might to pretend devotion for truth when they only make it their main vertue superstitiously to cry up their Scotch Presbytery founded on policy to debase the present English authority raised by providence O how valiantly will they raile nonsence in a Pulpit when they think there is no man able to answer them Their zeal which according to the meaning of the Spirit of God ought to devour themselves they imploy to set on fire and ruine the republike by their Jesuitical fomentations They are now effronted and become daringly bold to oppose Authority in a most insolent manner and all their doting scruples forsooth must pass currant for positive Doctrines they are too impudent to ask pardon for their preterite villanies they will rather ask leave to commit more that so they may as we say sin with Authority against the present Government These Impostors begin now to appear to the world in their genuine species they are now generally lookt upon as men who have onely put on the vizard of a specious formal devotion that under that they may the more cunningly cheat the poor silly people into