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
Sir in this scruple of conscience I am also much dissatisfied why we should keep such a spudder in the Pulpit in matters meerly civil and politick alas Sir let us preach Jesus Christ and desire to know nothing else Ah me how do some of our brethren especially amongst ye at London make us shrewdly suspect them whom otherwise the world must have in great reverence and estimation for their eminent worthiness in Gospel-pains-takings when the whole scope of their exercises is to set the people a madding and to spawle so so much in the face of Authority enough to make that ununreasonable Hydra rise up and tear in pieces our fellow-Saints whom 't is true the Lord hath set over us and yet to be our servant Governours Pag. 5. But on next he tells us the Good Catholike is quite turn'd Presbyter and doth now clearly relinquish the Royall Cause so much as that he is resolv'd to assist us with some grand pieces of his Treachery not doubting but that we shall serve to add vigour to their cause as more able and apt Instruments then were the hare-brain'd Cavaleers Verily Sir if his reasons hold water to prove this we shall be with some reluctancy and grief of spirit enforced to acknowledge the pernicious evill of our Presbyterian Discipline what a Papist be able to cloud himself under the holy walkings of a Presbyter O lamentable let us hear his reasons I pray Sir and the great Jehovah be pleased to work an information upon all our spirits He urges you see in the Book that they have more hopes by us then they had by the Bishops and here a Dominican Father shews us how to wit That if the points of our Religion where I conceive he hints at Auricular Confession and Penance with their Discipline and Policie no doubt he means our owning a Kirk-Chair-Infallibility were seriously considered that there is no form of Religion in the world does so neerly adhere to and consent with the true Catholick Faith though he denyes it to be super veritate fundatum as theirs is because perchance we so much stand upon our Kirk and they upon their Church He proceeds on with his Reasons because we of the Ministery are so mutable and given to change so that he concludes a probable hope of our conversion to them in the end O Sir that our unmoveableness in the wayes of worship godliness and walkings with God could supply us with an Argument to repell this undenyable objection of theirs Oh dear God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we do confess and acknowledge the instabilities and waverings of our opinions in many fundamentals and sound points Ah Sir help me to deny that Marginall witness he there inserts against us A Common-Prayer-Directory-Covenanting-Royall-Assembly-Engaging Ministers of England Let me tell you Sir though we seem out of some humane carnall concernments so much to boggle at the engaging to the present Government yet I professe it was indeed an odder change in us to run point-blank against all those former oaths we had so often taken at our severall Degrees and taking Orders then now but to make a promise by subscription of being obedient to that Government which the Lord himself doth indubitately own to be over us by his perspicuously appearing manifold providences and bringings about it doth not trouble me though indeed it was contrary to our many oaths that we have laid aside the Bishops but it grieves my spirit when I consider we could heretofore so easily swallow a Camel and that we should now so nicely strein at a Gnat. Pag. 6. Next for that which he calls Volaticum jus jurandum our Covenant how can we deny but that our Brethren make the main use of it now for a pick-quarrel with England which as we have grounds to suspect if the French have put them upon then assuredly some body hath given an assurance of his firm conversion to the Faith Catholick and we of the Presbytery the onely staffe He intends to lean upon which truths of his assertion that he may the more clearly hold forth you see he sticks not to tell us the particular services and good turns they did us for the advancement of and twisting together the catholick-covenant-Catholick-Covenant-Cause Pag. 7. Certainly we cannot chuse but see day all abroad at this great hole and through these crannies we cannot but espy the Jesuiticall closings with us I pray God it be not ours with them as in the business of France and Ireland For as he goes on it should seem when he ruled the roast the Jesuits were better able in any notion to disguise themselves under our Discipline then any other because alas we were so credulously formall that whosoever would but turn Covenanter we were eftsoon confident he must be an honest man if he had been the highest Cavaleer Iesuit or King himself which if the last had as his son now has done with his whole fry of Iesuites and Malignants about him I am subject to beleeve with the Novice they would and these will if the Lord avert it not in short time reduce England to a more sad condition then all we have hitherto sustain'd for let us speak soberly Sir if the late ungodly King had but come in by that cobled Treaty of the Isle of Wight there would I am confident hardly a moneth have commenc'd before we should have had some of our now best standing heads lopt off and I professe I have often feared with my self that such as you and I should scarce have been seated in those affluent Benefices and creaturely full enjoyments which we undisturbedly may if we will now enjoy under these our gracious Governors Pag. 8. Ah Sir what can we imagine but that when we three you know whom I mean are but once joyn'd but the effects will be most sad To us especially for whosoever stands we must fall I will not touch upon the sound reasons which in his 8. pag. he urgeth for this passage they indeed make me silent to give a Response to him or them for truly I cannot deny that the bloody intentions of the Cavaleers to us-wards and so consequently our just provocations against them must needs render us both one with another impossibly reconcilable Pag. 9. But let us us suppose now that if our brethren with the assistance we could wish them and the Cavaleers will bring them should prevaile against our present Government and lay England flat on their backs what benefit can we of all men propound or imagine to our selves for surely the Cavaleer would flye high and stand on tip-toe outvying us both for service and desert when at the most we do but wish well and are said to bawle a little in the Pulpit when in the mean while they are now suffered and let in to act in the field whose number also and considerableness every man knows much surmounts us in England and t is thought by the young
according to your present light in your wayes of worship of God but in an amicable way to compose such triviall impertinencies concerning which we have so often to no purpose sent overtures unto you ye know that a man once in danger of drowning indifferently catches hold of whatsoever is obvious to his sight or sense though it be a naked sword or hot iron I have seen two beasts fighting that would presently part and fall upon a third common enemy shall we be worse then beasts is there such a necessity in it that you must needs divide from us your heretofore Brethren and unite and joyn interest with strangers enemies aliens forraigners Danes Swedes French Dutch O horrible Irish too c. I must confess self-preservation is the most pressing if not the most legal of all duties but have a care Brethren that you have not learned this maxime out of Machiavel That its convenient for a Christian to agree with the Turk against a Christian for in danger saith he Honesty and fair-dealing may be laid aside and but what seems best may be undertaken this is but to defend a mans self with the left hand Now let the world be Moderators whether you have not gone these sinister wayes to work Good God! what I trow is the end and object of your designs what is there in the cause under which you now warfare that either a learned Doctor may be able to maintain or that a consciencious Presbyter dare excuse I see I must once more impeach you of the highest piece of perfidie and pursue you to the inmost retreates of your plots and see whether as the world gives out your Nation in general or that black counsel under which you now labour be least innocent or most viperous True ye paint over your pretences with the guilded colour of righteousness but seriously wise men judge that there is nothing but a desire to become masters of other mens habitations which makes ye so often desirous to go out of your own It was ever the custom of you cold Nothern ones to come before you were bid and to creep nearer the Sun Lord what a many arguments which now lye in English Jaques were there once rak'd up to prove the conveniencie of our Vnion and your naturalization what oldd remnants were there scrap'd up to assert the legality of your Sixth Jemmies transplantation as intricate as a Welsh Pedigree and because forsooth descended from a seventh Henry we must be your fellow-slaves and this unhappy fancy of yours bringing your third Hobby-Horse because his sons-son will in the end certainly prove fatall to you if you be not the more timely wise ye ran well who hindred you that ye might not obtain that precious liberty chalk'd out by us unto you ye were at your own disposition ye might have been what ye had desired but ah me in the midst of peace ye have the spirit of war and a seditious will and when ye once made us beleeve ye were at rest ye onely then plotted how ye might be more active these tricks will prove State-Torments to you in the end ye will not be at quiet till ye have the rule of our Church and Sate Really a man may read in the white-liver'd physiognomy of ye Scots and our Presbyters that innate Coveteousness in them to rule and raign which burns and consums ye within and is the true internal sign that makes them look as they do T is true your Duke Hamilton who paid so deerly for our University Earldom is now dead but his instructions live still and are now as vigorously on foot amongst you as ever though you invited us when you were well knockt and humbly cried Peccavimus a sinful ingagement because ye saw that unless you took in that young Renegado into your pack it would be as unfeisable for you to win England as those Kingdoms and Provinces which Galileo points out unto you in the Moon but now I le warrant by his help ye are as sure as a gun In good sober sadness the extravagancy of your designs is worthily to be jeered at they are so contemptibly ridiculous in the thoughts of all knowing men would to God ye did but in part understand how mightily you and your Dagon Presbytery is generally laught at in this our Common-wealth But should seem the great wrong we have done you and that which most offends you is our being free you will finde something or you will quarrel at a straw look thorow all our Histories and we finde that as long as Scotland has had a neighbour there never wanted brawlings either by good will or by force ye will enter upon and have to do with the affairs of England truly my brethren ye have always been taken for very bad Accomodators of differences Is this your stating the Cause to fight us if so for what is it I beseech you Is it for the reinstalment of your old Popish Bishop or for the reinvestment of your new sinfull King whom you have made to confess so great a contraction of the guilt of hainous sins and horrid bloudy crimes that you have even perswaded the world he is fitter to be hang'd drawn and quartered by the Laws of God and men at least we for our parts much doubt that Jus divinum of your rotten debaucht Kirk how you can or dare maintain his compurgation upon a meer formally hypocritical verball submission and that for a Jack-a-Lent who would rather turn Link-boy to you then sit out for Gods sake how comes it to pass that ye have not excommunicated him all this while as well as any other of your sinners will ye make him confess guilt and yet say he is not so or can ye dare say that his guilt is not within the line of his excommunication if ye do I dare say ye are all a company of rascally veillacons In the Spanish Schools I have read it was once a very hot dispute and there was cutting and flashing for it to some purpose whether the Indians were of the race of Adam their gold mines made them Scot-like deny their fraternity or a middle bastard species between a man and an Ape I wonder they had forgot you what can any man make of you you will have a King and no King a sinner and no sinner a righteous person and yet his whole house and himself bloody monstrous incarnate devils Well if he be such an one as ye have made him confess and we have not reason to deny then I will not say the habit of Tyranny but without question the Tyranny of habite hath got such predominancy over him that according to his instilled principles which have been drawn from the blood and been breed in his bone will hardly out of the flesh unless it be let out the same way his Tyrant fathers was In the interim me thinks the visible apparancy of his detestable horridness should at least palliate and allay your groundless
inveterateness against us but why speak I it must be the Lords work not mine not mans I see you must be constrained to be happy in stead of being miserable O how wonderfully are you infatuated See you not he hath a direful plot upon you as well as us but your Grandees have possest you to the contrary 't was warily done of them all the hopes ye can possibly expect is that you shall be the next after us do ye not perceive the pernicious evil of this deceit but you say you will not account it so when its like to be profitable to those that are deceived we shall answer you in your own terms so neither doth violence deserve that name when it shall convert to the commodity and advantage of those who must be enforced to embrace their own felicity ye must therefore even patiently take what falls though hitherto ye have denied that good fortune which requests admission to you But next ye will say the death of his father is that which sticks most to your stomacks I verily conceive ye are angry because ye had not the hap to do it your selves I know not how many above twenty ye had then made it but dare ye say it was unjust when we can borrow some old arguments of your Nation not only of your very Buchanan and Knox to prove the legality of it in lesser circumstances of crime but also of your new Declarations against this very person himself ye never had the breeding to put a Tyrant so mannerly to death but in a butcherly roguish way of secret murther we the people of England did not do it in hugger mugger after your manner of Prime Execution but in the publique place of Justice which though it were indeed an high piece of Judicature yet according to that generally received maxime All that is above Justice is not therefore unjust especially in matters of State As we say in Divinity matters of Faith are above reason yet not against it But alas ye are so blinded with the avarice of English guifts which ye were wont to receive here from your Scotch Kings and so wedded to your own interests that through the traverses of profit ye will not see the good of that glorious peice of Justice nor but meerly in policy though ye confess it in your own hearts will ye acknowledg it to be so yet now if ye will may you vindicate your perishing honours in justly serving the sinful son the same sauce we did the bloody Father ah let your publike liberty be evermore dearer to you then your particular good you have been animated sufficiently hereunto by the generosity of many of your Ancestors nor shall ye be unfortified in the designes which ye ought to put in â—re for them aintenance thereof if you please to make use of those who not out of fear but love had yet rather be your freinds then enemie Tertia Pars. ANd now I speak to ye the honest party left amongst the Scots be not ye terrified by the roaring-Megs of your Kirk-Governors threats turn your eyes Englandward and behold a proffered succour for you against all those that would oppress you alas the liberty wherewith ye are now flattered it s but a counterfeit one no way true and solid he that never was without a burthen at his back knows not what it is to be at ease ye that have so long groan'd under a Kingly and Presbyterian Tyranny know not what it is to be at liberty nor will your Task masters learn unless you document them out of our English Rules how to put a stop and moderation to the filthy avarice and boundless ambition of their hearts nor will ever cease to increase their Tyranny and your bonds while you so Ass-like suffer your selves to be fool-riden Now to excite you hereunto let me tell you That the justice of every cause for taking up arms divides it self into one of these three branches 1 First To revenge injuries received and upon this score next to your freedom are we now come down amongst you or 2 secondly to defend men from Tyranny upon this we first began and hope to see you make an end or 3 thirdly To give Laws to them that have none which indeed neither have you now in their due course nor had we while we were necessitated to receive so insufferable injuries having no bulwark of defence against oppressing Tyranny now my Brethren all these three are honest necessary and just causes upon which ye may boldly safely and piously adventure upon this ye that are feeble may lean ye that are weary of your insupportable burthens may rest your selves ye that are tied and bound with the chains of your oppressors may set your selves at liberty he that dies in this quarrel if it were possible let him covet to live again that he may be once more slain A lack a day what strange appearance is it amongst you that small faults peccadillo's comparatively should be punished in a subject when commissioned to act them yea and that even with a kind of barbarous death and monstrous horrid ones connived at yea adored in that sinful one who daily added encouragements to his commissioned Agent O horrible that the enormousness of the action should be that which Authoriseth the crime and justifieth the criminal certainly I say there is no appearance of equity or that which you call righteousnes in this seriously ye seem wholly to be led by the Dictate of that Tragick Poet so often chanted on the Theaters and so familiarly quoted by Tyrants That in matters of Polity and States and to command it is at any time lawful for a Prince to violate Right but it must be observed in any thing else Truly the deceivers of this Age do much wrong thus to seduce souls in covering such horriblenesses as these under the notion and name of Righteousness neither I suppose can it be amiss for me or any English Gentleman to shew ye your own condemnation in such wiles as these carried on under the guise of that which some men have been so much mistaken as to term Prudence in you but is indeed naught else but a subtilty of spirit which ye the people of Scotland have been ever observed to have at your fingers ends in your most absolutely seeming honest confederacies and transactions And yet let us speak soberly though so many Judgements have in fore times accounted you the stately cunning Sophisters of the world in which perchance that strict Mistress Poverty may much help you in my opinion and t is more then one Doctors ye are fit to be reckoned with those Platonicks who are said to have some rational intervals and are but sometimes in their right wits we are able to shew you to your shame and grief where you have ridiculously over-shot your selves I believe hereafter your mouths will water after some of our Commonwealth-liberty o' my credit ye will be of our opinion by that
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