which we have suffered and outliven must needs content our memory Surely then kind Sir every generous soul cannot but be passionately affected with and as it were resolutely interess himself against the rude calumniations and dirty bespatrings which some of ye black coats and blacker mouthes dare vomit and spue out of your Pulpits in the very face of Authority what wild stupididity possesses ye silly pettish elves Ye can Saint a Tyrant your quondam mortal Foe ye extoll to the skies since ye your selves brought him to the block him whom even a world yea even of his very foraign friends ingenuously acknowledg to be the greatest Bloudshedder of this last Century It s a great wonder to me to see how the Royalists hug the memory of their late weakling-Idol why is it but because as his son now does at times to serve his turn he deserted them in plain ground they are right Spaniels the more endeared to him because he was the principal cause of their so often sound basting and utter ruine but for ye secondary adopted fondlings of the Presbytery that ye should begin so strangely to lessen the number of those thousands who as ye often brag'd would never bow the knew to Baal this is much the greater wonder of the two The Cavaleers made a God of the first and ye a Calf of the second T is very pretty to observe how oddly ye are resolved sometimes for Monarchy and then presently you could find in your hearts to have a Commonwealth rather then relinquish a fat Benefice how strangely do your great London Brethren Weathercock it about Those Cawdries Hudsons Ashes Robin-Hoods c. whatsoever is commanded by Authority they will be sure to run Counter if an act of thanksgiving be emitted to be observed on Tuesday we shall be sure to have it in some by-corner but on their own Kirks-day-Friday truly they may do well to imitate the Moores who say they on the same day do evermore use to make publike prayers and meetings for the restitution of the Kingdom of Granada but bitterly curse the memory of the last King who could not defend it against Ferdinand 7. But seventhly you stand much upon your Conscience Scruples these forsooth must be the Cover-sluts for all your sneaking-hypocritical Rogueries and Pulpit-Impostures O what witched faces do ye there make what catterwauling howlings what religious railings Really I look upon this thing called Royall Presbytery as a meer monster whose figure can not be delineated as ye have now farced and pieced it up with your very godly Brethren the Cavaleers with your holy Brethren the Scots and with your I know not what brethren the Irish true it seems at the first view when a man considers your seduced numbers to be of a very formidable and great bulke but this gross thumping body of yours consists of several pieces and patches some Popish some Prelatical some Directory and yet most-Common Prayer and some Confess Mass-book Truly Sir ye shall finde that after it hath had two or three sound Scotch-shakings that it holds together rather by Ligaments then Nerves I confess ye have many Classes and Asses that is members amongst you but they are very uglily proportioned not well compacted the Head grows out of the Breech ye make a Cushion of it for your Repentant-Close-stool to speak more properly ye walk up and down tip and tail I know not how but the Cavaleer saies Hand over head But behold a little poor people gone to whip the breech of this great Garragantulus those whom a supream Providence hath called and lifted up to humble the pride and insolency both of a Monarchick and Presbyterian Tyranny who though they are inconsistent aim both at that one thing behold I say those little hills of Pencland who were able to brave and resist an whole Kingdom of the one sort and all the forces of the other Poor contemptible souls The weak things of this world hath our God chosen to confound the mighty I can compare our Army in Scotland to nothing so fitly as those smal grains of sand wherewith the Lord bridles in the furious insultings of the main it was your own boast Sir that they would scarce serve for a Break-fast to that Nation Indeed I hope so and beleeve you brag on ye English Apostates surely those severall atchivements made under Straughan Massey Montgomerey c. since our first marching into that Hell upon Earth which ye lately so much vanted of were victories so deerly bought that your gude Brethren had ere this time been finally defeated had they gained many such but I am forced to acknowledge that the false news of the Irish Rebels your other Brethrens successes and that the Plague hath much infested the poor English Protestant there this indeed hath given you much cause thus to elevate heighen your spirits but this cannot much perplex the honest heart for I dare pawn my Reputation it will in time appear that ye have not onely confederated with the gross Papist but ioyned tailes or rather Heads with the very Jesuite yet I beseech you Sir nicely to take notice of this one sentence There is yet whereby ye may be troubled where ye think your selves so secure not that I say we have a plot to out-vye you and bid higher for the Papist then have ye we should then be so far from being confident as now ye are by it that we should evermore doubt of our future prosperity But who can be ignorant that if the honest godly Englishman whom your party have seduced and divided from us should again re-unite themselves return to their obedience and wits and at last smell out that ungodly knavery which the Brethren have lately fob'd into their pretended Kings Declaration or if your other dear fellow-Saints the Cavaleers shall henceforth surcease to lend their hands bloud and estates to the propagating of their first enemies rascally designs and resolve henceforth to be true to their Countrey knowing that the plot is carried by you as destructively fierce against them as any other party whatsoever against whom ye more grin your teeth then assuredly all the plots and devices that are now machined against England or any of us all be we what we will be that are your enemies would presently burst and shiver in pieces and the best Scotified Presbyter of you all be like an old dusty-rusty Jack never more able to turn any way having lost some of your master wheeles But this let me add moreover to your Brother-Royalist his comfort we have known the man that having been overcome hath finally endangered the Conqueror though but with the broken end of a sword and to have slain him to whom even now he was an humble petitioner for his life Noble Gentlemen Cavaleers ye often use to boast that you could not have been vanquished had not that base forraign Scotch Nation been brought in assistant against you You say also ye cannot be in a worse
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
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
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