in glory and all pleasant and usefull one to another And in union with the State or Kingdome You were divided you kept them from medling with Spirituall things and they in requitall and revenge excluded you from Civill things you both in your dark and worldly state made lawes against each other The heavenly or spirituall men must not medle with earthly affaires they defile them nor earthly men act in heavenly or spirituall Thus were you cruell and unkinde to your selves and to each other one setting up an Heaven without an earth the other an earth without a heaven These in the Lord are married together in perfect union the same Lord being by the same spirit King and Priest and administring his Church and Kingdome together they are joynd in the King and must run down in fellowship together into the lower parts Now truth springs out of the earth You shall have God and Christ in the truth of the Spirit springing up in all your civill affaires in all your Lawes Statutes customes nothing else but heavenly truth and all your businesse civill and naturall shall be holy to the Lord blessed Ordinances of Heaven you shall be in all of them in the light of God and minister in Gods presence Vpon the horse bridles upon the pots upon all things written holinesse to the Lord And righteousnesse shall look down from Heaven Heaven shall shine forth to you righteous lawes You shall see the same things done in Heaven that are done in the earth looking in each others face and answering one another heer in THIS world earth will be no burden to Heaven being new and Heaven no trouble to earth no stranger when shee shewes her face and looks out she is the same thing and both joyning together salvation springs forth of them the Earth by her fellowship with Heaven brings forth good fruit peace righteousnesse and justice for the Land and the Earth without Heaven brings forth nothing but cold dead Lawes and Heaven without Earth but airy phansies both in conjunction make a compleat happinesse Now shall we meet together all Sorts in a generall assembly in the light of Heaven as golden candlesticks The holy one walkes in the midest of us emptying the golden Oyle by golden pipes from his golden self into his golden vessels his ministers And in this holy assembly sitting in the light of God all things shall be manifest to us wee shall see the whole forme of the house of God all the doors windows and pillars of it nothing of its statutes and ordinances shall be hid from us no error shal go undiscovered unrefuted all that have gon astray shall be brought back the ignorant shall be instructed the opposing and dissenting convinced and the obstinate rejected and cast out such a harmony and consent of hearts and mindes in this love and light must needs bring forth blessed fruit What ever is true in any religion we shall owne what is false we shall judge The darkness of Popery shall fall before our light we shall undermine the Kingdome of darknesse and set up truth in that beauty and majesty as shall gain all hearts upon such firme pillars as none can move her Wee feare not Papists nor all their strength we shall need no Lawes against them but The Law of the Spirit of life which wee know will over-come them The Gates of our Heavenly Jerusalem shall be open night and day let who will come in or go out No Vncleane thing shall enter into us But all the KINGS of the Earth all the wisdome state pompe and glory of Rome and all the World must bring their glory to this City this New Jerusalem And all the Nations upon Earth that shall be saved shall walke in the light of it Chap. XX. Of the restoration of the Army Levellers and City of London THE Army is but a particular part and that temporary and occasionall and is by this bright shining of the Sun of Righteousnes meltted into a generall peace and unity but lying under a particular condemnation it shall receive a particular discharge And we know thy imployment is so irksome and unpleasant to thee To be the kingdomes Gaoler to keep war in and peace out or to stand in the way to the Tree of life with a flaming sword to keep men from the injoyment of their liberty KING peace though thou art commanded to it by God these things being yet forbidden the people yet thou wilt be glad to be released from it that thou and all other may come into the Paradise of God and feed together upon the fruit of Divine peace and love There is under thy assuming power over the Kingdome King and Parliament and all and in thy maintaining thy Military power above and against the Civill in thy seeking thy owne subsisting and attempting to bee the Kingdomes Lord and restorer The Lord cloathing himself with zeal as with a garment incompassing himself about with flames of fire A Man of War a Lord of Hosts Casting away his Fatherly Government because of the Nations rebellion in all parts against himselfe and ruling us with a Rod of Iron God marching before us out of Egypts slavery into a Wildernesse turning us from a Civil Government into a Wildernesse and incamping in the midest of us and administering Laws to us as at sinai in thundering and lightning clouds and darknensse so terrible that makes all tremble A yoke that neither we nor our Fathers are able to beare And so we see Gods severity under mans iniquities And because it is the Lords Rod we kisse the Rod and love you for it Death is proper for this administration The Lord our Husband the Law dies wee were bound to honour you so long as you lived in the power and goodnes of God The whole Kingdome bowed before you while you led us safely through the Wildernes But Moses cannot bring us into Canaan but must only have a view of it and dye at mount Nebo This power is weak through the flesh and cannot do it if you contend now to effect any thing it is but the Devil striving for the body of Moses you are labouring to set up an honourable carcasse or to call back life into a dead body Christ did come into it and hath offered it up in his owne body and naild this power fast to the Tree you are dead fixt to the tree of shame by the curse with your Lord and by death you shall over come more then ever you overcame by life submitting to death your wils reasons lusts your seeking a worldly Kingdome your desire of lording it over others by force of armes with all your projects are slaine and all enmity in you against others and others against you Death hath disbanded you easd you of your hellish and wrathfull imployment Reconciled you to all and all to you brought you from being Turkish Janisaries to bee English men You are disolved into a body of love into GOD
your hands you were high peremptory churlish and froward towards him and so refused him He hath done you wrong and since offered you satisfaction which you have not accepted but require unjust and unreasonable tearmes he offended in personall acts but you insist upon hereditary satisfaction from him and his Children He hath offended himselfe and suffers for it but you would have restitution from the Office which is Gods and that never offended You have quite lost that reverence and honour that is due to him and look not upon him as he is in the Book of God you Lord and Head and his Anointed never minding God in him though buried under a heap of drosse and so never durst put any confidence in him or in the Divine Ordinance but looking upon him through the Glasse of your own weak jealousies and feares in which he is still presented to you as a black fâ—ul mischievous person you count it the greatest safety to keepe at distance from him To satisfy the People and your owne consciences you promised to make him the greatest Prince in the World and alwaies swore and Covenanted to defend his Person honour c. and since you have conquered his Armies and gotten all into your possession there appears nothing but high neglect or him instead of putting any honour on him because he doth not tamely sit down under your weak and absurd frame of government of Church and common wealth you imprison his person and honour You have greatly transgressed against the People who have intrusted you You have by your folly and weaknesse and unworthy managing that trust committed to you betrayed the honour and greatnesse of Parliaments into scorne and contempt and for ever except the hand of God wonderfully appear ruind and destroyed the Kingdomes great interest and the Peoples right a Parliament You have grosly disowned the People of England and have been led after others to save your selves becoming not ours but now the Armies then the Cities then the Scots Parliament You are cut off and dis-joynted from us making use of us for no other purpose but to bear your intolerable burdens of Excise Taxes c. by which yon have almost wasted us and minde onely your selves we receive not acts of favour justice Peace or honour from you you doing nothing effectually but reward your own Members suck and draw into your selves the honour wealth and places of the Kingdome the whole Kingdome languishing in misery you onely and some few of your creatures getting wealth Not a Parliament but a trade now a great Menopoly of honour wealth Law dignity and every thing that 's good in the Nation You never would or durst suffer any thing for us if you would as by right you should have suffered for the People we might have been saved from ruine but you constantly avoid it in your selves and expose us to it so cowardly that you dare not stand by your own Votes Ordinances Principles but upon all occasions for fear disert them justice and us Wee charge you with weaknesse and inability to manage the affaires in your hands for want of judgement and sore-sight you have brought your selves into a maze of confusion and know not which way to go either backwards or forwards and so will lose your selves and us at last in a wildernesse of woe and perplexity As you waste our estates so are you prodigal of our bloods you never were tender enough of peace but too forward in war As the King was guilty of beginning so you of upholding the plague of war as not in seeking peace so not in accepting of it when it was offered especially in continuing of an Army in the Kingdom when there was no enemy to hurt wherein you shewed your distrust of Gods protection the Peoples affection your feeling the guilt of your unreasonable and unjust Government which made you keep up force to defend your Turkish Tyranny This being certain publicke justice righteousnes requires no protection but it self in a Kingdom Had you universally distributed right to all and established peace and righteousnes you needed no force So that as the King begun the former you are the beginners of the second war in England and so guilty of the blood that is shed Your grosse and constant breach of faith and Covenant with all whereby the Faith of the Kingdome is become a scorne and reproach and our expectations of good from you are continually frustrated and for all our losses of estate and blood we are repayd with nothing hut shamefull confusion in Church and common wealth Chap. VI Shewing the Judgement upon the Parliament NO Error can be small in a Parliament yours have been exceeding great and great evils must bring great Plagues and your evils hold proportion with your sins and standing the greatest evils that can befall such a body as you are Along while you have laboured under the disease and distempers of blindnesses malice frightings faction c. wasting by them into faintnesse and feeblenesse and carried into many indirect and false waies but at last comes your dissolution when you were rent and torne a peeces by women and boyes Apprentices forced by them to their pleasure and so broken into two peeces one part flying and another part staying and both in armes one against another shewing by open war your former inward contests so broken as none could tell which was the Parliament neither part being in deed but parts able to challenge the being of the whole Parliament the standing peece pretends most right but the other the best sword this breach not heald but smothered up as they were broken so composed by force and so to this day they stand not a naturall free but a violent forced Parliament not bottomb'd upon Christ or standing upon the Pillars of the Kings writ the Peoples free choyce and their own joynt consent but as an accursed broken Idoll upheld by necessity and Armies force and in professe enmity one against another A body of death in the Kingdom of darknesse subsisting and acting in Satan standing not to save the Nation but to be a parpetuall plague to themselves and others They have the nature of hell a civill hell full of grosse darknesse in chaines of darknesse in such a thick mist they cannot tell how to take one right step but t is into misery void of true wisdome all their actions poor petty shifts weak devices improper independent irrational things Already miserable undone labouring under their own the Nations ruin but so incompassed with misery that attempting to get out they meet with greater The destroyer hath the upper hand of them and is their master they are in a pit of destruction and so shut up that that which should save them is destruction to them If they look to the King their evill consciences the great difference tween him and them assures them if he come to have power will be revenged of them If they look
the mutuall health and welfare of each other The KING it he could ruine the Parliament should but destroy his own body himself in another his own flesh and the Parliament in destroying the KING destroy themselves in their head The Parliament have conquered the King but have gotten onely this by it to be a confused head-lesse heap and put off their naturall head to put on another to be headed by an Army a faction and if the King should doe as much and conquer the Parliament he would be unhappy in it and he would be the head not of a body but a confused rabble not a King indeed but a friend his party would Levell with him and expect to be Kings with him he would be in as great a confusion without a Parliament as the Parliament without the King As they are broken divided set in enmity and malignancy one against another so are the parts disordered The head the King laid in the bottom the Parliament upon him the Army hath been and when occasion serves can be uppermost The Kingdome stands upon his head The Parliament came forth of the King and Army forth of Parliament now the King can't come forth but it must bee from the Parliament as the Parliament comes forth of the Army Divided and subdivided broken into King and Parliament Parliament and Army Army and City City and Parliament England and Scotland Scotland their divisions Ireland divided from both and subdivided amongst themselves But the destroyer hath most shewed his cunning in our divisions so perfectly and artificially are we intangled and perplext in distractions as there is no escaping The KINGS party divided and some fallen in with the Scotch and Presbyterian which they perfectly hate and yet are joyned to them Others rather chuse to sit stil or have better love to the Independent interest ther 's another conjunction in dislike dis-junction The Parliament is divided some look back to the KING others had rather stand against him both jealous of him yet forced to looke towards him The Presbyterian joyning part to the Cavaliers and part to the Independent and both hating those they joyne too The City falling to peeces too Thus doth God shake the Nations jumbles their principles together scatters them as dried bones that none knows whether to go to joyne The King is shut up in his pit in his prison under the Army and Parliament he must make his way through their blood to come to the Crown and when he hath done that he must again ruine those by whom he riseth the Scots and when he hath done that he is yet but miserable and is worse then where he is The Parliament must goe through the Kings party to their end by the Army and when they have done that they must ruine the Army and Independent intolerable to them and then they arrive but at confusion The Army must destroy the Kings party first and then the Parliament and at last it gains nothing but to be a wretched nothing The City must ruine the Kings party or else wo be to them and the Independent too or else they can have no settlement and then the Parliament and they may have leasure to fight alone Hambletons Scots have the English Nation wholly to destroy before they can come to his end both Army Parliament and KING and their own Nation at home And what then Then there will be roome to fight with the Irish so that wee are involved in destruction shut up under severall locks and bolts and to get out of one is but to be out of a lesse into a greater or larger hell Therefore its impossible to recover your selves by force you may wrastle and tug with your fates and weary your selves with toyling but by all you will but sink your selves deeper and by your false hipocritical and unnaturall conjunctions of heterogeneous bodies make new matter of difference and increase your own misery Neither can a Treaty compose you in the condition in which you are you are in death and under the curse and all your actions are and shall be accursed The Nation is not only broken but as dried bones have lost their marrow of Vnion their spirit of Love it hath neither flesh of softnesse and gentlenesse nor sinews of agreement Neither doth there appeare that wisdome and skill to binde up these breaches King lost disabled Nobles scattered weake inconsiderable things Commons distracted hurried after their vaine imaginations Of all the sonnes that the kingdome hath brought forth there is none to guide her to take her by the hand to lead her out of this pit The end of Treating at best is but to settle the Kingdome in its former worldly estate T is looking back to Aegypt we are in the wildernesse and must on to Canaan It were woefull if wee should lose the fruit of all our blood and misery that we have suffered and only be where we were which will quickly fall back into the condition we are now in No the Divine purpose is of some higher favour to us and short of it we must not sit down Besides This Treaty is not voluntary but forced not open and plaine but false each seeking to catch advantages and in darknesse and jealousie fearfull and unblieving which will blast them sin and iniquity unpardoned the wrath of God still flaming against the Nation unquenchable by all the art of man that will render all humane attempts vaine and fruitlesse Heer lies England as Sodom burning in the displeasure of God in Civil bloody warres in madnesse and folly The Majesty and honour of the Mation confounded and lost in the KING the liberty and justice of it in the Parliament the power and might of it in the Armies the religion and truth of it in the Church the wealth and trade in the City the fruits of the earth by warre and unseasonable weather and ALL in the losse of Gods favour Heer is the Kings curses of his people and imprecations of judgements upon themselves and families brought forth to the life That mad party that cry Dam me and Ram me that drink healths to the confusion of the Parliament t is done you live to see it The other side that have Covenanted the exterpation of Episcopacy root and branch t is finished fully The Parliament and the KING their root or the Laws of the Land out of which they grew the Nation her self the Church all rooted out And all sects and schismes Presbytery it self for one pul'd up by the rootes Your fears have brought forth the thing you feard is upon you The removing of the Candlestick the losse of the Gospell The whole Kingdome is left in Hideous darknesse And the glory of it is gon from you That persecution feared by Independents is come Satan the destroyer is upon you wasting killing imprisoning all true glory light righteousnesse peace And the answer of your many prayers for destruction upon the enemies of Christ your selves and
her Ghost into the Armies bosome and leaves the Army Executor of her wil dies into the People and al dying together and tumbled into one grave of confusion By this death there is a perfect Remission of sinne here is a true Act of oblivion on all sides a blotting out of transgressions Hath the King transgrest hee lyes in the dust for it he is in your own bowels devoured by you if you accuse him you accuse your selves look upon him now as pierced by you and you can't think of his sins but of your own shame with self-piercing self-wounding hearts Neither can the King remember the Parliaments injuries but he must in those thoughts be oppressed they are in him and if he should think of revenge he must be revenged upon himself death wholly overcomes and spoiles revenge and leaves it nothing at all to feed upon Or if any party do look back they see all these mutuall violences in the Divine wisdome and goodnesse the sting of them being taken away with pleasure and content and glory in these marks not of hatred but love glory in the Crosse and rejoyce in your mutuall sufferings together and one for another all bitterness and envy being slain thereby Every one as now in the accuser you see your own good and your adversaries weaknesse and sin so shall you by this change of death see all the evill as your own and be able to beare it every one accusing himself and acquitting others so that the greatest enmity will be against your selves or any thing that makes a division and nothing remaining to be hated but enmity or hatred it selfe There cannot a thought of strife or enmity arise now but it must appear in blood in the blood of Kings Queenes Princes Parliaments enmity being slaine at first look you do see death in it and so abhorre to change a word with it look upon it as a murtherer and immediatly fly from it into each others bosomes Here is away too to pay all debts to cancell all obligations on both sides in this pit of death must all be swallowed up Debts are forgiven a dead man Here is a death of the Old man The old Quarel the old termes of enmity the old man and his lusts The lustings of the KINGS party after honour greatnesse preferment the Parliament after places Bishops Lands c. the Armies lustings after arreares the lusts of envy malice tyranny oppression coveteousnes desiring each others goods the fuell of this flame in all is buried Thus as before our remedies were our diseases so now our diseases our miseries become our remedy in saving we lost now in losing we save Our gain was losse and our losse is become gain through the riches of the wisdome and mercy of the Lord our GOD Now we must say we had perisht if we had not perisht Chap. XV. Of the compleat cure of the Nation shewing it in its Raised state and parrticularly the King NOw through the tender mercy of our God doth the day sparing from on high visit us To give light to them that sit in darknes in the shadow of death to guid our feet in the way of peace The bright day of Englands Redemption is come the sweet morning of our Resurrection A rise let us go from this pit of misery Let us wrap up all our grave cloaths of shame sin and sorrow and leave them with their Father the destroyer in this dark night of hell and death The Lord saith it and in the power of the Lord we doe break open Iron gates of death and let goe these poor prisoners of hope and before we goe we will spoile the spoyler trample Satan under foot laugh and mock at thy power ruine thy Kingdom of darknes take away from thee thy power to vex wholly destroy thy destruction Oh thou enemy destruction is come to a perpetuall end We smite thee upon the cheek-bone thou canst bite no more Now we lead captivity captive we were under thee now thou thy selfe art a prisoner and a servant thou hast not hurt us but done us good in destroying us thy curses are turned to blessings to our infinite advantage Thou thy self shall be under the burden of divine wrath We are escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler your snare is broken and we are delivered and thou fallest into the pit thou diggest for others by thy wounding us wee are healed thou hast bruised our heel but we have broak thy head thy whole design of Englands ruine and thy plots are discovered and turned against thy selfe upon thee and thy wrath as a foot-stoole doe we ascend into the blessed throne of God We lock thee up in chaines of darknesse and throw thee under the earth get thee hence and all thy darknesse with thee that keeps Englishmen from seeing God in one another take with thee all thy bitternesse rage madnesse oppression tyranny all thy lies and falshood thy false Oaths and breach of Covenant all thy disorder and confusion thy mischievous plots and all thy scorne and reproach and all thy false accusing Father to Son and Son to Father c. Thy rayling and revilings blasphemies with every thing that is cursed and goe headlong into the deep Sea of thy perdition we wil live in heavenly peace love and righteousnesse in the light and glory of our own God Shake thy self from thy dust captive daughter this cloud of dust that darkens thee from divisions emptinesse barrennesse vanity instability and ascend into the light majesty union and strength of God England is become the Kingdome of the Lord and of his Christ God reigns in her she is become a holy Nation a heavenly Kingdome God is in her and none else The tabernacle of God is with men he now takes his great reign upon earth he is come he is come to judge the People righteously and to govern the Nation upon Earth The majesty of the Trinity dwelling before in weaknes that is sowed dyed it s raised in power before in flesh now in Spirit before covered and vailed hiding himselfe now in open and naked face We are now a new creature a new Kingdome of righteousnesse living in the immediate brightnesse of the face of God God is with us with all his host of power and goodnesse mercy and wisdome to establish us in peace and justice there is nothing amongst us but God who is exalted alone and saith I am and there is none besides me and hath taken the Kingdome into himself and every thing is what it is in the glory of God now indeed the soyl is the Lambs he is English Earth The people the Lords and shall be filled with the excellency of God in himself The Lord is King God himself reigns God is upon his throne and saith openly to the whole Kingdome I am your King you are my People I le rule you with a pure golden Scepter of righteousnesse and peace you shall submit to me and