by the sword to raigning and ruling by force They are surely most contrary and therefore Christ knowing he was to suffer commanded Peter to put up his sword and gave this rule for ever He that taketh up the sword to defend himself from suffering or to fight for Christ shall perish by the sword Note 1. We took up the sword at first to avoid suffering and to deliver our selves and Party 2. We now perish by that sword 3. If we now begin to learn what we then refused we go back and repent of all these twenty years work We may I think well do it as it was our work and therein justifie both the righteousness of God in his works and our honesty and innocency in serving of him This your Profession of suffering for Christ will I think overthrow all your active dispensation and if you be true to it it will lead you to an open declaration of the change of your minds and to a faithful resolution wholly to commit your cause to God and never more take up arms to deliver your selves and destroy others If you can do this pluck up this root of bitterness and cut out this core it will be a great ease both to your selves and the Nation If you are able to pull it up and remove it from you by a full honest and clear demonstration of your hearts and minds that may be sufficient to satisfie the Magistrate It will effect one of these two things Either it will overcome your enemies with love and so heal all the distractions of the Nation Or if they continue to persecute after such a declaration of your minds they will soon break themselves For by love and patience Christ hath and doth overcome all enmity and will do so for ever it is the most certain and invincible strength that ever was When you prosecuted the King and his Party beyond bounds and measure you went into confusion and there lost your selves And if they should be guilty of the same thing and pursue a weak faln people beyond the measure set by God the same confusion will be in their affairs that was in yours I think this of your present sufferings That in a large and common sense they are the sufferings of Christ as the sufferings of all men are his so far as they are humane though weak In all their afflictions he is afflicted The sins and sufferings of all are laid upon him We all like sheep have gone astray and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all and as our sins so our sorrows Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows Even of all Parties and of the worst of all not the godly only but the wicked not the obedient only but the rebells He made his grave with the wicked Even for the rebellious that the Lord God might dwell amongst them Therefore we do see that all Parties are enabled to suffer for that Cause they engage in And do find mercy to pardon their sins and strength to suffer death The common resolution of a man strengthened with the common grace of the Gospel and with any measure of common honesty or an opinion of the justice and truth of their cause do carry men off the stage of the world into death handsomly and steadily That some of you that have suffered have met with more peace and more innocency in suffering then in acting And more love and comfort in a prison and death then in a corrupt toylsom and sinful life in war and contests I do not wonder and yet cannot magnifie it as Martyrdom This I am bold to affirm That Christ hath not yet in these times so clearly or visibly set up his standard and gathered a people to it into distinction from other men as to commit his name truth and cross wholly and only to them Nor hath he formed a body by any law rule spirit or ministry into an outward profession under any visible charracters as he did in the Primitive times And therefore there are none whose sufferings can challenge this peculiar honour of fighting under this standard the Cross of Christ Therefore I do much fear that this profession and glorying in the Cross will cost you dear and involve you in deeper sufferings then you are aware of You will sooner come to a true feeling of your selves and a sober sense of your condition if you would sink down into your confession and acknowledgement of the righteous hand of God upon you for your sins And alas not so much for your personal sins as for the evil state and spirit in which you have acted Against it hath God very great indignation I feel in my soul God hath great pitty to your persons as men and as his creatures and servants And because as weak men you have been deceived and misled But that corrupt state and that spirit that misled you is judged for ever and never can nor shall recover It is not the lowness of a condition that keeps a people down but the unsoundness of it Were we once true and single we should find rest and peace in the worst things and deliverance out of them The upright may and shall rejoyce in the hottest fires and soon come forth But a false and unsound state must fall from heaven though it be exalted thither To fall under sin and shame to be humbled under the feet of the vilest creatures in the world to bear first our own sins and then the wrath scorn and revenge of all the world Is nearer to Christ shews more of innocency then t◠〈◊〉 our selves For the first part of 〈◊〉 Christian righteousness is to bear sin to judge and condemn our selves and to intercede for others To justifie our selves and condemn others is very contrary to the Cross of Christ This may seem and is strange to men but the mysterie of the Cross of Christ will open it to them that seek wisdom To conclude this point I do judge that as there was confusion in your actings so there is in your sufferings And though you are much to be pittied yet not to be justified in them or for them There is much mixtures in them Ingagements and necessity make men stout in their way Naturally what men cannot make good by wisdom and power they will maintain by resolution in suffering It is easier far for men to do so and die then to repent A false spirit and zeal will carry men out in suffering even to death it self as well as a true Yea the anguish and pain of so great a disappointment will make men chuse rather to die then to live in the shame and disgrace of it Shame is the greatest affliction to some tempers And therefore it is easier to die then to yield confess and give glory If there should be none of all this in your present sufferings yet so long as there is bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not and lie not
or I do not understand it or What do you mean by this or that passage T is strange totally condemned but not examined in any parts of it I may say in my case as Job chap. 31. v. 35 36 37. That mine adversary had written a Book surely I would take it upon my shoulder and bind it as a crown to me I would declare to him the number of my steps c. Had his reproofs been heavy true or false I would have taken them upon my shoulder and born either my own or his infirmities I have done it and by the same grace of God I can do it again Or had his book been more true righteous or mercifull then mine I can boldly say I should have put it upon my head openly worn his understanding professed it and gloried in it as a crown I know I have in me that authority over my self and have been so conversant in self-judging and retracting what I have seen to be short and also such a love to truth that it would be a glory and crown to me to meet with a light that could convince mine of darkness yea I have this experience of my self I can prefer another before me and give honour time and place to my adversaries even when I know they are the weaker But I may and do think that men are not able to deal with the reason of the Book and therefore it is left to my self to Animadvert upon it and possibly I may deal as severely with it as another The first thing that I blame the book for is its untimeliness it came too late I have in my heart a love to manknid to all English men and to the opposite parties in the Nation my place and work is to heal unite and reconcile and so to prevent ruine and destruction if I might be heard none should execute it nor any suffer it Many things did offer themselves in my mind that did tend to a universal peace and a composing all differences to the great advantage of the whole and of every part They have been long conceived in my mind and did offer themselves to birth at the beginning of this great change but I delaid so long till another spirit had stepped in and engaged the minds of men both in doing and suffering so that what was proposed towards mother course could not be heard by either and for this I suffered a very sharp rebuke from the Lord before the Book came forth t was like that to Moses Exod. 4.24 God met him and sought to kill him A more dangerous assault I have not received a long time nor a deâ—per wound I have still a frequent sense of it which keeps me in an awe of God My evil was suppressing a that light of love and peace which did arise in my mind from the divine nature This we must know and I declare it from a living sense That God is in his nature most gracious tender and patient yet he knows how to take vengeance on all iniquity even in his dearest children Where there is the greatest love there is the greatest authority and majesty yea the greatest jealousie and severity I find it so in his constant dealings with me The supreme Law of God is himself Love and with it peace salvation forgiveness good-will to man The very nature and Law of this love is to do good and communicate none receives it for himself only but to give forth to others of all things it must not be confined nor imprisoned being in its own nature infinitely large You have freely received freely give If this be the highest Law it doth punish accordingly being offended or transgressed against it requires the sorest punishment which is to take away that love They that have felt love must needs have the sharpest sense of the want of it and its nature being large and communicating that evil servant that hides and buries this talent of love and peace and not communicate it it shall be taken from him This was my danger All men live under a Law the Law of love is the exactest and severest where it is in life and power or the Law of the spirit of life which is in Jesus it is there the quickest and sharpest and works most fully and strongly where it is engraven and written upon the heart and put in the inward parts Every stroke of a Law of eternal life in the most inward parts must needs be terrible threatning eternal death I write this not only that you may know that I live under a Law and exact discipline but that all may learn to fear the Lord and his goodness For know assuredly that God will be known and feared of all and that in great mercy and severity For his love and grace where it is in its truth and power will not be abused and turned into looseness and wantonness you may abuse and corrupt lesser favour but it will rise and be revenged and at last have that absoluteness in it that it will rule and give Law to us else it cannot save us My suppressing the movings of general and healing love was thus it often rose up in my mind and required to be written and published I did attempt and essay to do it but what I did one day I disliked the second or third day either from the weakness of my mind or from a growing spring of light or both but finding larger and deeper discoveries I refused and rejected the former and so in hope of doing better more strongly more certainly and completely I delayed to do what was present till the season was past There is in this a great evil for which I received a great rebuke and yet am I not wholly delivered from the snare for the further enlargement of my mind and the instruction of others I will examine the particulars of it In not giving forth truth light and love as it arises naturally in our minds but deferring till it be more accomplished and compleat or till we can give it a finer dress which may render it the more acceptable to others that so the fruit may be more certain and our selves more honoured and justified In this there is a great transgression against the Law of love and life First it is a fin against that truth or light an undervaluing of it as if it were not worthy to be seen and looked upon by men in its own natural form wherein there is the greatest beauty it is sufficiently if not most lovely in it self and in its own naked and native goodness All light hath a natural Majestie in it and is best when purest and unmixed it commands by its own brightness but above all the light of love is absolute and perfect It hath in it a sufficiency of glory to take away the spots and defects of other things and therefore it self needs no accomplishments All additions to light and love do darken and ecclipse them both for they give
seek it For a people that profess themselves Spiritual and Saints to engage in a war to the expence of so much blood for their Religion and at last wave an argument for it it is strange you will sure in time examine the reason why it should be so And consider whether that cause be truly Christian that avoids a Christian trial that shrinks from reason and will not appear against its enemy but in arms with a rude and tumultuous rable Truth and integrity cannot but rejoyce in a combate of Reason and it is gross guilt and carnality either in the cause or persons that declines argument and flyes to brutish force If you fear treachery that your principles might have been drawn out and so your persons exposed to danger That wisdom that makes you suspect would enable to prevent such danger freedom of discourse is commonly granted in time of arbitration with security against taking advantage by such discourses But alas neither you nor any other no not your enemies can possibly bring forth your principles so ill-favoured as they have appeared in action I dare say there is no man in this Nation but his Reason or Religion will teach him a better state of things then hath been acted in the Nation since these wars begun that no mans mind or reason is so crooked and absurd as the series of actions have been It will be found that poor men have been hurried and thrust into many things either by company incogitancy the influences of the stars or rather the predominancie of evil spirits by the irresistible fate of times or some superiour over-ruling determinations of Providence Few men have exercised judgement in these wars either humane or Christian but have been tossed about by the earth-quakes and violent commotions of greater powers And if we could come but to look into mens minds when passions and furies are over we shall see that men are better things then they have appeared in this Scene of War And that at bottom there is but one man one nature one religion and that a good one Therefore I know I am a friend to you and to mankind in seeking to draw forth the reason of men to sift and trie principles and opinions But there is so much jealousie and accusation in the world that men are not only jealous of all others but of themselves also If men misjudge mankind they must needs misjudge themselves the first they do it is too manifest and therefore cannot be wholly free from the second It is sure your too hard thoughts of your selves and suspition of your principles that makes you afraid to appear in them I know there is a strong passion of fear upon you a great dread of sufferings in your minds And all your thoughts are how to bear the evil of this day so drowned in a sense of it that you can hardly think a thought of any thing else nor admit of a proposition of peace and safety to your selves It is true and evident that the way and course of your actions have been directly against the antient power authority and Law of the Nation And you are unhappily set in an opposite and contrary spirit to them and have done as much against them as you could You thought you had laid them all low enough and had buried them so deep that they could never rise again And that you had gotten into a heaven into the Kingdom of Christ or so near it that all danger of suffering had been quite past But now you see that all the weight and strength of your Prayers Gifts and Knowledge together with your Armies cannot keep down the things that you opposed nor uphold you against them But contrary to all your thoughts when you were strongest they rose up against you A state law and power of a Nation is a mighty thing and to rise up from death and the curse whether you had sent it provoked against you by so many and great injuries must needs be very terrible to you It would scare a man to see his enemy alive that he thought he had slain were it but a single person But to find the whole Magistracie and Ministry of the Nation the King Nobility and Gentrie with many thousands of oppressed people rise up against you in all the power and strength of the Nation Civil and Military all which have suffered from you I know it must needs astonish and amaze you coming upon you so much contrary to the assurance you had as you thought from God of a better state I do not wonder when I consider it that you are overwhelmed with fears and despair of receiving any good from them that rise from that pit of destruction into which you had doomed them for ever looking upon them as you do as Antichristian enemies to God and for in rejected you cannot expect good from them You are so oppressed with the evil that is upon you that you sink into resolutions of suffering and judge your selves lost for the present and your thoughts are only to bear the indignation that is upon you You could not forgive your selves nor your enemies neither could your enemies forgive you I do forgive them and you and so shall do the worst you can For my love is absolute without condition and therefore without repentance In love to you I proposed a sacrifice and an atonement Which is not your honesty or godliness but these things which we call principles I care not to call them so any longer I mean opinions or tenents which I say are delusions deceits or at best broken imperfect and short apprehensions or mis-apprehensions of things that have misled you in all your business into such crooked pathes that perverted your Counsels corrupted your spirits and made you a vexation to your selves and friends a burden and scourge to the Nation These would I have found out and sacrificed that not only your honesty and uprightness may be discovered which is certainly another thing from them but that your lives and liberties may be preserved also But neither side would regard what was offered You would not part with your opinions called principles no nor offer them to tryal Neither would the Law and authority of the Nation accept of any such sacrifice but being of a more outward and earthly nature hath required outward and bodily satisfaction What could not be resisted we must be content patiently to endure SECT VI. WE may now hope that this scene of blood is over and that the Law and Authority of the Nation is satisfied if it be not again provoked by new attempts upon the peace My soul is a friend to peace and an enemy to destruction And therefore I shall I hope perpetually seek Peace and endeavour to prevent mischief May I now obtain so much favour of you in your low and afflicted state as calmly and rationally to consider what I have and do propose weigh it well I do affirm that there is
become our advantage if we be made wise by our failings Let us first observe the process of things After his Majesties return there was by the sweetness and gentleness of his Government a great calmness and stilness in the Nation and in a degree in the most opposite The trying condemning and executing of the prisoners for the death of his late Majesty stirred a new passion in the spirits of many people And the execution together with the resolution of the sufferers revived a zeal confidence and boasting of their cause and an extraordinary earnestness in their minds which was expressed in incessant meetings discourses and prayers day and night These passions and religious exercises boyl up their minds into new heats which kindled this wild-fire and at last blowed it up into this open Insurrection That you may understand the reason of these things let it be considered what I have expressed in this and the former Treatise 1. That God had a controversie with this Church and Nation because of its sins and its sinful state and standing not with the things themselves only as they stood in darkness and weakenss 2. God must have some to plead this controversie with the Government and Governors of Church and State 3. Those that he called forth for that purpose he inspires and impowers with spirit for that work 4. The seat and subject of this spirit and ministry is the judgements and consciences of men For men by being inspired and led into opinions and judgements contrary to the received Law of the Church are thereby fitted to be instruments in Gods hand of his displeasure to the Church For the Church cannot be tried but by such spirits and judgements which differ from it and are contrary to it 5. They that are thus impowered for such a service so far as they do the will of the most high Lord in it are to be owned and justified Though the office be never so mean and never so contrary to â—he honours wills and wayes of States and Kingdoms yet it is the rod of God and must be kissed 6. These ministers of this displeasure have transgressed exceeded â—heâ—r Commission and exalted themselves in their service And so corrupted themselves and defiled their work This also is true Therefore there is in them that have executed this displeasure and in their consciences and work something that is just and something that is unjust and unrighteous Till these are distinguished there is no right judgement of them It must also be considered and it is granted by all Divines That the works of divine Providence and Government are executed by the administration of Angels Both the standing and changing of Governments is by the ministry of these principalities and powers Therefore in the great revolutions of this Kingdom both good and bad Angels have been employed They being spirits their proper sphere in which they move is the spirits and consciences of men Therefore it follows that as there hath been in these great Providences a righteous work of God and with it much unrighteousness so there are both Angels of light and of darkness inspiring the minds and consciences of men Now to administer justice upon men that have acted in these things without any judgement made of the principles and spirits that have moved in them cannot be thought to be perfect nor a right way to cure our distractions For outward punishments upon the body will not remove the evils that are planted by spirits in the consciences and judgements of men 1. For all men know First That if there be but a little truth and uprightness in any conscience it will bear up the person in the greatest outward suffering Neither death nor hell are able to over-power the least grain of honesty in the poorest wretch that ever lived That which is sincere is able to live and triumph under many sins and sufferings and will never yield till right be done to it 2. Mens spirits and consciences and the spirits that inspire and lead them are above the reach of the secular sword and only subject to the Scepter of Christ in his Church to the sword of the Spirit 3. Conscience though erroneous and seduced will enable men to suffer bodily punishment imprisonment and death with great chearfulness And if they are laid upon men without the means of conviction they do harden men in errour And therefore legal proceedings only to bodily punishments are not sufficient remedies to cure these distempers The case of the Nation under its present distempers is certainly extraordinary and far different from what it was an hundred or fifty years since Great variety of spirits are gone forth which have raised up the minds of men to a greater height of reason religion and resolution And old ordinary remedies will not cure new and extraordinary diseases If the Physick be not proper to cure and remove the disease it will by stirring the humours and enraging of them make dangerous commotions in the body For if men either from some measure of simplicity be it in the least degree and much mixed or from some spiritual operation be it of what kind it will or from an erroneous conscience If from any of these the sufferer be able to repell the Sentence of the Judge and to glory in his suffering and in a shew of righteousness to triumph over death he doth notably affront and wound that authority and judgement under which he suffers A man and his cause when he comes to judgement is brought out into the open view of all men and not only made publick but he and his cause is exalted to endure a conflict and tryal with the Law If the Law comes forth with that brightness and majesty that it ought the man is condemned in his own conscience and so justifies the Law and submits to his sentence and by this the Law and Authority is honoured But if the person judged stands clear in his own conscience upon any account and acquits himself in the face of dead when all men ordinarily yield such have a kind of conquest and do seem to overcome the sentence which must needs have an effect upon the people For people do naturally mind dying men death is King of terrours and it is a great thing to die it raises men on high And therefore in them that can die comfortably and confidently there is a great appearance of righteousness and worth which doth much affect the minds of people some are moved to pitty the sufferer and thereby his words and cause steals into their minds Others are convinced and drawn to the Party Others are hardened and strengthened by it For men think with themselves I cannot live comfortably bur here is that which will make me able to die comfortably and that is worth embracing That which makes the Magistrate to be feared and reverenced is his power of life and death That which makes men able to overcome death secretly overcomes the Magistrate
For every one that goes out of the world glorying in his righteousness makes a breath both in death and in the authority that inflicts it And when it comes to be easie and familiar as it will by a little practise Authority and Magistracy it self will be by such despised I shall commend to the Magistrate an Observation of mine own concerning the nature of man That he may consider what he governs and how he ought to govern him Man is a noble and stout creature There is so much of the majesty of the image of God in faln man that he retains much of the greatness though he have lost his goodness There lies raked up in this dust an invincible spirit that never will be subdued by force God could never break the rebellion of the Israelites by all his punishments upon them And therefore sayes Why should ye be stricken any more ye will revolt more and more Isa 1.5 All the terrours of the Law could never subject Paul but he sayes himself When the commandment came sin revived and I died Rom. 7.9 When the law came with terrour against him then fin roused up it self unto a desperate opposition There being such stoutness in mans heart that all the force of the Law could not subdue God sent his Son in love to this stout creature to take his flesh and so to soften and overcome it and in it to destroy both Law and sin This will shew us what is in man There is as much of this courage and greatness of spirit in the English as in any people under heaven which is very much awakened in these times both by the wars and by long liberty and a free exercise of their minds in Religion For first the people were inspired and impowered to execute the determined displeasure of God upon the Church and Nation which exalted them and subjected the Church and Nation under them Having as they think judged the former state of Religion they have opportunity and liberty to erect several new forms of Religion which is an act of spiritual principality and power and not without zeal for God and obedience to his Law By these things the genius of the Nation and the natural stoutness of the people is much lightened and encreased And therefore to reduce them into that state that they think they have judged and to destroy all their little principalities set up in their consciences only by outward force or by the meer letter of that Law which they have condemned without a superiour Law that judges them and their work to my reason seems not only impossible but dangerous Let the whole be considered and it will be found That meer legal and outward punishments upon such a people so spirited and principled so employed and exercised if their consciences and spirits be nor first fairly heard judged and convinced will inflame their minds into such a mad and desperate spirit as appeared in the late Insurrection into hardness and insensibility of death and danger which is the greatest enemy to Government that can be For it turns men into wild beasts not to be ruled by humane Laws And though they do attain nothing to themselves yet they may give disturbance and force the Magistrate from all humane and divine wayes of love and gentleness into violence and perpetual severity and fill the whole Nation with continual troubles and distractions It is true the Magistrate is bound by all bonds of Law of reason and nature to suppress and punish rebellion But when the seeds of rebellion lie in the mind and conscience the spiritual sword is as necessary as the secular and the one not effectual without the other What is written in this Treatise will I hope satisfie them that will read and consider that there is with us in the Church a spirit and understanding that will reach the root of rebellion in the mind and fully convince the conscience Which being joyned to the civil authority is sufficient to cure and heal the Church and Nation On the other side I must desire the present suffering Party that were so highly offended at my Book and at my proposition for the tryal of principles that they consider how much lower they are now faln There was certainly a loftiness and unsubjection of mind unsutable to their condition expressed in a glorying and boasting of their old cause and state which hath brought forth this contempt and suffering upon them I do believe that this late Insurrection was the work of a few rash and unreasonable men And do find that all sober men do express a great abhorrency of the act with resolution to wait patiently upon God for their deliverance Which truly I rejoyce in Yet the whole Party lying under the shame of these mens folly and madness they must seriously and deeply consider how far they yet stand unhumbled and unconvinced of those principles that carried these men into this practise Principles lie deep and when once they get rooting in the mind they are like ill weeds in a garden not presently destroyed Many times the judgement is enlightened against them yet they have a root in the heart which will spring up if not quite eradicated Their appearing in others and the evil fruit they bear is a good means to beget an utter detestation of them To make you sensible of the hand of God upon you and to help to clear your minds wholly of them I only propound these queries to you 1. First Whether those principles upon which they acted of the Cause and Kingdom of Christ and the honour and priviledge of the Saints above and against the world Have not been received into the minds and spirits of most men more or less that have erected new Churches and new Governments in the Nation Secondly Whether the same principles and the hopes of such things be not that which fills your heads and hearts with multitude of prayers and great confidences that you shall yet prevail and your enemies be destroyed And so though your understandings be more prudent then others yet whether the same things be not yet in your faith affections and duties Thirdly Whether these spirits and principles have not had a great influence upon the whole business a long time If so then if they be not rooted out by repentance and change of mind they lie not still in the heart though they seem not to act and appear Fourthly Whether men being upon an extraordinary bottom as the Saints of God distinct from others And exercising themselves in extraordinary duties with extraordinary hopes and confidences of extraordinary deliverances Are not thereby disposed and prepared to attempt extraordinary things to attain these extraordinary ends If so then you are drinking the same wine that intoxicated their heads that rose only they are weaker and you more able to bear it Remember Solomons counsel Who hath sorrow who hath contention who hath babling who hath wounds without cause They that tarry long
at least of the Church are together with the Presbyterians who are engaged in an opposition a large people a great part of the Nation And very considerable both for number for their activity and resolution for their courage in military affairs for their parts and abilities in civil affairs for their zeal and gifts in Religion And now being under one and the same dislike disappointment and suffering melting again into union As the Law and Government of the one side is so rooted in the earth that it is not to be removed by any humane means so these several sects are deeply rooted in the judgement and conscience and all of them are founded in some spirit that hath authority from God over the conscience be that spirit or authority true or false I dispute not now But they are by some authority under the name of God fixed and bound in their several wayes And therefore not possibly to be removed by any secular or worldly power It is as irrational and impolitick for a State to seek by power to suppress or wholly to extirpate such a people fixed unto death in their judgements as it is for those people to seek the overthrow of government Not only because it is against policy interest or reason of State to discommon and cast out of protection or otherwise to provoke into despair so great and mighty a people But it is also against the very nature of man and more against the nature and being of Government and Governors to seek the ruine of so great a part of the body and therefore it cannot be imagined to be in the Magistrate Neither can the Magistrate entertain such a thought without committing a greater absurdity then for the common people to attempt the overthrow of the Kingdom For the undertaking of impossible things and things destructive to humane and civil peace are much worse in publick persons then in the people But as on the other side I represented the state of the Government as immoveable not only to deter from attempts against it but to draw the people to it that they might be protected by it So do I represent these dissatisfied and divided people strong and immoveable not only to disswade from designs against them but also to encline the Magistrate to them For as safety and protection is by the Providence of God ordained in the hands of Governors and Government so the same mighty Providence hath disposed the peace rest security and strength of the Nation and Government in the minds affections and spirits of such a people It will be easily seen and understood if it be but considered That there is this day no rational or visible cause or danger of disturbance to the Nation but our own divisions neither from our selves nor from abroad For as none can hurt us but our selves so nothing amongst our selves can hurt us but our own divisions And therefore as the safety and protection of the subject is in the Law Government and Magistrate so the rest peaâ—â— and security of the Government and Nation is to be had from a union of such a people so divided and disaffected as now they are It is clear then that each of these Parties as they are now disposed are able to confer upon each other and upon the whole the most excellent blessings On the one side protection safety and subsistence on the other side security rest and settlement Let us now consider Whether both these Parties are willing to give and to receive these things from each other For if both be willing both to give and receive then there is a foundation laid in them of peace In reason both Parties must be willing to have these great blessings because neither can subsist without them or not comfortably It is manifest his Majesty seeks security and peace both by the imposing the Oaths which is but to oblige the people to quietness and obedience And by restraining and imprisoning those that may be suspected to make disturbance It is as manifest likewise that he is willing to give safety protection and liberty to these people witness his gracious Declaration But beyond all these the reason of State and nature of Government binds his Majesty to be willing both to give safety and receive security The question then is on the other side Whether they are willing to give security and receive protection I think it is not to be questioned but that they will be glad of protection And they cannot expect protection where they will not give reasonable security for their Allegiance As reason nature and religion lead them to do it so there doth appear in most of them a readiness to do it if they knew how to do it Both Parties being willing to receive and give these blessings of safety and security to each other It is then to be enquired Whether there be any thing in either Party that may let or hinder them from these mutual benefits Two things may be suspected First That there may be some opinion or doctrine in Religion that may imbondage mens minds and keep them from yielding or receiving this good I do hope and believe that there is no opinion amongst us so inhumane and absurd as to debar us from the exercise and practise of natural and civil duties If any such be whispered or privately suggested there is enough in every mans own reason religion and nature to teach him to abhor it But if it should be in mens private fancies I am sure if it come forth in any debate it will quickly be answered and rejected An open treaty or conference will expell it Another thing that may hinder is jealousie prejudice and enmity begotten by these wars by the different forms of worship and the opposite tempers of their minds and spirits But these are all a mist or dust which only darken at a distance As soon as the Parties come near one another their own natures and reasons together with the necessity and benefit of safety and peace will dissipate these clouds Being weak dark passions they will vanish before the strength of more solid and substantial things The lets being removed there is no doubt of the sufficiency of reason to instruct both Parties in a way how to communicate one with another so that they shall be understood received and believed by each other For if both Parties are heartily willing to do that for each other which is proposed they are able to say how why and upon what conditions they think reason to do it And this being reasonably propounded reason also will accept it For God never yet left man so void of understanding and knowledge one of another nor so void of confidence and trust in one another but they had power both to consent and agree and to gain belief and confidence one in another Though the envious man hath filled the Nation with great enmity and division yet sure we are men still he hath not rob'd us