Selected quad for the lemma: mercy_n
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A84168
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An apology for the royal party: written in a letter to a person of the late Councel of State. / By a lover of peace and of his country. With a touch at the pretended plea for the army.
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Evelyn, John, 1620-1706.
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1659
(1659)
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Wing E3482; Thomason E763_11; ESTC R209831
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14,277
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16
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foreheads to tell us he has lived amongst Papists to his prejudice who have proscrib'd him from Protestants persecuted him from place to place as a Patridg on the Mountains You may remember who once went to Achich the King of Gath and changed his behaviour before them and fain'd himself mad in their hands had many great infirmities and was yet a man after Gods own heart Whilst the Catholick King was your Allie you had nothing to do with Papists it was then no crime God is not mocked away with this respect of persons But where is it you would have him to be The Hollander dares not afford him harbour lest you refuse them yours The French may not give him bread for fear of offending you and unlesse he should go to the Indies or the Turk where yet your malice would undoubtedly reach him where can he be safe from your revenge But suppose him in a Papist Countrey constrained thereto by your incharity to his Soul as well as body would he have condescended to half so much as you have offered for a toleration of Papists he needed not now have made use of this Apology or wanted the assistance of the most puissant Princes of Christendome to restore him of whom he has refused such conditions as in prudence he might have yielded to and the people would have gladly received whilst those who know with what persons you have transacted what truck you have made with the Jesuites what secret Papists there are amongst you may easily divine why they have been no forwarder to assist him and how far distant he is from the least wavering in his Faith But since you have now declared that you will tollerate all Religions without exception do not think it a sin in him to gratifie those that shall most oblige him For his vertues and Morality I provoak the most refined Family in this Nation to produce me a Relation of more piety and moderation shew me a Fraternity more spotlesse in their honour and freer from the exorbitances of youth then these three Brothers so conspicuous to all the world for their Temperance Magnanimity Constancy and Understanding a friendship and humility unparallel'd and rarely to be found amongst the severest p rsons scarcely in a private family It is the malice of a very black Soul and a virulent â—â—â—egado of whom to be commended were the utmost infamy that has interpreted some compliances to which persons in distress are sometimes engaged with those whom they converse withall to his Majesties disadvantage whilst these filthy dreamers defile the flesh themselves and thinking it no sin to despise dominion speak evill of dignities and of the things which they know not But woe unto them for they have gone in the way of Kain and run greedily after the errour of Balaam for reward having mens persons in admiration because of advantage For the rest I suppose the same was said of Holy David when in his extream calamity he was constrain'd to fly from Saul For every one that was in distresse and every one that was in debt and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him and he became Captain over them And to this retinue has your malice and persecution reduced this excellent Prince but he that preserv'd him in the Wood and delivered David out of all his troubles shall likewise in his appointed time deliver him also out of these distresses I have now answered all your calumnies and have but a word to add that I may yet incline you to accept of your best interest and prevent that dreadfull ruine which your obstinacy does threaten Is it not as perspicuous as the Sun that it lies in your power to reform his Counsell introduce your selves make what composition you can desire have all the security that mortall men can imagine and the greatest Princes of Europe to engage in the performance This were becoming worthy men and honourable indeed this ingenuous self-denyall And it is no disgrace to reforme a mistake but to persist in it lyes the shame The whole Nation require it of you and the lawes of God command it you cannot you must not deferr it For what can you pretend that will not then drop into your bosomes The humble man will have repose the aspiring and ambitious honours The Merchant will be secure Trades immediately recover Aliances will be confirm'd the Lawes reflourish tender Consciences consider'd present purchasers satisfied The Souldier payed maintained and provided for and what 's above all this Christianity and Charity will revive again amongst us Mercy and Truth will meet together righteousness and peace shall kiss each other But let us now consider on the other side the confusion which must of necessity light upon us if we persist in our rebellion and obstinacy We are already impoverisht and consum'd with war and the miseries that attend it you have wasted our treasure and destroyed the Woods spoyled the Trade and shaken our properties a universall animosity is in the very bowells of the Nation the Parent against the Children and the Children against the Parents betraying one another to the death in summe if that have any truth which our B. Saviour has himself pronounced That a Kingdome divided cannot stand it is impossible we should subsist in the condition we are reduc'd to Consider we again how ridiculous our late proceedings have made us to our neighbours round about us Their Ministers laugh at our extram giddinesse and we seem to mock at their addresses for no sooner do their Credentialls arrive but behold the scean is changed and the Government is fled he that now acted King left a fool in his place and they stand amazed at our Buffoonery and madnesse What then may we imagine will be the product of all these disadvantages when the Nations that deride and hate us shall be united for our destruction and that the harvest is ripe for the sickle of their fury shall we not certainly be a prey to an inevitable ruine having thus weakned our selves by a brutish civill war and cut off those glorious Heros the wise and the valiant whose couragein such a calamity we shall in vain imploar that would bravely have sacrificed themselves for our delivery Let us remember how often we have served a forraign people and that there is nothing so confident but a provoaked God can overthrow For my part I tremble but to consider what may be the issue of these things when our iniquities are full and that God shall make inquisition for the bloud that has been spilt unlesse we suddainly meet him by an unfained repentance and turn from all the abominations by which we have provoaked him And then it is to be hoped that he who would have compounded with the Father of the faithfull had there been but ten Righteous men in Sodom and that spared Nineveh that populous and great City will yet have mercy on us hearken to the prayers and have regard to the
teares of so many Millions of people who day and night do interceed with him The Priests and Ministers of the Lord weeping between the porch and the Altar and saying Spare thy people O Lord spare thy People and give not thine Inheritance to reproach And now I have said what was upon my Spirit for your sake when for the satisfaction of such as through its effect upon your soule this Addresse of mine may possibly come to I have religiously declared that the Person who writ it had no unworthy or sinister design of his owne to gratifie much lesse any other party whatever as being neither Courtier Souldier or Church-man but a plain Country Gentleman engag'd on neither side who has had leasure through the goodnesse of God candidly and without passion to examine the particulars which he has touched and expects no other reward in the successe of it then what Christ has promised in the Gospell The Benediction of the peace maker and which he already feeles in the discharge of his Conscience being for his own particular long since resolv'd with himself to persist in his Religion and his loyalty to the death come what will as being fully perswaded that all the persecutions losses and other accidents which may arrive him for it here are not worthy to be compared to that eternall weight of glory which is to be revealed hereafter and to the inexpressible consolation which it will afford on his Death-bed when all these guilded pleasures will disappear this noise and empty pompe when God shall set all our sins in order before us and when it is certain that the humble and the peaceable the charitable and the meek shall not loose their reward nor change their hopes for all the Crownes and the Scepters the Lawrells and the Trophies which ambitious and self seeking men contend for with so much Tyranie and injustice Let them therefore no longer deceive you dear Sr. and as the guise of these vile men is tell you they are the Godly-party under which for the present they would pass and courage themselves in their wickedness stoping their ears and shutting their eyes against all that has been taught and practised by the best of Christians holiest of Saints these sixteen hundred years You shall know them by their fruites do men gather Grapes of Thornes or Figs of Thistles But so being miserably gall'd with the remembrance of their impieties and the steps by which they have ascended to those fearfull precepices they seek to allay the secret pangs of a gnawing worme by adopting the most prodigious of their crimes into a Religion fitted for the purpose and versatile as their giddy interest till at last encourag'd by the number of thriving Proselytes and successes they grow seared and confident swallowing all with ease and passing from one heresie to another whilst yet they are still pursued and shall never be at repose For Conscience will at last awake and then how frightful how deplorable yea how inexpressably sad will that day be unto them For these things have they done and I held my tongue saith God and they thought wickedly that I am such a one as themselves but I will reprove them and set before them the things that they have done O consider this ye that forget God least he pluck you away and there be none to deliver you And now Sir you see the liberty which I have taken and how farr I have adventured to testifie a friendship which I have ever professed for you I have indeed been very bold but it was greatly requisite and you know that amongst all men there are none which more openly use the freedom of reprehension then those who love most Advices are not rejected by any but such as determine to pursue their evill courses and the language which I use is not to offend but to beseech you to return I conjure you therefore to re-enter into your self and not to suffer these mean and dishonourable respects which are unworthy your nobler spirit to prompt you to a course so deform'd and altogether unworthy your education and Family Behold your friends all deploaring your misfortunes and your Enemies even pitie you whilst to gratifie a few mean and desperate persons you cancell your duty to your prince and disband your Religion dishonour your name bring ruine and infamy on your posterity But when all this shall fail as God forbid a title of it should I have yet this hope remaining that when you have been sufficiently sated with this wicked course wandred from place to place government to government sect to sect in so universal a deluge and find no repose for the sole of your foot as it is certain you never shal you will at last with the peaceful Dove return to the Arke from whence you fled to your first principles and to sober counsels or with the repenting Prodigall in the Gospel to your Father which is in heaven and to the Father of your Countrey For in so doing you shall not only rejoyce your servant and all good men but the very Angels which are in heaven and who are never said to rejoyce indeed but at the Conversion of a sinner This 27. Octob. 1659. Et tu conversus converte Fratres PSAL. 37. 10. Yet a little while and the ungodly shall be clean gone thou shalt look after his place and he shall be away 36. I my self have seen the ungodly in great power and flourishing like a green Bay-tree 37. I went by and lo he was gone I sought him but his place could no where be found 38. Keep innocency and take heed unto the thing that is right For that shall bring a Man peace at the last I request the Reader to take notice that where mentioning the Presbyterian I have let fall expressions somewhat relishing of more then usuall asperity I do by no means intend it to the prejudice of many of that Judgment who were either men of peaceable spirits from the beginning or that have of late given testimony of the sense of their errour whilst they were abused by those specious pretences I have reproved but I do regard them with as much charity and affection as becomes a sincere Christian and their Brother FINIS