Selected quad for the lemma: order_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A80495
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The coppy of a letter to Generall Monck.
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Albemarle, George Monck, Duke of, 1608-1670.
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1660
(1660)
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Wing C6163; Thomason E1016_13; ESTC R208275
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3,397
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8
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THE COPPY OF A LETTER to Generall Monck London Printed 1660. The Copy of a Letter to General Monck My Honoured Lord THough vertuous inclinations in their Infancy and Cradle are best Nursed up with the Milk of Flattery and seeming Courtships your full grown virtues which like Saul amongst the people make you more eminent than others and the eyes of our Israel to look upon you as their Deliverer will bear a more engenuous freedome which makes me presume though none more truly honours your Prudence Piety and Person than my self as I am here intrusted to receive the corresponding intelligences from most Counties that have concentred their Hopes and Addresses in your Lordship you will Pardon me if as the burning-glasse that collects the scattered and loose beams of the Sun to give them a more powerfull and vigorous operation I reflect the united sense of all to you in relation to your Words and Actings The last of which have been so prudent in Conduct so daring yet modest in the approaches to your proposed ends and so successfull in the great late changes we look upon as inlets to a settlement of the peace and happinesse of this Kingdome as you stand yet unequalled by any in the opinions and affections of the people even above men and onely below God himself and our rightfull King who hath wrought so great wonders by you And we hope will set fast the bars of our gates and establish peace in our borders by so glorious an Instrument and in it record your memory to all posterity as the deliverer of this Nation from the high Usurpation and severe Tyranny we have long laboured under But my Lord in relation to your words and Declared desires to the late restored Members of Parliament there are few satisfied but such as hope that with Frederick Duke of Austria you went abroad in a disguise to hear what others judgements were by them and their reasons if convincing yours to shape your future proceedings or if it were your judgement that you did declare and enforce it withall the advantage Oratory or Arguments could contribute to its support that in the confutation of them all persons of those mistaken principles might be reduced by your example who espouses no interest but in order to Gods glory and the publick good nor impose your opinion upon but submit it to the dispassionate Debates and Resolutions of a Free Parliament which humility and self-denial is the crown and glory of all your other noble Actions and that which sets you up a Scepter in the hearts of all but Factious and Fanatick people and gives you a Command of our Persons and Purses Yet give me leave as the Eccho of the Kingdomes voice to tell your Lordship it neither is or ever was for the alteration of our Monarchicall Government into Common-wealth foundations which are inconsistent with our ancient Fundamentall Laws and the humour of the people of this Nation who comparing the long happy and flourishing condition it hath for many hundred years enjoyed under their Kings and Reverent Episcopacy with the tragicall effects of our late changes cannot be in love with their Irons and Shackles nor be willing to submit to Papall Presbyteriall Tyranny for such is rigid Presbytery that have been acquainted with the gentler Yoke the Fathers of our Church laid upon us And though I might make it appear to your Lordship by clear proofs and undisputed authorities from Reason Nature Scripture and Authority First that as all Power is Gods so there is no exercise of it from divine Commission but paternal what is seated in the person of one man originally and derivatively onely from him as the spring and source into the lesser streames of subordinate administrations which Adam was vested in the state of innocency and that all men are borne to this naturall subordination for the orderly support of humane societies families being the epitomies of Kingdomes wherein the person to whome the supreame power belongs is onely accountable to God for his Actions Kings being subject onely to the direction not coaction of humane Laws Secondly That our Kings had this right justly conveyed to them by the grace of God not gift of man and by it have a just title to our allegiance and obedience both by divine and civill right as all our laws and Parliaments have declared Thirdly That King Charles the son of his late glorious Father and our Soveraign hath de jure the same and cannot without Rebellion a sin as high as that of witch-craft be denied him Fourthly That Episcopacy is of divine institution an order deduced through all ages of Christs Church and continued to us by lawfull and undoubted ordination Fifthly That Bishops have in all ages had Reverence payed them as the Pillers and supporters of Christianity by their pious learned and painfull labours when living and propagating it when dead by their bloodshed in Martyrdom when one dying man made many living Saints Sixthly That it was not the Calling but exorbitancies in it not the Tree but the Luxurious branches these times at first complained of and desired to prune not digg up Seventhly That it was a Government admired and approved by all the reformed Churches abroad as essential to the bene esse of a Church and by many learned divines antient and modern to the esse the very being of a Church Eighthly That Presbytery as propounded by our Synod of Divines is of a bastard extraction and a late birth being a stranger to antiquity and an action lately legitimated amongst us a thing so far from being countenanced as it was never known in the Christian Church Yet waving all these and infinite more considerations I could offer humbly casting my self upon your mercy for a pardon of this deviations I shall not so much reflect upon your Lordships reasons against introducing Monarchy and Episcopacy as to shew you they were never taken away by any just power admit it were in the late Parliament when full and Free for untill severall forces and violences were acted upon them and the Secluded Members denied their Votes There was no Regicide no murthering of the heirs that the Vineyard might be ours no Votes for altering our antient and best fabricated Government in the world but on the contrary all the Parliaments Protestations Declarations Actions and Covenants were for King and Parliament Conjunctim not divisim and were so intended to be adhered to by our Confessours though not Martyrs the lately restored Members and only surviving honourable mention of that expired Parliament Nor did the people of this Nation ever voluntarily contribute either of their persons or purses to other ends than the Parliament had declared even a confining of arbitrary power and keeping all things in their own bounds and channels a reforming amending the Watch not the taking it in pieces So as the peoples interests in this are safe but cannot be entituled to the indeavours of the chaines you mention without a just forfeiture of all they enjoy a maintaining of perpetuall divisions at home and inviting War from the injured persons and their now powerfull united confederates abroad having no Free nor Full Parliament to countenance them in such actings And that this was the sense the Covenant was taken in and of the Kingdome now in Generall I desire may be submitted to their Votes in the free Reprosentative to be called or that they may have a Ballet for it and then they will appear a hundred for one to make it good Nor is the glory of the City and opening of Trade at home and abroad to be boyed up by any other Engine than what the name of King actuates It being the splendor of Courts encrease of Nobility Amities abroad and Peace at home that loades the Vine with Clusters and makes the Wine-press to overflow as Londons experience evincingly may prove if we compare their now withering and formerly sprouting and flourishing condition together so as a Common-wealth in those and many other respects would rather prove a heightening to the disease than a remedy And for the Government of the Church so far as it is prudentiall it ought to be submitted to the Parliament and a Convocation of Divines justly called but what is of Divine Right in it ought to be preserved and preferred before our Lives and Liberties And therefore I most humbly contend for Episcopacy as an order at least if not to maintain it in its primitive glory and in that none can be sure there is a good Ordination without it unlesse in case extraordinary and that all doe agree the Ordination by Bishops lawfull we ought to chuse a safe before a doubtfull way as all Casuists agree However having fully as I conceive undermin'd the grounds and satisfied the reasons your Lordship laid and urged for a Common-wealth I shall proceed no further upon this head since you have made my Conclusion That Episcopacy holds best proportion and semetry to Monarchicall Government and that I have made it appear there neither is nor can be any other form justly introduced into this Nation Yet to take in all Interests and concenter them in a conscientious obedience the sinew of Government I wish both may be so moderated in their exercise of power as there may be no more leading into captivity nor complaining in our streets But that the King with his Parliament and the Bishops with their Presbyters may joyn to make the close of our Harmony most melodious For thus our King will have an inexhaustible treasure in the affections of his People and they best secure their Liberties in becoming their Soveraignes favourites which happy espousals I will yet hope to see you solemnize it in a Concurrence with the whole Nation whose desire it is as well as the Prayer of Your Excellencies most humble Servant