Government Or else by a friendly agreement with these or any other Governours If you resolve upon the first to destroy all that are not according to your conscience that your conscience may have liberty Then you would destroy all mens consciences but your own and all men for their consciences which is the most contrary to liberty of Conscience that can be Most contrary because you will endure none but your selves and that you would raise a war that you might establish a Law of cruelty which is a thousand times worse then to persecute by an established Law and Authority That power that you would have must be thorow the lives of thousands of your enemies and after that thousands of your friends for they that strive for a power never did nor never will agree in the sharing or administring of it But when through blood and destruction of friends and foes you have gotten it If you should prevail and you in your own persons escape yet that power gotten by war in that spirit you and we in reason must expect that it will be most cruel because raised and begotten by cruelty Indeed it is so horrid and irrational that the bare proposing of it will make reasonable men abhor such a thought For nothing but irrational and blind zeal with discontent and passion can so much blind the nature of man as to lead him into such unnatural things If your spirits do indeed drive to this to the removing and destroying the present state of things as an accursed thing then the ingenuous and seek not liberty from them nor complain of them for not giving it For every such acknowledgement of them doth confirm them and so contradict your prayers and endeavours to destroy them Sometimes secretly and cunningly to curse them and another time openly and for advantage to acknowledge them is falshood and deceit And will attain nothing but shame and confusion For there is little but shame and confusion in it It is a vile thing in private and secret to pray or warily to preach against a State and openly to comply with it in so doing our lives contradict our prayers or our prayers our lives But if this be the drift of your spirits though never so warily carried do you think it is not felt and understood by them that you so oppose you cannot conceal it from them It is wise counsel Solomon gives Curse not the King no not in thy thought or conscience for a bird of the air shall carry the voice and that which hath wings shall tell the matter It must be understood spiritually for it cannot be meant literally Angels are intelligences and intelligencers they are principalities and powers and attend both the Throne and Altar they are present in dominion at Court and in your Closets at your devotions They are the birds and that which hath wings that tell the matter Publick authority hath publick ears and eyes and reach all corners Spiritual intelligencers as well as outward informers If they know and feel that you intend their destruction must they not abhor that spirit that under pretence of liberty of Conscience really endeavours liberty of destroying and of overthrowing Governments to exalt themselves And if they understand any thing they must think These men seek our destruction and as they pray for it and preach it so they will if they can or dare attempt it as they have done And therefore they having such a sense of you you cannot in reason expect but that they should labour to suppress you If they find rebellion war and wrath in the principles of it though in religious duties and conscience will they not suppress both the rebellion and conscience and the duties or worship in which it is And shall they not be justified in so doing I am sure your Law and Practise will justifie them For the same thing hath been done often and would be again if you had power while you are in this spirit When you shall recover either your own nature and reason or the nature of the Lamb out of this Spiritual drunkenness and cruel zeal you will find First That Antichrist the great enemy of Christ is also an enemy to man to his life peace civil order Law and to all humane Ordinances Secondly That this enemy is a spirit the Angel of the bottomless pit And therefore his chief seat and place is in spiritual things in conscience and in the spirits of men and in those things wherein spiritual men or the spirits of men are exercised in gifts religion and holy duties and his last and greatest strength is not in corrupt forms but in those that are most spiritual most lively zealous and gifted Others are but the flesh these the horns of the beast Thirdly And therefore conscience and the spirits of men even in Religion and in lively or spiritual Religion is grievously polluted by him This Templo of God is defiled by him You must come to know it and feel it as I have done Fourthly The nature of this beast is to destroy whence he hath his name Apollyon a destroyer His highest place is conscience gifted mens spirits enlightened and his highest work is to kill and destroy and in order to that to curse and blaspheme with those spiritual gifts Fifthly This spiritual beast this destroyer cannot but be seen and felt by the common reason of men although they cannot judge him yet they must have a sense of him as an enemy to that life and peace in which they live and to that Authority and Government which is committed to them Sixthly As they cannot but discern and feel the horns of this beast that pushes them and wounds them so they cannot but arm themselves with such weapons as they have against him If it be a State it will defend it self by Laws punishments policies and power Seventhly This self-defence though it be earthly cannot be denyed them yea they will be justified in it so far as it is rational humane and necessary and for the preservation of peace and common safety Wherein any are cruel and revengeful that is devilish also and then it is the beast against the beast But an humane care to maintain Law Authority and Peace though it be no more yet it is good against a destroying spirit that would bring in war and confusion under the highest notion of Religion and Reformation The ordinary and common Ordinances of man are to be justified in acting against a Religion Zeal that seeks the subverting of them The first is useful necessary and profitable the other is hurtful and destructive Eighthly The Law and Authority of a Nation defending it self from this spirit by its own weapons being outward must necessarily fall upon the persons lives and liberties of them that are ngaged in this spirit I am grieved in my soul for both both wound my heart both the agents and patients In love to mankind I am afflicted for them and feel the
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
spirit in obedience to his Father and in all his work knew no sin yet he himself was made sin His Father by a superiour Law judged him as the sinner and acquitted pardoned and justified them This is Christs way first reprove severely as a legal Minister purely and holily and finding that short or weak he layes down his life for them he had condemned And when he had administred the Law in its highest purity he then nailed it to the Cross as a weak thing that could not save and died under it to bring in a better Law of peace and forgiveness The fourth and last is the best the reproofs of the Spirit which Christ prefers above his own John 16.7 8 c. It is expedient that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgement Christ reproved of sin from righteousness The spirit reproved of sin and righteousness Christ reproved of sin in the flesh in weakness as under it and the Law and so grieved at it The Spirit reproved of sin and of righteousness in glory and power because saith Christ I go to my Father where he was glorified Being now exalted not only over their sins but by the worst of their sins by their crucifying of him The Son of man was lifted up His love and life overcame both Law Sin Death and the Devil having taken away their sins his Spirit could now manifest to them this one only sin unbelief That there was in him love peace pardon and salvation for them and their worst sins hatred of him that he had born them himself and was acquitted of them and so they were all done away and this sin only remained that they believed not this blessed and mighty grace that could overcome all that evil and bring forth glory to himself and good to them out of their sins and his death And this the Spirit did not only declare but convince so strongly that they could not resist it For his own descending upon them was an undeniable proof of it He convinces of righteousness by shewing that they had a righteousness as well as sin and that as their sins were Christs so his righteousness was theirs that their righteousness was with the Father in a heavenly invisible state because I go to the Father That this is true his own coming as Gods gift is a sufficient proof And therefore it is conviction with judgement or of Sin Righteousness and Judgement For except both the evil and the good be produced both Sin and Righteousness in the light and power of the Spirit there may be wrath administred but not Judgement It is said of Judgement because the Prince of this world is Judged And that is true Judgement that convinces the creature of Sin and of Righteousness and by the Spirit releases him and judges the wicked one the enemy that is the principal the author and worker of all this mischief This Judgement doth right to man to Christ and to God to man it humbles and abases him and brings him to God where his righteousness is It doth right to Christ and the sufficiency of his love life death and resurrection to save the world And it exalts God his love mercy fulness and justice that he hath the righteousness of the whole world with him and that he hath accepted Christ to it as Lord and Prince of the whole world as head of man and hath given him power and spirit to reveal and dispence that righteousness freely to whom he will Now it much concerns you and me and all men that are busie in reproving others to examine our selves by these things what kind of reproofs we do administer If you will admit your work to be tried which you now cannot avoid upon a little humble and sober consideration you will find that in the administration of condemnation upon the Magistracy and Ministry of Church and Kingdom persons and things officers and offices you are very much short of the second of these which I call a Legal or Angelical reproof and punishment for sin For true legal lawful or angelical justice is administred First upon men as Gods creatures made in his image and so his children though drawn away by Satan into the worst evils It is secondly not to ruine or destroy but to reform Thirdly it is by a just holy stable Law and not from mens uncertain and broken imaginations Fourthly it is from a just holy and godly life and nature If these things be true as they are then consider What spirit have you acted in Is it not mercy and justice to you and all men that this should be known That you dealt with them not as men but as brats of Antichrist And sought not to reform either persons or things but to destroy root branch abjure and curse for ever And that by no steddy known Law of God or man such you never could own or profess but by uncertain opinions and imaginations which you never were nor could be true to or agree in either for Church or Common-wealth yea generally ye acted besides all rule Law and authority only by that you call necessity self preservation and interest And this you did not from a pure nature as is too grosly manifest but from a mixture at least of pride envy malice covetousness and self-seeking seen now by your selves and all men If you fall so short of the second I know you will not presume once to think of the third kind which Christ our Lord administred in the flesh first to discover sin and then to bear the curse and punishment of it himself This was â—nce an example and the Saints of old were called to practise the same thing read 1 Pet. 2.19 20 c. and chap. 3.17 18. But alas you are not yet instructed in the doctrine of such a thing but are taught the contrary that this is only for Christ to do and not for men But you are sheep gone astray and led away by false spirits and for the present have lost the Sheeps nature and acted as Woolves When you return unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls chap. 2. v. 25. he will teach you another and more excellent way And therefore as you are short of the second so you are opposite to the third in the very form of your spirits For Christ the holy one dies for the ungodly your holiness serves only to punish and destroy the ungodly his holiness to your practice must needs seem either unrighteous or foolish and impolitick to suffer the just for the unjust and only for well-doing and to commit his cause to God Why did ne not justifie himself and condemn others Had he power in his hands Yes he could command legions and that of Angels Why then did he not cut off the wicked out of
now faln 1. They had many of them a work upon their spirits and many gifts wherewith they were anointed 2. These works and gifts were but flesh but earthly but man after the image of the first Adam which is of the earth earthly and not the second Adam the Lord from Heaven Not the Lord nor from Heaven 3. As they were earthly and fleshly so they were private and personal servile and ministerial not the Lord no largeness to comprehend the whole nor authority to subject the whole nor wisdom to rule the whole either the whole Nation or their whole party 4. That they had Commission only to destroy subdue and punish the Church and Kingdom standing in darkness and corruption There never was in that party or people any union strength glory or success in any thing but in fighting and killing And therefore could never attain any Civil or Religious body either to be a Church or Kingdom but an Army to fight And for this work they were anointed and sanctified So was Cyrus and his Medes Isa 13.3 and 45.1 which is not only a Legal Ministry but a heathenish and bloody one 5. That when they had subdued and broken down they had nothing to build no new Law or Religion either from heaven or earth either for themselves only or for the whole Nation No man or sort of men did ever so much as pretend that they were Legislators nor did ever tender to the Nation a Law either from heaven or earth but after they had cursed and rejected the old state they dressed up the carkase of King Lords and Commons in a Protector another House and a Parliament and had more stability in it then in any of their inventions beside They never could produce any thing like unto the wisdom and reason of a Law but every bird would chatter its own note such broken stuff and absurd confusion never was 6. They never had a publick or healing spirit talk they did of the common good of all men But their spirit was not only narrow but stood in opposition to the spirit of the Nation They were alwayes bound up most firmly and strongly to a private and so to a selfish spirit and could never be perswaded to accept of any thing that was large Those miserable principles of Interest Self-preservation and Necessity began carried on and ended the War and Party 7. Their gifts and work being fleshly and earthly and having only figures and prophesies of the heavenly Kingdom of God â—nd not the nature and substance of that Kingdom with them they could not administer it but those prophesies and figures must cease and die before the truth of the Kingdom can come forth 8. Their gifts being only private and personal and their work only to subdue and â—ull down when they aspired beyond their â—bility and commission to reign and to make â—ew Common-wealths and new Churches â—hey corrupted into pride enmity opâ—ression covetousness self-seeking greedily â—evouring the wealth riches pleasures hoâ—ours and places which they had cursed and condemned and therein were more foul â—hen those that they cast out 9. And from corruption they fell into divisions jealousies persecuting others and â—ne another and so into destractions and confusions 10. And by that into their present reâ—ection from all power authority riches â—nd estates into contempt imprisonment poverty plunged into a deep Baptism of afflictions and disappointment 11. Into which if they can retire with meekness humility and repentance they will find rest safety and purifying A condition more sweet and clean and as to God and their souls more comfortable and profitable then their former greatness though it be to the flesh grievous 12. There the Book would leave them in quietness and cover them from the wrath of their enemies justifying them in the exercise of their private and personal gifts as honest men And promising them a resurrection in a more large pure spiritual and durable state Ministries and Dispensations of a far more excellent glory then this have perished and why there should be such unwillingness to bury this I know not It died to me and in me long since and hath been ever since corrupting rotting reeling and staggering till it fell in pieces It hath had its time done its work fulfilled its Ministry emptied and poured out all the wrath it had upon others and when it had executed others it was a torment and vexation to it self wanting other matter to work upon The Party it self was weary of it complained of the vanity corruption and filthyness of it were ashamed of it annoyed by it it stunk so in the nostrils of every ingenuous and enlightened spirit none pleased at it but for what they got and kept by it none easie under it but sick of it and it self sick and hated at last executed it self to fulfill that word He that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword even by that sword they took up and by that force they fomed That Power that Army they raised against the King turns to the King and against them that raised it It was long dying and every Party watched to have had it themselves and were pulling and catching at it some had it one while and some another whilest quarreling amongst your selves it is faln into your Adversaries hands and that I suppose is the great trouble You would be content it should die and you would execute it but thought also it belonged to the Executor to have its riches honours power and success But it seems there was an elder Brother an heir alive that you did not dream of Though this work of yours with its power fall very contrary to your hopes designs purchases and carnal confidences yet not contrary to many hints of prophesies in their own spirits nor contrary to common justice and reason For first it hath been often said to you and in you Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit That an Army is a harsh cruel worldly brutish self-seeking power and that while it stood it was a burden to all but them that received pay in it or by it And secondly if it doth fall as you thought and desired what must necessarily follow The antient Government of the Nation was suppressed by force if it had been by Light and Reason that Light that removed one would have shewed us a better but that we could never see The old one being suppressed and only suppressed for all you could do could not root it out and no other prepared if that force that suppresseth it be weary sick forsaken and spent whether should it go but to its center to the standing foundation If the force ceales that suppressed what can be expected but that the old suppressed Government should rise When therefore either the purity or truth of your spirits or the power of your reason shall prevail over your passions and losses you will rest satisfied That you still arc chafing and rubbing this dead
body to keep or recover life in it or are so lamentably angry for the loss of it I would have that charity to hope that it is because you think that holiness and godliness will be suppressed and prophaness and wickedness will get up To satisfie you know this assuredly 1. Iniquity unrighteousness had got a Sanctuary in and amongst you and was lodged more secure in your professions and gifts then in any company or state of men in the earth and therefore 2. It is a most holy and righteous God that hath pulled down or is pulling down that strong hold that spiritual wickedness in high places And 3. As God will not suffer iniquity to harbour under his own name and cause so he will not suffer it to rest upon the earth for the earth is the Lords and the creation is his 4. Sin and ungodliness got ground of you in your greatness and riches you know it did And while you thought to reform the world you were deformed by it and that the spirit that engaged for righteousness against the world betrayed that cause and fell into the unrighteousness and filth that it opposed The Lord rejects this pretender in great jealousie know assuredly God in this act is gone forth with vengeance against unholiness and will manifest himself in such holiness as you will not bear if you were not plunged into suffering 5. Know God hath set his holy Son upon his holy hill of Zion The Lord reigns in righteousness and in righteousness hath brought you down for your unholiness and if you have any true love to holiness but a spark of the truth of what you profess you will rejoyce more in these fires while they consume you and your dross then ever you did in your success and greatness because God is now avenging himself of his wicked enemies that lurked in the prayers preachings gifts prophecying of his kingdom and for the world trouble not your self with that he hath laid you aside as unworthy of and false to the work of reformation which you professed he that refuses that spirit because it was unholy and base hath a more excellent spirit which he will manifest to the purging of all things and all men I cannot without some indignation pass this point that men so palpably corrupt and unclean when under rebuke and judgement and that for their impurity yet should think that they are the only Champions of holiness as if the cause of holiness did die or fall with them No it is iniquity and hypocrisie that falls There is an incorruptible holiness that is mighty and will throughly purge away yours and others dross and cleanse the whole earth As to the things that I write in my Book concerning his Majestie and those principles of rest and grace laid in Noah and in that Covenant which God made with him and his seed for perpetual generations which I affirm to be the firm foundations of all the Kingdoms of the world that tried stone tried first in all Nations and then laid in Zion and is now the root of his Majesties restoration after his long sufferings I confess the things are deep and remote from common understandings What I feared and writ concerning these principles I find true that they are little understood being yet low and under a vail and therefore might appear remote and strange both to his Majestie and the Nation which way prolong our trouble c. They are so indeed understood neither by one side nor other Let them lie and sleep a while foundations must do so when shaking and troubles make us need them they will be enquired after if any do there they are But my friends let us reason a little together and lay aside all allusions and all passions and soberly consider what evil was offered to you in that book After the case of the prisoners and so of the partie was represented I still think to their advantage more then ever I yet met with elsewhere the desire was to wave that tryal and procure another Court that should try principles that might at least supersede or succeed that What the issue of that Court and tryal is we now see and had reason to foresee Supposing his Majesty and the Law of the Nation to be offended and provoked against them that took away the life of the late King what probable or rational way was left to save the Prisoners but by moving that they and their principles and so the principles of the whole party should be tried in a higher and more spiritual Court A trial must be the common Law and ordinary way certainly destroyes both life liberty and estate To avoid that another must be proposed What rests to be tryed but opinions and principles And how can that be done humanely but by such a Court and by such a Law as is there propounded If those principles are good they may not only be justified but prevail to rule if they be not found so then their deceit will be discovered your judgements delivered from them and the prisoners and Party in a fair way to be pardoned by and reconciled to the present power Or else a third and middle state would have appeared A large righteous and merciful Law might have been produced that might have united comprehended and saved both Parties I confess freely I do believe and know it is to be had and will come forth whenever the righteous and good Law of God may obtain among men and right reason may be heard I confess to obtain this I did declare to his Majestie my sense and judgement of your principles which I have long had and do still retain upon a judgement made by many and great trials in my spirit and confirmed by constant experience much examination and deliberation And being many years fully convinced of humbled and sore afflicted for that prophane carnal cruel and selfish spirit in which this work was begun and carried on I did and do still offer them up to trial and was and am still willing that his Majestie and the Nation might see that they need not seek the lives of men seeing they might have the principles which is the best satisfaction can be given It is that which I have long desired even of this Party when they were up That we might have a Bar of Religion and Reason where the right of all parties in the Nation may be fairly argued and heard but could never obtain it I do judge it the true and only Christian and humane way to come to Peace and therfore I shall and do earnestly desire it There is nothing in the earth that I do seek more then this That my mind and judgement may be tried by the Reason and Religion of the Nation or the Reason and Religion of the Nation tryed by my Judgement Had it been a known enemy that had propounded such a thing to you why should you be angry at it or why not embrace and
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
that good in the office and institution of a King and that good in the nature and person or his Majestie as a man and a Prince if we consider no more that you may live under him with more Peace spiritual comfort more holiness and godliness and with less sin and evil then you have done all these wars or since This I affirm upon knowledge of a sure root and foundation laid by God and Jesus Christ in the beginning of the world now manifested and revealed so firmly and strongly that no humors passions or lusts of men nor any spirits and powers of darkness can overthrow so that what ever men say or do the foundation is sure they may prejudice themselves and deprive themselves of the comfort and benefit of it but the foundation remains firm for it is that tried stone that hath born all Nations in all ages I have likewise affirmed to his Majestie concerning you and your way and work that the spirit of that Ministrie in which you acted against him is dead that your power both Civil and Military hath resigned to him and that the principles or opinions being proper only for that work of destroying and of their own nature weak and short are reducible And then that there are in you those gifts and abilities that may be of singular use to him and the Kingdom So that upon a good understanding between you the King may be happy in you and you in him As the thing propounded is not only just and honest in the sight of all men but also good and profitable for all Parties To you no less then saving of life liberty and estate To his Majestie security honour and the great advantage of the hearts affections and judgements of a great and considerable people And to all the Nation that rich blessing of Peace in knowledge and right understanding So the means propounded to this end is as innocent and safe That wise sober and spiritual men of large hearts and indifferent in their judgements should have the hearing and trying of mens principles and opinions The end being unquestionably good peace and love and the means to that end proportionable a trial of mens opinions before the wisest and best in the Church We cannot reasonably doubt of a good effect except we conclude one of these two things that there is not with men or in the Church that Grace and Spirit of Christ which is able to judge and lead into a way of Peace or else that men are not willing to receive that blessing of Peace though it should be manifested No man can conclude the first without the guilt of unbelief and denying the truth of the Promise of God that his spirit shall abide with his people for ever nor the second without great injury and uncharitableness to mankind But if his word and Spirit be with us and that Word and Spirit be sufficient for that end whereunto it is given which is to purifie enlighten heal and unite the body of Christ to deny it is blasphemy against that Spirit then walking according to the rule of that Word and Spirit we need not doubt of obtaining that end which is so much according to his own nature which is love peace and salvation Why you should think that such a proposal should come from an enemy I can impute it to nothing but this the extremity of your anguish under your fore and grievous loss and disappointment which makes all things seem harsh while the mind is drowned in that sense It is true you meet with sharp reproof there but you must come to find true love in the severest reproof before you can be soundly healed Proposals of a Treatie and Peace for the preventing of present and imminent danger use not to be the way of enemies If such things should come from a professed enemy I think the nature of the things deserves acceptance and not scorn or reviling I confess I think you have wronged me and the Book and I therefore might require reparations of you I know in time you will give it There is that right and reason in you which will give me satisfaction when it shall recover it self from the passions of fear grief and anger which now darken and suppress it In the mean time let us consider whether there be not something in the Book that is yet improveable for the good of the whole Party that stand in opposition to the present Government and so are in danger to be destroyed by it We hope his Majestie and in him the Law is satisfied and by that sacrifice of blood that hath been shed is attoned as to past things yet the breath is not healed but your spirits are still set in opposition to the power of the Nation and the Law and Power of the Nation looks upon you with jealousie and an evil eye thinking that yet you may attempt against the Peace of the Kingdom Great discontent appears in you it cannot be hid all endeavours are used to uphold and revive the cause and consequently that enmity and war that hath formerly been acted against his Majestie and Party This is seen known and felt and doth undoubtedly provoke the Power of the Nation to endeavour the suppressing the Party for preventing future inconvenience It cannot be otherwise all men do it When you had the Power you did as they now do you interrupted their meetings and required Oathes of them This now fills the prisons ruines many Families exasperates mens Spirits into bitterness and wrath which destroyes the sweetness and comfort of religion wounds the life and power of godliness and grieves the good spirit of love and peace in Christ What ever you think of it now I know it is in it self a good and mercifull work and will be so acknowledged by you in time to reconcile a poor broken people guilty by Law and their own consciences to the authority and power of the Nation in which they live For a naked people to be in their judgements and affections zealously set against the Law and Government of a Nation which is provoked and enraged newly recovered and restored experienced fore-warned and fore-armed against them what ever may be expected hereafter there is in it apparent ruine for the present Alas a Law and Power is an Iron Scepter and in the hand of a self preserving spirit such as was in you and is in all men yet must needs be hard to them that are professed enemies to it The consideration of it wounds my soul and affects my bowels of compassion to you which urges me to do what I can to prevent misery to your persons and families And therefore I do earnestly entreat you to consider seriously whether your botom upon which you stand in this divided and opposite state to the present power and Government of Church and Kingdom be sufficient to bear you up against what you are likely to suffer if you persist The foundation upon which you
heaven c. This was the Law of his whole Life and Death He that will be my Disciple must deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me Alas alas how can you look into this glass and not blush to see the deformities of your whole work how directly contrary yours is to this Instead of blessing you have cursed What he blessed you reject the meek the mourners the merciful the peace-makers the persecuted you begun this war because you would not endure persecution Instead of not resisting evil you have inflicted evil and would not be resisted in it Instead of loving enemies you have hated and destroyed them Instead of blessing them you curse as bitterly as you can Instead of bearing persecution you persecute Instead of denying self you sight for self Instead of taking up the Cross you flie to force to avoid it and load others with it make others bear it So hath the blessed God set things that they that are not with him are against him And they who refuse to bear the Cross must become Crucifiers of others All men that will not endure persecution they will persecute they that cannot or will not be killed will kill So have you done and therefore been enemies to the Cross of Christ and so enemies to Christ himself for he is crucified in all crucifying And they that hate the flesh of the whore and burn her with fire they make war with the Lamb also Rev. 16.14 So have you made war with the Lamb with his doctrine nature life and death 2. Christ our Lord humbled himself and became a servant to others you have exalted your selves as far as you could into all kinds of places of honour He became poor that he might make others rich you have made others poor that you may be rich He suffered the errors and contradictions of sinners but sinners those that you have judged sinners have suffered your contradictions in your several Oathes and Impositions He bore the infirmities and diseases of the whole Nation the whole Nation have born your infirmities and diseases your blindness haltings and staggerings He bore the sins and curse of the people The poor people have born yours both sin and curse He died that others might live You kill others that you may live your selves He suffered the just for the unjust but others have suffered from you because they resisted your unjust power and will I believe you have been misled by an evil spirit and therefore I pitty you Alas you have walked in darkness and not known whether you have gone You did not think your way and work had been so contrary to the way of Christ you found it weak and short but now you will see that it is in the whole from the rise of it to the end of it contrary to the nature and spirit of the Lamb and to his Law and Doctrine 3. Christ in the Gospel brought forth a new Creation a new and Spiritual Kingdom a new Law new Ordinances new Ministers new Worship And this not in opposition to nor to the destruction or disturbance of any authority either of the Jews or Gentiles but he taught and practised obedience to both But you have only disturbed and destroyed what you could of the Government of the Nation but have brought forth no better no new Kingdom or new Law for the people and what forms of worship you have made for your selves and several Parties are but some broken pieces of the letter of the old Apostolical frame set up in another spirit Let us compare your work and way with the Spirit and his holy and pure Ministrie He came from Heaven himself cloathed with an outward and visible appearance in great Majestie and Power openly manifesting himself to all Nations in mighty signs and wonders that were his own and not anothers He did truly glorifie Christ and set him up above his enemies making them know that Jesus was the Son of God and that the Kingdom of God was with men And this to the face and in the consciences of all the powers of the earth He formed and built a Church upon the rock from the heavenly pattern He came from heaven and carried the Saints into heaven and made them sit down together with Christ in the heavenly He led them into the holiest and brought them to Mount Zion indeed the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels to the general Assembly c. Have you had the substance and truth of any of these things with you You have been able to talk of them to notion fancy or prophesie something of them which others could not But had you had this heavenly glory you needed not your earthly Armies nor worldly Polities nor the help of profane and loose people and practices to save you The Spirit had his own manifestation his union his own tongues interpretation of tongues his own signs and miracles his own power and glory pure holy and clear his own anointing was sufficient to lead into all truth But instead of manifesting you have by your wayes extreamly darkened others your selves and the name of Christ and Religion which you professed Instead of tongues and interpretation to others you were in such confusion that you could not your selves understand one another you pretended to signal mercies and successes but they are not spiritual but such as are common to others so is victory in battle Instead of being led into all truth alas you were led into all kinds of contradictions and into many erroneous wayes which proved to be lyes and delusions to you And therefore you must not any longer boast of the Spirit of God You cannot shew that he is descended upon you or that he hath led you as he did the Apostles into a heavenly state You are still in the world in the gross uncleanness of the world in the wrath malice destruction pride covetousness deceit of the world You are and have been under the Ministrie or Judgement of the Spirit In his giving you up to corruption that you may be manifest to be but men and not born from on high In blowing upon and infatuating your Counsels In scattering and dividing your spirits In rejecting your work and way as not his own as abominable to his purity goodness truth and righteousness In judging of you in the sight of all the world for abusing his name and in kindling a sire upon all your riches honours and works a fire of jealousie that burns like an Oven which will purifie you And therefore you are in this day nearer to the Spirit of God then you were from the first day you engaged Consider now what ground you stand upon in your present opposition to this Power and Providence You cannot stand up with Moses and Aaron in their Office for you have not led us out of Egypt into Canaan but have been intangled and fettered in Egyptian darkness Nor can
the beast And in one hour would you be made as desolate as you have been You neither could nor can resist it For strong is the Lord that judgeth For he that hath sworn he will bring down them that exalt themselves be they never so mighty and raise up the lowly the meek the Lamb who only trusteth in him and shall be saved by him If you could not resist this Judgement when you were great and strong why should you not be wise now and cease from that state and those wayes which lead you upon sensible ruine For what more certain destruction can there be then for a naked people to dash themselves against a rock of power and authority that is rooted and grounded in the Laws and minds of the Nation and now after proof and trial rises up strongly against all its enemies You are as to your persons part of the Israel of God I do most freely grant it to you But as yet but Israel after the flesh and no more And God hath used you and the fire of your fleshly Zeal Rev. 17.16 17. to hate the whore make her desolate and naked and to eat her flesh The war hath been of fleshly knowledge fleshly forms and fleshly wisdom by fleshly power policy and arms against outward and fleshly corruptions which God hath put into your hearts until the words of God should be fulfilled And during this Ministry you pleaded the cause of Zion and had the name title and success for that work But those words are fulfilled And then there appeared in this fleshly Israel and fleshly work a spiritual Antichrist which your own mouthes have acknowledged and a spiritual Sodom Egypt and Babylon which your works have manifested Sodoms pride idleness and fulness of bread Egypts falshood cunning and cruelty Babylons loftiness glorying and self-exaltation Where our Lord also was crucified As well as the flesh of the whore desolated It is this spiritual Antichrist this adulterated wine or wine of fornication in and with your fleshly gifts and fleshly success that bewitches your minds abuses your understandings and enrages your spirits into a foolish confidence and presumptuous opposition to the power of the Nation to your apparent ruine My endeavour is to redeem your understandings from those vain and rejected confidences and to recover your minds and reasons into a sober consideration of your selves and of your condition that you may not desperately throw away your lives and liberties in a heady drunken and rash zeal Friends I do earnestly desire you seriously to consider if you can or if your high conceits of your selves your principles and cause will admit of reason and consideration Then consider what is there in your present state which now lies under so great conviction in your consciences and so great condemnation from men that should make you disdain either a reproof or a proposal of trying your principles at a bar of Religion and Reason before the wisest justest largest and soberest men in the Church and Nation For that was the intent of that Book that you so fiercely and bitterly condemn It was humbly desired that the persons to be tried together with their principles might not be judged at least not finally by the Common Law but might have a Chancery And why should you not now be reconciled to it and seek it what should hinder you from petitioning it as a singular mercy To the utmost of my understanding it might be not only a means of saving your selves but a blessing to the Nation I am very confident that you and all men after you have wearied and spent your selves your peace and comfort in these unnatural and brutish violences will be glad to hearken to a brotherly and friendly debate of things When that pride that makes men scorn all mens Reason and Religion but their own is brought down For he that knows any thing of the general and large love of God and of Jesus to all men must conclude that that pride will as certainly be ruined and ruine it self as he knows God is just or mercifull SECT IX I Intended not to prosecute this point of accommodating the present distance and opposition that is betwixt you and this Government of the Church and Nation But being unexpectedly faln upon it and engaged in it and it being the end of my first Book and the constant frame of my mind to seek peace by a right understanding And there being still great need of it in respect of the great numbers that do suffer and possibly a better opportunity for it satisfaction being taken to the Law of the Land justice of the Nation upon them that have suffered The same love to you that led me at first to propound it continues still in me and leads me now to prosecute it The enmity is strong and great confirmed by a long and cruel war heightened and inflamed by many wrongs and injuries It is a fire that hath and doth burn fiercely in the minds of men It is now upon you if it be not quenched it doth and will utterly destroy you and all that cannot yield to the present Government of the Church except a new war relieve you And both you and the whole Nation have found by woful experience that war is no friend but an enemy to all Civil and Religious blessings And that fighting may destroy both the good and the evil without Judgement but save nothing I hope it is and will be the mind of all sober Christians and Englishmen that consider the effects of our late wars rather to suffer in their own particulars then to raise a new war whereby the whole Nation must suffer thousands be slain and at last they that raised it will be far worse then they were when they begun That Law and Sentence that came out of Christs lips first and was afterward confirmed by the Spirit in the Revelations as a divine Law to all ages is He that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword And therefore wo be to that Party or Person that makes war and division his hope that longs to see the Kingdom in a flame that he may warm himself at the fire Or would have the whole ruined and Shipwracked that he might have a share of the pillage You have had the sword and could not keep it it is turned now against you and the strength of the Nation also all highly provoked by your evil dealings with them And yet you are the sharpest enemies to the Propositions of Peace I know no good reason why you should be so A good friend of yours and mine hath said again and again One side must yield why should not we first lie down and submit We that profess most knowledge of the Gospel and are most conversant with Scriptures should be most inclined to meekness and peace there is sure some notable evil spirit gotten in that makes the most gifted the most quarrelsome I am bound to examine what
and doth make these things uphold them and walk in them and in all the wayes and forms of men in the midst of all their vanity and iniquity and not be defiled with them And this Spirit when you are led by him will enable you to live either above them or besides them or in the secret of his Tabernacle which is within all there forms and that with purity peace and content And this Spirit that upholds and gives being to all forms and persons doth distinguish and perfectly judge between the good and the evil of all persons and things and doth eternally chuse and gather unto himself that which is holy in all and casts the chaff and dust to the Serpent and him and it into the Lake of fire If therefore you have this Spirit and will do that visibly which he doth eternally then you must by him first gather all these things and all the parts of the broken Church and Nation under his wings that he may do with our Chaos as he did when he made the world first sustain cherish and brood upon this desolate state and then form a new one For if you cannot receive all into your hearts and bowels of love you will never renew or reform any thing For love is the first moving cause of all good It is love only that hath in it that mercy that life that goodness that can heal and reform the poor diseased and decayed state of man and of the Church This excellent divine nature of God Love hath rejected with indignation your harsh and severe spirit of self-sasety and self-seeking into confusion and shame And hath taken the work out of your hands into his own after you have by violence and unskilfulness spoyled wasted and ruined he will himself save and restore And in order to it takes the whole frame of things in all its sin death curse and misery both persons parties forms and states into the bowels of his most tender compassions into himself and his own nature life and being who is Emanuel God with us In our flesh and so in and under our sins and curse bearing of them for us and from us He hath love to those persons that you would destroy finding his own image in them for they are his own creatures and children therefore he will save them and first pardon and then remove their iniquities In those offices that you would destroy he knows there is good in them and in the honour and riches belonging to them and therefore will take away the abuse and corruption of them And in that service that you so much vilifie there is heavenly excellency which must be preserved purified enlightened and all the death darkness and prophaneness separated from it The holy one of Israel will do this Therefore to conclude this point of holiness you may and must know That you were sanctified with a measure of gifts for a service for the execution of Gods displeasure Its work is finished the gifts corrupted and now as to publick work upon the Nation rejected and under a judicial blindness and confusion because of an evil spirit that did and doth still possess them It is the righteous judgement of the Spirit of God upon them who hath though your gifts and performances be many and solemn cast them as dung in your faces If you will retreat with them in humility and repentance to attend the purifying of your own souls and the purging away your own sins you will find mercy to your selves But if you think by them to exalt your selves again into dominion and power in the Nation you will but involve your selves in more misery and wrath and like a Bull in a net entangle your souls in greater errours and outward troubles The holy Spirit I know and have felt did bear you a long time as a heavy burden and at last eased himself of you as a clog and cumber to him And now I with joy feel that he is free to exercise his own power to effect and perfect what you have failed in It will be your only safety now to retire into deep silence and humility and leave the Church and Nation to him that is Lord of both who made both and I can assure you will perfectly reform both SECT XIV BEsides the two things mentioned of the Kingdom of God and of holiness there are some other things that you have sought in these late wars which are still in your minds As common liberty or the liberty of the people and liberty of conscience But it is most certainly true and by experience now manifested that these things are not in that spirit in which you have acted and still stand Nor is this way of strife and contention the way to obtain them but the contrary For as war and enmity is against the Kingdom of Christ which is a Kingdom of peace And as they harden pollute and vitiate the mind of man which is contrary to holiness So they do naturally exalt will and force rage and jealousie and so must necessarily eat up and devour all liberty and turn all into the worst kind of tyrannie if the Father of mercies and Spirits doth not enlarge mollifie and sweeten the nature of man which wrath and war doth imbitter and harden It is true common liberty is written in the common nature of man in some degree though it be very weak This liberty came forth in you in notion profession and affection beyond what it doth in other people and it hath been not only talked of but desired by you yet that spirit in which you rose and in which you seek it hath not any true liberty in it And if it hath not liberty in it it can neither attain it for you from others nor give it by you to others it never could do either Mind well what I write else you will not understand it For it is I know besides the common reason and apprehensions of men and therefore seems to be and is strange to the dark and private spirit of the world but you and all men must know that there is a divine reason in these things which ought to be and therefore shall be the rule of mans Reason Know then first That we began our wars upon this principle of delivering our selves from the yoak of the Law and Government of the Church and Kingdom being of another spirit and way from them And upon the same principle of self-safety and self-freedom was the war carried on and the whole business from step to step This seemed to us very just and righteous that we should have liberty to serve God according to what light and understanding he gave us And there is an undoubted right in it Yet we see to what infinite confusion and strange enmity and division this principle hath brought us And therefore there is some notable evil either in the principle or in the liberty or in both I think both will be found faulty I
men for an outward liberty They would rather suffer from them then so acknowledge them Therefore liberty of conscience will be found a new and upstart thing born in this age amongst many other weak things and that it is not of the old rase of the right generous and heavenly Saints It may be pittied and indulged but cannot challenge much Thirdly This liberty of conscience seeks earthly things and outward freedom Which is not only for conscience or but for an outward and earthly conscience and with that for worldly ease honour and advantage For conscience if the Son make him free and so he be free indeed it can and doth live with God and with men in heaven and in earth and under the earth in bonds chains and death and is still free with God and Christ and cannot be confined It is therefore some outward thing that is pleaded for as well as or more then liberty of conscience Fourthly It is a common observation that men while they have been under their enemies and in a low condition then they cry up liberty of Conscience but when the same persons have attained power they content not themselves then with liberty but set up their consciences to be a Law to others It hath been practised by all sorts of people as they have gotten power into their hands in some degree or other They have all punished some for Conscience Let this be well examined and if we can let us find out the reason of it it will enlighten mens minds and clear the truth Consider then First Whether conscience receiving its Law and rule from God the supream Lord ought not to exalt that Law as it hath opportunity and hold it forth as a Law to all men I believe it is so and therefore conscience taught and instituted of God is truly royal and Princely in his nature and both must and will rule Which is the reason why neither the Jews nor Christians would seek to their enemies or to the heathen States for liberty but knowing and loving the majesty of their Lord they would either raign with him or suffer with him and from him If this be the royal nature of truth then it follows 1. That whatever men profess when they are down and low yet we must expect that when they get up they will exalt that which they hold to be truth as high as they can and exalt themselves with it And 2. If they pretend otherwise they do either weakly or deceitfully hide and cover their minds or else basely stoop below the majestie of truth for present ease and advantage And 3. If we our selves by the Law of our own life and religion do exalt our religion as a Law we must not wonder if others do so also but have reason to be content with it and submit to it And 4. Knowing that the Law and Religion of our Lord Jesus must and will rule if we have it with us and in us it will be sufficient 1. To uphold us in a low state 2. To assure us that whatever other persons or spirits God sets up they must come down with shame 3. That when that Law comes to rise we shall rise and raign with it And 4. In the mean time suffering with it will prepare us to raign with it and him Secondly If this be true that conscience rightly taught and enlightened is and will be a Law to all men then what a poor or false conscience is that which craves liberty of men If it be only weak it is to be pittied if it be an evil thing it is to be judged Be it one or other we see by experience it is to be suspected For if it be carnal and naught when it is low it will be certainly worse when it gets power If it be base subtile and serpentine when it is poor it will be cruel and tyrannical when it rises Therefore though there be a natural right to liberty of Conscience yet it is just reason it should be examined For further Fifthly They that profess much for liberty of Conscience could never give it to others neither to their enemies that first denyed it to them nor to them that needed it from them I do think they that contend for it will never grant it That large and generous spirit that shall he able to give it will neither need it nor stoop so low as to ask it And that narrow low fleshly mind that knows not how to bear the darkness and shortness of them that are above him I doubt would less bear the darkness and shortness of them that are under him Sixthly This liberty of Conscience hath brought forth to the Church a very strange brood of absurd opinions loose practises proud and rebellious spirits to the scorn of Religion contempt of all kind of Government breaking of all relations of all bonds natural civil and religious Now that which is a cause or occasion of so much ill hath certainly an evil thing in it And therefore is no clear nor strong ground to engage upon There is no question but men in tenderness to their own flesh and bodies do when they are in danger of suffering cry up liberty of Conscience as a great thing and decry the contrary beyond measure Passion passion for self for self unmortified to avoid the Cross is not a proper judge of Laws Liberties Religions and Kingdoms It doth likewise appear from what hath been said that this liberty contended for is not according to the antient Christian and Apostolical spirit But a carnal impure and mixed thing Yet on the other side I do acknowledge there is a humane and natural right in it which although it be weak and low ought to be considered and pittied It being a thing of natural and rational equity if it be fairly and rationally demanded it may I suppose be had His Majesty hath in goodness and prudence graciously promised and declared it It is in it self a reasonable thing and therefore if reasonably claimed the reason of man cannot justly deny it And much less reason of State which is the reason of the Nation Besides the natural reason of it the present state of the Nation gives it a great advantage and makes it even to reason of State which is the preservation of civil peace necessary And therefore nothing so likely to endanger it as mens irrational heady and violent opposing the Government of the Church and Kingdom And therefore I affirm that for you to stand out in open enmity to the present Government in attempting war and hostility or in preaching and praying against it or cursing and reviling of it as wicked or Antichristian which tends to the destruction of it either by war or otherwise To continue in this is not the way to procure liberty of Conscience but to overthrow and destroy it This liberty of Conscience must be had either by an utter ruine of all that is against it and so of the present
men If we seek liberty of Conscience upon grounds of Conscience and Religion which is most proper and most for the advantage of the Cause of Conscience who hath most strength in his own Court then we must conclude the Magistrate hath a Conscience For if he have no conscience he cannot consider conscience to give it freedom If the Magistrate have a conscience then 1. If we plead liberty of Conscience he must be himself free to exercise that Conscience in Religion and Worship Can you then freely grant that to the Magistrate which you desire of him And let him in his way be as free from your tongues and pens as you desire to be from his sword and officers If so then you must cease all rayling reviling and reproaching for that from the subject to the Magistrate is persecution of the tongue in name and dignity as well imprisonment from the Magistrate to the subject is persecution of the body Object But ought we not to reprove evil and testifie against it Answ Yea according to the Gospel which is to reprove them as Brethren with meekness long-suffering love gentleness but to speak evil of their persons and worship not to them but to others against them is not to convince but to defame which to a dignity is to oppose and so to overthrow it and to set up your selves either against or above them If so you go beyond a Gospel-rule which forbids to speak evil of dignities and commands to honour all men If it be not according to the Gospel of Peace and Love then it is carnal strife and will bring forth fruits accordingly And will stir up answerable disaffection in the Magistrate For him to restrain and imprison is the same thing with your opposing them whereby you would restrain them from setting up or practising what their consciences lead them to Observe this well If you expect liberty of Conscience to worship you must give liberty of Conscience to worship And they that have liberty to worship God in Jesus Christ are part of his House and Church If you and others will admit this That men walking in different wayes of worship of one God are all servants of that God whom they worship and so members of the body and of the Church though under much darkness many mistakes â—his alone will kill all enmity To enlarge your minds to this do but consider that which both your reason and your wants will necessarily lead you to For can you ask liberty of Conscience of them that have no Conscience If they have Conscience they must have liberty to worship God If they be worshippers of God in the name of Christ they are Christians And this they do therefore they are members with us though dead or corrupt members And as our reason and wants will lead us to it so our judgements may well admit it For the body of Christ is this day most large and the House of God is a House of prayer to all Nations The name of Jesus Christ is published received and believed on in the world and consequently called upon And all that call upon the name of the Lord are saved that is according to the degree or measure of Faith Religion Obedience and Worship they exercise so is their salvation either outward temporary and worldly or inward spiritual and eternal For we plainly see that all men do worship God and have some kind of Communion with him They give him some service and receive some good from him life and support for that life for the soul and body Which doth not deny the exercise of justice either to God or men neither of temporary or eternal civil or ecclesiastical but establishes all For by admitting all to this common priviledge they are thereby subject to all divine christian and humane judgements And either we must admit all Parties to this priviledge or else we must admit them to no outward civil or natural priviledge For the House of God and visible body of Christ is more large then any Nation and the love of God to man in Christ is larger then any other law or light civil or natural The Spirit of Jesus is more merciful long-suffering and gentle then any other spirit And therefore if we cannot admit them to be partakers of Gods goodness in his House we shall not allow them a place in the earth And they that pray against men as enemies to God as wicked and Antichristian they will also thrust them out of all rule and dominion and consequently out of Possession in the earth and either destroy them quite or reduce them to slavery If this be considered it is so vile a thing that the nature of man will abhor it And if it abhor the effect it must also abhor the cause that spirit and way that produces such cruel things in the earth And as it is vile in it self so it engages Party against Party to their utter destruction and leaves no means of peace which is most contrary to all the grace of God in Jesus Christ It further follows if we allow the Magistrate a Conscience and freedom for his Conscience we must allow him the Conscience not of a private person only but of a Magistrate If he have freedom of Conscience as a Magistrate he hath not only liberty of worship but liberty as a Magistrate to countenance advance and promote that worship which he practises and judges to be the worship of God For every one is bound as to worship God so to be zealous for that worship and to promote it And every one in their place doth it Ministers in their way Magistrates in their way and People in their way This then is the great difficulty and the knot of the business every Conscience requires liberty not only for their practise but for their zeal to promote their particular way This zeal wanting knowledge and rule to walk by and therefore in confusion makes men clash oppose and quarrel one with another It cannot be expected that I should at this time shew the place and duty of all degrees and Parties with their distinct bounds and limits it would require a Treatise by it self I shall only say this at present 1. I know there is a holy righteous and a good Law for all men to walk by in their several orders and places in the great House of God without offence and hurt one to another 2. There is work and employment for all both Magistrates Ministers and People to exercise themselves and all the power committed to them either civil or spiritual against the common enemy of mankind wickedness unrighteousness and unmercifulness And the Church of God and the Nation have both need of all their power and gifts and of every good thing that God hath made and right to them all 3. While they oppose one another the Church and Nation doth not only lose the benefit of all these parts but envy strife confusion and so every
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
against the truth Jam. 3.14 So long as you suffer to bring others to suffering and are willing to endure for a time that others might utterly be destroyed So long as you pursue your old design of destroying though it be by and through this deep counsel of your own suffering first Glory not as if it were the Gross of Christ You lye against the truth against the true and meek suffering of the Lamb of God which is not to destroy but to save mens lives Therefore neither your life nor death is like his neither your Religion Worship nor suffering The rebuke of our Lord to his Disciples is proper for you when they would have had fire from heaven to consume their enemies the Samaritans because they opposed them in their way it is said Luke 9.55 He turned and rebuked them and said Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of I am certain you know not what spirit it is that leads you in all this Therefore as I have been and am against your actings so I am against your sufferings not only because they are impure and not evangelical but because I pi ty both you that suffer and them that inflict them I know the nature of man and of Christ is sorely and grievously injured in both And therefore it concerns me and every good Christian to do what we can to deliver you and them from this turmoyl It is my desire and must be my endeavour SECT XVII I Had now concluded with a proposal for peace had not this late Insurrection drawn forth my mind to a consideration of it Which although it be a very monstrous and strange thing yet it doth so much agree to what I have written in this Treatise that I cannot but animadvert upon it and enquire into the nature and reason of it I have largely discoursed of this spirit of wrath and opposition And shewed the evil and danger of it That if it be admitted into the mind and into Religious exercises in deprecating cursing and condemning it will raign and not be confined but will break out into war and open hostility in pag. 162 163. these words are opened Out of the Serpents root comes forth a Cock trice and his fruit is a fiery flying Serpent The old Serpent the Devil is the root of all malice from him and his spawn comes forth this hissing Adder or Cockatrice cursing If this be hatched in Religion and fed with zeal and holy duties it will soon get wings and flame forth in attempts to war This is I think a natural and true description on of this fiery flying Serpent that flamed out and flew abroad in this late Insurrection It seems while I was writing against it the thing was hatching I was by a secret spring in my mind directed to write of that subject not only beyond my thoughts when I began to write but contrary to the disposition of my soul which did often turn away from the consideration of such black dark and hellish spirits and practises But though my mind be very averse from taking pleasure in raking in such filthy sores yet I could not resist the power and justice of that reason that led me into a discourse of them I see there is a secret intercourse betwixt reason and the causes or principles of things True understanding knows things as fully in their causes as sense doth in their effects There is nothing so deep or dark but it is subject to be seen and over-seen by the light of right reason True reason is the image of God and one with that supream wisdom that rules all things And therefore will be justified and fulfilled by him that is the head and Father of it This I write not in the subtilty of wit and Philosophical observation but in authority And do require of all men not only consideration of but subjection to the righteousness and truth of what is written I know I am alone in what I write and not only singular but something strange and different from all mens present notion of things I know also my person is mean and contemptible Yet there is that justice and truth of reason in what I write that I dare challenge in the sight of God and man that it should be considered What is truly reasonable or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is both humane and divine and therefore they that refuse it must first sin against their own mercy their own life For the word or reason of God is our life and tha◠by which all men Nations and Kingdoms subsist Therefore to depart from the rule and reason of our beings must necessarily be the confusion and destruction of that life and being And secondly to refuse the truth of reason is a sin against the most high who is Lord and Father of that reason And therefore if he fulfill his own image his word and reason in man then he must bow all states and powers to it Which he will certainly do in justice to his own mind and law and in mercy to men For nothing is better for man then that he should be ruled by the law of his own nature and by his reason enlightened from and in union with the divine and eternal mind I have some reason to urge this because in the Inquisition I proposed unto his Majesty and desired a tryal of mens opinions spirits and principles by spiritual persons and by the Law of God and reason As the only way of curing the distmpers of the Nation which lie in the spirits and judgements of men And are the roots that bring forth these ill fruits of rebellion But it seems the proposal I made was either unseasonable or otherwise so weak and obscure I would blame none but my self that it was not considered or if considered it was rejected by his Majesty As it was neglected by his Majesty so the other side did exceedingly scorn and revile it and me for writing of it Whatever weakness there be in the things there written for which it may justly suffer both neglect and contempt yet there is that truth and reason in it as will stand before God and must be acknowledged by men For what is reason and truth agrees with the rule and Law of the most high God and therefore must sway and rule all States and Kingdoms And what is truth and reason and so one with the eternal mind will be either more true or more evidently so to morrow then to day And consequently that which refuses it will be found weaker and worse by refusing of it I sensibly find that both Parties are farther from that great blessing of peace and happiness then they were before they refused it and the Nation more disturbed Let us enquire into the reason on both sides and then possibly another Proposition of peace may find better acceptance If reason be so weak as not to prevail it will be confirmed and strengthened by experience And so our losses will
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