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heart? We have need here of Delius the diver, and yet could he see what any one should see in the heart? I relate openly things which have been done, heard, seen, testified; which no one could say are my calumnies, without the greatest of calumnies. "I am, indeed, far baser (you say) than they even pretend, on account of those numberless hidden crimes, of which, according to you, I am really guilty." Thus you try to deface and wash out what is known with what is unknown, what is clear with what is hidden. You confess there are things which are obseure, uncertain, concealed, that, with the greater impudence you may be able to deny them, when explored, when made certain. and manifest. At last you stoop so low as, to pen concerning yourself this confession (which is little short of an infamous libel) that you may the more easily evade the just accusation of others. Beware how you think these and such-like things will avail with God: for certain it is, that they will not avail with men even of moderate sagacity. But if lashed, as you have long been, and as you say yourself, by the tongues and the reproaches of all men, you have at length repented indeed, and returned to a better course of life, I rejoice at it. We will believe your repentance to be sincere, when we shall learn that you have repented of your injuries, of. your infamous slander against us.

THE

READY AND EASY WAY

TO ESTABLISH

FREE COMMONWEALTH,

AND THE EXCELLENCE. THEREOF,

Compared with the

INCONVENIENCIES AND DANGERS

OF READMITTING KINGSHIP IN THIS NATION.

Et nos

Consilium dedimus Syllæ, demus populo nunc.

LTHOUGH, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things hath had some change, writs for new elections have been recalled, and the members at first chosen readmitted from exclusion; yet not a little rejoicing to hear declared the resolution of those who are in power, tending to the establishment of a free comInonwealth, and to remove, if it be possible, this noxieus humour of returning to bondage, instilled of late by some deceivers, and nourished from bad principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people; I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published, in the midst of our elections to

a free parliament, or their sitting to consider freely of the government; whom it behoves to have all things represented to them that may direct their judg→ ment therein; and I never read of any state, scarce of any tyrant grown so incurable, as to refuse counsel from auy in a time of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute determination be to enthrall us, before so long a Lent of servitude, they may permit us a little shrovingtime first, wherein to speak freely, and take our leaves of liberty. And because in the for mer edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed, ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for a perpetual senate. The treatise thus revised and enlarged, is as follows.

The Parliament of England, assisted by a great nun ber of the people who appeared and stuck to them faithfullest in defence of religion and their civil liberties, judging kingship by long experience a government unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous, justly and magnanimously abolished it, turning regal bondage into a free commonwealth, to the admiration and terror of our emulous neighbours. They took theniselves not bound by the light of nature or religion to any former covenant, from which the king himself, by many forfeitures of a latter date or discovery, and our own longer consideration thereon, had more and more unbound us, both to himself and his posterity; as hath been ever the justice and the prudence of all wise nations, that have ejected tyranny. They covenanted "to preserve the king's person and authority, in the preservation of the true religion, and our liberties;" not in his endeavouring

to bring in upon our consciences a popish religion; upon our liberties, thraldom; upon our lives, destruction, by his occasioning, if not complotting, as was after discovered, the Irish massacre; his fomenting and arming the rebellion; his covert leaguing with the rebels agains: us; his refusing, more than seven times, propositions most just and necessary to the true religion and our liberties, tendered him by the parliament both of England and Scotland. They made not their convenant concerning him with no difference between a king and a God; or promised him, as Job did to the Almighty," to trust in him though he slay us:" they understood that the solemn engagement, wherein we all forswore kingship; was no more a breach of the covenant, than the cove nant was of the protestation before, but a faithful and prudent going on both in words well weighed, and in the true sense of the covenant" without respect of persons," when we could not serve two contrary masters, God and the King, or the king and that more supreme law, sworn in the first place to maintain our safety and our liberty. They knew the people of England to be a free people, themselves the representers of that freedom; and although many were excluded, and as many fled (so they pretended) from tumults to Oxford, yet they were left a sufficient number to act in parliament, there fore not bound by any statute of preceding parliaments, but by the law of nature only, which is the only law of laws truly and properly to all mankind fundamental; the beginning and the end of all government; to which no parliament or people that will throughly reform, but may and must have recourse, as they had, and must yet have, in church reformation (if they throughly in tend it) to evangelic rules; not to ecclesiastical canonsį, though, never so ancient, so ratified and established in the

land by statutes, which for the most part are mere positive laws, neither natural nor moral; and so by any parliament, for just and serious considerations, without scruple to be at any time repealed. If others of their -number in these things were under force, they were not, but under free conscience; if others were excluded by a power which they could not resist, they were not therefore to leave the helm of government in no hands, to discontinue their care of the public peace and safety, to desert the people in anarchy and confusion, no more than when so many of their members left them, as made up in outward formality a more legal parliament of three estates against them. The best-affected also, and bestprincipled of the people, stood not numbering or computing, on which side were most voices in parliament, but on which side appeared to them most reason, most safety, when the house divided upon main matters. What was well motioned and advised, they examined not whether fear or persuasion carried it in the vote, neither did they measure votes and counsels by the intentions of them that voted; knowing that intentions either are but guessed at, or not soon enough known; and although good, can neither make the deed such, nor prevent the consequence from being bad: suppose bad intentions in things otherwise well done; what was well done, was by them who so thought, not the less obeyed or followed in the state; since in the church, who had not rather follow Iscariot or Simon the magician, though to covetous ends, preaching, than Saul, though in the uprightness of his heart persecuting the gospel? Safer they therefore judged what they thought the better counsels, though carried on by some perhaps to bad ends, than the worse by others, though. endeavoured with best intentions: and yet they were

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