appears to us without doors till better cause be declared, and I am sure to all other nations,—­most illegal and scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause, thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up.  This, I say, other nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us here at home for the most conscientious.  Certainly, if the great officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like disorder and confusion.”

He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one “jealous of their honour,” to “manifest and publish with all speed some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning to these disorders,”—­in other words, to disown and denounce Lambert.  But, having thus delivered his conscience on the subject of the second dismission of the Rump, he declares farther complaint to be useless, and proceeds to inquire what is now to be done.

“Being now in anarchy, without a counselling and governing power, and the Army, I suppose, finding themselves insufficient to discharge at once both military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found out with all speed, without which no Commonwealth can subsist, must be a SENATE or GENERAL COUNCIL OF STATE, in whom must be the power first to preserve the public peace, next the commerce with foreign nations, and lastly to raise moneys for the management of these affairs.  This must either be the [Rump] Parliament readmitted to sit, or a Council of State allowed of by the Army, since they only now have the power.  The terms to be stood on are Liberty of Conscience to all professing Scripture to be the Rule of their Faith and Worship and the Abjuration of a Single Person.  If the [Rump] Parliament be again thought on, to salve honour on both sides, the well-affected party of the City and the Congregated Churches may be induced to mediate by public addresses and brotherly beseechings; which, if there be that saintship among us which is talked of, ought to be of highest and undeniable persuasion to reconcilement.  If the Parliament be thought well dissolved, as not complying fully to grant Liberty of Conscience, and the necessary consequence thereof, the Removal of a forced Maintenance from Ministers [Milton’s own sole dissatisfaction with the Restored Rump], then must the Army forthwith choose a Council of State, whereof as many to be of the Parliament as are undoubtedly affected to these two conditions proposed.  That which I conceive only able to cement and unite the Army either to the