rate of their blood and treasure, they never shall
be able to regain what they now have purchased and
may enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke imposed
upon them. Nor will they dare to go about it,—utterly
disheartened for the future, if these their highest
attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the
triumph of all Tyrants hereafter over any People
that shall resist oppression; and their song will
then be to others How sped the Rebellious English?,
to our posterity How sped the Rebels your fathers?....
Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate
this new gilded yoke which thus transports us.
A new Royal Revenue must be found, a new Episcopal,—for
those are individual: both which, being wholly
dissipated or bought by private persons, or assigned
for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot
be recovered without a general detriment and confusion
to men’s estates, or a heavy imposition on
all men’s purses,—benefit to none
but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope
is to be either the ministers of Court riot and
excess or the gainers by it. But, not to speak
more of losses and extraordinary levies on our estates,
what will then be the revenges and offences remembered
and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by
all his adherents: accounts and reparations
that will be required, suits, indictments, inquiries,
discoveries, complaints, informations,—who
knows against whom or how many, though perhaps neuters,—if
not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines,
banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet
disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and contempt
on all but the known Royalist, or whom he favours,
will be plenteous. Nor let the new-royalized
Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old doings,
though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever
conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will
they not believe this, nor remember the Pacification
how it was kept to the Scots, how other solemn promises
many a time to us? Let them but now read the
diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures,
that now appear foremost and briskest in all public
places as the harbingers of those that are in expectation
to reign over us; let them but hear the insolencies,
the menaces, the insultings of our newly animated
common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their
Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal
pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every ribald:
nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for very
shame of their own vile persons; not daring to name
themselves while they traduce others by name, and give
us to foresee that they intend to second their wicked
words, if ever they have power, with more wicked
deeds. Let our zealous backsliders [the Presbyterians]
forethink now with themselves how their necks,
yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,—these
new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating
tub, inspired with nothing holier than the venereal
pox,—can draw one way, under Monarchy,