of taking up Armes, Raising and Forming Armies against
the King, fighting against his Person, Imprisoning,
Impeaching, Arraigning, Trying and Executing Him:
Banishing his Children, abolishing Bishops, Deans and
Chapters; taking away Kingly Government, and the House
of Lords, breaking the Crowns, selling the Jewells,
Plate, Goods, Houses and Lands belonging unto the
Kings of this Nation, erecting extraordinary High Courts
of Justice, and therein Impeaching, Arraigning, condemning,
and Executing many pretended notorious Enemies, to
the publick Peace; when the Lawes in being, and the
Ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them:
By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and
not at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes,
But by certain diabolical principles of late distilled
into some person of the Army, and which he would entitle
to the whole, who (abating some of their Commanders,
that have sucked the sweet of this Doctrine) had them
never so much as entred into their thoughts, nor could
they be so depraved, though they were Masters only
of the Light of Nature to direct them. For Common
sence will tell them, that whoever are our lawful
Superiours, and invested with the supreame Authority,
either by their own vertue, or the peoples due Election,
have then a just right to challenge submission to
their precepts, and that we acquiesce in their determinations;
since there is in nature no other expedient to preserve
us from everlasting confusion: But it is the height
of all impertinency to conceive, that those which
are a part of themselves, and can in so great a Body,
have no other interests, should (without the manifest
hand of God were in it to infatuate all your proceedings)
fall into such exorbitant contradiction to their own
good, as a child of four years old would not be guilty
of; and as this Pamphleter wildly suggests in pp.
6. 11. 27, &c. did they steer their course by the known
laws of the Land, and as obedient Subjects should
do, who without the King and his Peers, are but the
Carkass of a Parliament, as destitute of the Soul which
should inform and give it being. And if so small
a handful of men as appeared in the Palace-Yard, without
consent of a quarter of the English Army, much lesse
the tenthousand’th part of the Free-people that
are not clad in red, shall disturb and alter your
Government when it thinks fit to set aside a few imperious
Officers, who plainly seek themselves, and derive
their Commissions from superiours to whom they swear
obedience; how can you ever hope, or live to see any
government established in these miserably abused Nations?
Behold then with how weak a party you are vanquish’d,
even by those very instruments you had so long flatter’d
with the title of the Free-people; imputing
all the direful effects of your depraved principles
to their desires, when as I dare report my self to
the ingenuity of the very Souldiers themselves, if
they, who have effected all these changes by your
wretched instigations, and blind pretences, imagine
themselves the People of this Nation, but are{1} a
very small portion of them, compared to the whole,
and who are maintained by them to recover, and protect
the Civill Government, according to the Good old Lawes
of the Land; not such as they themselves shall invent
from Day to Day, or as the interests of some few persons
may engage them.