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tion, no doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully accept them; your excellency once more declaring publicly this to be your mind, and having a faithful veteran army, fo ready, and glad to affift you in the prosecution thereof. For the full and abfolute administration of law in every county, which is the difficultest of these propofals, hath been of moft long defired; and the not granting it held a general grievance. The reft, when they shall fee the beginnings and proceedings of thefe conftitutions propofed, and the orderly, the decent, the civil, the fafe, the noble effects thereof, will be foon convinced, and by degrees come in of their own accord, to be partakers of so happy a government.

READY AND EASY WAY

TO ESTABLISH A

FREE COMMONWEALTH,

AND THE EXCELLENCE THEREOF,

Compared with the

INCONVENIENCIES AND DANGERS

Of readmitting KINGSHIP in this NATION.

Et nos

Confilium dedimus Syllæ, demus populo nunc.

LTHOUGH, fince the writing of this treatise, the

face of things hath had fome change, writs for new elections have been recalled, and the members at firft chofen readmitted from exclufion; yet not a little rejoicing to hear declared the refolution of those who are in power, tending to the establishment of a free commonwealth, and to remove, if it be poffible, this noxious humour of returning to bondage, inftilled of late by fome deceivers, and nourished from bad principles and falfe apprehenfions among too many of the people; I thought beft 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 midft of our elections to a free parliament, or their fitting to confider freely of the government; whom it behoves to have all things reprefented to them that may direct their judgment therein; and I never read of any state, scarce of any tyrant grown fo incurable, as to refufe counfel from any in a time of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their abfolute determination be to inthrall us, before fo long a Lent of fervitude, they may VOL. III,

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permit us a little fhrovingtime firft, wherein to speak freely, and take our leaves of liberty. And because in the former edition, through hafte, many faults escaped, and many books were fuddenly difperfed, ere the note to mend them could be fent, I took the opportunity from this occafion to revife and fomewhat to enlarge the whole difcourfe, especially that part which argues for a perpetual fenate. The treatise thus revised and enlarged, is as follows.

The Parliament of England, affifted by a great number of the people who appeared and stuck to them faithfulleft in defence of religion and their civil liberties, judging kingship by long experience a government unneceffary, burdenfome, and dangerous, juftly and magnanimously abolithed it, turning regal bondage into a free commonwealth, to the admiration and terrour of our emulous neighbours. They took themselves 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 difcovery, and our own longer confideration thereon, had more and more unbound us, both to himfelf and his pofterity; as hath been ever the juftice and the prudence of all wife nations, that have ejected tyranny. They covenanted"to preferve the king's perfon and authority, in the prefervation of the true religion, and our liberties;" not in his endeavouring to bring in upon our confciences a popifh religion; upon our liberties, thraldom; upon our lives, deftruction, by his occafioning, if not complotting, as was after difcovered, the Irish maffacre; his fomenting and arming the rebellion; his covert leaguing with the rebels against us; his refufing, more than feven times, propofitions moft juft and neceffary to the true religion and our liberties, tendered him by the parliament both of England and Scotland. They made not their covenant concerning him with no difference between a king and a God; or promifed him, as Job did to the Almighty,

to truft in him though he flay us:" they understood that the folemn engagement, wherein we all forfwore kingfhip, was no more a breach of the covenant, than the covenant was of the proteftation before, but a faith

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ful and prudent going on both in words well weighed, and in the true fenfe of the covenant" without respect of perfons," when we could not ferve two contrary masters, God and the king, or the king and that more fupreme law, fworn in the first place to maintain our fafety and our liberty. They knew the people of England to be a free people, themselves the reprefenters of that freedom; and although many were excluded, and as many fled (fo they pretended) from tumults to Oxford, yet they were left a fufficient number to act in parliament, therefore not bound by any ftatute of ceding 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 recourfe, as they had, and muft yet have, in church-reformation (if they throughly intend it) to evangelic rules; not to ecclefiaftical canons, though never so ancient, fo ratified and established in the land by ftatutes, which for the moft part are mere pofitive laws, neither natural nor moral; and fo by any parliament, for just and ferious confiderations, without fcruple to be at any time repealed. If others of their number in these things were under force, they were not, but under free confcience; if others were excluded by a power which they could not refift, they were not therefore to leave the helm of government in no hands, to difcontinue their care of the public peace and safety, to defert the people in anarchy and confufion, no more than when fo many of their members left them, as made up in outward formality a more legal parliament of three eftates against them. The beft-affected alfo, and best-principled of the people, ftood not numbering or computing, on which fide were moft voices in parliament, but on which fide appeared to them moft reason, most fafety, when the house divided upon main matters. What was well motioned and advised, they examined not whether fear or perfuafion carried it in the vote, neither did they measure votes and counfels by the intentions of them that voted; know- . ing that intentions either are but gueffed at, or not foon

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enough known; and although good, can neither make the deed fuch, nor prevent the confequence from being bad: fuppofe bad intentions in things otherwise well done; what was well done, was by them who fo thought, not the lefs obeyed or followed in the ftate; fince in the church, who had not rather follow Ifcariot or Simon the magician, though to covetous ends, preaching, than Saul, though in the uprightness of his heart perfecuting the gofpel? Safer they therefore judged what they thought the better counfels, though carried on by fome perhaps to bad ends, than the worfe by others, though endeavoured with beft intentions: and yet they were not to learn, that a greater number might be corrupt within the walls of a parliament, as well as of a city; whereof in matters of neareft concernment all men will be judges; nor eafily permit, that the odds of voices in their greatest council fhall more endanger them by corrupt or credulous votes, than the odds of enemies by open affaults; judging, that moft voices ought not al ways to prevail, where main matters are in question. If others hence will pretend to difturb all counfels; what is that to them who pretend not, but are in real danger; not they only fo judging, but a great, though not the greatest number of their chofen patriots, who might be more in weight than the others in numbers: there being in number little virtue, but by weight and measure wifdom working all things, and the dangers on either fide they feriously thus weighed. From the treaty, fhort fruits of long labours, and feven years war; fecurity for twenty years, if we can hold it; reformation in the church for three years: then put to fhift again with our vanquished mafter. His justice, his honour, his confcience declared quite contrary to ours; which would have furnified him with many fuch evafions, as in a book entitled, "An Inquifition for Blood," foon after were not concealed; bithops not totally removed, but left, as it were, in ambufh, a referve, with ordination in their fole power; their lands already fold, not to be alienated, but rented, and the fale of them called " facrilege;" delinquents, few of many brought to condign punishment; acceffo

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