The Copy of a LETTER To a Country Colonel, OR, A serious Dissuasive from joining with those Officers now in Rebellion against the PARLIAMENT.  
Par novum fortuna videt concurrere, bellum  
Atque virum—  
SIR,  
I Am informed that you are invited again into arms. Before you do it I desire you to look round about you; and consider well The Call, The Cause, The Company you are to engage with, and the Enemies you are to oppose. For if it be true, that war is never just but when 'tis necessary (& which is never so but when there is no other remedy,) That arms are never warrantable but when they are taken up for preventing or repelling ruining mischiefs, evils of the first magnitude; and for preserving, recovering or acquiring such good things, as every eye may see, and every tongue will confess are essentially necessary to the being, or universally desirable to the better being of a people, or cause concerned therein; and lastly, That the authority which calls to arms, and can only make killing no murder, and triumphing no treason, must be unquestionable. A man had need of more than good company and a good persuasion concerning his friends and enemies respectively, to induce him to this extreme and worst of remedies. But before I come to search the Cause, or dispute the Call; which stands first (in order of nature) to be considered: let me entreat you to look well into the quality of your company; because I fear your greatest temptation lies on that hand. I confess, some years since there was an Army, and there were Officers that did worthily in Ephratah, and were famous in Bethlehem: But sure you are much mistaken, if you think this, that Army & these those Officers who fought so gloriously for our liberties as men & Christians, who jeoparded their lives so often, so honourably, and (through grace) so successfully in the high places of the field in all the three Nations, against a violent and vindictive King, and his son (in nothing unlike his father, but that he is more vicious.) This certainly is not that Army, or th●se are not those Officers which thought those Members only worthy to sit as the Leg stators of three Nations, by whose counsels chief they had conquered two, and rescued the third out of the paws of the Lion; and when they had done it, wanted not courage to sit upon him in judgement, and cut off his head: a terrible and eternal example to all that should thereafter usurp or abuse a power over a generous and freeborn people.  
But indeed this is that Army, or very like it, and these those Officers, who, when they had done those great things under the Parliaments authority and conduct, had been duly paid by them as the best of servants, owned by them as brethren, tendered and provided for as children, honoured and rewarded as the very saviours of their country, deserted their masters, their brethren, their fathers, and their patrons; and laid their conquering weapons at the foot of their fellow servant, planting the laurel (I had almost said the crown, but in that I had said less) upon his temples, who possibly if he had been born to it, or had never taken it, might have been thought worthy of one: but having so taken it by diseasing his Masters, and putting a violence upon that authority which he owned and served while he commanded their forces, got nothing thereby more than a sad and deplorable reproach upon religion, unparalleled losses and oppressions on the people, a general frustration of all his designs, wounds, and a lasting dishonour upon his name, a spirit so broken by unprosperous infidelity, and an heart and life so constantly assaulted with fears and terrors, that he needed not (amongst men) any greater punishment than a longer time of holding and suffering those splendid horrors.  
At his end, leaving the Nation ready to expire with him under the weight of its own confusions and an unsupportable debt, a dishonourable peace, and a war not more improvident than unprofitable.  
These Officers, Sir, are something like those who gave their single person a louder negative than ever any King of England was entitled or pretended to; and a larger purse than any Sovereign before either had or needed: and which was worst, therein exempted him from the fear of ever needing any Parliaments (if he could have kept his ambition within any bounds) and the people from the hopes of receiving any benefit by them. And 'tis most like, so like that Army as if it were the very same, which very lately interrupted that Parliament, whom they had not six months before owned (with self-shame and repentance for their former injurious actings against them) the only lawful authority of the Nation: and that at a time when they were industriously studying to settle the government disjoined by former usurpations, and not yet (as it seems) settled to general satisfaction; resupplying their treasuries miserably exhausted by mismanagements of the late governments, with as little charge or grievance as might be to the people (and solely, if possibly, out of the Estates of Sir George Booth and other traitors and Apostates) for the pay of the Army; and that most just, but almost forgotten debt of the Public faith, and not to be infinite, when they were providing against that dangerous combination of those two great and Malignant constellations of France and Spain, united (as is credibly reported and universally believed) to our ruin in the Scottish Kings restitution; and when malice itself being judge, they were not doing any thing that had the least tendency to infringe or weaken that good and righteous cause they and the Army had been so long engaged in.  
This, Sir, is the company that you are to keep, those are the men you are to be allied to in blood. My soul enter not thou into their secret, for their wrath is cruel. But you will say (or they no doubt will say) Is there not a Cause, and sure there had need be an hugely great one for such furious and destructive proceed: a Cause-destroying Cause, or a complication of causes and mischiefs intolerable, and otherwise incurable for such an overturning violence.  
Why, read their own Declaration, weigh the matters therein alleged, well, take them all for granted, and then give righteous judgement; and say, or let themselves when they are themselves, say if they have a righteous cause for such unrighteous actings. In the year 1648, they held forth that the greater number of Members in Parliament were apostatised and had made defection to the King's interest after they had declared they would make no more addresses to him; having plainly discovered that in the preservation of his person and authority, they could not preserve our religion and liberty. And therefore they secluded them from their share of the government: is there any thing that has the resemblance to that so much as charged upon the Parliament now? or can they instance in any one debate, vote, or resolution which did in the least threaten that Good old Cause. Themselves (as little ingenuous as they are) and as little our friends, do not pretend it: and, which could only have justified their putting a period (as much as in them is) not only to all the present, visible, lawful authority of the nation, but destroying the very root of all civil power, and from whence only future representatives (if ever they intent us any) can be regularly derived, and safely provided for. But we will not search for what we are sure not ●o find a just, full and competent cause. Themselves have stated it upon the Parliaments Votes for taking away some Officers commissions, and the ruin (as they imply) of their families thereby; a mighty cause sure, and very honourably held forth by them who made no conscience to design (and which they now endeavour to carry on) the ruin or hazard of three Nations, rather than suffer an eclipse in the power and profits of nine boisterous gentlemen, who yet are very far from being ruined by this deserved reducement; having such estates, for which not long since some of them deemed themselves fit to sit in an house of Peers, who before the wars were scarcely qualified for an election into the House of Commons.  
Little remembering, it seems, that to make them way; whole brigades, whole Armies who had born the first brunt and a great part of the heat of the war, held it their duty, at the Parliament's command to disband, and to be reduced not only from your commands, but some of them that had been eminent in service, to a morsel of bread and little less than beggary.  
Whereas now if a cheap and unbloudy victory be not recompensed not only with pay, but titles and salaries to general Officers, and if marks of favour besides titles & salaries be not conferred upon those that appeared forward in this late action, it must not be born no not in a Parliament, but stand as an unpardonable crime, and worthy to be punished with the loss of their authority: as if a 1000 l. to the Commander in chief of that Brigade, 500 l. beeween two Officers that seem to have signalised themselves in that expedition, an 100 l. to the Captain that brought up the news, and 3. hundred to that worthy Gentleman that kept the Citadel till relief came to him, were not convenient gratuit●es for a Commonwealth sunk to so great a degree and almost extremity of want; by means of a Government themselves had set up and asserted, which beside the loss of many millions in ships and trade, had involved the Nation in a debt of more than two— to the soldiery by sea and land.  
And was it not a good mark of favour, to engage the proceed of all Delinquents Estates new and old for the satisfaction of the soldiers whole arrears, though incurred from the time that they turned them out, and during the time they kept them out of the exercise of their lawful authority: the Parliament (so indulgent were they to them that now requite them so ill) resolving to pay them, if not for yet while they held the pikes at their breasts, and chose to own a single person before and against a whole Nation, yea three Nations and their Repres●ntatives: from which satisfaction they did not exempt any, even the most active of these Officers, the authors of all their wrong and the people's miseries: after which all reasonable men will be to seek what favours and rewards can be proportionable to the unlimited opinion which these men hold of their own unmatchable deservings.  
But by these things we begin to understand the meaning of that negative character that so often they style themselves by, & boast themselves in, as that they are no Mercenary Army. It appears now (though not now first) that besides their pay they must have honourable gratuities, and that themselves must be the only judges of what are enough so. 'Tis not enough that they were paid to a penny while they were faithful and suffered the Parliament to sit (and if they have wanted since, whom have they to blame but themselves?) 'Tis not enough that their Commanders have been more eminently and plentifully rewarded then any under Heaven for services, wherein for the most part the private soldiers suffer most in life and limb, without any other consideration than a little pillage and a letter of thanks scattered amongst them, but they must carve out their own gratuities proportionable to their avarice and ambition, or else they are not pleased: and over and above all, must have also an indefeizable estate of fee-simple in those commands and offices, and hold no longer at will of their Masters: a tenure which the best skilled armies in the trade of war and the military Discipline never understood or pretended to in former times.  
And yet all this is not enough to complete the meaning of Unmercenary, but they must thereby also be entitled to a share in the Legislature, not as members, (some of them) of Parliament, but as the body of an army, by stating Proposals which must not be denied, hardly debated or disputed, nor without a high offence, delayed; or, which is more, to have a total negative upon all the authority of the Nation; or which is most, and most unsupportable) themselves to possess the Legislative power, and a right to make and make void, to repeal and institute Laws not only martial but of a civil nature also, which none but the people or their deputies can without much arrogance or ignorance pretend unto, and which no people ever suffered but such as could not help it, were borne under it, or cheated, or conquered to it.  
But what talk we of such petty powers, such low preeminences, such inferior prerogatives of nulling, repealing or making Laws, nay Governments for a people whom they dare not say they have conquered: they claim something higher and more absolute, non est mortale quod optant: 'tis not enough to be above all that is called man, but they must judge and punish as God himself does; as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, they know the meaning of the Parliament; and by a Godlike authority they will punish the iniquity of their intentions though never discovered, or drawn forth into overt-act; for do not they and their parasites charge, that the Parliament meant to bring in the King, to acquit Sr George Booth who rebelled for him, and in order thereunto to discompose and alter the constitution of the Army, (which surely they needed not to have done upon that occasion) most of them being but too well acquainted with the trade of King-making, or which is all one, of setting up single persons above and in place of Kings. But certainly of all calumnies in the world, this though suggested with never so much impudence can never stick, for let the Army be (if they will) more and wiser than men; is the Parliament less or worse than beasts? have they not by all their experience and that stock of reason that's left them? yet learned the dictates of nature and the princples of self-preservation? can they be supposed willing to trust a King whose father they beheaded, and having destroyed so many Cavaliers, at last prove felones de se, and trust themselves and their security upon the crazy faith of those not yet reconciled enemies, more enraged and exasperated by so many defeats and ruins.  
But there are some (who are pleased to think more charitably of the Parliament) as to the care of our civil liberties, who will yet suspect them of a rigid Presbyterian spirit gendering to persecution in matters of conscience, to all such we submit to consideration the votes of the Committee for government so often alleged by others, and made public in many papers, in which was granted more than the Army saw reason to ask in their Proposals (but perhaps they meant more, and 'tis the Parliaments crime that they were not Gods too, and could not be able to know the secret recesses of their hearts and their thoughts afar off: was there not then yielded at least as much as any sober Christian can wish or bear, that owns a God in Christ: That there is a pattern of wholesome words, and some clear fundamental truths to be contended for; that there are some damnable heresies and doctrines of devils to be opposed, and that would not themselves live as without God in the world, or have the Magistrates while he gives equal protection to all Christians, himself be none, or no more than an heathen.  
You see then the quarrel and the cause you are to fight for, which principally is the discharging of nine officers from their commands who had (some of them) as nominators removed nine score guilty of no other crime then what themselves had not long before been only deeplyer died in; and for this you are to fight against the Parliament and the assertors of their authority, & because they were so bold as to refuse their chief Commander a Commission illimited in power and time, and so good husbands for a poor beggarly Commonwealth as to deny the unnecessary chargeable and dangerous qualities of move general Officers in a time of peace, and after they had suppressed a dangerous insurrection without them, and lastly because they presumed to be so wise as not to remit the removing of officers to the pleasure of a Council of war. Which they saw not long before had discharged Col. Okey, Alured, and other faithful Commanders for opposing, that which themselves shortly after pretended to repent of, nor to trust the supplying of officers to those nominators who were so late so imprudent, or so unhappy as to present to the Parliament, such as some of these nine were, and now more fully discover themselves to be. By all which propositions 'tis plain they designed to make their Army a new model with a witness, an in tire self subsisting body perfectly independent of the civil and Sovereign ●ower, the only representative of the only good people of the refined interest: unaccountable for any of their actions, but qualified to call all others to account, wanting nothing of omnipotency, but this, that though they can do all things else, they cannot make the people believe them just and honest. And no wonder if upon this principle they were angry at the Parliament for giving and at themselves for taking commissions from them whom they resolved to obey no further or longer than themselves should think fit.  
Things standing on these terms, can your heart endure, or will your hands be strong to fight General Monck on such a quarrel, when he shall advance to restore such a Parliament to the just exercise of their power, which they have improved hitherto with so much reason and resolution to public advantage, and is he become your enemy for telling you the truth and standing for the right and justice of their cause. O tell it not in Gath lest the uncircumcised rejoice, nor in judah lest our best friends be forced to say this Northern Star outshines the brightest Southern worthies, & though many of them have done worthily this one excels them all. I know other causes are alleged towards the justifying this transaction of the Army, which are rather occasions than causes, or consequents then occasions, as namely the hasty passing of some acts which at another season would have had a maturer and more deliberate consideration. But 'tis not well remembered that they had an Army hanging over their heads ready to turn them out of doors, and sure they had need make haste who must run the gandelope through an Army: beside that by those sudden votes they vacuated nothing, but was void in th●●ery making, as done without a due legislative authority, & which if not (in one prin●●●●● act) made void must have given the single person a plausible pretence to return upon us with 1300000 l. by the year and an Army to support him. If thereby the deserving ministry that were placed in delinquents livings during their interruption were in danger to suffer, providence and the careful sedulity of the Parliaments Committee has made even since their disturbance, and yet regularly so good a provision, that no worthy Minister will have cause to complain of the Parliaments over hasty resolutions. I wish their Tithes and maintenance be not more endangered by the Army then their pulpits by the Parliament, and yet that's not all their defence. They declared and enacted that nothing done in the time of their interruption should be deemed lawful or binding, but was it not with this salvo, unless it had been or should be enacted & confirmed by them. And now I pray who hindered the Parliament from sitting to enact and confirm whatever of those laws or ordinances should be found of advantage, and for the real good of the people. If they had past such an Act the 6. of May next, things in fumo jure, it must have been just, it would hardly have passed for prudent or safe, but to do it when in their own both right and expectation they were to have sat 6. months longer where was the danger, and therefore I know no fault it has: but that it was altogether contrary (as their declaration speaks) to what was desired in the third proposal of the Petition and Address of the 12. of May: a soar crime not to understand the pleasure of the Army which yet it's hoped the nation may forgive though the Army do not.  
Howsoever sure enough they will thank the Parliament for the other half of that Act, prohibiting the levies of any money, otherwise then by authority of Parliament, by which it will be in their power to save their purses, if they have as much courage as cause till they be opened by their own consent in themselves or their deputies.  
But woe is me I had forgot that which was indeed a cause for this action, and a very important one; the Parliaments Act of indemnity was too narrow, the plaster would not reach that soar place, but that Lambert is still in danger of refunding the profits of the Aulnage, and the thousands which were discharged by privy seals of money due upon a second moiety, and others for their Salaries as Treasurers and Councillors, all which they acquired by setting up & standing by an unlawful power, when as the simple Commonwealths men were so easy as to serve 4. years and upwards that interest gratis, and now again upon their return returned into the same practice with the same principles, but I confess they that hazard their cause and their conscience had need have their penny for their penny worth. And now let themselves say whither from this time forward they did not watch all occasion to destroy the Parliament. One word more and then I have done, tell me how shall the Regiments you are to raise or call together be provided: Must you not by the Army's authority, or will you by your own (which is as good) levy money upon the Country for their subsistence: If so, do but consider, if ever England see a lawful power again, whither they can assert their authority and secure their sitting, if they do not severely execute the penalties of those laws both old and new which call it treason to tax the people, and take their money without common consent in Parliament, or if you design free quartet think well of it, whither S●. Bricies' night may not be acted over again, or which is more Christian and more adviseable, the people may not see reason in their own defence even without the help of a Parliament to disarm and reduce such insolent Lurdans, who shall so eat up the people like bread without a lawful authority, and drink the sweat of their brows without remorse, not satisfied till by fleecing the poor Commons they seat themselves again as Lords on wolsacks, and there with a more than Popelike arrogance pretend to 3 swords, military, civil, and spiritual, as the people's Sovereigns, and yet contending with them for pay as the meanest of servants: who while they deny Ministers tithes and a forced maintenance, continue to enforce their own pay till they leave us not a ninth, who by a more Magisteriall than cunning Chemistry are drawing all the wealth and power of the Nation into a refined interest, whereof themselves must be the only judges and members, lest when they come again into the Peers House, or which is the same the San●ed●●●n, or Senate, it should be again objected to them that their interest in the Nation is not considerable, because their estates are not.  
Yet, in all this that I say, I would not be understood to speak against the Army in its general and aggregate body, I do in part mean the general council of Officers as now constituted and distempered, or I mean those Officers that principally head this rebellion against the Parliament: nay perhaps I mean principally if not Solely, Colonel Lambert the head and great engine of this great defection. I know an Army is necessary, I judge well of many in this, those who have refused Commissions from this new self created authority, and many others. And am not without an hopeful persuasion that of those who are now marched Northward, many do go, with that mind that when they are come where they may do it, with effect and advantage, they will deliver up their most obstinate Officers to him who knows how to obey the Parliament, fight Rebels, and maintain a good cause with an honest sincerity and suitable courage.  
To conclude I should speak something of your call, but (upon due search,) I find you have none, unless you reckon that for one which you find in the first of the Proverbs, 10.11.12.13.14.15.16. verses, which speaks thus, (viz.) 10. My Son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not, 11. If they say, come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause, 12. Let us swallow you up alive as the grave, and whole, as those that go down into the pit, 13. We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil, 14. cast in thy lot among us, let us all have one purse, 15. My Son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path, 16. For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood, and if you think fit to answer such a call upon your peril be it, I have justified my friendship, and delivered my soul by this to you. But take heed, misery overtake you not as an armed man and the justice of God number you amongst the workers of iniquity, to which he deprecates in your behalf, who is;  
Yours.  
FINIS.