〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. A Just INVECTIVE against those of the ARMY, And their ABETTORS, who murdered King Charles I. On the 30 of Jan. 1648. WITH Some other Poetic pieces in Latin, referring to these Tragic times, never before published. Written Feb. 10. 1648. By Dr. Gauden then Dean of Bocking in Essex, now Lord Bishop of Exeter. 1 Sam. 24. 6. 9 Who can stretch forth his hand against the Lords anointed and be guiltless? 2 Chron. 35. 25. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah, and all the Singers spoke of Josiah in their lamentations, and made them an Ordinance in Israel. Prosperimae improbitati nunquam deest terror, nec spes afflictae virtuti. LONDON, Printed by T. L. for James Davies, and are to be sold by Phil. Stephens at the King's Arms over against the Middle Temple Gate in Fleetstreet, 1662. The Author to the Reader. I Wrote this Piece (flagrante dolore) in the just paroxisms of extreme grief and horror, immediately upon the Murder of the late Excellent King, 1648. as soon as the astonishment of sorrow gave leave to regular thoughts and words to vent themselves; I sent it (incognito) in its sackcloth and ashes to London, where I hoped it might find way to public view. My aim was, not only to gratify my Own and the Nations vehement passion, by expressing a just indignation against that prodigious Villainy, but to represent in true colours that horrid sin and shame of killing the King, whereof some men than were so impudent as to glory. And since I could not divert them from that flagitious Fact by such Loyal and Religious Remonstrances as I sent them, I thought it high justice to take this vengeance on them, either to bring the Authors and Abettors (if possible) to repentance, or to preserve others from partaking of their sins and plagues, by any after comprobation of their then prosperous impiety, so as to make it the sin and shame of the Nation. But my Papers found no hand so adventurous in those Tyrannous times as to Print them; although conveyed to a person who had hazarded and suffered much in that way of loyal-service and danger: So that having no Copy left of it, I did not see it, or hear of it for many years, supposing it had perished in the common shipwreck of those days, until this Feb. 1661. occasionally meeting with Mr. Dugart (to whom I first sent it) and enquiring what became of such a Piece, he told me it was Printed, and brought me the Book with a new Title (Tragical enough) put to it (viz. Cromwel's bloody Slaughter-house discovered, etc.) whereas I had inscribed it after the example of Gregory Nazianzen, when he wrote his two sharp invectives against Julian the Apostate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) the Steliteutick of that Army, justly arraigning and condemning them that were guilty of that bloody and barbarous Fact, which I hereby exposed, as upon a public Pillar, to the view and execration of all men. When I had thus recovered this Piece beyond all expectation, I well remembered upon review, its pristine lineaments; and found it signally marked with the sad drops of my passionate heart & pen; upon such an occasion in which no Ink could be black enough, or have too much Salt, Vinegar, Gall, or Aquafortis in it. Upon a calmer view of it (after thirteen years' absence) finding it to have something in it of a confused rapture, not misbecoming so intensive a grief, and so pious impatience, with an unfegined abhorrence worthy of so abominable a Fact, and monstrous a scandal to our Nation and Religion, I have been persuaded by the Printer to own it as a legitimate Issue of mine, with someother pieces born in the same storm, though in another style and language, in order to make him some compensation for his first (but not so beneficial) Loyal printing of it, while yet it appeared an Orphan or fatherless, because nameless: I am now content my name be called upon it, that the world may see in this unflattering glass, with what thoughts they ought for ever to reflect upon so enormous a wickedness, which no time can bury in oblivion, no colour can palliate or excuse, scarce any repentance can expiate; being then the Nations infinite horror, and so must be an abhorrence to all posterity: Nor may the present serenity of the times (which miraculous mercies have restored) ever make us forget the blackness of darkness, which lies upon that day, beyond Jobs birthday for that facinorous Fact committed in it. For whosoever shall think of that crying Regicide, without just detestation, will contract the posthumous guilt of the Murder, and as a dog lick up the blood of the King which was so cruelly and unjustly shed. And whosoever shall remember it with approbation perpetrates the parricide afresh, and is a mental murderer of his Sovereign. O how great then was, and is their sin, who were the first malicious contrivers and cruel actors in it? What repentance will be sufficient for them? What contrition, detestation, confess on, satisfaction can be proportionate to the enormity of the crimes committed with so high a hand, followed with so many tragedies and confusions, yet ushered in with so many pretensions of Religion, Reformation, sancity and devotion, yea special Revelations and Miracles, the strong delusions and stratagems of Satan, that grand Impostor, a liar, and murderer from the beginning, who affected the fairest vizards of an Angel of light, when he was to act the foulest part of a Devil: so expressly against the word of God, and diametrally contrary to the examples of all true Saint, no less than the Saviour and sanctifier of them? A dreaful example indeed of pride and faction, betraying men to hypocrisy and barbarity, by which the just God loudly warns the still discontented spirits, the murmuring tongues, and malicious hearts of some men, not to venture again on the confines of such sins, by any temptation, never so specious and potent. Sin is seldom solitary or goes along, but is followed with a train or succession, disposing, yea exposing from less to greater, and from the greater to the most heinous and truculent sins, if for no other reason, yet for this, to defend or cover the lesser: Nor can any man easily foresee, what will be the impudent period of his sin, how modestly soever it begins. David's idle humour, and an occasional look, betrayed him to wanton thoughts, these to unlawful lusts, this to Drunkenness and Adultery, these to Murder, and all to the highest both perfidy and ingratitude to God and all valiant loyal subjects. Hazaels' bashfulness was at first ashamed to find himself under the Prophet's suspicion of those cruel barbarities which afterward he committed without remorse, and with greediness. Tumultuating and traitorous thoughts (much more such words) must be stifled in the cradle by every good Christian; who knows how great a fire a little spark will kindle? King's must not be cursed, no not in the Bedchamber; these lesser thiefs of schismatical and seditious mutinies let in at the window, will open the door to greatest Rebellions and Regicides. Subjects cutting off the lap of their King's garment, or lesning the Robe of royal Majesty, that is their just reputation, honour and authority, will embolden them to venture at their heads and throats, yea to take away their lives and Kingdoms: which David, a man after Gods own heart, so much abhorred, that his heart presently smote him for that cautious essay, as petty Treason, upon Saul's Vesture, which carried with it something of injury and indignity to the King the Lords anointed; nor did his justice spare those King-killers, who having slain Saul and Ishbosheth, David's enemies, thought he had done a meritorious service. A man's greatest flatterers, enemies and traitors are those in his own breast, where proud discontents, inordinate lusts, and extravagant passions (as the populacy, rabble, and vulgarity of people) are prone daily to conspire and mutiny against that Reason and Religion, which ought to have a constant rule and sovereignty in the soul. I believe many men never intended in their first Schismatical motions so sinful a conclusion; many no doubt are now ready to alter their opinion at the scene and success of affairs, yea to think those counsels & actions very wicked, which they find are become so unprosperous; but he sees sins too late, who doth it (as Adam, Cain & Judas,) by retrospection only in the glass of punishment. It is best discerned by a forward and direct view in the first access, by that prospect, which the Word of God, and the Laws of the Land give us. Had this been done by those blood thirsty and deceitful men, this Piece might have been spared; now it will serve on the Anniversary of England's Lamentation, Jan. 30. to excite that just passion of a penitent grief, and utter detestation, which are due to the memory of so foul a Fact, and of those sins which brought us under the stroke of so sore a judgement. The grief and horror of which, did so perfectly possess my soul, when I wrote this Steliteutick, in an ecstasy of sighs, tears and indignation, that the Reader may easily perceive the deluge of sorrow by the streams of it, which run as a torrent with much trouble and unevenness, not with that order and smoothness that becomes a quiet and calm temper, which had been a sin in me at that time, when every soul, not stupid or seared, in England was filled with extreme grief and horror, either for the sin they had done, or for the punishment they had deserved, or for the duty they had omitted, or for the desperate estate of the malicious doers of it, whose repentance was scarce to be hoped or prayed for, having spoken and acted so many lies, perjuries, and sacrileges in hypocrisy, seared their consciences, caused the enemies of God to blaspheme, and profaned the spotless sanctity of Christian Religion, and done despite to the Spirit of grace, which they dared to pretend to be the patron of their bloody policy, a promoter and approver of their so execrable and accursed practices. I shall be glad if any faithful corrasive here may bring any of them yet living, to some sense of their most crying and transcendent sins, that if possible they may repent & be pardoned by the mercies of God, and merits of the Son of God, whose precious blood only can cry louder than that of the Kings; if this end be not attained (of which God knows, as yet there have been very few signs) yet I have great hope to reach the other end, of keeping all good Christians and loyal Subjects for the future from the like degeneration, as much as they would avoid Hell and eternal damnation. Obedience to Superiors in all things lawful for the Lords sake, is a Christians greatest honour and patience with prayers and tears under unjust pressures is his surest defence; all other ways are but the wanton temptations of the devil, and the petulant transports of men's wicked hearts, most unworthy of good Christians (as all primitive examples teach us) whose actions flowing from faith, and guided by love must never vary from the paths of piety and loyalty, humility and charity, which are the way to true peace and eternal happiness. And thus I have given thee (O Christian Reader) an account of my first writing, and now publishing or rather owning this Steliteutick, or pious Satire, writ against so 〈…〉 nstrous a sin, as that was of Murdering the King. Farewell. JOH. EXON. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉: A just INVECTIVE Against the MURDERERS OF King Charles the First. HAve you killed our King, and also taken possession of his Goods, Lands, and Kingdoms? O ye bloodthirsty and deceitful men! Is this your Zion, that must be built with Royal blood, and your Jerusalem, that must be raised with such detestable iniquiry? O ye painted Sepulchers, will no bones serve to fill you, but those of your King? You ravening Wolves, (whom God hath suffered to uncase yourselves of your Sheep's Clothing) can nothing satiate your cruel Appetites and Hydropic Thirst, but only the flesh and blood of our King? whom with merciless hands and hearts, in an impudent Triumph, you have murdered before the Face of God and his Subjects; whose Royal Posterities, and people's Lives and Estates, you now hope to devour, without any opposition or gainsaying. So cruelly heavy and barbarous is that Iron Sceptre, with which you think to rule this Nation; nor allowing any fair and legal plea, for either Kings or People's Lives, Liberties, Estates, or Religion: but beyond all Papal and Mahumetane Tyranny, you usurp over our Souls, no less than our Bodies; and seek (now) by slavish fears, and sinful Agreements, A Knack of State, called the Agreement of the People. to make, to make us all as much the Children of the Devil as yourselves, whose Consciences (no doubt) like Cain's tell you, your desperate and damnable Estate, having sinned against the light of God, and his holy Spirit, (some of you) so impudently and maliciously, as justly excludes all hope of pity or pardon from God and Man; having first treacherously betrayed, then barbarously murdered, both your and our King. Go on you Apollyons, you abaddon's, in the Spirit of Antichrist, to fill up the measure of your Abominations, till you are drunk with blood, and stumble and fall together: O you Locusts, the blackest smoke, and noisomest vapour that ever the breath of the bottomless pit exhaled, or sent forth into the Christian world; your Maiden faces, in your first seemingly modest and fair pretensions to the King and Kingdom, have now brought on the poisonous Scorpions of you Tails, after many cunning windings of flattery, perjury, and hypocrisy. Behold the fruits of your Oaths, Prayers, Fast, your Illuminations, Raptures, and the Sacred madnesses of your Prophets; are they not as the Grapes of Sodom, sour, and unsavoury, setting on edge the teeth of all men that have any taste or relish of true piety? Are these the practices of Saints of spiritual and seraphic minds, of men living in God and in Christ by the Spirit? We call Heaven and Earth, and yourselves (who are to us as Hell and Devils) to witness against you; What can the most carnal, loose, and profane Atheists do more abominable, than you have done? What have the falsest Jews, the fiercest Turks, the most brutish Heathens, the Renegado Christians, the subtlest Jesuits, or the most Phanatique Anabaptists, and Schismatics, or any other, that are wholly without God in this world▪ ever done comparable to your immense Villainies? Yea, what could Devils do more, if they had their wills, but by such Instruments as you are, extend their malice to the utmost latitude of their power? Have you not by Treachery and Tyranny usurped upon all just power, and exalted yourselves (such despicable worms) above all that is called God? Neither King nor Parliament, nor Laws, nor your own Engagements to all, nor your many Proposals, Promises, and Declaratjoins have any reverence with you, or weight upon you; but like riotous and enraged Beasts, you have overborne, and trampled under your feet all that is either Sacred or Civil, in the Laws of God, Nature, Nations, or this Kingdom, of which you are Members, though the most ulcerous and pestilent that ever the Earth can bring forth, or bear. Happily your stupid pride, and brutish insolency, will not suffer you to consider how odious, abominable, and accursed you now are to all men, but such as are Cockatrices of the same Egg and Brood with yourselves, that is, seared Saints, hardened Hypocrites, and enraged Satan's. We assure you, you are now looked upon by all sober and honest minds, as the heaviest, and filthiest Incubuses that ever oppressed Church or State; as the Legions of unclean Spirits, which by Diabolical Arts and Magic of Hypocrisy, have got possession of this Church and Kingdom, till Christ by his power cast you out of, and suffer you like the Demoniac Swine, through the just judgement of God, to be hurried headlong by your own terrors, and despairs, into the Lake that burns with fire and brimstone. You are like cursed Cams, not mockers only, but murderers of the Father of your Country; impudent Ravishers both of Church and State, to satisfy your most abominable lusts of Tyranny; Cove●uosness, and all licentious Profaneness. Monsters of men, putrid Apostates, execrable Saints, shameless Sinners, traitorous Tyrants, what have you to plead for, or palliate with your late horrid outrages, and unparallelled villainies, by which you have obstructed the Fountain of Justice, altered the Channel, broken the Cistern, turned the clear and wholesome Waters of our Laws into Blood, Wormwood, and deadly Poison; while you have with unheard-of tyranny and treachery, set up your private wills, by that public power (wherewith you were entrusted only for some limited uses) above the Majesty and Lives of our King and his Children; above the Dignity of our Parliaments, the Honour of our Laws, the Reverence of your Country, and the Regard due to your fellow Subjects, and confederate Nations; And all this without the least colour of any Call or Authority from God or Man, Reason or Religion; against all Obligations both Sacred and Civil, that might possibly lie on men's Souls to God or Man against many your particular pretensions, and former promises of such due observance as became you, both as Men, Subjects, Soldiers, and Christians? You, who are not the thousand part of His Majesty's Subjects, how durst you knowingly act as in the name of all, and yet indeed against the Duty, Desires, and Consciences of all, but such Children of Belial as yourselves? You that are for the most part such Sons of the Earth, of so base Extraction, of meaner Education, Strangers to all good Literature, Honour, or Civility; Heirs of beggary and contempt; whom most of the Subjects in England might for your rudeness and barbarity justly have disdained to have set with the Dogs of their Flocks: how are you become the Creators of a new Heaven, and a new Earth, who are such Sons of Tohu, and Bohu, of Chaos, Obscurity and Confusion? You that at best are but God's Butchers, the unjust Executioners of his just vengeance; as the evil and destroying Angels sent among us for a time; (though your exorbitant malice and lusts disdain to be limited by your Military Commission, yet God, we hope, will restrain your fury, who hath manifested your impious folly.) With what forehead could you thus lift up your hand against, and set yourselves above all those who are confessed your Betters, Masters, and Superiors: As if in a Giantly impudence, and Cyclopic cruelty, you could never be famous enough, but by Infamy, nor fierce and wicked enough, unless you fought against Heaven, against the express Word of God, and his Vice-garents on Earth. Thus heaping up Mountains of Lies, Perjuries, Hypocrisies, and Cruelties, upon those vast and enormous Lusts of Rapine, Sacrilege, Covetousness, Revenge, and Tyranny in your hearts, which nothing nath ever equalled, or can exceed. You have indeed finished the Masterpiece of your Father the Devil, whom as his firstborn, he hath filled with a double portion of malice, subtlety, and cruelty beyond any; whose hearts like Elymas the Sorcerer, or Simon Magus, he hath possessed. You have nothing left you but Impenitence and Hell, (which you neither believe, nor fear) by which to make farther progress in your most flagitious, and ever accursed Villainies. What step have you more to advance to the blaspheming of the Majesty of the most high God, both in himself, and his Deputies, lawful Kings, and Sovereign Magistrates? What more can you do, or invent, to the scandal of the Gospel, to the exposing the Name of Christ to open shame, to the trampling his Blood under feet, through the hatred and detestation of all Nations, that are without the Church? How could you devise more to adorn the Triumphs of Pope and Papists, to whose tails you are tied, though your faces seem contrary, and whose business you have done, while you pretend to abhor their Names, as much as Devils do potent Charms? What Sea could ever wash away from the face of the Christian Reformed Religion, the stain of that blood of our King, which you have (in a Pageant of Justice) most unjustly, inhumanely, and barbarously shed, to colour your Malice, to satiate your Revenge, and to make way for your Tyranny, If we the People of England should by our silence adopt, and by our assistance nourish, those prodigies of Rebellion, Treason, and Confusion, which your libidinous Mars, by the help of your prostitute and officious Venus, (your Un-parliamentary Junto) hath lately brought forth and astonished the world withal? Was it ever so done, since the Name of Christ was planted on the earth, save only by the spawn of those furies, from whom you are descended, who made such havoc first in Africa, after in other Western Churches, and lately in Germany? whose principles and practices you have as much surpassed, in Hypocrisy, Anarchy, Cruelty and Blasphemy, as Belzebub (your Prince) may be thought to exceed the lesser fry of damned Spirits. Those impure Catharists exercised (indeed) their Donatistical and Anabaptistical frauds and fucies, chiefly upon the vulgar, to the ruin of many thousands of the Country people and Citizens▪ But you like so many Ravilliacks, are not content to have spoilt so many Noble and flourishing Families, to have exhausted so many plentiful Estates, to have made so many mourning Widows, and Fatherless Children, to have destroyed the lives, and sucked the blood of so many Christians, your fellow-Subjects, but you must in one day swallow up the two Houses of Parliament, in another murder the King, in a third cut off the right and inheritance of the Crown from the Undoubted Heir, and all the King's Children. At last you conspire to tempt us all by your simple and foolish Paper falsely called, The Agreement of the People, to join with you in the utter overthrowing of our Laws, Liberties, and the whole frame of this ancient and renowned Kingdom, whose weight you will find too heavy for such weak Atlases as you will shortly appear, both in Counsel and in Power, who are only wise to do wickedly, and strong to shed or drink the blood of your King and Countrymen. Your Cruelty hath fulfilled the wish of Caligula, at one blow to cut off the head of three Kingdoms, and with him all Monarchy, to make way for your Polemocracy, a Military Tyranny, or Schismatical Anarchy. Thus have you been profound to deceive, skilful to destroy; our Souls faint within us, because of such treacherous dealers, such hideous Murderers, into whose snares the breath of our nostrils is fallen, and in whose deep dissembling pits the Anointed of the Lord, our meek, patient, and most Christian King is swallowed up; under the shadow of whose just Authority▪ Princely wisdom, and judicious piety we hoped to have been safe. How doth this sometime famous and flourishing Kingdom, now sit as a Widow, oppressed, desolate, despised; full of unexpressible lamentations? The bitterness and gall of your cruel Hypocrisy hath entered into, filled and overwhelmed our Souls. How is she that was the Joy, Crown, and Queen of all Nations, the Envy or Emulation of all Christian Churches, now become the horror and astonishment of her Neighbours round about, the pity and calamity of all her friends, the scorn, reproach, hissing and triumph of all her Enemies? Nor is there any helper, comforter, or Deliverer left, till God take the matter into his own hands, and plead the cause of the King and Kingdom against those proud Goliahs, whose uncircumcised hearts and lips, out of a riot and superfluity of wickedness, have blasphemed our God, destroyed our King, laid waste and exhausted the Kingdom, and turned this Church into a Den of Thiefs. O Lord arise, O Lord consider, O Lord hear the voice of our sighs, tears and prayers; let the cry of the blood of our King and our people come up to Heaven; have mercy on us, for we are brought very low. Our gracious King, the Husband of the Kingdom, the Father of his Subjects, the Preserver of our Laws, the Patron of Religion, the Protector of the Church, you have treacherously and barbarously murdered; the two Houses of Parliament, (whose weakness, perverseness, unevenness, inconstancy and cowardice God hath seen, disliked, judged, and punished) you have forcibly invaded, scattered, and oppressed, notwithstanding all your special Engagements to them both of duty and promise, commission and trust. The loyalty and love of the people, you every where either with terror and cruelty seek to suppress and smother, so that they shall not dare to petition for redress, or complain of those endless calamities which they suffer under your tyranny; or else making lies your hope and refuge, with forged semblances of compliant Petitions, and counterfeit Gratulations, you falsely and impudently pretend the concurrent Votes of the Countries, and the Communities approbation to your most abominated practices: When God knows, and even yourselves in your bloody dissimulation cannot be ignorant, that the generality of all men in all places, of all degrees, do from their Souls utterly abhor, deprecate and detest, your execrable Counsels, and accursed Actions, which have thus brought upon us the abomination of desolation, through the damnable deceivableness of your unrighteousness: Nor do we believe that your pride, and tyrannous hypocrisy either finds any comfort in them, or much considers those papers, which seem to own you, or applaud your wicked deeds, further than they may carry on your strong delusions with the vulgar, whom you know to be neither very wary of evil, nor very steady in what is good. If you had the general Consent of the Vulgar (which you know you have in no sort) yet neither is their judgement any good rule to measure the Morality of your actions; nor their inconstant pleasure any rest of honour, virtue or piety: But indeed you (as well as we) are sadly conscious, that all those clamorous Petitions for Justice, by which you would seem (as by Oracles of your own inspiring) to be fatally directed and divinely encouraged in your Cruelties and Treasons, were nothing else but the strokes of the Lions own tail, the more to enrage himself; the very froth and scum, which arose only from the zealous activity and boilings of your own bloody Faction; who restl 〈…〉 Devils, continually go about, seeking whom they may de●●i●e and destroy; we are well assured that your Schismatical crew of Regicides are no more to be compared to the people of England, than the Glean may be to the Harvest; or Canters, Thiefs, Beggars and Jugglers, to the sober and settled Dwellers in this Kingdom. No, every honest man, who hath any sense of piety, loyalty, modesty, pity, or humanity left in his Soul, (as you have none) takes up jacob's words against you, Cursed beyour wrath, for it is fierce, and your anger, for it is cruel: Into the secrets of these men let not our Souls enter; Lord lay not the guilt of the sins of these men to the Charge of the People of this Kingdom. No, let the blood of our pious, patient and most Christian King, be upon you, and your Abettors for ever; who, as without any sense of Loyalty, Pity or Charity, so without any shadow as well as▪ substance of Justice, having neither Law, Rule, nor any due Authority, first by Fraud and unheard of Insolency seized upon his Majesty's person, afterward by Flatteries, Lies, and Terrors sought to deceive him; At last, by mere Force and beastlike Cruelty, have massacred, and as so many horrid Assassinates, utterly destroyed him. And all this after many fawn, and shows of loyal and tender regard toward his Majesty, and his Royal Family, as both your first Proposals, and your after Agitations, (honestly and very providentially discovered by Major Huntingdon) do declare: In which all men now plainly see, that you did but make way by the Fox, to let in the Wolf, and by your Dalilah to bring the Philistims upon our Samson: Yea, after his Majesty was not only entered into and advanced in a Treaty with the two Houses, agreeable to their Votes, and the general desires of all his Subjects; under the most solemn National security and Public Faith, which could be given, or pass between a King and his Subjects, or indeed any honest men: But even when his Majesty's great wisdom and goodness had so far brought all things to a fair closure and happy Agreement, that the two Houses were satisfied, and resolved to proceed upon his Majesty's Concessions, as a firm ground of Peace to the Kingdom. Yet after all these public, Civil and Sacred Obligations, which lay upon the two Houses and the Kingdom, on yourselves as well as any, and all of us; for you to seize again upon his Majesty's person, without any pretended Authority, and with your Iron hands, and Adamantine hearts, to ravish and pull him out of the arms and embraces of his Subjects, violently to hale and tear him from the reviving love and loyalty of the two Houses and his People; thence to hurry and toss him to and fro, to what inhospitable places, and desolate Prisons you listed, there to deprive him, not only of all things proportionable to his quality as a King, but even of those civil accommodations which ought to be allowed to any Gentleman, though an Enemy and a Captive of War, which the King never was, not being taken by force, but rendering himself to the professed love and sworn loyalty of his Subjects. After this, with a sacrilegious mockery of Justice, in the highest affronting of God, the King, the Parliament, and the three Kingdoms, by an unheard of and most horrid Outrage, and riorous force to oppress and utterly destroy the remaining honour,, freedom and power of the two houses; and in despite of them to erect a new Court of Justice (as you most unjustly term it (for which you have no colour of Law from God or Man, no precedent in this or any other Christian Kingdom, no ground or pretence of Parliamentary consent or Authority of either Houses, (whose Members, three parts of four at least, you forcibly detained and deterred from fitting in the House of Commons, the Lords being unanimously against you; by all which methods of cunning and violence you seek like Absalon (the contradiction between whose name and actions, very well fits your affected but undeserved title of Saints) to intrude yourselves into a Judicative as well as a Military power, (as if Hangmen and Executioners should usurp the sears of Judges, who are not fit to be of a Jury; since their interest and advantage (like yours) lying in the destruction of others, will easily tempt them to condemn any man.) At length you make a shift to pack, not a high Court of Justice, as you shamelessly style it, but the basest Conventicle of Injustice that ever was in the World; In which all Cards of honour being shuffled out, you turn up such Knaves only for Trumpets as will best play your game: A very Medley and Rhapsody of the most ignorant, shallow, cowardly, cruel, weak, debauched and insolent Fools, or Atheists, Hypocrites, Traitors, and Tyrants, that ever usurped power over any honest and innocent man. Your Precedent Bradshaw, and your Solicitor Cook, are commonly known, and branded to be men of as corrupt Souls as any lived in their profession; Their most traitorous, and covetous villainies, not allowing the least pretence of ignorance ●n the Laws, which are in no Case more clearly, expressly, and severely contrary, than in this, of taking away the King's life, wherein they, against all Law, Duty, and Conscience, were as Judas' chiefly employed. At last upon the wicked, most unjust, and cruel Sentence of these Mercenary, Unauthorised, and Tyrannous Sycophants, and Hucksters of Justice, (who must needs have their Commission from him that is the Father of Lies, the false Accuser, the Old Murderer, the deceiving Serpent, the Roaring Lion, the Red Dragon, the Dead Sea of Cruelty, and the sink of all Confusion, the Damned and Damning Devil; and not from God (the Fountain of Justice, the Father of Mercy, the Institutor of Order, the Author of Peace, and the Commander of subjection to lawful Kings) in any notion imaginable; further than the Devil may have Commission from God, permitting and limiting the activity, but not approving the iniquity of his rage and malice) to compel such a King, so Great a Monarch of three Kingdoms, their Undoubted Sovereign Lord, to submit to their arraignment, Accusations, and Sentence (who were most of them his declared and desperate Enemies) without allowing him the liberty of protesting against their confessed Usurpation and Non-authority, or of pleading for his own both Innocency, and well known Privilege, Sovereignty, and unquestionable Immunity, according to the Laws of God and of this Kingdom; which are expressly against their traitorous and tyrannous proceedings▪ as well as the nulli●y of their Authority. After this, without any remorse or pity to their and our King, to force a person of so excellent worth, wisdom, virtue, honour, and Majesty to how down at the feet of so vile persons, and then to Chop off his Head which was Sacred, Crowned and Anointed, as rightful King over them and all his Subjects in his Dominions. (A Butchery so barbarous, that the common Headsmran aborted to do it; nor may we think those bloody Zealots were willing he should deprive them of the pleasure of cutting the throat of such a Sacrifice, to inaugurate them in their Royal Priesthood; by which their Schismatical fury pretends a title against, or above all Lawful Kings and Governors. What Words, what Tears, what Sighs, what oppressive Thoughts, what secret and unutterable Reflections of most stupefied and astonished Souls, are sufficient to measure the Immensity, to weigh the burden, to express or conceive the horror of this outragioussin, and most flagitious villainy. Poor Prince, after so many delusions, so many lying Addresses, made by the chief Engines and movers of the Army; after so much patience, so great demonstrations of excellent wisdom, meekness, calmness and Christian gentleness to his very Enemies and jailors; under infinite reproaches, injuries, and indignities, even to the very spitting in his face: after all those gracious condescendings, by which he had reduced himself almost to the very shadow and bare name of a King (saving that he had gained the highest and most absolute Empire in the renewed love & loyalty of the most and best of his Subjects) that he might please all, secure and satisfy all, purchase Peace for all at any rate but the price of his Conscience: Yet after all these infinite demonstrations of goodness, capable to have softened even Devils themselves, to be thus butchered by a Soldiery and Schismatical cruelty, to be brought to public execution without any help or redemption from Parliament or people (who generally abominated so horrid, inhuman, unseen, and unheard of a Spectacle; whose Public Faith, besides their Personal Allegiance was engaged for his Majesty's honour and safety,) what heart can be large enough to equal the sorrow, what Eyes can be Fountains sufficient to deplore so unmerited a Fate, befalling so excellent a Prince, by the malice, ambition, cruelty, and treason of so base and execrable villainies. And all this Tragedy of Tragedies carried on to such bloody conclusions, under colour of Safety and Reformation at first; afterward of Satisfaction and Indemnity to the Army; in both which the good King denied nothing, that men of any modesty, worth, or ingenuity, could expect, or would desire. Yet after infinite delusions, and mutinous insolences committed against King, Parliament, and People, some impotent and ambitious Tyrants, (who have the marks of Blood and Cruelty in their Faces, and on their Foreheads, in the Army, and Commons House, bethink themselves of a Scene of Justice, which must speedily be acted by them; lest the closure of a Peace with the King, and the two Houses, should render their employment useless, as it hath long been burdensome; And forcing their Buff Grandees, and proud Officers, to return to their Needles, their Hammers, their Lasts, their Slings, their Carts, and their Flails, should quite defeat those designs of power, estate, and all licentious profaneness both in Opinions and Practices; which their Chief Officers, and Levelling Sticlers, have all this while designed for themselves, and their false, giddy, cruel, covetous, and unreasonable Faction; through that power and influence, which by their lies, sorceries, and hypocrisies, they, with the help of that mongrel Minister, that Military Priest, that modern Simon Magus, that disguised Executioner, that bloody Butcher of the King H— P— they have gained upon the Common Soldiery. Upon whose simplicity and valour they have presumed tyrannously, and traitorously to advance the mere will and pleasure of some Officers in the Army, and those rotten and ever infamous Members of the Commons, over all the Laws and Liberties, the Lives, Estates, and Inheritances both of King, Prince, and People. Yet after all these Scenes of various Villainies, they have the impudence to glory, as if they had done God good service, and so extremely pleased God, and the People, that they expect all should agree to their Plandite, as if might and right were well met in the Army. O you most seared Consciences, you most Rebellious Souls against God, the King, and your own light; You most accursed Doers, you deaf Adders, whether you will hear, or whether you will forbear, know this, That we the Christian people, and loyal Subjects of England, do in the bitterness of our Souls declare (as in the sight of God, to whose just Tribunal ●e appeal, and summon your stupid and cruel hypocrisy) to all the world, our total detestation, and utter abhorring of your Counsels, Actions and future Designs. You glory, as if you were now Masters of our Estates, Liberties and Lives: But we shall by God's grace keep our Souls unspotted from those great Offences and presumptuous wickedness, wherewith you are infected beyond all cure or recovery. No we would have your impenitent hardness, as well as the softer world to know, That we look back with extreme sorrow, shame and repentance, upon our former Delusions and forwardness to this Unhappy War; wherein though they were most to blame who were the Deceivers and Instigators of us; yet we cannot excuse ourselves further than thus, That we did it out of credulous inconsiderateness, and not out of malicious wickedness. The God of Heaven, whose mercies exceed our sins and your cruelties, forgive the Errors and great sins of this Nation in this Unnatural War; which have deservedly, as from the Divine vengeance, though most perfidiously, as from your multiplied Treasons and wilful Rebellions, brought upon these Kingdoms such a sore plague, and intolerable oppression as you are. Whose detected hypocrisy hath now made it clearly appear, That both King, Parliament and People were merely cheated and abused, by the Fraud first, after by the Force of those Factions, Schismatical, bloody and implacable spirits, your chief Genius's who despaired to carry on their wicked Designs of Ambition and Tyranny, but by the means of Anarchy, Profaneness, Disloyalty, and public ruin of Church and State. All which Rottenness and Villainy, must be masked a while under the Names of Reformation, Laws and Liberties, King and Parliament, which we see too evidently (though too late) after infinite miseries, Oppressions, Bloodshed, and Delusions, amount to no more but a slavish Submission to the will and Arbitrary Tyranny of a few sanguinary Schismatics, cruel Hypocrites, and desperate Usurpers over all; who, like deep Ditches; and open Sepulchers, having swallowed up our King, our Parliament, our Estates, our Liberties, and many of our brethren's Lives, now like impudent Strumpets, in the wantonness and security, to which success have hardened their hearts and foreheads, wipe their mouths as if they had done no evil; and now lying in-wait for our precious Souls, dress their whorish Faces with the Harlotry, & Temptation of a New-fashioned Representative, and that both silly and ridiculous Babble, called the Agrrement of the People. Than which never any poison was presented in a sordeder, and less suspected Cup; Nor foolish Devil never used less inviting baits for his snares; Their gross and brutish unpolitickness offering nothing in that Beggar's dish to the miserably abused, and justly discontented Kingdom, but only such general dull and confused notions, as might become the soberer sort of Picts or Highlanders, or the less savage Indians, when from their Acorns, Nakedness, and Barbarity, they began to form some conceptions of casting themselves into more orderly and civil Societies, for their better Government, and Common welfare; So vastly short their motley. Agreement comes of those most tried, wise, noble, rational, just, and indeed Divine Principles, and Foundations of True Government, Order, and Polity, on which his famous Monarchy hath for many hundred of years been raised to so stately a Fabric; having flourished to so perfect a beauty, to so ancient and venerable a glory, as became the Wisdom, Piety, and Gravity of our former Kings, Parliaments and Ancestors, Men of Renown for true Wisdom, and Heroic Greatness; to whom these late Overturners, and Innovators of all Government, would scarce have served for their Dwarves, Zanies, and Buffoons. But lest these Cursed Movers of the Ancient Boundaries, and Landmarks, should lose both themselves, and us in the Wood and Wilderness of their poor, rude, barbarous, and novel projections they bring forth their Ignes Fatui, lights of private Inspirations, Fanatic Delusions, False and Falsifyed Interpretetions of wrested and corrupted Scriptures, to make some show to their seduced Proselytes (whom they would re-baptize in the blood of the King with themselves) as if they were the little Stone cut without hands, which must become a great Mountain, etc. They the Saints which must bind Kings in Chains, and Nobles in Links of Iron, &c, They the people of the most High, to which the Kingdoms of the Earth must be give, etc. Whereas true Saints, which had the power, not show only of godliness, would not take all the Kingdoms of the World upon such Devilish Concitions, and by such damnable practices, as yours are, most apparent, and by yourselves confessed to be unwarrantable. Such Scripture paintings upon the face of your Jesabel, would have served the turn of John of Leyden, Knipperdoling, Muncer, and those other Impostors, your infamous Predecessors, as well as you, and indeed they were by them no less pretended; But with how bless*d success you are loath to own to remember, as presaging your like destinies in Gods due time. It is a strange and unwonted way of any sound and true Christians, apparently to violate, and wholly decline from the obedience of clear moral precepts of Justice, and other both Religious and Civil Duties to God and Man, under a pretence of Zeal, and a Call to fulfil prophetic Obscurities: which darkly foretell what shall be done, but do not precisely command us to do this or that; In which events even the wickedest men, and Anti-christs (such as these are) may, as the Vials of the wrath of God, pour our themselves, and have a great part to act, and yet receive no comfort or reward, other than that of Hypocrites, who may (as Joseph's Brethren, and Nabuchadnezzar did) then most serve God's Prophetic, and Providential disposings, when they act most contrary to his Revealed Will, and only seek to serve their own Envy, Covetousness, and unsatiable Tyranny, however they may as the Devil bait their Temptations with Scripture Allegations. But know O ye hardhearted Belshazzars (whom no hand-writing out of God's Words, clearly setting forth your sin, curse, woe, and damnation, can yet scan or deter from your frolic villainies) That, if you were Angels from Heaven, as you are Luciferine Brats from Hell, (transforming yourselves at first into Angels of light, but now fully uncased, so that now your fiery eyes, your black and wide mouths, your blasting and sulphurous breath, your proud horns, and your cloven feet appear to all but your own besotted Imps and Familiars) if (we say) you yet appeared as Angels, yet you should give us leave to believe the express Will and Word of God, rather than your juggling fancies, to which that is diametrically contrary, both in the Precept, and all practices of Christ, and his true Saints. Hear how the voice of God disagrees with your apparent folly and madness. He bids honour and obey the King, and our lawful Governors; You cry crucify, destroy, and scatter them. Christ commands to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, no less than to God what is Gods: But you take away, as from God, and his Church what is his; so from our Caesar, his Empire, Liberty, Life, Posterity and all. The voice of God bids us seek peace and ensue it, branding with the reprobate marks of Hypocrites, those that as Traitors, heady, high minded; and fierce despisers of what is good, break all Truce, or Treaties, which you have done, beyond what ever the fallest Miscreants ever did. The Word of God is a clear, constant, uniform light, as to the Rules of an holy life in Piety, Equity and Charity; but your Opinions, Practices, and pious Pretensions, Centaur-like, are various and deformed Changelings, many-shapen, and misshapen▪ Monsters, shifting Proteusses, Slippery and virtiginous Serpents, folded and hidden in the winding labarinths, and intricate circulations of your many subtle, sly, and perplexed Designs. The truth is, there is as wide a difference between your clamours, howl, and hideous yell which sound nothing but War, Blood, Rebellion, Famine, Death, Desolation, and Damnation) and that soft, sweet, gracious, and most glorious voice of God in the holy Scriptures, which you use for a Net, not a Garment) as there is between the most bright, beautiful, Soul-saving-truths', and most black, deformed, Soul-damning-Lyes. Yourselves cannot think us uncharitable, if we do believe, and tell you, That you have more blaspemed the Spirit, Name, Grace, Word, Saints, and Servants of God, by intituling these as Inspirers, Authors, and Approvers of your most graceless and devilish practices; than ever those hardhearted, and impudent Hypocrites the Pharisees did, by imputing the saving miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ to your Beelzebub the Prince of Devils: whose Servants you are, whose work you do, and whose wages you must expect. Nor do we doubt but all the Curses written in the Book of God (which like that of Meroz, have been causelessly, factiously, and falsely, by some of your double-faced Janus', formerly imprecated upon the King, and his loyallest Subjects) will certainly overtake, and fall upon both you, and your viperous Generation. We hope God will in his infinite goodness not suffer this dying Church, and desolated Nation, to be further partakers of your Babylonish Sins, and open Sorceries, lest we be partakers of your plagues and Torments, which are laid up in the Treasures of the wrath, both of God, and all good men against you, and your desperate faction. We tell you▪ we are so far from counting you Saints and Saviour's, that we look upon you as the Tophet which God hath indeed prepared for the King, and these Kingdoms, to try and torment them a while; But we doubt not, but God will at last cast you (who are our Sin, our Death, and our Hell) into the Lake that burns with fire and brimstone for ever. Unless you repent, so many of you Officers, Soldiers, and others, as are capable of Repentance, not being so deeply engaged in the desperate sins of those men, your chief Leaders and Seducers, who being past feeling, of a most reprobate sense, greedy and unreasonable Sinners, make no conscience to damn your Souls, for the perfecting their ambitious and covetous designs, for which they have hitherto made use of the hands of so many valiant men, worthy of a better work, and a nobler War, whereby to destroy your and our King, subvert our Parliaments, Laws, Government, and Religion; And all this, against all your and our Protestations, Vows, Oaths, and Promises to God and Man. O you that have followed these Theudasses', as the seduced people sometime did Absalon in the simplicity of your hearts, not aware of their devilish stratagems, devises, and designs; You that have any touch of God's Spirit, or his Grace in your hearts, any fear of God, or dread of Sin left in you; You that have any sense of your Souls eternal welfare (which those either question or deny) any terror of the wrath of God, or hope of his love and mercy? You that are afraid to degenerate into unreasonable Beasts, or incarnate Devils, (that you may enjoy the benefit of the Kings last charitable Prayers for your pardon and repentance) make haste to depart from the Tents of these achan's, these Korahs', these Sinners who know themselves accursed of God and Men. Come out of their Babylon, which is become the habitation of Devils, and the Hold of every foul Spirit, a Cage of every unclean and hateful Bird, by a penitent and pious withdrawing from such filthy Harpies, such cunning, yet cruel Hyena's, such weeping, yet devouring Crocodiles; such Banners as bear not the King's Arms, but his head cut from his body; such Ensigns as are died in the blood of their King, murdered by them, while they pretended to fight for him, and preserve him, O drink no more of the Wine of the Wrath of their Fornications, which they hold forth in that poisonous, and filthy Cup of their Agreement of the People; with which they hope to make drunk this whole Nation; That as Lot's incestuous Daughters, their lusts may be fully impregnated by the conjunction of the strength, riches, and counsel of these Kingdoms, Know you for certain (O you Soldiers) that no place of Repentance can be found among those Esau's and Judas', who have been the chief and malicious Actors and Contrivers of these wicked and cruel Confusions; whose Names as we well know, so we are sure the hand of God will find them out, making them (who have been the terror and torture of men of all degrees,) to become as Pashur Magornoissabis, terror round about; As a Wheel, in past revolutions from prosperous wickedness, to miserable punishments; as Chaff toffed to and fro by the breath of God's displeasure, and the execration, or abhorrence of all people in all Nations, Christian and Heathen, where ever they are driven to be Vagabonds and Runagates, carrying with them in their festered Consciences the forked Arrow, of their deceiving, and then cruelly destroying both their King, and their Country. And this, till they are cast into the chains of utter darkness, who have quenched the light of Israel, and to everlasting flames, whose wrath kindled with the fire of Hell, hath burned to the very Foundations of so happy a Nation. No person of Worth, Honour, or Piety▪ but will ever loath to eat, drink, or converse with them, looking upon them as unlucky prodigies; Much more will every ingenuous Man or Woman abhor ever to marry, or make any affinity with them, or their Families, polluted with the blood of their King; but most of all abominated will they be as to any Communion with them in Prayer, or other religious duties, who having turned the Grace of God into wantonness; cannot but already hear Judas' silent clamours, deep despairings, and self-condemnings; Like Julian the Apostate, they cannot but feel the secret and smart strokes of God in their Consciences, for betraying, persecuting, and destroying the innocent blood of our King. O Earth cover it not, O Time forget it not, O Heaven fail not to revenge their prodigal and cruel waist of so royal and precious blood! Surely without any uncharitable rashness, they may be suspected to be past all grace, and recovery by any Prayers. There remaining for such sinners of the sin to death, such relapsing Swine, and resorbing Dogs, who pretending to have escaped the pollutions of the World, are returned to their mire and vomit; feigning to be illuminated Saints, yet have wrought such works of thick darkness, nothing but a fearful expectation of vengeance, and fiery indignation to consume them, without infinite mercies They have impudently, and traitorously judged, condemned, and murdered the King, upon the pretence of his raising War against the Parliament; of which Fact themselves are doubly, and most unquestionably guilty before all the World, twice menacing, invading, and forcibly assaulting their Masters in the two Houses of Parliament. Nor if their charge had been true against the King (which upon his death he both denied, and most evidently proved by the legal right he had to the Militia, and the date of their Commissions for raising War, before His Majesties were out) yet were not these Usurpers any competent Judges by God or Man appointed: Nor was indeed that calumny the real motive of their sudden, bloody, and resumed cruelty; but only that extreme fear, hatred, and terror, their hypocrisy, and villainy had conceived against the King's excellent wisdom, constant piety, and immovable goodness; which they had so often, and so unmeasurably abused; and which they saw was the chiefest obstacle in the way of their Sacrilegious Ambitions. And now like desperate Empyricks, upon whose cruel tamperings we have spent our Blood, our Estates, our Lives, the honour of our Nation, and the credit of our Reformed Religion: You (now) pretend to stop that bloody issue (which by tumult and treason you have made) by destroying the whole Royal Family, and letting out all the Ancient blood of our Kings out of the veins of these Kingdoms: To extirpate Kings, Peers, and Parliaments; and by addle fictions of your weak and confused brains, to obtrude the frippery and gullery of your Agreement of the People As if all Rules of Justice, all true Policy, and Reason of State, and good grounds of Government (no less than all wickedness, cruelty, hypocrisy, and treason) only dwelled in your shallow brains, and narrow hearts; Who for the most part are not guilty of any Learning, or Civil Improvements, are open and declared Authors of Ignorance, Confusion and Tyranny, Enemies to all sober Manners, and good Orders, both in Church and State. Nor do those great things (as you call them) which you have hitherto with most infamous treachery, and cruelty, peracted and attained, any way render you considerable with sober, godly, and truly wise men: For what may not Frontless Hypocrites do, who have forsaken God, and given themselves over to the Devil's Captivity, when impowered with Arms and Might, they resolve barbarously to break through, and cast off all bonds of right, trust, duty, credit, and conscience to God and Man, as you have done. But you O hardened and infatuated Regicides, can you in good earnest flatter yourselves, that this foolish Toy, this shameless Imposture, your Bastard Brat, your headless Chimaera, your many-headed Hydra, called The Agreement of the People, (but by as full an Antiphrasis, as the Fiends and Furies of Hell were called Eumenides) will be a salve sufficient to heal, or Plaster to cover the wide deep and festered wounds, which your treacherous cruelty hath made upon this Kingdom in all Estates, both jointly as in Parliament, and severally, as in the interests of the Crown the Nobility, the Clergy and the Commons. No, yourselves know, that very Title, which you shamelessly impose upon your mad and deformed Model is nothing but a Lie and Falsity; being in no sense The Agreement of the People, not we hope ever like to be. Neither in their Representatives the Commons, whom you have disbanded and cashiered in the Majority; leaving only some few Members left, whose Asinine patience and stupidity suffers the Balaams of the Army, as mad and false Prophets to ride upon them for the price of blood, and wages of Iniquity: To which Vassalage, we hope no Gentlemen of any Honour or Conscience, will ever betray themselves or their Country, by returning to the House again, or sitting and voting there, while it is under such insolent Tyrants. Nor will you find it more agreeable to the generality of the people throughout the Kingdom, both Ministers and others, who ●n thei● souls disagree as much from what you have done and by that further design, as light doth from darkness, Liberty from Oppression, and God from your Dictator the Devil. No, the People of England, will one day (if God please to cast his Net upon you, and put his hook into the all-devouring jaws of your Leviathan) make you and your Dawbers with the untempered mortar of a mouldered and dissolved Parliament, to understand, that they abominate you and your deeds, as much as Hell itself; for your monstrous sins are their own Hell and Horror, more to be detested than all the sinless sufferings of Hell. The ancient and most honourable House of Peers, whom sometimes you flattered into a Fool's Paradise, (while the poor shreds and remnants of that Court might serve your turn to face your affairs by any show of their Authority) as if you had designed nothing to their diminution: Yet you have wholly laid them aside, as useless and dangerous Idols of honour, fit to be cast out to the Bats and Moles, to be leveled unto, or abased beneath, the meanest Animals, and vilest beasts of the People; for though ●hey should, any of them, so dishonour themselves as to descend ●nto the Hell of your infected walls; yet could they never there ascend to any degree of public influence either for Counsel or Action, being sure to be always overlaid, smothered and oppressed by your over-voting crew of Mechanic Idols; who saving that they have mouths to speak a Treasonable Yea or No, in other points, have Eyes and see not, Noses but smell not, Hearts but consider not, the blood, cruor, carcases, skulls and dead bones of their King and their Brethren of all degrees, with which they have inhumanely filled that Charnel-house, that Golgotha of that quondam House of Commons. Sure the numerous, and once both famous and flourishing Nobility of England, besides those of Ireland and Scotland, cannot but infinitely abhor and detest your arrogant despising of them, and trampling upon them; if they have but any drops of their Ancestors noble blood running in their veins, or any sparks of true Honour left in their Breasts: It will at length kindle such a fire of just indignation and revenge in those Cedars, as shall consume such base shrubs, such offensive thistles, and such domineering Briars: But if their ignoble despondency have so debased them to Luxury and Cowardice, that they dare not vindicate the Honour of their Nation, Name and Order, together with the rights of the Crown, the Fountain of their Honour, but are content to be either bowed, or hewed down, or over-dripped, or exsuccated by such Aspiring Ivies as you are; our Counsel is, that the ancient Barons of England, sometimes Peers and chief Counsellors in Parliament, would solemnly Degrade themselves, lay aside their vain and ridiculous Titles, reverse their Escocheons, sell their Scarlet Robes to the Brokers in Long-lane, rather than keep them, either to feed Moths, or to be Monuments to all posterity, What Capons, Poultroons and dangerous Buzzards they are, descend from such Eagles, as many of their Ancestors were. But if the Nobility should so far betray and desert themselves, their Posterity, their King and their Country (who though their number be not great, yet their interest is; and so might their influence on the Public yet be, both great and good, if their spirits and gallantry were such, yet, how can you the greater bugs of the Army; or you the lesser Vermin and Maggots of the Commons (who survive and crawl after the dissolution of your Parliament; bred of, and feeding upon, the putrefaction of that House) How can you think, that the People of England, who are generally and highly concerned in the Honour, Credit and Religion of the Nation, can ever with a good Conscience, or any face of common honesty, agree to your Juggling and Sophistry; as if you or your Western Mahomet and new Antichrist (Hugh Peter's) had any Papal power to absolve their souls from those Protestations, Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, by all which they were and are both lawfully and religiously bound, under the greatest curses of God both to the Kingdom in general, and specially to the Parliaments Privileges, and the Rights of the King and his lawful Successors: of which gross and manifold perjuries, they must make themselves guilty, only to make way to the Dictatorship and Empire of some of your greater Brambles; That (forsooth) the People of England might enjoy that Liberty, Peace and Plenty under your unavoidable Tyranny, vusatiable Rapine, and cruel Oppression; of such Beggars as most of you are, and were, which formerly they could never have under the gracious Kings wise and Loyal Parliaments, the ingenuous Laws, and excellent Government of this sometime flourishing Kingdom. Sure you are not yet so much beasts, as to think, that the Community of this great people can all govern themselves, or mutually one another: Government must necessarily be settled and centred somewhere: Nor is it likely, that your leaders and Pashas, whose hands are imbrued in the blood of their King, will ever be so modest, as to lay themselves aside; and denying their own most ambitious and covetous desires, to let any others but themselves and their creatures reap the fruit of their projects and labours; for which they have pawned their souls to the Devil, and sold themselves as Ahab to do wickedly. But if you dare venture it upon so ingenuous a Trial let the people of England without your terror, cunning, injurious restraints and exceptions be their own Umpires, and Choosers, whether they will bear the light and easy yoke of the Laws, and the gentle as well as just chastisements of their penalties under a lawful King, or the iron-yoke of your Tyranny, and the Scorpions of your wills, being so many Evening Wolves, bloody Traitors, and unlimited Tyrams, (whose little fingers in these last three years, have been infinitely heavier than the loins of all the Kings, that ever were in this Kingdom) let the people have free suffrages, you will soon find, That the true Agreement of the People (a hundred voices to one) is this, to shake off your cruel Tyranny, to bring to condign punishment such unheard of Traitors; and to invest in his Throne our lawful King Charles the Second, the Eldest Son of that good King you lately murdered. But how can the people of England ever hope to have any other Civil Agreement of theirs, binding to you and your pragmatic faction; further than your own fancies, lusts, and pleasures think fit; since they find you to have so lately broken through all Laws of God and Man; all Ancient and Fundamental Agreements in this Nation, on which the Honour and Safety of our Kings, the Privileges of our Parliaments, the Liberties of the People, the Order and Purity of our Church, and the happiness of our Nation were settled? What Cautions can you give, that you will hereafter submit to any public Agreement; who are such shifters, jugglers and dissemblers, that no Laws, Leagues, Protestations or Promises you freely make can bind you; No faith to King, Parliament, People, Neighbour Nations, or God Almighty can hold you; but like the man possessed with the unclean spirit, you break all ties and bonds, casting Church and State into fire or water, as the rash motions of your Frantic humours carry you. etc. Conscience you can have none; since your lights are so Lunatic, and your principles vary every month. Credit you have none, who have made bankrupt of the Public Faith, and forfeited so many solemn and Sacred Obligations to God and Man. Sense of Honour or Duty you can have none, since you have neither fear of God, nor reverence of Man. Estates you have little or none, to hazard or lose upon any forfeiture of your Faith or Agreement: And for your Heads and Lives they are now so vile and cheap, that although you are not fit to live, yet they are scarce worth the taking. Sure you cannot but appear to yourselves as well as to all men, the most outlawed, notorious and stigmatised Rebels, the most perfidious Traitors that ever any King, or Senate, State or People employed or trusted: Having utterly blotted out all your former promeritings and good service so much boasted of; Since the Event proclaims you served not King, Parliament, or Country, but your own lusts, and villainous designs, which by the advantages of mutinous power, you now seek to accomplish under the void, and forfeited Commission of that stupid Saint, that dumb show of your silent, extatick, and seduced General; who in so great a concern, forgot his pristine valour and honour. So that the darkening of your most wicked designs by this ti●le of The Agreement of the People, amounts to no more in the true and last sense of it, but this, That you would have the People of England, and the other two united Kingdoms, willingly to bow down to your Hoddy doddy, your all Breech-Idol, as a Prophet of your own so variously, and falsely inspired, justly calls your unlicked, and monstruous projects, not of Government, but of Anarchy and Tyranny, who may live indeed to see a day of judgement come upon you. You would have us all to pledge you in that horrible draught of the King's blood, which you have greedily drank; to approve and abet your execrable villainies, and to submit for ever to the intolerable Tyranny of such Goths, Vandals, and Saracens as you are. Who are but the Devil's Leieutenants; Factors for the God of this impure World; signal Anti-christs, accurate fullfillers of all the characters foretold, and brands set upon you in the last and perilous time; in which true glass, you, and all men may clearly see the ugly lineaments of your most deformed faces and manners. It is hoped, that God hath yet so much mercy left in store for these sinful (and by you most miserable) Kingdoms, as he gives us grace utterly to abhor your desperate sins; So that we trust he will never suffer us by a Devilish Apostasy to fall from all Vows, and Oaths, by which we and our posterity are bound to God, the Crown, and our Countries; only to have yours, and the Devil's absolution, to make a Covenant and Agreement with Hell and Death, with your most irreligious and damnable designs and practices. No, the sin and horror of your waves, are now like Absaloms' incestuous and noonday Rapes, discovered in the sight of the Sun, and all the World; Nor will the subtlety of your soft and feigned voices, like Sirens any more charm, and enchant the honest people of England, into such Beasts and Monsters, as yourselves are; to whose hellish deformities you would have all others to conform: They have seen, and felt too much already of your cruel Hypocrisies, your devilish and strong Delusions. Have not your words been always Soloecisms to your purposes, and your practices contradictions to your pretences? Have you not as much as lies in your power and malice, cast us into the dead Sea of disloyalty, perjury, cruelty, barbarity, irreligion, and confusion, that is possible for any Nation suddenly to relapse, and fall into, after so many Sacred, and Solemn Professions of Loyalty, and Reformation to God, and the World, whom we called to witness upon our Souls? Agreeable to all which, and to fill up the measure of our sins, as if our Rebellion against God, and the King, were hitherto but a light and small matter, by which we have most unhappily occasioned his death, by the hands of cruel Edomites, and cursed Amalekites as you are; which most deplorable calamity, to us, and this Nation, we penitently look upon as the severest temporal stroke which the wrath of God, gone our against us, can inflict upon us. Yet your impudent Hypocrisy now seeks to obtrude upon us your wretched and abhorred Agreement; The Sum of which is to leave the Kingdom without a King, Government without Authority, Magistrates without Power, a People without Laws, a Body without an Head, Sheep without a Shephere, Christians without Christ, Churches without Ministers, Ministers without Maintenance, a Nation without Faith; In a word, you would have us live as men without Souls, without God, wilfully degeneraring to Beasts, without sense of Virtue or Vice, shame or honour, without fear of Hell, hopes of Heaven, or thoughts of Eternity; and all this to maintain a few Tyrannous Hypocrites, and Sodomitick Saints, the cry of whose sins, like Sodom, is gone up to Heaven, and are a burden too heavy for the Earth to bear. Have you not already made the Name of these Protestant, and Reformed Churches, to stink among all Nations, both Christian and Heathen, through the dead flies, and rottenness of your principles, and manners. Have you not surpassed the cunning and cruelty of the most Jesuitick heads and hands, as much as you come short of their learning and pretensions, which are to advance the Pope's Authority above that of Kings: But you upon base Principles, seek to subject the Regal Sovereignty to that of the People, as you call it, nor that you mean so in good earnest, further than to delude the people, and to raise the heads of your desperate Faction above all, both King, Prince, Peers, and People. We appeal to all sober Christians, whether your Treasons have not far surpassed the Powder Conspiracy; Inasmuch, as they plotted secretly, but you have peracted openly, the murder of the King, the ruin of all the Royal Issue, the overthrow of all our Laws, the blowing up of all Parliaments, the subverting of the whole State and Government, the devastation of your Country, the abolition of all true Religion, the extirpation of all Liberty, Peace, Order, and Humanity. Your Elder Brother Faux himself might seem a Saint compared to you; whose New Light, and Dark Lantern you have so long made use of, to hide and disguise your desperate intentions: Nor were the rest of those Powder Traitors so criminal as you, if they had effected what they designed, since they neither pretended to that Saintship, or that smooth preciseness which you have done; nor had they upon them such signal ties of Public, and special Trust (besides your many voluntary Obligations) The total violation of all which, renders your Sins out of measure sinful, and your Treasons incomparably traitorous; beyond what any Catelines, but yourselves, ever had the desperate boldness to have conceived, or committed. Had you been our Open Enemies, or self-raising Rebels, in a declared rivalry, and enmity against King, Parliament, and Country, we could either have prevented, and opposed you, or have born with less shame and disdain your insolent and prevailing Cruelties against them all. But when we consider what ostentation, and show you made of exact obedience, and plenary aquiescence in their Votes, Results, and Orders, from whom you had your unhappy Commission; also of loyal regard to His Majesty's Safety, Rights, Honour, and Posterity, (to whom some of your chief Commanders (as they well know) engaged their Souls, as much as was possible for any mortal men to do●, devoting themselves to all the Curses of God, temporal and eternal, upon the breach and failer of their words to His Majesty. Add to these the fair gloseings you made at your first meeting, of speedy and impartial endeavours to settle all things in Peace, Justice, due Liberty, and Piety; which how faithfully you have effected, the present Deplored state of this Church and state may witness; whose face is now miserably squalled, and hideously besmeared with the blood of the King, and those most indelible Reproaches wherewith you have blasphemed our God, our King, and our Religion. We the People of England, of all sorts, Lords, Gentry, Clergy, and Commons, do again and again declare to God, and all the World, the present Age, and Posterity, so long as the World shall endure, our infinite adhorrence, utter detestation, and total disagreement, from what you the Officers of the Army, and your most slavish, ever infamous, and Unparliamentary Juncto have already done, or shall further do, (through God's vengeance upon this Nation) in prosecution of your never sufficiently abominated Villainies. Nor do we desire any thing more of the just and Almighty God, (not in order to the satisfaction of our private malice, or desire of revenge on any of you (though our particular injuries have been many from you) but only in order to the public Vindication of God's Glory, the Honour of the Reformed Religion, the Loyalty, Faith, and Credit of this Nation, the wiping away those foul sins of Treason, Perjury, Truce-breaking, and Regal Parricide, (in all which Villainies your execrable Faction, wallowing in the blood of your King, and fellow-Subjects, now seek impenitently and irreparably to implunge this whole Nation;) That we might (as some solace under our immense sorrows, and tyrannising miseries inflicted by you) but live to see Gods temporal judgements so far upon you, as may pull down your Luciferian pride, and make your obstinate minds to see the horror of your Villainies; That like Cain, you may be afraid of all men; like Judas, accursed to all Posterity, given over to Satan, and excommunicated by all good Christians, as Murderers of your Father, Killers of your King; That you may ever be haunted with the rueful Ghost, and hideous Phantasm of the King, whom you have traitorously butchered: That the exemplary vengeance of God may be upon you, and your Adherents so remarkably, and in such a Proportion to your Villainies, that if there be any place left for Repentance, you may find it; and yet all the World may see, your destruction is the Lords doing, and say, Doubtless there a God that judgeth the Earth. Nor do we despair, but God will upon our true Repentance for our great sins and supine folly (which gave you advantages to fulfil your most odious Villainies) so far remember his mercies to his most deplorable Kingdom, and by you (as so many wild Boars) desolated Churches, as to stir up some powerful Avenger of the King's blood; and all that other innocent blood, which the depths and deceits at first, the force and violence afterward, of your bloody Faction hath occasioned and caused to be shed; by your tumultuating the people; your instigating the spirits of the two Houses with false and panic fears; Your calumniating the King, and perverting his gracious purposes; Your enflaming the enmities, and heightening the Animosities on both sides; Your fraudulently voting, No Addresses; and publishing that lying and most infamous Libel for your pretended grounds; Your widening the differences, and hindering all fair equable closings, both formerly, and in that 〈◊〉 memorable Treaty at Newport; of which you were the most rude, savage and perfidious Violators, that ever History recorded. We know, that you can now only trust in your Arm of Flesh, in the Devil's aid and Counsel, having in your works denied the Living God; instead of whom; your Belly and the present World, are become your God and your glory: for the satisfaction of which, and the attaining places of profit and power (agreeable to your lusts, which are enlarged like Hell) you have dared to advance thus far to the destroying of King, Parliament, and Laws; which were the only boundaries and conservers of our Peace, Properties, Lives and Liberties; yet after all this, you inscribe on your Bloody Banners, and impudent foreheads, The Agreement of the People; and the Restorers of our Liberties. Which Plots, although you think them your Masterpieces for artifice, juggling and policy (that so you might by fair words and flattering lies, allure the many and meaner People to maintain those Monsters which you have brought forth) yet you must know, That the People of England's eyes are not so blood-shotten, not their Consciences so ●eared, nor their Hearts so disloyal, nor their senses so bewitched by your Magic and Charms, as not to see through, and fully both discover and detest your devilish designs of Tyranny, Anarchy and Profaneness, whereto you drive, through all these cloudings of immethodical Nonsense, and indigested scribble; which like your late damnable Remonstrance and your other illiterate and irrational Papers discover; that where there is so much want of grace and common honesty as in you, it is impossible not to want even those shows of common sense and vulgar Reason, which are necessary (not to justify (which no tongue, pen or wit of Devils can do) but so far as to palliate your filth, and cover your nakedness; or to render your wicked projects but tolerably plausible to those, that have the grossest perception of things. The better to temper this your Cup of deadly poison, to please the vulgar relish (which you think is gross and undecerning) you tempt them with the name of Liberty, first in Civil things; which all men see is but a mere Cheat, while they are like to be held under your Iron hands, and squeezed under your tyrannous wills, and intolerable Exactions; instead of enjoying the benefit of our ancient and famous Laws (the best that any Subjects in the world enjoyed, the just and only bounds of our Liberties, and Conservers of our both Peace and Prosperities; to which all honest men (who have no joint stock with you in Knavery, Poverty, and Baseness) desire most humbly and earnestly to return; Despairing (and with good cause) that ever their Liberties and Properties can be either advanced or defended by you, who have been so insolent usurpers over King, Parliament, and all our Laws and Liberties; which our forefathers indeed enjoyed many years, through God's blessing and the Fatherly care of their Princes, to a greater measure of Peace, Plenty, and Piety, than ever can be hoped for under such bloody Leeches, such numerous and unsatiable Caterpillars, as we have felt you to be: Nay, we tell you, we so far disdain your Hypocrisy, Treachery, and Tyranny, that we had rather be under the Tyranny of our rightful King (of whose justice and clemency we nothing doubt) than owe our Liberty, as you call it, to such vile Mushrooms and detested Traitors as you are; who boast of Liberty, yet are indeed slaves to your damned and desperate lusts; studying nothing but how to delude the people with the name and fancy of Liberty; as if you would persuade us rather to be the Devils Freemen, as you are, (led Captive by his will) than to be Loyal Subjects to our lawful and most hopeful King; or humble servants to God, whose sacred ties are many ways upon our souls, binding us to fear God, and to honour the King; and no less to abhor you; and have no fellowship with such as are given to seditious or perjurious changes: forbidding us to use our Liberty, as men and Christians, for a cloak of maliciousness, perjury, tyranny hypocrisy, and all licentious villainies, as you have done. The next pretence wherewith you bait the Mousetrap, and temper the Ratsbane of your Agreement, is that of Liberty in Religion; Your meaning is, That men may be free to profess no Religion; or any which they call such, so it be not the true one, which you know is most opposite to your seditious, traitorous, merciless, uncharitable, and bloody Superstitions: The very truth is, you aim at such an Intolerable toleration in Religion, as you think is most agreeable to the profane hearts, and licentious manners of the most debauched lives, and Atheistical Spirits, with which you have already pestered this English world. In order to this Truth-darkening, and Soul-damning design, we know you follow your Leader the Devil, and his Lieutenant General, to the utter dissolving of all Government, Order, and Discipline in the Church, to discourage all learned, godly and painful Ministers; to rob and spoil them of all settled Maintenance; to reduce them and the work of the Ministry to that contempt, which in the pride and luxury of these times, follows poverty and beggary; That they depending on the people's good will and charity, (which in many you have made bad and cold enough toward the best and ablest Preachers) or upon your insolent and niggardly stipends, they and their families may either eat their own dung, and drink their own piss, or be forced by necessities of life to desert their Function and places; so as to leave their Congregations destitute of all holy public duties; or expose them to those Military Wolves and Mechanic Foxes, which you have in great store provided for the supply of all places, in Church as well as State. Thus doth your rage reach as high as Heaven, and as low as Hell: But we hope the God of Heaven will look down upon us, and our children in mercy, and by some speedy rebuke of such Satan's, not suffer your folly and fury to proceed any further, it being manifest to all moral and sober men, that you are Factors not only for yourselves, to devour our Estates, Houses, Lands▪ Liberties, Peace, and Lives; but like the great Dragon, yo● pour for●h a Sea of blood and poison, ignorance and profaneness▪ such as may for ever drown both our and our children's souls it. Heathenish Barbarism, Superstition, Atheism, and Eternal destruction. But know O you neither Millstones, you poisonous Asps, you King-killing Basilisks, you desperate Deceivers, and damnably deceived: That although you have against all Faith of Turks, Jews, or any Heathens, by fraud and force usurped upon our secular and civil Liberties; so that at present we have not any form power to oppose you, and call your Ringleaders to a severe account for your unheard of crimes and injuries against our King and our Country. Yet shall our constancy in, and our suffering for our Religion, and our encouragement of godly learned and faithful Ministers, to our best abilities, make the world to see, that there is no Agreement between Christ in us, and Belial in you; our God and your Mammon. We hope the Triumphing of such Hypocrites as you are, is but short; nor shall you long insult over the dead and divided Corpse of our late Lord and Sovereign King; whose Wisdom, Piety, Faith, and Patience, God (we doubt not) hath crowned with Glory and Immortality; having perfected those many Princely gifts and Divine graces in him (as God often doth in his dearest Saints and Martyrs, after the example of his crucified Son Jesus Christ) by his sufferings and your cruelties, whose Memory and Posterity will be ever dear, precious, and honoured, to us and our succeeding generations as a King, who now appears beyond the Errors and Jealousies of former surmises (chiefly raised and fomented by your false and envious Faction) to have been the most constant Pillar, the Noblest Patron, the resolutest Protector, and the most patient Martyr for our Laws, Liberties, Lives, and Religion; Yea and of our Parliaments true Privileges; which his Majesty best saw, and fullest declared at first to have been shamefully invaded and out-raged by your Tumults, afterby your Armies; next by your new modelings, at last by actual mutinings, impudent menaces, violent and warlike expressions upon their safety, liberty, faith, loyalty and honour, with which purposes you sometime falsely aspersed, and afterward accused the King: and for which calumnies you most unjustly condemned, and traitorously murdered him; yourselves being most truly and notoriously guilty of that, for which you wickedly, cruelly, and unjustly destroyed your and our King. Shall you escape the righteous judgement of God? Will not God visit you for these things? Shall he not be avenged of such cruel Hypocrites? Nor is it without a special Providence, that you should be left wholly naked, and destitute of all pretended due Authority, in the fulfilling your execrable villainies, to which you would now fain invite the people of England; not having any show or colour of any Parliamentary Votes, Authority, or Commands to countenance your mischiefs, murders, and tyrannies, not any concurrence of either Lords or Commons; whom now under force, and without all freedom (becoming either Gentlemen or Christians) we must tell you, we look upon as no House, and their enforced, or enslaved Votes as null; Their after sit, and complyings with you, being nothing but infamous, and base prostituting of the Honour of that House, and Vassallating of the Dignity and Liberty, both of the Parliament, and People of England, to the tyranny of a few Mutinous Cutthroats, Traitorous Rebels, and bloody Schismatics; who are in no sense to be counted the People of England, any more than Scabs, or Plague-sores, or Leprosy, or putrid Ulcers, and noisome Excrements, are to be repured any part of the Body, whose grief, burden, and annoyance they are. So that unless you can flatter yourselves to have done well, and worthily, in all you have cruelly, insolently, and traitorously acted against King, Lords, Commons, Gentry, Clergy, and all honest men. Unless you can propound something to recompense the inestimable Injuries you have done to all Estates in these three Kingdoms, as in other acts of your Tyranny and Treason, so chiefly in that unparallelled Villainy of Murdering such a King, and depriving us of so Incomparable a Prince, for Wisdom, Piety, Gravity, Patience, Magnanimity, Courage, Constancy, Charity, and all other Virtues, most adorning a Man, a King, and a Christian; (the loss of whom, all the lives of you, and your Approvers cannot countervail, or expiate, being but as so many Dogs heads to such a Boon.) Unless you can stop the Mouths of all men, or cut their Throats, or sear their Consences, or persuade them to damn their Souls, for your sakes, to gratify a few Cauterised Consciences, bloody and ambitious Spirits among you. You cannot but hear the sound of much Vengeance coming upon you, to which your own black Souls summon you, and which your own Consciences will in the first place silently, but yet severely execute upon you. Nor will your Seeming Smiles, and forced confidences, nor yet the Applauses of your sordid Flatterers, and desperate Confederates, nor yet the assistance of your numerous and deluded Soldiers, be able to exempt you from that storm of Fire and Brimstone, that Pit, Snare, Curse, and Hell, which pursues you, and is ready to overtake you. How can such Zimri's, who have so traitorously slain such a King, their Lord and Master, ever hope to have peace, or impunity in this, or the other World? Since the Justice of Divine Providence (in a Case where his Name was not blasphemed, and so his Glory not so concerned, as in this, (of your murdering so lawful, and so Christian a King) suffered not any of the Murderers of Julius Caesar, who was but an Usurper, to die other than a violent, and immature death. Nor will (we hope) our Solomon by God's blessing, and his Subjects assistance, suffer the hairy Scalps of those who were the chief Counsellors, and Actors, in destroying his dear Father, and our Dread Sovereign, to go down to the Grave in peace, or to die a dry death, who have shed the blood of War, in a time when all Differences were by a Treaty drawn to a Peace and Union. We can never think, that a Babel of so confused a fashion, of such a headlong height, as yours is; such a Toads-stool suddenly grown out of the Earth of Beggary and Ignorance, by Fraud and Cruelty, lately watered with the blood of the King, and his Subjects, can long thrive or stand; having no foundation in the World, or any show of reason, equity, honour, peace, liberty, or piety to support it. Not any seeming Authority (for due and legal you could have none upon Earth.) Not any general desire, delight, consent, or Agreement, in what you have done, or propound further to do; but rather a general detestation, an utter abhorrence, and a perfect hatred of you, and your deeds; which honest men will then agree to, and subscribe, when they can be content to love Death, and Hell, or to hate God, and their Souls. Nor doubt we, but many of those Soldiers, whose valour and simplicity you have thus far grossly abused, by engaging them in such desperate assistances (whose profit will redound to but few, or none of them) when their Christian, penitent, and smiteing hearts shall come to see (as no doubt many of them already do, who are not throughly poisoned with your desperate Principles) to what horrid Villainies they they▪ are made Gossips, and accessary by your Fraud, and Hypocrisy, they will speedily re●●rn from you, dead Dogs, desperate Sheba's, and cursing Shimei's, ●hose mouths and hearts are full of the gall of bitterness, whose hands and feet are swift to shed blood, who know not the way of Peace, nor have any fear of God before your eyes? whose Curse is to bo●st yourselves in your iniquity; to fall from one wickedness to another, till eternal vengeance upon you. Penitently smiting their breasts, as those that came from crucififying Christ Jesus, (a work proportionate to the malice and cruelty of you our King's Murderers, our barabasses) whose barbarity hath at once deprived the King of what is wont to be dearest to men, his Life, and his Kingdoms; robbing his Subjects, the Christian World, and all Mankind of the greatest glory, and most Illustrious Example of Virtue and Piety that ever sat upon a Christian Throne The most unspotted People, the wisest Prince, the most Charitable Christian, the most imitable Pattern for Moderation in Prosperity, for Patience in Adversity, for devout humility toward God, for judicious zeal to true Religion, for constant love to the Church, for winning Majesty upon all men, that ever swayed the Sceptre of this, or any other Kingdom; Accessible in his brightest splendour, Magnanimous in his Diminutions; Of a thriving and victorious Virtue under the heaviest Pressures and Crosses; Whose excellent Skill was never so much discovered as in the late Storms; Whose Darken rendered him not less formidable to his Enemies, or less venerable to his Friends; Nor was he ever more terrible to those that are perfect haters of God, of Him, and of all Goodness, than when they saw that the Eminency of his Virtues was not to be smothered by their Calumnious Expressions; but the beams and lustre of Divine Majesty in him daily conquered all Ecclipsings that either his own misfortunes, or your malice cast upon him, This was the Man, this the Christian, this the King, this the Saint, this the Martyr, whom ●hese Judas' have betrayed, these Jews destroyed, these Cannibals devoured. A Sin questionless exceeding in many respects that of Christ's Crucifiers, (not as to the dignity of the person, wherein Christ infinitely surpassed the Majesty, as well as Merit, of all Earthly Kings) but as to that Eminency of Civil Dignity, and Sovereignty, wherewith the King from God was invested; which Christ Jesus never assumed, contenting himself with the form of a servant, and subjecting himself to Civil Magistracy. Also in regard of that malice, hypocrisy and pretenceless Cruelty, which these Monsters showed against the King, destitute of any show of Due Authority; which the Crucifiers of our Saviour wanted not, urging also a Law they had, by which they said, (though falsely) he ought to die: What Law the King's Murderers either produced or pretended to justify their Authority, their Accusations, or their Sentence against, and Execution upon the King, we and they are yet to learn; nor is it possible they ever should; since all our Laws do most fully and clearly declare the person of the King as Supreme, Sacred, Unaccountable, Inviolable by any Person, Process, Judgement or Punishment on Earth. When the soldiery by Sea and Land shall once seriously reflect upon and consider the infinite odious aggravations, wherewith this horrid Murder of such a Man, such a Prince, and their lawful King, is laden (to which Villainy, their Valour was abused, to be only as Bloodhounds, Butchers, and Hangmen) no doubt they will be conceive so just and generous a disdain, that no men's hands will be more ready to avenge their own dishonour, the shame of their Profession, the wound and slain of their Consciences, the Blood of their King, the Dignity of Parliaments, and the Loyalty of their Nation, (never so branded in any former age) than those Soldiers, whose Valour you the Achitophel's, Jeroboams, haman's, and Machiavels of our times have basely abused, only to serve you in accomplishing you Execrable Villainies, and to preserve you from just and speedy Vengeance, which (as Severus said to those Villains and Traitors, who had murdered their Emperor Pertinax) can neither be invented for you, nor executed upon you, proportionable to the many and Out ragious Villainies committed by you. We the People of England, cannot but appeal to God, your own Consciences, (such as they are, cauterised and polluted with the Blood of our King) also to the judgement of all men, that have but common sober sense, Whether any Age, any Monuments of former times, any History of humane Affairs, have ever recorded any excess of Riot, any superfluity of Wickedness to have ever flowed from the hearts of any men, o● have been fulfilled parallel to yours? Whether any Combination of desperate men, filled with the Quintessence of all wickedness, fraught with flattery, cruelty, hypocrisy, tyranny, and all degrees of malicious Villainy, incident to humane nature, have since the world began, and Mankind hath been planted upon the Earth, ever committed the like Villainies (which exceed all names of Vice and Infamies) or ever more deserved to be made a public Curse, and universal Execration to all Mankind, to have their persons cut off from the face of the Earth, and buried with the burial of an Ass; to have their Posterity, as a Pestilent Progeny spewed out of the Land, (unless they fully declare their unfeigned and utter abhorrence of their Father's Villainies, who have defiled the Land with the blood of the King;) That their Houses (which are neither great nor many) may be raised; that their memories may be blotted out from under Heaven, or only remembered with perpetual scorn, cursing and infamy. Since they have besides many other preparatory mischiefs, by murdering the King, disinheriting his Posterity, and dissolving this ancient and flourishing Monarchy, (as far as lies in their power and malice) put us upon this miserable choice; Either cowardly, basely, and shamefully to submit to their detestable and unsatiable Tyranny; or to be ever oppressed with a War in our own bowels; in which we must either expose our Lives and Fortunes to these men's covetous Cruelty, or help to enslave and destroy ourselves by assisting these Usurpers; or compel the Rightful Heir of these Kingdoms, our hopeful King CHARLES the Second, to plead and assert his Right by a Foreign Sword; being denied that just assistance, which as his Subjects we ought to afford him against the Murderers of his and our Country's Father; his own Enemies, and indeed of all Kingly Majesty, and Mankind; the dissolver's of our Parliaments, the Oppressors of our Liberties, the Exhausters of our Estates, the Suckers of our Blood, the Blasphemers of our Religion, the Damners of our Souls (unless God preserve us,) the Crucifiers afresh of the Lord of Glory, and putting him to open shame. The Cry of the blood of our King, the Voice of the Genius of this Nation, and the Alarm of God's Justice, call aloud to all honest men of Foreign Nations round about, to all loyal Subjects in these three Kingdoms, to all men of any common honesty or sober profession of Religion in all the world; summoning them to sanctify themselves, and lustrate and expiate not only this English Nation and these three Kingdoms, but all Mankind, and Civil Societies, by taking speedy Vengeance, and executing Gods and Man's severest Justice on these perfidious Truce-breakers, proud Usurpers, cruel Hypocrites, traitorous Apostates, and barbarous King-killers. We cannot but send the divided parts of our dead but endeared King, now a glorious Saint, (whom these men have with subtlety and cruelty lately murdered) to all the Tribes of this our Israel, to desire the advice of all good men, to see and consider, whether this hideous Villainy were committed with their consent, or deserve to be patronised with their Agreement; whether it was ever thus done in any Christian Nation or Kingdom, by any Army of pretending Saints, or any men, we say not of Common Honesty, but of the most exquisite and studied Villainy: Whether any thing can be produced out of Common Principles of sound Reason, out of the Laws of God, out of Christ's Holy Precepts, out of the Actions and Examples of any holy and good men; or lastly, out of any letter, sense or meaning of our Laws, whereby in the least degree to countenance, cover or excuse the Actions of these men; or to satisfy any man's Conscience, that doth not utterly abhor, and seriously endeavour to expiate the sin and guilt of such Detestable Villainies. According to the heaped and overrunning measure of their open sins, and abominable Villainies, so let every good man, that fears God, knows the Memory and Virtues of so good a King, loves his Country, will keep a good Conscience, and desires to save his own soul, not only withdraw all voluntary assistance from them, lest they seem approvers of their wicked Deeds, and be partakers of their Gild and Judgements; but heartily pray, and constantly endeavour the Restoring of the Crowns and Kingdoms to the only Lawful Heir, the late Kings Eldest Son, upon whom are many happy Presages, and great Expectations of Glorious Achievements; whom God hath in Mercy, we hope, to these Churches and Kingdoms, preserved out of the hands of these bloody Villains, who Declared in their Devilish Remonstrance, their purpose to destroy him, with his Brother the Duke of York, and mingle their tender bloods with that of their Father; whom special Providence hath prepared for great and excellent Designs, by the maturity of his years, by the procerity of his person, by the gallantry of his Spirit, by the excellency of his Understanding, by the gravity of his Manners, and severity of his Example, far beyond what is wont or expected in young Men, or young Princes in point of Piety and Virtue. This is that Person, this that Prince, worthy of his high Descent, worthy of such a Father, whose worth already promises to exceed all you can desire or hope for from a Good and Gracious King; upon him God, and our Laws, and our Oaths, commands all Loyal and Religious Subjects to fix their Eyes, to unite their Hearts and Hands to the Love and Assistance of him, to expiate the sin and shame of their former Errors and Defaults, which have produced such sad and abhorred Effects; to break the Strength, to extirpate the Persons, to oppose the Designs, and to revenge the Villainies, which have been with an high hand committed against God, the King, the Parliament, the Laws, and the Kingdoms, by these Miscreants, men always of desperate Fortunes, but now of so desperate Minds and Manners, that all their paths lead to the Chambers of Death, and their steps are descending to the pit of Hell. From which the Lord in Mercy deliver the people of this Nation, by prospering our Rightful King, and by his Valour and Virtues, redeeming us speediy from the sins, sufferings and tyrannies of these bloodthirsty and deceitful men; with whom no Agreement can be made by any man, who doth not desperately resolve to sin against the Holy Ghost, and eternally damn his own Soul. Lam. 5. 16. 16. The Crown is fallen from our head: Woe unto us that we have sinned. For this our heart is faint, for these things our eyes are dim. Eph. 5. 11. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. Consilia callida & inhonesta prima fronte laeta. Tractatu dura; eventu tristia Lecit. FINIS. In Martyrium CAROLI PRIMI Magnae Britaniae Regis invicti, Jan. 30. 1648. IN fandis refer as damno, scelerique dolorem Musa parem; qualis luctu sub morte Josiae Ingenti vallem compleverat Hadarimmon. Qualis ab irriguis oculis, seu fonte perenni, Uberibus manet lachrymis noctuque diuque: Qualem continuo rorans pia lumina fletu Optabat V●tes deplorantissimus olim. Sit modus hic nescire modum; quô postera discat Impia gens quantum sceleretur sanguine Regis. Regis ab antiquis oriundi Regibus; at Qui Tantum alios superans, virtute antiquior omnes▪ Quantum lenta solent celsae viburna cupressus. Ut scopulus mediis Neptuni in fluctibus ingens, In coelum tollens sublimia culmina, nullis Exuperanda undis, immotus pectore forti Perstat, & immensis haerens radicibus, omnc 〈…〉 Oceani frangit rabiem; n●● territus unquam Conjuratorum ventorum praelia temnit. Talem Te sensêre Tui; Te (Maxime Regum) Vidimus invictâ conatus ment ferentem Hostiles; variâ tentato mole malorum Inconcussa manet victrix patientia; sacro Horrore insuetum complêsti Carolus orbem. Aurea, quae pulchro pînxti dictamina libro, (Tam pravi caecique malis Lux & super aevi) Unicus implêsti vitae, moderaemine; passus Quas alii fingunt aerumnas; ultima mortis Humanam superant sortem miracula sancta. Rex idem, & Martyr; Trino Diademata clarus, Altior exurgens summ â mens ambition● Martyrium imperio junxit: Quartamque Coronam Stellis non gemmis fulgentem, sum●re pergit Impavidus Christi, & Sponsae mirandus Alumnus; Coetibus Angelicis proprior, mortalia longè Despicit. Ante pedes (facinus deforme) Rebellûm Dum prostrata jacet Majestas Regia, surgit Celsior, è ten●bris splendens Augustior istis: Comminuit quantum Satanae, vel militis ira, Omni-potens tantum Numen virtutibns auxit; Gratia grandescit, collo minor, atque corona Carolus evafit Magnus; Ludibria Trunci Ridet; Rex humilis sequitur vestigia Christî. Formosum in latâ vidistis valle Leonem; Quem trepidi cingunt Pastores; Rusticus horror Magnanimum sequitur telo, & clamore lacessens; Non hominum, non illa canum, petulantia terret Gradivum, generos a fugam quia bestia nescit Degenerem, motu nullo blanditur; at ille Constans incedit gressu; vultuque minaci Arduus insidias strepitusque aspernit inanes; Inveniet, facietve viam sibi conscia virtus. Per fastiditos sic Te tulit impetus Hostes Ingentem Regni Genium; dumque agmine circum Sacrilegûm spectant crudelia schismaticorum, Immortalis abis Regna ad meliora Monarcha; Lusit fatalim mens impenetrabilis ictum; Plectitur illaesus; poena est victoria; fanguis Non minus innocuum decorat, quam purpura Regem. Tutatur, quem non potuerunt Scepira, securis. Non dolor Hunc, non irae movet, non Carceris horror, Non tristis comitem squallor, non Monstra profani Judicii, non scommata, sputa, culumnia, pulsus Erectum laedunt animum, purissima lympha Mille modis agitata ni●et: Patientia totum Possidet; ac pleno sic fatur Numine Turbam. " Tetrius in vosmet, quam in me p●ccabitis; illa " Vulnera me cruciant potius, quae saeva paratis " In proprias animas, quam quae in mea corpora cives; " Non Deus hoc vobis, non sancta oracula mandant " Infandum facinus; Quamvis justissima summi " Dextra patet, (suplex hanc prono exosculor ore;) " Vos tamen injustos graevior vindicta manebit; " Qui genus humanum, & mortalia temnitis arma, " At sperate Deum memorem fandi, atque nefandi, " Castigatvehemens faelicia crimina poena; " Deprecor ultorem, mea vota novissima Christo " Pro vobis, patriâque meâ cum sanguine fundam. Dixerat; & dicto citius prostratus atrocem Imperturbato Rex invictissimus ictum Sustinuit unltu.— Diriguêre omnes; imo suspiria ducunt, Pectore quê is hominum, quê is non adamantinae corda: Non dolor, aut lachrimae, vastus stupor occupat orbem Ingenuum, irato suffusum triste pudore Erubuit coelum, pallentia lumina condens. Antiquae periit sic illustrissima Gentis Gloria; vix oculis unquam reparabile nostris Occubuit lumen; Domini quem dextra sacrâret In Regem, extinxit diro manus improba ferro: Publica libertas; Decora omnia; Religionis Sanctus honos, unâ pereunt collapsa ruina, Singula quae tantâ fuerant suffulta columna. In Chaos horrendum lapsos nox opprimit atra; Cum tenebris pondus; Terras Astraea reliquit, Sanguine pollutus Divi; Lex sancta recessit; Militis incubuit trucis insatiata libido, Omnia diripiens paupertate ambitiosa, Cui stravere viam Regni perjuria dira. Sic Lupus, & Vulpes, tecti ambo pellibus Agni Insidiis fallunt, non vincunt Marte leonem, Tam claro ut possint satiari sanguine fauces. Quoque magis possint factis obtendere velum Justitiae, miles procerum, plebisque senatum (Relliquias vulgi rudis, informisque Tumultus,) Dissipat; in sulsis toga cedere cogitur Armis. Carnifices dant jura prius; suffragia deinde Liberiora petunt, sequitur sententia tristis; Corripit, incusat, condemnat, destruit, idem Judex & Testis, Miles, Subjectus, & Host. Tantum Relligio, tantum nova lumina possunt Persuadere mali; lucis tum Lucifer almae Nomen, & Effigiem simulat; quùm perditus error Ingruit, & tenebras cupiens effundere vero, Immanes animos ad atrocia crimina ducit: Principis hinc sanguis libandus: subditus iras Non putat averti superûm, nisi tanta litetur Victima: non alio ritu placabile numen Sanguinei celebrant sancti: maculata cruoré Dextra Fraterno, Patris, Regisque pianda: Tantae molis erat sanctorum condere Regnum. Nihil habet ulterius vestris quod moribus addat Horrens posteritas; I nunc perjure supremum Ecoeli pergas sede exturbare Monarcham: Ind locum teneas latè dominantis Abyssi Regis; ut ad solium poteris conscendere dignum, Arbitrio Cromwelle tuo, dum cuncta reguntur Numine quis credet mundum rectore moveri? Flevit J. G. CAROLUS REDUX; Sive Nemesis ad CAROLUM SECUNDUM. CArole, vindictam celera; ne per fidus orbis Esse Deum tàm corde neget, quam pernegat actis: Imp●a, quae laeti, & ridentes facta tuentur Prosperiora mali, falso dum lumine cernunt Crimina, mox viderint quum tristia, turpia credent. Carole, vindictam celera; Te mille ruinis Pressa vocant tria Regna; uno Te vindice sperans Sustentat miseris reliquam patientia vitam: Te leges vocitant; sancto Te murmure poscunt Pectora, quae tacitis miscent susprcia votis. Carole, vindictam celera; Te justior ira Flagitat, & Coeli, & Terrae; Te Gentis, & Orbis Vox properare jubet; multo Te mersa cruore Et Patria, & Patris clamat Te sanguis inultus; Perfida quem fudit truculentum Dextra Rebellum. Carole, vindictam celera; victricibus Armis Ora petas exosa Deo; seu, fulmina ab alto Omnipotens quando Numen librabat Olympo, Usta Gygantae is cecidere cadavera flammis: Et subitam, & certam fundat tua dextra ruinam. Carolus adventum celeres; non Phosphorus almae Nuncius Aurorae post noctem gratior atram; Non requies fessis; calidis non umbra; minaci Gurgite jactatis non portus; non sitienti Rivus; certa salus non aegris; non morienti Vita magis laeta est, aut gratâ ment recepta, Quam Tua solicitis aderit praesentia nobis. Publica vita, Salus, Requies, Lux (Unicus) adsis, Numinis auxiliis fultus; Qui monstra domares Et foedam lustres Gentem virtutibus Haeros. Fatidicum vox est Te Majestate secundum, Et caedem ulcisci & Regnum superare Parentis. Vovit J. G. 1649 Manibus Montisrosanis sacrum. Votivam hanc quam vides, invidesque viator tabulam Nudam; non auro, miniove pictam, Uno Montisrosani Nomine (Vilis plebeculae Nobile ludibrium) Ornatam, sanctam, satisque celebratam, Malè foederatae Gent is infamia, (Heu justae meritaque nimis!) Foedam, deformatamque senties. Caut is, & Oceani proles barbara, Mente, manuque truculentâ, Solis detescens vitiis, & dedecore; Caetera vilis, & pauperrima; Ingens Christiani Nominis Dehonestamentum, & propudium; Busiridas, Cyclopesque omnes Immanitate superat nefandâ. Tragicum obscurae Gentis facinus, Ne nescias (Lector) audi. Regii vindices sanginis dum videri volunt, Nobilissimum Regii sanguinis vindicem, Majestatisque sacrae assertorem aeerrimum, Montisrosanum (Gentis decus, dedecusque) vitâ, Seipsos honore humanitateque privant Scythae. Quo enim nuper sancti, ligatique perduelles, Vafri, perjuri, truces, inexorabiles, Insatiabilem restringuentes Ambition is sit 〈…〉, Regium propinârunt poculo cruorem; Idem diverso nequiores isti Excipiunt, ex sorbentque animo Egregium impotenti vindictae Mactantes Heroem, Pristina facinora, Novissimo hoc piaverunt monstro. Quum enim venditum prius amissumque Carolum (Virtutum & Regum exemplar unicum Mirandum, inimitabile, aeternum) Propriâ neglexerant trucidare dextrâ, Montisrosani pergunt jacturam reparare caede. Imbelle●, fraudum, irarumque vernae; Uti nescientes, quam parti sunt victoriâ. Immites (proh pudor!) mitissimi Numines cultores, Amantissimum satagunt immanitate placare Deum, Humanum quasi cruorem sitiret, esuriretvé sanguinem Propriis qui non pepercit, nostrae consuluit saluti Christus, mitis, misericors, clemens, placabilis, ●nimicorum indultor, ligantium solutor Damnantium salus, crucifigentium Redemptor, Occidentium vita. Hunc, Hunc Christianae tantus Reformator sectae Audire, imitarive si velis Scote, Non carnificis Christiano praetulisses munus, Infame, detestabile, diris execrandum; Aut una saltem simplicique lainenâ Contentus, non dimidatâ, aut lentâ Torquere debuisses (miser!) Hero 〈…〉, Totâ. Quem non terruisti morte: ●ereri fas est, non irridere miserum; Nec ludibrio suplicioque simul excipere Praeclarum hoc virtutis aenigma, Humanaeque prodigium inconstantiae; Qui Sapìentiam temerìtate, Fortitudinem fugâ, Splendorem Tenebris, Foelicitatem infortunio, Victorias laqueo, Triumphos patibulo Clausit. Adeo demirandâ, deplorandâque rerum vicissit 〈…〉 line, In valles celsos videas desidere montes, In spinas su●ves degenerare Rosas. Suspensum satis, lusumque cadaver Rabiosi dum lacerant Canes, Invicta interim ridet Anima Trunci dispendia Montisrosani. Quem enim unus non capit Tumulus, bust●mve▪ Totus Hunc orbis excipit, conditque sinu, Docto, ingevo, molli▪ ver●c●ndo: Adeo non mendicatâ Pompâ, Aut ementito Honore, Funeris, fruitur, caretve, ●el jam superstes Heros; Quem immortale 〈…〉 esse jubent Gratiae, Musae, virtutesque omnes. Haec (viator) dum legeris, Luge si poteris; Si nescis, Actor esse Detestandus incipis, Qui lector & indolen● Ista deseris. 1649. L. M. Q. J. G. FINIS.