The Censure of the ROTA Upon Mr Milton's Book, entitled, The Ready and easy way to Establish A Free commonwealth.  
Die Lunae 26. Martij, 1660. Ordered by the Rota, that M. Harrington be desired to draw up a Narrative of this days proceeding upon Mr. Miltons Book, called, The Ready and easy way, &c. And to cause the same to be forthwith Printed and published, and a Copy thereof to be sent to Mr. Milton.  
Trundle Wheeler, Clerk to the ROTA.  
LONDON, Printed by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the sign of the Windmill in Turne-againe Lane.  
1660.   

The Censure of the ROTA Upon Mr. Milton's Book, entitled, A Ready and easy way to Establish a Free commonwealth.  
SIR,  
I Am commanded by this ingenious Convention of the Rota, to give you an account of some Reflections that they have lately made upon a Treatise of yours, which you call, The ready and easy way to establish a Free commonwealth; in which I must first bespeak your pardon, for being forced to say something, not only against mine own sense, but the interest which both you and I carry on; for it is enjoined me to acquaint you with all that was said, although I take as little pleasure to repeat it, as you will do to hear it. For whereas it is our usual custom to dispute every thing, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking Argument against Argument, and tilting at one another with our heads (as Rams fight) until we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden Oracle the Box; and seldom any thing, how slight soever, hath appeared, without some Patron or other to defend it. I must confess, I never saw Bowling-stones run so unluckily against any Boy, when his hand has been out, as the Ballots did against you, when anything was put to the question, from the beginning of your Book to the end. for it was no sooner read over, but a Gentleman of your acquaintance said, he wished for your own sake, as well as the Cause you contend for, that you had given your Book no name (like an Anabaptist's child) until it had come to years of discretion, or else that you had got some friend to be Gossip, that has a luckier hand at giving Titles to Books than you have: For it is observed, you have always been very unfortunate that way, as if it were fatal to you to prefix Bulls and Nonsense to the very fronts of your learned Works, as when you call Salmasius, Claudius Anonymus, in the very Title of that admired piece, which you writ to confute his Wife and his Maid. As also in that other learned labour of yours, which you style Tetrachordon, that is to say, a Fiddle with four strings; but, as you render it, a fourfold Cord, with which you undertake (worse than Captain Ottor, and Cuthbert the Barber) not to bind, but (most ridiculously) to untie Matrimony. But in this Book, he said, you were more insufferable; for you do not only style your Declamation, The ready and easy way, as if it were the best or only way, to the disparagement of this most ingenuous Assembly, who are confident, they have proposed others much more considerable; but do very indiscreetly profess in the same place, to compare the Excellencies of a commonwealth with the inconveniences and dangers of Kingship; this, he said, was foul play, and worse logic: For, as all conveniences in this world carry their inconveniences with them, to compare the Best of one thing with that Worst of another, is a very unequal way of comparison. He had observed, that Comparisons were commonly made on the wrong side, and so was this of yours, by your own confession. To this, another added, He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the Company of Chandlers and Tobacco-men, who are your Stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said, that he himself reprieved the Whole Defence of the People of England for a groat, that was sentenced to vile Mundungus, and had suffered inevitably (but for him) though it cost you much oil and labour, and the Rump 300 I. a year, to whose service it was more properly intended; although in the close, you pronounce them to be as very rascals as Salmasius, and all the Christian world calls them, if ever they suffered any of their fellow-Members to invade the Government (as O. Cromwell and others have since dove) and confess yourself fooled and mistaken, and all you have written to be false, howsoever you give yourself the second lie in writing for them again. After this, a grave Gentleman of the long robe, said, You had broken the heads of all the Sages of the Law, and played false in the very first word of your Treatise. For the Parliament of England (as you call the Rump) never consisted of a packed Party of one House, that by fraud and covin had disseazed the major part of their Fellows, and forfeited their own right, by abetting the ejectment of the whole House of Peers, and the greater part of their own (which was always understood to be the whole House) with whom they had but a joint Right. That they had been several times justly dissolved by the Army, from whom they really derived their Authority; and the general Voices of the People, in whom they had declared the supreme Power to reside; and their own confession upon Record in their journal-book. But this, he said, you stole from Patriot Whitlock, who began his Declaration for a Free State with the same words; and he wondered you would filch and pilfer Nonsense and fallacies, that have such plentiful store of your own growth. Yet this was as true as that which follows, That a great number of the faithfullest of the People assisted them in throwing off King ship; for they were a very slight number in respect of the whole, and none of the faithfullest that forswore themselves, to maintain and defend that which they judged dangerous, and resolved to abolish. And therefore they turned regal Bondage (as you word it) into a Free commonwealth, no more justly and magnanimously, than other Knights of the Post do their feats, by plain downright perjury. And the Nation had little reason to trust such men with their Liberty or Propriety, that had no right to their own ears, but, among the rest of their Cheats, had defrauded the very Pillory of its due. This being put to the Ballot was immediately carried on in the Affirmative, without a diffenting Pellet. When presently a Gentleman, that hath been some years' beyond-Seas, said, He wondered you would say any thing so false and ridiculous, as that this commonwealth was the terror and admiration of France itself; for if that were true, the Cardinal and council were very imprudent to become the chief Promoters of it, and strive by all means to uphold that, which they judged to be dangerous to themselves, and for the interest of a Nation, which they hate and fear so much as they do us; for if this Free State be so terrible to them, they have been very unwise in assisting it to keep out the King all this while; especially if they saw the people of Paris and Bordeaux disposed (as you say) to imitate us, which appears very strange; for by their history, any man would judge we had catched the disease of them. As for our actions abroad, (which you brag of) he said, he never heard of anywhere he was, until O. Cromwell reduced us to an absolute Monarchy under the name of a Free state; and then we beat the Potent and flourishing republic of the United Provinces. But for our actions at home, he had heard abroad, that they savoured much of Goeth and Vandal barbarism, if pulling down of Churches, and demolishing the noblest Monuments in the Land, both public and private, (beside Religion and all Laws, Human and Divine) may amount to so much. And yet, he said, he granted what you affirm, That they were not unbecoming the rising of a glorious commonwealth, for such are usually founded in Faction, Sedition, Rebellion, Rapine, and murder. And how much soever you admire the Romans,— ab infami gentem deducis Asylo, if you remember, they were at first but a Refuge for Thieves and murderers. In all Asia, Africa, and the New World, there is no such thing as a republic, nor ever was; but only that of Carthage, and some paltry Greek Colonies upon the skirts of Asia minor; and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 commonwealth there have been a hundred King 〈…〉 world, which argues, they should be the more agreeable to Mankind. He added, Commonly republics arise from unworthy causes, not fit to be mentioned in History; and that he had heard many Persons of honour in Flanders affirm, That it was not the Tyranny of Spain, nor the cruelty of Duke D' Alva, nor the blood of their Nobility, nor Religion, nor Liberty, that made the Dutch cast off their obedience to their Prince; but one penny Excise laid upon a pound of Butter, that made them implacably declare for a commonwealth. That the Venetians were banished into a Free State by Atila, and their glorious Liberty was at first no other, than he may be said to have that is turned out of his house. That the Romans were Cookolded into their Freedom, and the Pisans Trepand into theirs by Charles the eighth. That as commonwealths sprung from base originals, so they have ruined upon as slight occasions. That the same Pisans, after they had spent all they had upon a Freak of Liberty, were sold (like Cattle) by Lewis the 12. The Venetians hectored, and almost ruined by Maximilian the first, a poor Prince, for refusing to lend him money, as they were not long before by Francisco Sforza about a Bastard. The Florentines utterly enslaved for spoiling an Embossador's Speech, and disparaging Petro do Medici's fine Livereys. The Genoeses— But as he was going on, he was interrupted by a Gentleman that came in and told us, that Sir Arthur Hazlerig, the Brutus of our republic, was in danger to be torn in pieces (like a Shrove-tuesday Bawd) by the Boys in Westminster-Hall; and if he had not shown himself as able a footman as he that cudgelled him, he had gone the way of Doctor Lamb infallibly. This set all the company a-laughing, and made the Traveller forget what he was saying. After a little pause, a learned Gentleman of this Society stood up, and said, He could not but take notice of one absurdity in your Discourse, and that is, where you speak of Liberty gloriously fough for, and Kingly thraldom abjured by the people, &c. for if by liberty, you mean commonwealth, (as you do) There was never any such thing, as either the one, or the other; unless you will state the quarrel at the end of the war, which is very senseless, and directly contrary to all Oaths and Engagements: or can prove that Hanging, Drawing, and Quartering of some of the People, and selling others as Slaves, for taking up Arms in all parts of the Nation for the King, are abjurations of his Authority; and he wondered, you could be so weak, or impudent to play foul in matters of Fact, of which there are so many thousands witnesses to disprove you. But he was of opinion, that you did not believe yourself, nor those reasons you give in defence of commonwealth, but that you are swayed by something else, as either by a Stork-like Fate, (as a modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that Foul is observed to live nowhere but in commonwealths) or because, you have unadvisedly scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable eloquence as yours, would be thrown away under a Monarchy, (as it would be) though of admirable use in a Popular Government, where Orators carry all the Rabble before them: For who knows to how Cheap a rate this goodly Eloquence of yours, (if well manadged) might bring the price of Sprats, as no wiser Orators than yourself have done heretofore, in the petty factions, Greek republics, whom you chiefly imitate; for all your politics are derived from the works of declaimers, with which sort of Writers, the Ancient commonwealths had the fortune to abound, who left many things behind them in favour, or flattery of the Governments they lived under, and disparagement of others, to whom they were in opposition, of whom we can affirm nothing certain, but that they were partial, and never meant to give a true account of things, but to make them finer or worse than they really are; Of which men, one of their own commonwealth Poets, gives a just Character, by sorting them among the worst of men.  

— {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman},  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}—   
All which you have outgone, (according to your talon) in their several waves, for you have done your feeble endeavour to Rob the Church, of the little which the Rapine of the most sacrilegious Persons hath left, in your learned work against Tithes; You have slandered the Dead, worse than envy itself, and thrown your dirty outrage, on the memory of a murdered Prince, as if the Hangman were but your Usher. These have been the attempts of your stiff formal Eloquence, which you arm accordingly, with any thing that lies in your way, right, or wrong, not only begging, but stealing questions, and taking every thing for granted, that will serve your turn; For you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his Canting with signal Assistances from Heaven, and answering Condescensions: The most impious Mahometan doctrine, that ever was vented among Christians, and such as will serve as well to justify any prosperous villainy amongst men. He said, when God punishes a Nation for sin, The Executiones of his judgements, are commonly but malefactors reprieved, as they are usually among men; For when he punished the Israelites for Idolatry, he made use of greater Idolaters than themselves: And when he afflicts a people for their disobedience, to a just Government, and fantastic longing after imaginary Liberty, it is with infallible Slavery, for their deliverers always prove their Tyrants. This the Romans found true, for they had no sooner banished their Kings, but they were in few years glad to banish themselves, from the Tyranny and oppression of their Patriots, the Assertors of their Liberty, and that very Contest furnished their Free-State with Sedition, and civil War for 500 years, and never ended, until they were reduced to an absolute Tyranny, under the power of that faction, that took upon it to vindicate their Liberty; He added, that he could not but smile at one thing you said, and that is, That King and Bishops will encroach upon our Consciences, until we are forced to spend over again all that we have spent, and fight over again all that we have fought, &c. For if you did not look very like a Cunning man, nobody would believe you, nor trust your predictions of the future, that give so ill an account of things past. But he held you very unwise to blab any such thing, For that party you call, We have gained so abundantly much more than they have spent, that they desire nothing more, then to fight over the same fights again, at the same rate; and if you could but make your words good, he would undertake, they should be the first men that should set Bishops about your Consciences: for how vile soever you make the Blood of faithful English men, they have made such good markets of it, that they would be glad at any time to broach the whole Nation at the same price, and affored the treasure of Miraculous deliverances, (as you call it) into the bargain. This he added, was easier to be understood then your Brand of Gentilism, upon kingship, for which you rest Scripture most unmercifully, to prove, that though Christ said, His kingdom was not of this world, yet his commonwealth is. For if, the Text which you quote, The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them, and they that exercise authority over them, are called Benefactors: But it shall not be so among you, &c. be to be understood of civil Government, (and to infer commonwealth (as you will have it right or wrong) and not to be meant of his spiritual reign, of which he was then speaking, and expressly calls so; You must prove that he erected a republic of his Apostles, and that notwithstanding the Scripture, everywhere calls his Government the kingdom of Heaven, it ought to be Corrected, and rendered the commonwealth of Heaven, or rather the commonwealth of this World; and yet the Text, does as well prove Benefactors heathenish as Kings, for if our Saviour had meant to brand Kingship with any evil Character, He would never have styld himself King of the Jews, King of Heaven, King of righteousness, &c. as he frequently does, but nowhere a State-holder, or Keeper of the Liberties.  
To this, a young Gentleman made answer, that your writings are best interpreted by themselves, and that he remembered in that Book, wherein you fight with the King's Picture, you call Sir Philip Sydnes, Princes Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian Parents in England; A Heathen woman, and therefore, he thought that by Heathonish, you meant English, and that in calling Kingship, Heathenish, you inferred, it was the only proper and natural Government of the English Nation, as it hath been proved in all Ages. To which another objected, that such a sense was quite Contrary to your purpose, to which he immediately replied; That it was no new thing, with you to write that, which is as well against us for your purpose: after much debate, they agreed to put it to the Ballot, and the young Gentleman carried it without any Contradiction. That done, a Gentleman of good credit here, taking occasion from the former discourse, said, you had shown yourself as able a Divine, as a Statesman; For you had made as politic provision for spiritual, as civil Liberty in those pious and Orthodox, (though seeming absurd and Contradictory) grounds you have laid down in order thereunto, which being rightly interpreted, do say, or by consequence infer thus much. That the Church of Christ ought to have no Head upon Earth, but the Monster of many heads, the multitude, who are the only supreme Judges of all matters that concern him; a privilege they claimed, when he was upon Earth, when they took upon them to condemn him, and cried Crucifige: That all Christian laws and Ordinances have a coercive power, to see themselves put in Execution, and yet they ought to be subject to every Man's will and humour, (which you call his best light) and no man to them but in his own sense. That the Scripture only ought to interpret itself, (just as it can read itself) and every man is to take the interpretation in such a sense, as best suits with his own capacity, or his occasions; That every man may do what he pleases in matters of Religion, but only those that are in Authority, who ought not to meddle in such matters, as being of so different a nature from their Cognizance, (or any other) that if it be their will to Command the only true Religion to be observed, it presently becomes inchristian inhuman, and Barbarous. That no man can serve God, nor save his own Soul, but in a commonwealth, in this certainty, you go after your own invention, for no man ever heard it before: But if it should be true, it is a sad thing to think, what is become of the Apostles themselves, and all the Saints in the Primitive times, when there was never a Christian commonwealth in the World? That any man may turn away his Wife, and take another as oft as he pleases, as you have most learnedly proved upon the Fiddle, and practised in your Life and Conversation, for which you have achieved the honour to be Styld the Founder of a Sect. All this you call Liberty of Conscience, and Christian Liberty, which you conclude no Government is more inclinable, not only to favour, but protect, than a Free commonwealth. In this, (he said) you say right; For it is notorious enough, that since we have been but called a commonwealth, such pious Doctrines as these, have been so wonderfully propagated, that England does now abound with new Christians, no less than Spain did of late years, and of the same mongrel breed; all which agree in nothing, but the extripation of Christian Religion, and subversion of Government, to which your Discipline does naturally conduce. For certainly, the most ready and easy way to root out Religion, is to render it contemptible, and ridiculous, which cannot be sooner done then by giving Licence, and encouragement to all manner of Frenzies, that pretend to new discoveries in matters of Faith, these will quickly make it become a sport and mockery to the People, until it be utterly extinct; And this, some of the Church of Rome found true, who give a greater check to the growth of Reformation, by clothing some of the new professers in Fools Coats, and exposing them to the derision of the multitude, then by persecuting, and putting thousands to death. And this is the way you go which will never fail you, as long as there are fools and mad men to carry on the work. And with this if you could but introduce the wholesome Cannons of the council of Munster it would make an admirable Model for the ecclesiastical part of the republic, if it were not for one unlucky Circumstance, and that is that Knipper Dolling Proclaimed John of Leyden King, and not State-holder. This (he said) was an unhappy mistake and no less out of your way then that of the Fift Monarchy Men, who would have been admirable for your purpose if they had but dreamt of a fift Free-State.  
By this time they began to grow weary of your perpevall falsehoods and mistakes, and a Worthy Knight of this Assembly stood up and said that if we meant to examine all the particular fallacies and flaws in your writing we should never have done, he would therefore (with leave) deliver his judgement upon the whole, which in brief was thus. That it is all windy foppery from the beginning to the end, written to the elevation of that Rabble and meant to cheat the Ignorant. That you fight always with the flat of your hand like a Retorician, and never Contract the logical fist. That you trade altogether in universals the Region of Deceits and fallacy, but never come so near particulars, as to let us know which among diverse things of the same kind you would be at. For you admire commonwealths in general, and cry down Kingship as much at large, without any regard to the particular Constitutions which only make either the one or the other good or bad, vainly supposing all flavery to be in the government of a single Person, and nothing but liberty in that of many, which is so false that some kingdoms have had the most perfect form of commonwealths as ours had, and some republics have proved the greatest tyrannies, as all have done at one time or other. For many if they combine have more Latitude to abuse power then a single Person, and less sense of shame, conscience, or honour to restrain them, for what is wickedly done by many is owned by none, where no Man knows upon whom in particular to fix it. And this we have found true by experience in your Patriots and Assertors (as you call them) for no one person could ever have done half the mischief they have done, nor outlived the infamy they have suffered without any sense of shame. Beside this, as all your politics reach but the outside and circumstances of things and never touch at realties, so you are very solicitous about weeds as if they were charms, or had more in them then what they fignifie: For no Conjurer's devil is more concerned in a spell, than you are in a mere word, but never regard the things which it serves to express. For you believe liberty is safer under an Arbitrary unlimited power by virtue of the name Commonwealth, then under any other Government how just or restrained soever if it be but called Kingship. And therefore very prudently you would have the Name Parliament abolished, because it signifies a parley of our Commons with their Norman Kings. But in this you are too severe a Draco to punish one word for holding correspondence with another, when all the liberty you talk so much of consists in nothing else but mere words. For though you brag much of the people's managing their own affairs, you allow them no more share of that in your Utopia (as you have ordered it) then only to set up their throats and bawl (instead of every three years, which they might have done before) once in an Age, or oftener, as an old Member drops away, and anew one is to succeed, not for his merit or knowledge in State affairs, but because he is able to bring the greatest and most deep mouthed Pack of the Rabble into the field; a more wise and equal way (in your opinion) of choosing Counsellors, than any King is capable of. But he added, you had done worst of all, where you are most like yourself, and that is in that false and malicious aspersion of Popish & Spanish counsels which you cast on the present King. For it is well known to all the world, he hath preferred his Conscience before three Crowns, and patiently endured to live so many years in exile, rather than change his Religion; which if he would have done, or been moved with such counsels, he might long since have procured all the Forces of the Catholic world upon us, whereas it cannot be denied of his greatest opposers, That they are so jealous of their ill-gotten Purchases bought with their Crimes, that rather be in danger of losing a pig, they would (with the Gergosens) desire Christ to depart out of their Coasts. After this said, he moved the Assembly that I might be desired to deliver my judgement upon the Book, as he and others had done, which being immediatlypast; I knew not (though unwilling) how to avoid it; and therefore I told them as briefly as I could, That that which I disliked most in your Treatise was, That there is not one word of the balance of Propriety, nor the Agrarian, nor Rotation in it, from the beginning to the end: without which (together with a Lord Archon) I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not only in my writings but public exercises in that Coffee-house, that there is no possible foundation of a Free commonwealth. To the first and second of these (that is the balance and the Agrarian) you made no objection, and therefore I should not need to make any answer. But for the third (I mean Rotation) which you implicitly reject in your design to perpetuate the present Members, I shall only add this to what I have already said and written on that subject, That a commonwealth is like a great Top, that must be kept up by being whipped round, and held in perpetual circulation, for if you discontinue the Rotation, and suffer the Senate to settle, and stand still, down it falls immediately. And if you had studied this point as carefully as I have done, you could not but know, there is no such way under Heaven of disposing the Vicissitudes of Command and Obedience, and of distributing equal Right and Liberty among all men, as this of Wheeling, by which (as Chauser writes) a single Fart hath been equally divided among a whole Covent of friars, and every one hath had his just share of the favour. I told then, I could not but be sorry to find so learned a man so ignorant in the nature of Government, as to make disproportionate Parallels of councils as you do, where you compare the Senate of Rome with the Grand council of Venice, between which there is no Analogy at all: for the Senate of Rome was never the supreme Power of the People, as the Grand council of Venice is, but merely a council of State. But I wondered most of all at what politic Crack in any man's Scull the imagination could enter of securing liberty under an Oligarchy, Seized of the Government for term of life, which was never yet seen in the world. The Metropolitan of all commonwealths the Roman did but once adventure to trust its whole Power and Authority in the hands of one council, and that but for two years, and yet they had like to have lost their Liberty for ever; whereas they had frequently in all ages left it wholly in the power of a single Person, and found it so far from danger or inconvenience, that the only Refuge they had in their greatest extremity was, to create a Dictator. But I could not but laugh (as they all had done) at the pleasantness of your fancy who suppose our noble Patriots, when they are invested for term of life, will serve their Country at their own charge: This (I said) was very improbable, unless you meant as they do, that all we have is their own, and that to prey and devour is to serve, in which they have appeared so able and industrious, as if they had been made to no other purpose, but, like Lobsters, were all claws and Belly. For though many laugh at me for accounting 300000l. in wooden ware toward the erecting of a Free-State (in my Oceana) but a trifle to the whole Nation,) because I am most certain that these little Pills the Ballots are the only physic that can keep the Body politic soluble, and not suffer the humours to settle) I'll undertake that if the present Members had but a lease of the Government during life (notwithstanding whatsoever impeachment of Waste) they would raise more out of it to themselves in one year, then that amounts to; beside the charge we must be at in maintaining of guards to keep the boys of them, and before half the term be expired, they would have it untenantable. To conclude, I told them, you had made good your title in a contrary sense; For you have really proposed the most ready and easy way to establish downright slavery upon the Nation that can possibly be contrived, which will clearly appear to any Man that does but understand this plain Truth. That wheresoever the Power of Proposing and Debating, together with the Power of Ratifying, and Enacting laws, is entrusted in the hands of any one Person, or any one council (as you would have it) That Governnent is inevitable Arbitrary and tyrannical, because they may make whatsoever they please lawful or unlawful. And that Tyranny hath the advantage of all other that hath Law and Liberty among the Instruments of Servitude.  
J. H.