An Apollogie of the Soldiers to all their Commission Officers in Sir THOMAS FAIRFAX his Army.  
SIRS,  
WE your Soldiers who have served under your Commands, with all readiness to free this our land and nation from all tyranny and oppression whatsoever, and that by virtue of Commission both of this present Parliament, and from the hands of Sir Thomas Fairfax, whom now is our General at this present, and likewise also from all the late generals that were his predecessors in this our late war, which was, and is both justifiable and warrantable for you, which both by the law of nature, and the necessity of the land, through the permittance of God you have been called unto: Now we (we say) meaning the whole Soldiery, who have faithfully served both the State and you, without any by respect to ourselves, or any ambition of or to that great power that God hath been pleased to put into their hands, or that honour that he hath cast upon any of you, but on the contrary were always right glad, when that any conscientious, godly and judicious moral man was placed either in that great Counsel at home, or the public service broad, which we had thought would have been to the utter extirpation of all ungodliness and illegal proceed against the liberty of the Subject, according to the tenor of all their oaths, vows, declarations, and Protestations, through which hope and comfort the hearts of our whole Army were mightily animated, and unanimously went through all difficulties to the uttermost of our power, even to the adventuring of our lives, limbs, and estates, for the preservation of the Gospel, the liberty of the Subject, and the just and right privileges of Parliament, which we shall ever be willing to maintain, they protecting us in our lives, liberties and estates, to live under them safely and peaceably in the faith and practice of the Gospel, which was and is the tenor of our service, of which we have but little hopes, seeing every day where we come to our great discomfort, how the common enemies of our peace are countenanced and we disregarded, or rather contemned, and the honest party of the Kingdom in all parts slited, and in many places imprisoned, whereby we are made sensible, what we are like to suffer, when once dispersed, by which means we are enforced, or rather provoked, to frame or draw a petition unto the honourable house of Parliament, wherein we shall make knowing our grievances, whereunto we desire your assent, yet notwithstanding we are not ignorant of that great likelihood, which there is of estates to be sealed upon all of you, which will be in effect-but like the trunling of a goulden-bal before you, to make you to run after it, with an intent never to let you have it, but when they have once divorced you from your Soldiers, think to order you at their pleasure, and indeed if they once effect this their design, which we think is the disbanding of our forces, that then you must subject yourselves unto their wills, and so make a god of your Mammon, or else be content to part with what they shall so settle upon you, and also that which is your own already, and however it will be but a pu chase of a bondage of s●●very to you and your posterity to eternity, they being carried along as we perceive in many of their proceed, by those who not dare to both pray and preach for the destriction of our Army in these words, that God would be pleased to bring to confusion those wicked, ungodly Commanders, and damned trooping Devils, (for whose vistories the Lord make us ever thankful) but before this disbanding be brought to pass●, we hope they will out of a godly and sericus consideration think upon us their Soldiers who have faithfully served them in this their love and unhappy war, even unto the very subduing of their enemies, through the wonderful blessing of God, they themselves, lives, liberties, and estates together with the Kingdom's deliverances, being testimonies of our service, and not to expose us into the hands of such merciless men, where we shall not dare to make any profession of what God shall hold sooth or reveal unto us, nay not yet once to speak in the behalf of this our just and lawful service in which we have served them, which we do render in respect of our liberties, ●en thousand times more than all our Arrears, in which we hope they will not in the least deal discourteously with us, we being such men as are willing to walk by this rule, as to be content with our wages, and we having our brethren the Scots, for an ensample in that particular, and again, we say, it had been better for us never to been born, or at least to have been an Army, then that those honest people, who have shown themselves with us, and for us in these our sad calamities, and that ten times more for our just privilege and liberties, then for their own ends, then that they should suffer either imprisonment of body, or any other tyrannical and ungodly persecutions, and that without any redress or legal relief, who have been imbolened through those blessed achievements and successions of our Army, as to discover themselves for us, among whom we may count ourselves who are like to partake of the same afflictions, if not prevented before the anulity of our army, which if not that then there will be but little difference between you, our Officers, and us your Soldiers, witness that audatiousnesse of the ill affected in all places, saying of some of you ●heady, what was such and such a one before these times, besides those wicked and insolen: speeches wherewith the whole Army in general is mocked, scoffed and derided by those wicked, Matcha ●illians of the world undeservedly.  
Now these and many other such like reasons being taken into your serious considerations we hope will we be just cause for you to go along with us in this business, or at the least to let us quietlly alone in this out design, we desiring no more than what is just and right, according to all their Declarations, and Protestations to the whole world, that being our witness, thus leaving you to the powerful wisdom of God, which is only able to make you wise to all things, we rest so praying.  
Your servants so far as we may.