THE Butcher's Blessing, OR THE BLOODY INTENTIONS Of Romish CAVALIERS against the City of LONDON above other places, Demonstrated by 5. Arguments,  
To the Right Honourable the Lord Major, the Sheriffs, and other the religious and worthy Inhabitants of the said CITY.  
Delivered by way of Prologue before a Sermon the last public FASTDAY,  
By I: GOODWIN.  GENESIS, 19 9 
And they said, stand back: and they said again, this one fellow came in to Sojourn, and he will needs be a Judge; now will we deal worse with thee, then with them.  
Sic ego torrentem, qua nil obstabat eunti,  
Lenius, et modico strepitu decurrere vidi:  
At quacunque trabes, obstractaque saxa jacebant,  
Spumeus, et fervens, et ab obice saevior ibat.  Ovid. Met. 
LONDON: Printed for HENRY OVERTON, and are to be sold at his Shop in Popes-head Alley, 1642.   

Right Honourable, Right Worshipful, and you the rest of the worthy Inhabitants of this great and famous CITY.  
TO engage you all as one man, to rise up at once in your might, for the preservation and defence, aswell of yourselves, as of your City, against that whirlwind of cruelty and blood, which rends and tears the Kingdom in pieces where it falls. You shall do well to consider; That yourselves in particular, and this your City, are the great hatred and wrath and indignation of these men: What they have done unto others, whether great or small, in ways of hostility, violence and blood, throughout the Land, they have done it chief in relation to you and your ruin; all the Mountains they have cast down, and the valleys they have filled up, have been to prepare themselves away to you and your City. They have practised in cruelty hitherto, and trained up their right hand in blood, that by that time they come to you, they may be Butchers by occuppation: they have taught their right hand terrible things against others, that their right hand might teach them terrible things against you: they have forced a disposition of cruelty upon themselves, to practise cruel things upon others, that so by custom it might become natural to them, by that time they shall come to do execution upon you. They have tempered a cup, the mixture whereof is red and they pour out hereof daily, but you are their wicked ones that must be made to wring out the drags thereof, & to drink them up. The rods wherewith they chastise your Brethren elsewhere favourers of the same cause with you, will (you must look) be turned into Scorpions when they come to you: and if Cheshire and Shropshire and other parts of the Land have been punished sevenfold, London (doubtless) shall be punished seventy times seven fold if they shall enter and possess the Gates thereof. These heights and depths of their rage and fury against you and your City are demonstrable upon these 5 grounds.  
First, That purity of Religion, which is a scourge in their sides, and thorns in their eyes, hath its Throne amongst you. That generation, which is the great abhorring of their souls, I mean the generation of the righteous, of men and women feareing God, which are in other places by ten and by fifties are with you by hundreds and by thousands, your glean of them are better than the Vintage of other places; your City is a Sanctuary unto them, and place of refuge from all their quarters: you are looked upon as the great friend, and favourers and protectors of them: You and your City have been the great Bulwark against those Prelatical invasions, wherewith the Kingdom was so sorely infested and annoyed of late, and wherewith the truth and purity of Religion professed in it, was in danger of being turned upside down, Had not this City of yours been a morsel too big for them to swallow, had it not stuck so long in their Throats as it did: the whole Kingdom would have gone down merrily without any straining; but now this sticking in their throat as it did, hath caused them to vomit and cast up what they had devoured otherwise. And this (doubtless) is one main ground and cause of their advancing and heightening themselves in malice, and purposes of revenge against you: you are the principal shield and Buckler of that Religion which they labour to destroy and root up root and branch, not out of the Land only, but out of the whole world, if it were in their power.  
Secondly, You and your City are looked upon, as the chief protection and safeguard of that Honourable Assembly and Court of Parliament, and those worthy Members thereof who have not prevaricated, or turned head upno the Kingdom, and the great trust reposed in them but stand by the cause they have undertaken against all the fiery encounters and oppositions both of men and Devils. These being the men, whose blood must be the ransom of these Sons of Belial, if ever they be redeemed out of the hand of death and condemnation, which they have drawn upon their heads by those desperate courses they have run, and you being the men (as they judge and herein judge not much amiss) that chiefly stand between them and their ransom, and will not suffer them to drink that blood that should heal them: You can expect none other but that that Spirit of malice and blood which possesseth them, should rage's and roar against you more than others, and that the furnace of their indignation shall be het seven times hotter than ordinary for your burning; when men are bend and have any strong desires to offer violence or do mischief unto others, and are opposed in the execution of their desires herein, it is commonly found, that they double the strength of their desires to do mischief to those that oppose them in such a way, above the desires they had of doing mischief to those others. Thus the men of Soaom, having an 〈◊〉 to offer violence to those two men (as they supposed them to be) that were come to Lot's House, and Lot interposing himself to prevent and inner the execution of those evil intentions, they threatened him, that they would deal worse with him, than they would with them, Gen. 19 9 and the reason hereof is plain; because men seldom desire any thing with so great a desire, as they do not to be opposed or hindered in the prosecution of their desires: They can more willingly quit their desires of many things which yet please them, freely and of themselves, than they can endure strongly to be opposed and interrupted in the satisfaction of them: This than is another reason, why you should be the height of their malice and revenge.  
Thirdly, They know that you and your City are the Parents (as it were) that have begotten and brought forth all that opposition which hath appeared elsewhere, or been raised against them and their proceed in the Land: that it hath been your zeal, in raising men and arms and moneys, that hath provoked multitudes in the Land to do likewise. They look upon others as partly passive in that very activeness wherein they have declared themselves against them, & so make them (its like) an allowance accordingly in their hatred and thoughts of revenge against them. But upon you they look not only as merely active against them out of an inward principle of your own, but as actuating and animating others also. And therefore what they deduct from, or abate in their hatred towards these, they will add to their hatred and malice against you: you must look to pay for yourselves and for your Children too. Men use to be more merciful to those that are drawn by others to practise evil against them, in case they come under their power, then to those that provoke and whet them on to do it. God himself laid a heavier punishment upon Eve, than he did upon Adan, because she was the temptress, and partly by her example, partly by her solicitation wrought upon his infirmity, and drew him into part and fellowship with her in the sin. Your righteousness, is their sin.  
Fourthly you are the great remora & bar in the way of their proceed you separate between them & their desires, between them & their so dear beloved ends: there is a contrary gale blows so strong and stiff from your quar●er that, they cannot make he port or Haven, that they have been bound for this long time; You are they that multiply their sorrows, and increase their pains in bringing forth: you make them buy their gold at a dearer rate, than they are willing and had hope to have bought it: you keep them still in the sweat of their brows, whereas they had hoped before this, to have been eating their bread. You are to them as Moracats sitting in the Gate was to Haman, all his honour and greatness and favour with the King, did not avail him, he was not himself for all his great enjoyments because Mordacai was not yet brought under, to likc the dust at his feet: so all the success that these men have in other parts of the Land, their plundering of this town and of that, all the rapine and spoil they have made, all the prey & booty they have taken their seizing upon this man & upon that, in a word, all that they have done or have hope to do otherwise, will give them little satisfaction, will not make them fat, so long as you and your City are in peace, and able to withstand them. And therefore as Haman hated Mordicei more than all the nation of the Jews besides, and sought the ruin and destruction of these only or chief by way of subordination and reference to his (as appears by the Story) for he had no quarrel to them, but for Mordicais sake, and upon occasion of that offence given by him. Even so (doubtless) those men of wickedness we speak of burn in hatred and desires of revenge against you, more than they do against all other places in the Land besides: and what outrages and insolences of violence they practise elsewhere is chief to accommodate and strengthen their hand, and to be subservient unto them for the rapine and ruin of you and your City. Their plundering and pillaging and spoiling in other places, is but the tuneing of their instruments, the plundering and pillaging of you, would be playing out of their song or ditty: were it not for you, they might have all things according to their hearts desire: they might eat those apples their souls so much lust after, they might feed fat upon the sweet bread of Romish superstitions and Doctrines. They might have Organs and Altars, Cringing and Crouching, they might have Copes and Surplisses, Wafers and Tapers Crucifixes and Crosses, Pilgrimages and Pictures, with all the accourements, and the whole profane glory of the Romish Synagogue. Were it not for you, they might have Lucifer put again into Heaven, and Angels of light thrown down into Hell instead of him; Prelates I mean restored to their former thrones and dignities and faithful Ministers of the Gospel the great troublers of the Israel of the Devil, trodden and trampled on like clay and mire in the streets: they might were it not for you have every man of them a door open: which leadeth to his hearts desire. They that desired to live loosely; might do it without paying any tribute of being checked or reproved for it: and so they that had a mind to live profanely, to oppress, to tyrannize, to be drunken to be unclean, etc. they might have gone roundly to Hell every man his way no man ask them why do you so, which (indeed) is the sum of all happiness that these men desire or seek after. Whereas you and your City not being made their footstool, they cannot get up into those thrones; the summer fruits that their souls so much lust after, do not ripen because of the cold air that breathes upon them from your City. So that it is no marvel, if the spoil and ruin of your City, be the first borne of all the designs of their rage and cruelties You are the heir that stand between them and the inheritance, if they can kill you, the inheritance shall be theirs.  
Fiftly and lastly, you and your City are looked upon as the great Magazine of wealth, riches, & treasure in the Kingdom: the garden of the Hesperides, where the trees grow that bear the golden apples, is known to be compassed about with the walls of your City. Now the love of these men is so above measure excessive to your Silver and gold, their souls cleave so to it, that except you will give it them into their bosoms quietly, and in a way of peace, they must needs, though with the extremest peril and hazard of their own lives, attempt yours, for your money's sake. This wine of yours looks so red and pleasantly in the glass upon them; that their hearts are inflamed with it: yea the zeal of it hath so fare eat them up that they cannot live without it; you must give it them, you must let them have it one way or other, or else they die. And therefore their resolution to make the adventure howsoever upon you, may well be like that of the four Lepers (2 King. 7. 5.) to adventure themselves into the camp of the Aramites; If they sat still, or if they went into the City, they were certainly dead: and if they went amongst the Aramites, if the worst came to the worst, they could but die; but by making the attempt they might possibly live; so that desperate Generation we speak of, being not able to live, not knowing how to do, how to subsist without the spoil of your City, and the possession of your treasure looking upon themselves as dead men without it, may in a way of ordinary discourse and reason, come to this issue in point of resolution against you, to make the attempt and venture upon you howsoever, if they shall miscarry inmaking the attempt, they were but dead men if they shall sit still and make no attempt upon you, they were but dead men neither: and this was more certainly death, than the other, in making the attempt they might (haply) prosper and so live, you have this passage, 2 Chron. 14. 14. that Asa and his men spoiled all the Cities of the Ethiopians, for this reason, because their was much in them: And they spoilt all the Cities (saith the text) for there was exceeding much spoil in them. The abundance of wealth and treasure in them, was the reason why they were plundered and ransacked and destroyed. Plenty of silver and gold are of dangerous consequence and influence, to advance the courage and resolutions of enemies; to turn weak men into strong, and cowards and such as are fearful otherwise, into men of valour and resolution. So that now this is another reason very considerable, why you and your Cities above all other persons or places in the Kingdom should be predestinated to spoil and ruin in these men's counsels, intentions and decrees: because in other places they can but glean; but here they know they shall have a full harvest.  
Now then, it being a thing so apparent and evident upon these reasons (and many more possible of like importance might be added) that you and your City are principally intended for the great sacrifice to be offered upon the service of the rage, malice, hatred and cruelty of these men, doth it not concern you in special manner; more than all the Kingdom besides, to look about you, and quit yourselves like men, yea and more than like men (if it were possible) to cast if it were your whole substance into the treasury of your preservation and peace? Let any thing you shall keep back of what is in your power to do or give for the advancement of the great service that hath been recomended unto you, every time you see it or think upon it, be as an omen or presage unto you, of the loss and spoil of your City, if you shall still detain it. You know that whereas ordinarily men use to cut or clip their hair with shears or sissers, in some diseases which are dangerous and violent, they shave it close with a razor preferring baldness and nakedness for a time, before loss of life. In like manner, though moderation and sobriety of expense be the commendation of wise men at other times; yet cases of exigency alter the rule, and make any thing less than what men are able to do with their utmost might, extremity of weakness and misprision. Nothing less than all things, is like to do any thing.  
 jugulent homines, surgunt de nocte, Latrones.  
 teipsum serves, non expergisceris?  Horat. 
FINIS.