A DECADE OF GRIEVANCES, Presented and approved to the Right Honourable and High Court of Parliament, against the Hierarchy or government of the Lord Bishops, and their dependant offices, by a multitude of people, Who are sensible of the ruin of Religion, the sinking of the State, and of the plots and insultations of enemies against both.   clergymen with high church accoutrements fall in disorder from a tree by a church in disrepair 
The tottering Prelates, with their trumpery all,  
Shall moulder down, like Elder from the wall.  
Printed in the year, 1641.   

ZIONS' PLEA Against The Prelacy.  
RIght Honourable and high Senators, you are not unacquainted how the affrighting and turmoiling troubles of the heart speak in the faces of all true hearted subjects, expressing often by their sighs and groans, and also vented by their pathetical complaints, the moving cause whereof is our calamity, partly already seized, and partly making haste (as it is further threatened) to seize upon us. But to our shame and confusion of faces, we must confess, that of the provoking cause of this calamity, (namely sin) we are nothing so sensible as we should be; or if we complaint of sin, yet we find not out that Ashteroth or main national sin which is the conjunct or immediate working cause of all the evil that is upon us. When a body politic is run all into one festered sore of sin, and one benumbing bruise of judgement, than the universal and painful distemper taketh away the discerning faculty of the master sore that hath bred and fed all the rest, which indeed must either be sought out and removed (as the principal cause) or it will never prove a cure. Though the wrath of God be revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, yet for some one capital sin especially, the Lord departeth from a State, and turneth it upside down. This might be instanced in Israel, joining himself unto his idols, which made the Lord unto him as a moth, and unto the house of judah as rottenness. This principle Israel understood, when they sought again and again, and sought out the cause why he fell before Benjamin. The same course took josua in humbling himself to find out Achan, and the excommunicate thing. He might have found out, and also removed many other sins, yet if he had not found out the thing of the curse, he might have mourned his heart out, before he had prevailed with the Lord against the enemy.  
How to find out Achan, or golden wedge and Babylonian garment, hoc opus, etc. for it is not obvious to every man: Yea this spirit is neither found out, nor cast out, but by fasting, and prayer. Yet woeful experience, the common schoolmaster, hath formerly discovered to the Chariots and horsemen of Israel, and now doth discover this very same to be the very chief cause of our calamity that we pitch upon; we do not exclude our own sins, nor others sins, for many sins and many enditemens' are against us; but this is the master sin, as we conceive, and that upon this ground, that the capital sin of a nation is not the higest sin abounding in the highest measure (against which there is any laws established;) but that is the main and master sin, which is established by a law. And this is that framing of mischief by a law, that the prophet speaketh of, called in another place, the commandment of man establishing sin.  
Now give us leave (Right Honourable) to demand, what sin is established by law in this commonwealth, but the hierarchy and their acoutrements? and therefore we verily believing by the grievances following, offer to demonstrate that the hierarchy and their householdstuff, is the capital sin and main cause why all this evil is come upon us.  

I.  
First, may it please your honours to take notice, that the calling of the Hierarchy, their dependants, offices and ceremonies, whereby they subsist, are all unlawful and Antichristian.   

II.  
The hierarchical government cannot consist in a nation with soundness of doctrine, sincerity of God's worship, holiness of life, the glorious power of Christ's government, nor with the prosperity and safety of the commonwealth.   

III.  
The present Hierarchy are not ashamed, to bear the multitude 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that their calling is jure divino. Bu● they dare not but confess, when they are put to it, that their ca●ling is a part of the King's prerogative. So that they put upon God what he abhorreth, and will hold of the K●ng when they can do no other.   

iv  
They abuse many w●●es that power from the King, by changing, adding, and taking away at their pleasure, to the grievous vexation of the subject, the dishonouring of his Majesty, and the making of the laws of none effect.   

V  
The privileges of the laws and the hierarchiall government cannot consist together.   

VI  
The loialty of obedience to the King's Majesty and his laws, cannot possibly stand with the obedience to the hierarchy.   

VII.  
All the unparallelled changes, bloody troubles, devastations, desolations, persecutions of the truth, from forraines or domestics, since the year of our Lord 600. arising in this Kingdom; and all the good interrupted or hindered, hath had one or more of the hierarchy, as principal causes of them.   

VIII.  
All the fearful evils of sin and judgement, for the present reigning amongst us, and threatening against us (to omit the black desolation of our sister Churches) we conceive to be the birth of the womb●, and the nu●slings of the breast of the hierarchy.   

IX.  
If the herarchy be not removed, the sceptre of Christ's government, namely disciplin●, advanced to its place, there can be no healing of our sore, no taking up of our controversy with God; yea our desolations, by his rarest judgements, are like to be the astonishment of all Nations.   

X.  
Lastly, right Honourab●●; I● you strike at the hierarchy, removing that Ashteroth or grand Idol, and erect the purity of Christ's ordinances, we are confident that there shall be a ceasing from exorbitant sins, a removal of judgement, a recovery of God's favour, a repairing of the breaches of the Church and Commonwealth, a redeeming of the state, a dashing babels brats against the stones. Yea this shall remove the wi●ked from the throne, strike a terror, and astonishment to the hearts of all foreign and domestic foes. In a word, God will go forth with us, and smite our enemies. Yea a glorious prosperity shall rest upon Zion, King, State, and Commonwealth.  
Thus having laid a Dec●de of evils arising as so many corroding ulcers out of the body of the hierarchy, we wish your Honours might prevail with them by fair means; to take Hierax for a precedent without exception: who forsook the Prelacy (as Isidore witnesseth in his epistle 223.) meeerly for the unlawfulness of the calling; which calling was not then come to that height of unlawfulness by many degrees that now it is. A certain Monk being chosen Bishop, refused the burden, who after his death (as they say, Caesar. Histerb. Illustr. miracls. lib. 2. cap. 29.) appeared to his friend, speaking to him thus, Si Episcopus fuissem peritssem, If I had been a Bishop, saith he, I had been damned. To conclude, we desire to say no more to your Honours, but up and do what the Lord hath bidden you.  
Magnum iter ascendis, sed dat tibi gloria vires,  
Non est è terris mollis ad astra via.   
FINIS.