A LETTER to lieutenant colonel John Lilburn now Prisoner in the Tower.  
SIR,  
HAving met with divers prints of late under your name, and among others one entitled, The upright mans vindication, or an Epistle writ by John Lilburn Gentleman, &c. unto his friends, and late neighbours at Theobalds in Hartfordshire, &c. It hath been much upon my spirit to present some small things I have observed in it unto your more serious and second cogitations; and that out of hearty love( such as one Christian ought to bear another) unto your inward, and outward man. Sir, I hope that you who have been seldom sparing( as I suppose counting it a duty) in remembering others of their faults, will not take it amiss in me to present some failings, which I find in you, unto your sight, it being not to upbraid, or reproach, but to advice, and counsel you for the future: neither can I believe you will be offended to see it in print, which was done to save you a labour, and in imitation of your own practise, which you cannot allow in yourself, and dislike in another, neither knew I how to convey it any other way unto you; But this may suffice for reason, both for my address, and the manner of it.  
Sir, I find you beginning with some texts of holy writ, A good name is better than precious ointment; A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches; A good report maketh the bones fat. Which I suppose you look upon as truths, or to what end did you quote them? and if so, then surely they are general, alike to all, yet by your practise in your subsequent discourse, you would persuade us, that you look upon them as onely concerning Mr. Lilburn; for upon every displeasure and conceit, you brand your supposed enemies with such calumnies( give me leave so to term them, for you can never make them cut upon your own knowledge to be true, unless you are able to search the heart) as make it apparent, that another mans name is no precious ointment in your nose. Suppose mayor Packer did render you as an Hypocrite, an Apostate, and a great combineing enemy with the Nations enemies( a Common-wealth he called it I believe, though you scorn to do so) and doth not a fallacy lurk here in the terms? you are no enemy to the Nation, and yet may be no friend to the Common-wealth; so will the Caveliers say too, who have a mind to England, even to ruin the Common-wealth. Suppose I say he presented you as such an one in his thoughts; must you therefore return the same, or as bad language? A great seeming religious man, a pretended religious man( is not Hypocrita latin for this?) one raised from the dunghill, or a mean condition, to be one of the cruel Lords, or unjust Taskmasters of the people of England. Then first, you do this in print, did he do so? Secondly, He hath the oaths of divers men taken before the Council of State, to give his opinion a ground; what you have for yours, unless malice, I see not, for you give not one reason to induce a belief that he is such an one. Admit he defamed you, is that a warrant for you to defame him? is this the effect of the Christianity you so much boast of, and the fruits of your sincerity, meekness, and uprightness you call your neighbours to be witnesses of in the same page.? Truly, Sir, the most Christian may question the three which brings forth such fruit. Look, Sir, I beseech you a little into yourself, you are quick enough in discovering moats in others, let not that beam of revenge, rancour, and fury continue undiscerned, nay, unplucked out of your own eye, a bitter vein of which runs through all your following discourse.  
The next thing I shall take notice of, is your address to the Council of State, which you style your honest address. Had you called it humble, it would have been a more proper epithet for the address, and better have become the addresser; for humility is a garb a Christian need never to be ashamed on: yet either you are wholly unacquainted with it, sure, or much undervalue it, your address having not any sign, or print of it in the least, in which if in any place a man might look for it. Indeed you are pleased to style it an address, and so let it go, yet had not you so name it, I could not have  told what to have called it; wherein I find nothing but a disorderly relation of your own, and your wives thoughts and actings, bombasted with extoling your own bravery, and gallantry in the field, even to that odious degree of comparison with any man in the Army( a thing had not you said could hardly have been believed) proclaiming your sufferings( which many judge your unquiet spirit the cause of) and your unmatchable constancy, notwithstanding all the temptations of wealth, preferment, &c. stuffed with invectives against the late Parliament, the General, Council of Officers, and the present Parliaments call; and brags of the greatness of your party( a course some have sworn you practised amongst the Caveliers beyond sea) comparing yourself to Titus Flaminius, whom therefore contrary to all History you will have called the desire and delight of mankind, though you are as far out in your history( it being Titus the son of Vespasian, that destroyed Jerusalem, who was styled Deliciae humani generis) as comparison; and likening the General and mayor Generals to the Triumviri Lepidus, Antony, and Augustus.  
Sir, Sure you could not judge this a probable way to prevail by; look to it, lest you have not as well practised as studied Matchiavels tenants, which you endeavour to pin upon others: for will any rational man think, that Mr. Lilburn could imagine( had he never so high a conceit of his valour and party) that he should threaten the General, Council of Officers, and Council of State into a compliance or obedience to his will? which were they men of the lowest, or most abject spirits, the very fear of their own safeties would cause them to oppose his return; for what less doth your discourse amount to in English than this, that you the great Patron of Liberty, with your party of hobnails, clouted-shoes, private souldiers, leat hern and wollen aprons, would extripate these great men, who practise the worst of Matchiavels tenants, and who by their gilded pretence of Religion, and by craft, cunning, deceit, cruelty, policy, and shedding of blood, have got into great places, and power, which they would keep in their own hands arbitrarily by will and pleasure to destroy all the lives, liberties, and properties of all the quick-sighted people of England at their pleasure.  
These are very odd arguments of persuasion, and rather intimate something like a design in you, not to have them recall you, that you might take an advantage to come over and raise tumults against them for denying your return. You will threaten and rail them into a condescension, and come trampling in upon their dishonour, and cowardice, or else make them accessories after the fact, to your cryed-out so unjust banishment, and so have a plausible ground to be spatter them with a more cruel, unjust, and harsh dealing with you, than with any professed enemy in England, Scotland, or Ireland. And indeed you made sufficient provision for this on all hands; lest they should be pitiful, you would exasperate and dare them, and then not knowing, but that their spirits might not be proof against your unheard of valour, you threaten them, and assure them of certain ruin at your approach, their so potent, so much followed, and so professed enemy. These are practices indeed Matchiavel might instruct you in; and Borgia, or Alexander the sixth themselves could not have outreached you in policy: but you had best look that you have strength to carry it on; for I suppose your histories will afford you little encouragement. In your Roman, you shall see Saturninus, Tiberius, and Caius Gracchus, a Triumviri too, who when they had raised seditions against the Senate, cried up liberty, and were backed by such a party as you lately boasted of, were slain even in the midst of their popular and tumultuary faction; so weak a defence is the multitude.  
You talk of the Law Agraria among the Romans, boasting you will do the like in England, conjuring the council of State as they love their own welfare, and the Nations, to get you a Pass; could you, nay had you done what you promise, Tiberius Gracchus did the like, he divided the land by the lex Agraria, neither did he bargain for thousands of acres for himself as you are reported to have done in your Lincolnshire land division, he divided King Attalus his money by the lex de pecunia Attalia; yet this Tiberius a man of the most noble patritian extraction, son of Tib. Gracchus( Censor, twice consul, and one whom often Triumphs rendered not more glorious than his virtue) and Cornelia daughter to that famous Scipio Africanus; this Tiberius I say, who alone had preserved twenty thousand Citizens at one time in Spain, had made such laws in favour of the people, in his very Tribuneship, an office sacred and inviolable, attempting further against the dignity of the Senate, was by Scipio Nasica, and an unarmed and gowned Senate, slain in the midst of his favourites, together with three hundred of his followers, with the bare trestles, and feet of the broken seats; so little safety is in the protection of the multitude.  
Then in your grecian histories, where it was not unusual for the Demogogues, and Ring-leaders of popular tumults to scandalise, and accuse those virtuous and valiant Captains, who by their great services lay open to envy and jealousiy; but mark the conclusion, when the people began to cool, consider, and want their gallant Citizens unjustly banished, or rashly murdered, They still turned their fury upon those incendiaries, in their ruin seeking a revenge of their own folly and rashness; as Plutarch in the life of photion, &c.  
Lastly, in our own histories you shall find that popular insurrections never raised their Ring-leaders above the gallows, as in Jack straw, Cade, and Wat tiler, who was stabbed by the Maior of London, in the height of his jollity, and in the head of twenty thousand of the rabble, without the least hurt to any of the contrary side: you are not therefore to put your trust too much in such a party, neither upon confidence in them are you too highly to esteem yourself, if you value your honour or safety.  
For your letter to the General I must profess it amazed me to see so little of reason, but less of prudence, and least of all of Christianity in a thing owned by Mr. Lilburn: you will have him to be the man who alone with the bare lifting up his finger was able to recall you, and I will admit it to be so, to avoid contests; was the charging him to have basely attempted your life, murdered three of your children, threatening to scuffle with neither small nor great but onely him, and at last concluding with a challenge, that as a sturdy fellow, you would give him satisfaction face to face, if he had any thing to say to you, a likely motive to induce him to satisfy your hearty, and earnest entreaty? Truly Sir, this is so far from favouring of what you so largely profess, and call our Hartfordshire neighbours to witness to, to wit, Christianity, that I profess I know not what to term it: can any man( do you think) be so senseless, as not to perceive that the General, had he had a mind to have done as you affirm, wanted either power or opportunity to have effected it in six or seven years? Surely, Sir, if my memory fail me not, you went into Scotland to him within less than that time, where such a business might have been brought to pass with little ado, and less suspicion; then for the murder of your children, a scandal so senseless, that one less than a madman( and truly wrath makes men mad) would have been ashamed to own it; for the last of a challenge, a thing the mere moralists so detested, that they generally pronounce it no part of true fortitude to accept of, or cowardice to refuse; and so abominated by Christians, that it is ranked in the first of sins, pregnant with twins of self murder, and murdering ones neighbour; nay it favoured much of a spirit, like those you are accused to be then too intimate with, the old cavalier I mean, and may give your ill-willers occasion to think it done to please them, and that they had a hand in, or at least instigated you to the penning such a thing: which should you set aside Christianity, even reason would be ashamed to own; would not the General be courted a madman to accept such an offer? pray consider then what must the offerer be thought to be. Sir, let me tell you, it was so far from bravery, that it was plain folly; might not he well answer you( as Augustus did Antony, who being routed and besieged, sent him a challenge) if Mr. Lilburn have a mind to die, there are ways enough to accomplish it? or may not Charles Stuart, on as good a ground sand to the General to get him a Pass? consider it in another, and it may be you will discern the unhandsomness of the action.  
Then for that word sturdy, I would desire you not to pride so much in it, it being always taken for a rebellious and obstinate disposition, despising the law of God and man; hence our English Law imposes it as an epithet suitable onely for rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, whose reward is the whipping-post, and house of correction.  
You also blame your wife, who, give me leave to tell you, in what you lay to her charge, all sober and moderate men must judge to be the more prudent of the two, and I hearty wish you had been ruled by her, both for your own quiet, and your friends comfort; as also that you had been silent in declaring the reason of your strange address; and your printing it in Dutch and English, upon mere presumptions of a denial, with your sending it to Paris to be printed in French, to Amsterdam to be printed in Latin and Dutch, to make sufficient use of. What misconstructions may this put upon your actions? and what occasion may it afford your enemies to say, Mr. Lilburn had more than himself in this action, for sure he could not attain to so many languages so soon? and who they were that would be so ready to revile the present Governours all men may know: what could this printing be sufficient for, unless an endeavour to exasperate foreigners, and give them occasion to defame our Common-wealth? what could those arguments against the present Parliament be sufficient for, but to render them mean, and contemptible; and to tickle and please the old cavaliers, those inveterate enemies of our countries freedom? and to say truth, you could not imagine the French would sand an Army, and the Dutch a Navy to settle you in England, that you took such care to state your case unto them; it must then seem to suffice for some other end, which every one will guess at according to his fancy: but these few among many will suffice to stir you up, I hope, to make a stricter enquiry into your carriage, and a deeper search into your heart.  
Consider, if God should say I have afflicted my servant Lilburn, and he is not humbled, but rather grown more lofty, and bitter, I have smitten his children, and he will not take notice of my hand; I will therefore chastise him with scorpions, since rods will not reclaim him: yea, may not this justly provoke him to lay more, and heavier afflictions on you, to take away the rest of your children, your wife, yea, your own life? I beseech you, Sir, lay these things seriously to heart, seek God earnestly in prayer, that he may discover for what end he hath smitten you, and endeavour to be humble and meek, and no doubt but he will look upon you in mercy, and restore you; which that he may do is and shall be the earnest desire of his soul, who is,  
Your present Christian friend,   

Postscript.  
SIR,  
FOr my name, I thought fit not to publish it, it being no part of my ambition to appear in print, being moreover assured that you look more to the reason, then the person of a man.  
Entered according to the late Act for Printing.   

London, Printed by Henry Hills, and are to be sold at the sign of Sir John Old-castle, in Py-corner, 1653.