A SEASONABLE CAUTION TO THE city OF LONDON.  
Printed in the year 1648.   

A Seasonable Caution TO THE City of LONDON.  
Gentlemen of the City,  
YOur Neighbours of Kent, and other Counties wishing well to them, take it unkindly, that( notwithstanding all these former admonitions) you should let down your chains, & give a free march to this bloody, cheating, schismatical Army at all hours of the night through your City to cut their throats, and lend them six thousand pounds to enable them to march: when they had no other design, but in a peaceable way to deliver a Petition to the Houses, demanding nothing but what the Parliament by their Declarations, Covenant, the Oaths of Supremacy and allegiance, and the known Laws of the Land ought to grant. Onely, being fore-warned by the inhuman assacination of the Surrey Petitioners, they had some men in arms a sufficient distance from the Town, to secure their Messengers: They have by their Letters to yourselves and the Houses manifested the clearness of their intentions to you all. They are known to be men of settled habitations and fortunes( for the most part), not vagabonds and Souldiers of fortune like the Army: Their commerce with you help you both to trade and feed: whereas the Armies insolent march in triumph thorough your city so far lessened your reputation ever since, that you constantly lose in your Trading 200000 pounds a week, and no Bullion comes into the Mint; whereby multitudes of you are undone, and yet the Armies arrears, and all other Taxes are exacted from you with as much cruelty as if you lost nothing. Remember the Butchery committed upon the unarmed Prentices, when Crumwell cried to the Souldiers, to kill man, woman and child, and fire the City; at which time his nose looked as prodigiously upon you as a Comet. Remember the scorn put upon you by a Grandee when you were enabled to put up our chains again; That the House had consented, your posts should have chains as well as your Aldermen, and did as well deserve them. And Weaver's word when your Guards came to attend the House, that threescore of the Army should beat 300 of them.  
Remember how unwillingly and jugglingly they restored unto you the Tower( first plundered of all its ammunition you formerly had in it) and part only of your Militia, and that clogged with many restrictions: They that bestow gifts so grudgingly upon you when they are weak, will deprive you of them again when they are strong, Adversity makes them your false friends, Prosperity your real Enemies, necessity onely ties them to you: have a care therefore you do not relieve their necessities, least you lose them; like the frozen Snake in the bosom, when they grow warm they will bite and sting. You seem to have forgotten the unjust imprisonment of your Aldermen; The unfaithfulness and inconstancy of their Votes and Ordinances, even for security of money, and land bought: the several Informations and Testimonies you had of their good intentions to borrow more of your money; not by way of loan, nor upon the public faith, but by way of plunder. Notwithstanding all these injuries and many more( as if God had infatuated you to destroy you) you suffer a corrupt faction within you to list men( to the amazement of your neighbour Counties) whose principles you first examine, and if they be not Independents, you trust them not with arms. I hear of a young man who being asked of what principles he was? he answered that in these doubtful times he professed no principle but gain: to whom was replied, Then we are of one principle, for we are resolved to keep what we have got. Behold the principles of these men that obstruct our peace! consider that Heaven and earth have denounced war against these men, and that God himself hath touched the hearts of all men as one man to rise against them, and demand to have Peace, Religion, and Justice restored. When the whole Kingdom shall rise in a flamme, what will be your lot but smoke in our eyes, and at last a consuming fire in your bowels: when you only shall be left to maintain this domineering Army with your money, and to recruit them with your blood? Many of their Officers say already, that the Country is exhausted of money, and you shall be their purse-bearers: but because you are a cursed cow, they must keep the Army about you, that the Souldiers may hold you by the horns whilst their friends milk you. Consider how absolute a necessity, and how general a resolution there is that all things should return to their old channel: If you stop the violence of this Torrent, it will swell until it overwhelm and drown you. You that are guiltless, join not with the guilty: you that are guilty, sin no more: there will be mercy for you if you repent, and amend in time. The very multitude of offenders will help to excuse your offences: Let not despair hurry you from one sin to another until you fall into destruction, as it did Judas, whose despair( by all Divines) is held to be a great impiety then his treachery: by the first he sinned against the God-head of Christ; by the second against his Manhood only.  
FINIS.