guards against our brethren mankind, and our rebels the wild beafts. For, if there can be no prefumption upon the rights of a whole nation, there can be none moft certainly upon thofe of a private perfon; and, if the robbers of countries be God's vicegerents, there is no doubt but the thieves and banditos, and murderers, are his under-officers. It is true which you say, that God is the fource and fountain of all power; and it is no lefs true, that he is the creator of ferpents, as well as angels; nor does his goodness fail of its ends, even in the malice of his own creatures. What power he fuffers the devil to exercise in this world, is too apparent by our daily experience; and by nothing more than the late monftrous iniquities which you difpute for, and patronize in England: but would you infer from thence, that the power of the devil is a juft and lawful one; and that all men ought, as well as most men do, obey him? God is the fountain of all powers; but fome flow from the right hand (as it were) of his goodness, and others from the left hand of his juftice; and the world, like an island between these two rivers, is fometimes refreshed and nourished by the one, and fometimes over-run and ruined by the other; and (to continue a little farther the allegory) we are never overwhelmed with the latter, till, either by our malice or negligence, we have ftopped and dammed up the former.

But to come a little clofer to your argument, or rather the image of an argument, your fimilitude. If Cromwell had come to command in Ireland, in the place of the late Lord Strafford, I fhould have yielded obedience, not for the equipage, and the ftrength, and the guards which he brought with him, but for the commission which he fhould firft have fhewed me from our common fovereign that fent him; and, if he could have done that from God Almighty, I would have obeyed him too in England; but that he was fo far from being able to do, that, on the contrary, I read nothing but commands, and even public proclamations, from God Almighty, not to ad

mit him.

Your fecond argument is, that he had the fame right for his authority, that is the foundation of all others, even the right of conqueft. Are we then fo unhappy as to be conquered by the perfon wl om we hired at a daily rate, like a labourer, to conquer others for us? Did we furnish him with arms, only to draw and try upon our enemies (as we, it feems, falfely thought them) and keep them for ever fheathed in the bowels of his friends? Did we fight for liberty against our prince, that we might become flaves to our fervant? This is fuch an impudent pretence, as neither he nor any of his flatterers for him had ever the face to mention. Though it can hardly be spoken or thought of without paffion, yet I fhall, if you pleafe, argue it more calmly than the cafe deferves.

The right, certainly, of conqueft can only be exercifed upon thofe against whom the war is declared, and the victory obtained. So that no whole nation can be faid to be conquered, but by foreign force. In all civil wars, men are fo far from ftating the quarrel against their country, that they do it only against a perfon, or party, which they really believe, or at least pretend, to be pernicious to it; neither can there be any juft caufe for the deftruction of a part of the body, but when it is done for the prefervation and fafety of the whole. It is our country that arms, our country that pays them, our country that authorizes the undertaking, and by that distinguishes it from rapine and murder; laftly, it is our country that directs and commands the army, and is indeed their general. So that to fay, in civil wars, that the prevailing party conquers their country, is to fay, the country conquers itfelf. And, if the general only of that party be the conqueror, the army, by which he is made fo, is no lets conquered than the army which is beaten, and have as little reafon to triumph in that victory, by which they lofe both their honour and liberty. So that, if Cromwell conquered any party, it was only that againft which he was fent; and what that was, mult appear by his commiflion. It was (fays that) against a company of evil counfellors, and difaffected perfons, who kept the king from a good intelligence and conjunction with his people. It was not then against the people. It is fo far from being fo, that even of that party which was beaten, the conqueft did not belong to Cromwell, but to the parliament which employed him in their fervice, or rather indeed to the king and parliament, for wheft fivice (if there

had been any faith in men's vows and proteftations) the wars were undertaken. Merciful God! did the right of this miferable conqueft remain then in his majefty; and didft thou fuffer him to be deftroyed, with more barbarity than if he had been conquered even by Savages and Canibals? Was it for king and parliament that we fought; and has it fared with them juft as with the army which we fought againft, the one part being flain, and the other fled? It appears therefore plainly, that Cromwell was not a conqueror, but a thief and robber of the rights of the king and parliament, and an ufurper upon thofe of the people. I do not here deny conqueft to be fometimes (though it be very rarely) a true title; but I deny this to be a true conquest. Sure I am, that the race of our princes came not in by fuch a one. One nation may conquer another fometimes juflly; and if it be unjustly, yet ftill it is a true conqueft, and they are to answer for the injuftice only to God Almighty (having nothing else in authority above them) and not as particular rebels to their country, which is, and ought always to be, their fuperior and their lord. If perhaps we find ufurpation instead of conqueft in the original titles of fome royal families abroad (as no doubt there have been many ufurpers before ours, though none in fo impudent and execrable a manner) all I can fay for them is, that their title was very weak, till, by length of time, and the death of all jufter pretenders, it became to be the true, because it was the only one.

Your third defence of his highnefs (as your highness pleases to call him) enters in most seasonably after his pretence of conqueft; for then a man may fay any thing. The government was broken; who broke it? It was diffolved; who diffolved it? It was extinguished; who was it, but Cromwell, who not only put out the light, but caft away even the very fnuff of it? As if a man should murder a whole family, and then poffefs himself of the house, because it is better that he, than that only rats fhould live there. Jefus God! (faid 1, and at that word I perceived my pretended angel to give a start and trembled, but I took no notice of it, and went on) this were a wicked pretenfion, even though the whole family were deftroyed; but the heirs (bleffed be God!) are yet furviving, and likely to out-live all heirs of their difpoffeffors, befides their infamy. "Rode, caper, vitem, &c." There will be yet wine enough left for the facrifice of thofe wild beafts, that have made fo much spoil in the vineyard. But did Cromwell think, like Nero, to fet the city on fire, only that he might have the honour of being founder of a new and more beautiful one? He could not have fuch a fhadow of virtue in his wickedness; he meant only to rob more fecurely and more richly in midst of the combustion; he little thought then that he should ever have been able to make himfelf master of the palace, as well as plunder the goods of the commonwealth. He was glad to fee the public veffel (the fovereign of the feas) in as defperate a condition as his own little canoe, and thought only, with fome scattered planks of that great shipwreck, to make a better fifherboat for himfelf. But when he faw that, by the drowning of the mafter, (whom he himself treacherously knocked on the head, as he was fwimming for his life) by the flight and difperfion of others, and cowardly patience of the remaining company, that all was abandoned to his pleasure; with the old hulk, and new mishapen and difagreeing pieces of his own, he made up, with much ado, that piratical veffel which we have feen him command, and which, how tight indeed it was, may beft be judged by its perpetual leaking.

First, then (much more wicked than those foolish daughters in the fable, who cut their old father into pieces, in hope by charms and witchcraft to make him young and lufty again) this man endeavoured to deftroy the building, before he could imagine in what manner, with what materials, by what workmen, or what architect, it was to be rebuilt. Secondly, if he had dreamt himself to be able to revive that body which he had killed, yet it had been but the infupportable infolence of an ignorant mountebank; and thirdly, (which concerns us nearest) that very new thing, which he made out of the ruins of the old, is no more like the original, either for beauty, ufe, or duration, than an artificial plant, raised by the fire of a chemift, is comparable to the true and natural one which he first burnt, that out of the afhes of it he might produce an imperfect fimilitude of his own making.

Your laft argument is fuch (when reduced to fyllogifm) that the major propofition of it would make ftrange work in the world, if it were received for truth; to wit, that he who has the beft parts in a nation, has the right of being king over it. We had enough to do here of old with the contention between two branches of the fame family: what would become of us, when every man in England should lay his claim to the government? And truly, if Cromwell fhould have commenced his plea, when he seems to have begun his ambition, there were few perfons befides, that might not at the fame time have put in theirs too. But his deferts, I fuppofe, you will date from the fame term that I do his great demerits, that is, from the beginning of our late calamities (for, as for his private faults before, I can only wish, and that with as much charity to him as to the public, that he had continued in them till his death, rather than changed them for those of his latter days); and therefore we must begin the confideration of his greatnefs from the unlucky era of our own misfortunes; which puts me in mind of what was faid lefs truly of Pompey the Great, "Noftrâ miferiâ magnus es." But, because the general ground of your argumentation confifts in this, that all men who are effecters of extraordinary mutations in the world, muft needs have extraordinary forces of nature, by which they are enabled to turn about, as they please, fo great a wheel; I shall speak first a few words upon this univerfal propofition, which feems fo reafonable, and is fo popular, before I defcend to the particular examination of the eminences of that perfon which is in question.

I have often obferved (with all fubmiffion and refignation of spirit to the infcrutable myfteries of Eternal Providence) that when the fulnefs and maturity of time is come, that produces the great confufions and changes in the world, it ufually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine juftice and predeftination; and, though we fee a man, like that which we call Jack of the Clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reafon must needs be convinced, that the hand is moved by fome secret, and, to us who stand without, invifible direction. And the stream of the current is then fo violent, that the strongest men in the world cannot draw up against it; and none are fo weak, but they may fail down with it. Thefe are the fpring-tides of public affairs, which we fee often happen, but feck in vain to discover any certain causes;

And one man then, by maliciously opening all the fluices that he can come at, can never be the fole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by intending and imagining to be fo); but it is God that breaks up the flood-gates of fo general a deluge, and all the art then and industry of mankind is not fufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In fuch a time it was as this, that not all the wifdom and power of the Roman fenate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor the courage and virtue of Brutus, was able to defend their country, or themselves, against the unexperienced rafhnefs of a beardlefs boy, and the loofe rage of a voluptuous madman, The valour and prudent counfels on the one fide are made fruitlefs, and the errors and. cowardice on the other harmless, by unexpected accidents. The one general faves his life, and gains the whole world, by a very dream; and the other lofes both at once, by a little mistake of the fhortness of his fight. And though this be not always fo, for we see that, in the translation of the great monarchies from one to another, it pleased God to make choice of the most eminent men in nature, as Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio and his contemporaries, for his chief inftrument and actors in fo admirable a work (the VOL. II.

U

end of this being, not only to deftroy or punish one nation, which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to exalt and bleís another, which is only be effected by great and virtuous perfons); yet, when God only intends the temporary chatlifement of a people, he does not raise up his fervant Cyrus (as he himself is pleafed to call him) or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good, as vices to do harm) but he makes the Maffaniellos, and the Johns of Leyden, the inftruments of his vengeance, that the power of the Almighty might be more evident by the weakness of the means which he chooses to demonftrate it. He did not affemble the ferpents and the monfters of Afric, to correct the pride of the Egyptians; but called for his armies of locufts out of Ethiopia, and formed new ones of vermin out of the very duft; and becaufe you fee a whole country deftroyed by thefe, will you argue from thence they must needs haye had both the craft of foxes, and the courage of lions?

It is eafy to apply this general obfervation to the particular cafe of our troubles in England and that they feem only to be meant for a temporary chaflifement of our fins, and not for a total abolishment of the old, and introduction of a new government, appears probable to me from thefe confiderations, as far as we may be bold to make a judgment of the will of God in future events. First, because he has fuffered nothing to fettle or take root in the place of that, which hath been fo unwifely and unjustly removed, that none of these untempered mortars can hold out against the next blaft of wind, nor any stone stick to a stone, till that which these foolish builders have refused be made again the head of the corner. For, when the indifpofed and long-tormented commonwealth has wearied and spent itself almoft to nothing, with the chargeable, various, and dangerous experiments of feveral mountebanks, it is to be fuppofed, it will have the wit at laft to fend for a true phyfician, especially when it fees (which is the fecond confideration) most evidently (as it now begins to do, and will do every day more and more, and might have done perfectly long fince) that no ufurpation (under what name or pretext foever) can be kept up without open force, nor force without the continuance of thofe oppreffions upon the people, which will at laft tire out their patience, though it be great even to stupidity. They cannot be fo dull (when poverty and hunger begins to whet their understanding) as not to find out this no extraordinary mystery, that it is madnefs in a nation to pay three millions a year for the maintaining of their fervitude under tyrants, when they might live free for nothing under their princes. This, I fay, will not always lie hid, even to the floweft capacities; and the next truth they will discover afterwards is, that a whole people can never have the will, without having at the fame time the power, to redeem themselves. Thirdly, it does not look (methinks) as if God had forfaken the family of that man, from whom he has raifed up five children, of as eminent virtue, and all other commendable qualities, as ever lived perhaps (for fo many together, and fo young) in any other family in the whole world. Efpecially, if we add hereto this confideration, that by protecting and preferving fome of them already through as great dangers as ever were paft with fafety, either by prince or private perfon, he has given them already (as we may reasonably hope it to be meant) a promife and earneft of his future favours. And laftly (to return closely to the difcourfe from which I have a little digreffed) because I fee nothing of those excellent parts of nature, and mixture of merit with their vices, in the late disturbers of our peace and happiness, that ufes to be found in the perfons of those who are born for the erection of new empires.

་་

And, I confefs, I find nothing of that kind, no not any Thadow (taking away the falfe light of fome profperity) in the man whom you extol for the first example of it. And certainly, all virtues being rightly divided into moral and intellectual, I know not how we can better judge of the former, than by men's actions; or of the latter, than by their writings or fpeeches. As for thefe latter (which are leaft in merit, or rather which are only the inftruments of mischief, where the other are wanting) I think you can hardly pick out the name of a man who ever was called great, befides him we are now fpeaking of, who never left the memory behind him of one wife or witty apoph thegm even amongst his domestic fervants or greatest flatterers. That little in print,

1

which remains upon a fad record for him, is fuch, as a fatire against him would not have made him fay, for fear of tranfgreffing too much the rules of probability. I know not what you can produce for the jultification of his parts in this kind, but his having been able to deceive fo many particular perfons, and fo many whole parties; which if you please to take notice of far the advantage of his intellectuals, I defire you to allow me the liberty to do fo too when I am to speak of his morals. The truth of the thing is this, that if craft be wisdom, and diffimulation wit (affilted both and improved with hypocrifies and perjuries) I muft not deny him to have been fingular in both; but fo grofs was the manner in which he made use of them, that, as wife men ought not to have believed him at firft, fo no man was fool enough to believe him at laft: neither did any man seem to do it, but those who thought they gained as much by that diffembling, as he did by his. His very actings of godlinefs grew at laft as ridiculous, as if a player, by putting on a gown, fhould think he reprefented excellently a woman, though his beard at the fame time were feen by all the fpectators. If you afk me, why they did not hifs, and explode him off the stage; I can only answer, that they durft not do fo, because the actors and the door-keepers were too ftrong for the company. I must confefs that by thefe arts (how grofsly foever managed, as by hypocri tical praying and filly preaching, by unmanly tears and whinings, by falfehoods and perjuries even diabolical) he had at firft the good-fortune (as men call it, that is, the illfortune) to attain his ends; but it was because his ends were fo unreasonable, that no human reafon could foresee them; which made them, who had to do with him, believe, that he was rather a well-meaning and deluded bigot, than a crafty malicious intpoftor: that these arts were helped by an indefatigable induftry (as you term it) I am fo far from doubting, that I intended to object that diligence, as the worlt of his crimes. It makes me almost mad, when I hear a man commended for his diligence in wickedness. If I were his fon, I fhould wish to God he had been a more lazy perfon, and that we might have found him fleeping at the hours when other men are ordinarily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his when other men were ordinarily afleep. How di ligent the wicked are, the Scripture often tells us, "Their feet run to evil, and they "make hafte to fhed innocent blood," Ifai. lix. 7. "He travels with iniquity," Pfal. vii. 14. "He devifeth mischief upon his bed," Pfal. xxxiv. 4. "They fearch out ini"quity, they accomplish a diligent fearch," Pfal. lxiv. 6. and in a multitude of other places. And would it not feem ridiculous, to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and for his indefatigable industry in ranging all night about the country, whilft the sheep, and perhaps the shepherd, and perhaps the very dogs too, are all asleep?

The Chartreux wants the warning of a bell

To call him to the duties of his cell;

There needs no noise at all t'awaken fin,

Th' adulterer and the thief his larum has within,

And, if the diligence of wicked perfons be fo much to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and exaggeration of their wickedness, I fee not how their courage can avoid the fame cenfure. If the undertaking bold, and vaft, and unreasonable defigns can deserve that honourable name, I am fure, Faux and his fellow gunpowder friends, will have caufe to pretend, though not an equal, yet at leaft the next place of honour; neither can I doubt but, if they too had fucceeded, they would have found their applauders and admirers. It was bold unquestionably for a man in defiance of all human and divine laws (and with fo little probability of a long impunity) fo publicly and fo outrageously to murder his master; it was bold with fo much infolence and affront to expel and disperse all the chief partners of his guilt, and creators of his power; it was bold to violate fo openly and fo fcornfully all acts and conftitutions of a nation, and afterwards even of his own making; it was bold to affume the authority of calling, and bolder yet of breaking, fo many parliaments; it was bold to trample upon the patience of his own, and provoke that of all neighbouring countries; it was bold, I fay, above all boldneffes, to ufurp this tyranny to himself; and impudent above all impudences,