clares it by alphabet, and refers us to odd remnants in his topics. Nor yet content with the wonted room of his margin, but he must cut out large docks and creeks into his text, to unlade the foolish frigate of his unseasonable authorities, not there with to praise the parliament, but to tell them what he would have them do. What else there is, he jumbles together in such a lost construction, as no man, either lettered or unlettered, will be able to piece up. I shall spare to transcribe him, but if I do him wrong let me be so dealt with. Now although it be a digression from the ensuing matter, yet because it shall not be said I am apter to blame others than to make trial myself, and that I may, after this harsh discord, touch upon a smoother string, awhile to entertain myself and him that list, with some more pleasing fit, and not the least to testify the gratitude which I owe to those public benefactors of their country, for the share I enjoy in the common peace and good by their incessant labours; I shall be so troublesome to this disclaimer for once, as to shew him what he might have better said in their praise; wherein I must mention only some few things of many, for more than hat to a digression may not be granted. Although certainly heir actions are worthy not thus to be spoken of by the way, yet if hereafter it befall me to attempt something more answerable to their great merits, I perceive how hopeless it will be So reach the height of their praises at the accomplishment of hat expectation that waits upon their noble deeds, the unfinishing whereof already surpasses what others before them have left enacted with their utmost performance through many ages. And to the end we may be confident that what they do proceeds neither from uncertain opinion nor sudden ounsels, but from mature wisdom, deliberate virtue, and dear ffection to the public good, I shall begin at that which made hem likeliest in the eyes of good men to effect those things or the recovery of decayed religion and the cominonwealth, which they who were best minded had long wished for, but bew, as the times then were desperate, had the courage to ope for. First, therefore, the most of them being either of ancient nd high nobility, or at least of known and well-reputed an estry, which is a great advantage towards virtue one way,* ✦ Aristotle, a favourite author with Milton, remarks, in speaking of nobiVOL. III. L : but in respect of wealth, ease, and flattery, which accompany a nice and tender education, is as much a hinderance another way the good which lay before them they took, in imitating the worthiest of their progenitors: and the evil which assaulted their younger years by the temptation of riches, high birth, and that usual bringing up, perhaps too favourable and too remiss, through the strength of an inbred goodness, and with the help of divine grace, that had marked them out for no mean purposes, they nobly overcame. Yet had they a greater danger to cope with; for being trained up in the knowledge of learning, and sent to those places which were intended to be the seed-plots of piety and the liberal arts, but were become the nurseries of superstition and empty speculation, as they were prosperous against those vices which grow upon youth out of idleness and superfluity, so were they happy in working off the harms of their abused studies and labours; correcting, by the clearness of their own judgment, the errors of their misinstruction, and were, as David was, wiser than their teachers. And although their lot fell into such times, and to be bred in such places, where if they chanced to be taught anything good, or of their own accord had learnt it, ther might see that presently untaught them by the custom and ill example of their elders; so far in all probability was their youth from being misled by the single power of example, & their riper years were known to be unmoved with the baits of preferment, and undaunted for any discouragement and terror, which appeared often to those that loved religion and ther native liberty; which two things God hath inseparably knit lity, that "high birth is the accumulated honour of ancestry, which ther descendants are ambitious of piling up to greater heights: the further back it extends, nobility is deemed the more illustrious, so that the old nobles are ofte filled with contempt for men resembling those with whom their own honoun began. Noble birth is a thing altogether different from native nobility d character. The former rests solely on the glory of our ancestors; the latter is our own work, when, by upholding that glory, we have rendered it ap propriate and personal. This, indeed, seldom happens; for noble races are exhausted like luxuriant soils. During a certain time, the sons will emulate perhaps surpass, the virtues of their fathers; but at length the current d honour dries up, or is turned back; and families decline, fall, and sink from one degree of degeneracy into another still deeper. Of those most distin guished by spirit, fire, and energy, the posterity often degenerate into fool ii. 15. Modern times furnish numerous examples of the truth of th observation.-ED. together, and hath disclosed to us, that they who seek to corrupt cur religion, are the same that would enthral our civil liberty. Thus in the midst of all disadvantages and disrespects, (some also at last not without imprisonment and open disgraces in the cause of their country,) having given proof of themselves to be better made and framed by nature to the love and practice of virtue, than others under the holiest precepts and best examples have been headstrong and prone to vice; and having, in all the trials of a firm ingrafted honesty, not oftener buckled in the conflict than given every opposition the foil; this moreover was added by favour from Heaven, as an ornament and happiness to their virtue, that it should be neither obscure in the opinion of men, nor eclipsed for want of imatter equal to illustrate itself; God and man consenting in joint approbation to choose them out as worthiest above others to be both the great reformers of the church, and the restorers of the commonwealth. Nor did they deceive that expectation which with the eyes and desires of their country was fixed upon them: for no sooner did the force of so much united excellence meet in one globe of brightness and efficacy, encountering the dazzled resistance of tyranny, they gave not over, though their enemies were strong and subtle, till they ad laid her grovelling upon the fatal block; with one stroke vinning again our lost liberties and charters, which our foreathers after so many battles could scarce maintain. but And meeting next, as I may so resemble, with the second ife of tyranny, (for she was grown an ambiguous monster, nd to be slain in two shapes,) guarded with superstition, Which hath no small power to captivate the minds of men therwise most wise, they neither were taken with her mitred ypocrisy, nor terrified with the push of her bestial horns, but reaking them, immediately forced her to unbend the pontifial brow, and recoil; which repulse only given to the prelates hat we may imagine how happy their removal would be) as the producement of such glorious effects and consequences the church, that if I should compare them with those exloits of highest fame in poems and panegyrics of old, I am rtain it would but diminish and impair their worth, who are ow my argument; for those ancient worthies delivered men om such tyrants as were content to enforce only an outward D obedience, letting the mind be as free as it could; but thes have freed us from a doctrine of tyranny, that offered violence and corruption even to the inward persuasion. They set al liberty nations and cities of men good and bad mixed together; but these, opening the prisons and dungeons, called out of darkness and bonds the elect martyrs and witnesses of their Redeemer. They restored the body to ease and wealth; but these, the oppressed conscience to that freedom which is the chief prerogative of the gospel; taking off those cruel burdens imposed not by necessity, as other tyrants are wont or the safeguard of their lives, but laid upon our necks by the strange wilfulness and wantonness of a needless and jolly persecutor, called Indifference. Lastly, some of those ancient deliverers have had immortal praises for preserving their citizens from a famine of corn. But these, by this only repulse of an un holy hierarchy, almost in a moment replenished with saving knowledge their country, nigh famished for want of that which should feed their souls. All this being done while two armies in the field stood gazing on the one in reverence of such nobleness quietly gave back and dislodged; the other, spite of the unruliness, and doubted fidelity in some regiments, was either persuaded or compelled to disband and retire home. With such a majesty had their wisdom begirt itself, that whereas others had levied war to subdue a nation that sought for peace, they sitting here in peace could So many mile extend the force of their single words, as to overawe the dis solute stoutness of an armed power, secretly stirred up and almost hired against them. And having by a solemn pro testation vowed themselves and the kingdom anew to G and his service, and by a prudent foresight above what the fathers thought on, prevented the dissolution and frustrating of their designs by an untimely breaking up; * notwithstand ing all the treasonous plots against them, all the rumours either of rebellion or invasion, they have not been yet brought to change their constant resolution, ever to think fearlessly of their own safeties, and hopefully of the commonwealth: which * Charles I. had been accustomed to dissolve those parliaments which withstood his tyranny, or refused to gratify him with the plunder of the country. For many years he and his court subsisted upon fines illegally in posed. See in Rushworth (vol. i. and ii.) and in Guizot, (Histoire de Revolution de l'Angleterre, p. 397-399,) a list of the principal fines, which from 1629 to 1640 amounted to 173,650 pounds sterling.-ED. ། its hath gained them such an admiration from all good men, that little yet exalt them in their own thoughts, that, with all And, indeed, if we consider the general concourse of suppliants, the free and ready admittance, the willing and speedy redress in what is possible, it will not seem much otherwise, than as if some divine commission from heaven were descended to take into hearing and commiseration the long and remediless afflictions of this kingdom; were it not that none more than themselves labour to remove and divert such thoughts, lest men should place too much confidence in their persons, still referring us and our prayers to him that can grant all, and appointing the monthly return of public fasts and supplications. Therefore the more they seek to humble themselves, the more does God, by manifest signs and testimonies, visibly honour their proceedings; and sets them as the mediators of this his covenant, which he offers us to renew. Wicked men daily conspire their hurt, and it comes to nothing; rebellion rages in our Irish province, but, with miraculous and lossless victories of few against many, is daily discomfited and broken; if we neglect not this early pledge of God's inclining towards us, by the slackness of our needful aids. And whereas at other times we count it ample honour when God vouchsafes to make man the instrument and subordinate worker of his gracious will, such acceptation have their This trait in the character of the Long Parliament must always belong to a genuine republican government.- -ED. 1 |