Instrumental Causes of the Ruin of Governments and Common-Wealths

A LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE Lord General MONK CONTAINING The instrumental Causes of the ruin of Governments and Common-wealths, with an Advertisement of our present danger by a foreign Invasion.

THE true affection and high Honor I have for you amongst other your Country men, that desire your chiefest good, and rejoice with you in the late happy success God hath magnified you with before his people, gives me this confidence for a humble address in those papers, which were printed last year, January 1658. they being a few sudden Notes drawn up at that time upon conference with some London Divines, to give timely warning of the great Displeasure of God that hang over our heads; and had our friends then in place and power considered of them, and advised with godly faithful Ministers, what to do in a case of this importance, ruin had not come upon them so inevitably and suddenly. For your Excellency knows well, what great alternations of Government, and turning of things upside down, have been within the space of this last year in the land, very terrible in our eyes. These papers will acquaint your Excellency what great danger the Church of God & this State is in at this time, which every days experience more and more confirms the truth of: and since the impression of these papers Dr. Reynolds hath lately put forth a Sermon of his upon the same Subject of Church-Desertion, whose Judgment in the case is much to be reverenced.

I do humbly beg your Christian perusal of them, and if God shall make your Excellency instrumental to so high and noble a work, as the advancement of the Gospel, true Religion, and the pure Worship of God is (which is so basely oppressed in our days) you will be very happy; for God will surely honout those that honor him: and you, and this people shall find, that nothing doth promote the Peace, Plenty, Security, and flourishing estate of the Land, then Zeal and Forwardness to hasten the work of God's house, which he calls for. So says God by his Prophet Haggai, when he called the people to the building of the Temple, In this place will I give Peace, saith the Lord of Hosts, that is, upon this work of building my house, and setting up my pure worship: you shall find, I will give you peac and establishment, and not otherwise. I will add a little to what I have said upon the case, with your Honors good leave, to evince the great hazard we are in, if it be not instantly prevented. Common-wealths and Nations are brought to ruin by two sorts of causes, some intrinsical, some extrinsical. As all the works of nature are ruined in like sort, either by causes that are within them, or that are without them. So we see a house falls either by the rottenness of the plates and timber-work that decay within, or by high winds, or fire that assault it from without: In like manner it is with States and Governments in this world, they come to ruin by means of distempers in their own bowels, or by the force of foreign Invaders. We have woeful experience of the one, God grant we find not at length the mischief of the other.

Internal active causes of the ruin of Governments, are,

1. Sedition amongst the great ones striving for mastery, or conspiring against those that have the Rule.

A second is Tumults of the discontented multitude, grieved with the burden of heavy Taxes, loss of Trade, and cruel Oppressions.

A third is a phanatick spirit, or ignorant impetuous zeal in factions of Religion, which hath in many ages proved pernicious to Church and Common-wealth.

A fourth is Civil Wars, as saith the Lord by the Prophet Haggai, I will shake the heavens and the earth, and I will overthrow the Throne of Kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the Kingdoms of the heathen, and I will overthrow the Chariots, and those that ride in them and the horses, and their Riders shall come down, everyone by the sword of his brother. And again, the Prophet Isaiah, Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire, no man shall spare his brother. And he shall snatch on the right hand and be hungry, and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm; Manasseh Ephraim, and Ephraim Mansseh: and they together shall be againsh Judah: for all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

By these cruel Tallons God in Judgment pulls down Governors and people, when both are wicked, corrupt and rebellious against God, provoking him to do Justice upon them to their confusion.

My Lord, you have seen with your eyes in these few late years of ours, how busy these Instuments have been in this Nation to bring it to a general ruin: God hath called you forth now at a time when the last scene is abroad, the last blows of divine vengeance are ready to batter all in pieces, though the generality dream not of their danger: for it is God's usual course, upon the impenitency of a Nation, to go from one heavy Judgment to another till he hath utterly destroyed all, by giving up his people into captivity, and bringing upon them Forrein Nations to devour them: and this is the other extrinsical cause of the ruin of Nations.

When foreign Nations are through God's just Judgment called in upon them, then comes utter ruin.

Now whether our danger after all our former Calamities be such, let your Excellency draw up the conjecture from these Prognostics.

First, When God greatens our adversaries, and makes them more potent then afore: For when our enemies have malice enough and power enough to do us mischief, then have we cause to fear them, for God hath strengthened them against us, as he strengthened the Assyrian against Israel, Isa. 10.56.

And now hath not Rome made herself strong enough to the work, by the association of those two Crowns of France and Spain, and combination of all popish Princes? What think we, is the secret drift of that Conclave and bloody-slaughter-house (as we have found it) but to use the Armies of those Princes to overturn the reformed Churches, especially this of England? there was a time when they had will to hurt us but no power, in the Armado and Powder-plot, but now alas they have too much both Will and Power, as the letters of Forrein Agents forewarn us.

A second ground of conjecture is from our implacable domestic Contests, which have continued now these 20. years, and it hath been the usual conclusion of the wisest States-men, That when a people are wearied with home-bred long Contests, then a Forreiner may break in with good success and carry all; as Malvezzi observes well of Greece, that when it was wearied with civil dissensions, then Forreiners usually made it a prey.

May not our danger be concluded from hence also? especially if we consider a third ground for the conjecture.

And that is, when Forreiners carry before them a pretence or title for their just invasion.

Such was the policy of Amurath going to destroy the King of the Tartars, he took with him Islan brother of that King in the head of his Army, and by his presence the people of the Country more easily submitted to the Conqueror. The like policy used Achish King of Gath, when he purposed to carry up David in his Army against his Country-men. I need not say the case is much a like now, its easy to draw up the resemblance, if God over-rule not matters, and secure us and our Religion; as he did for Israel, preventing David from coming up with the Armies of the Philistines, least he should have assisted the uncircumcised against the Church and people of God, and in pursuance of his own private interest miserably have wasted his own Country: which no doubt so good a Prince abhorred in his heart, choosing rather to wait patiently upon God for a clear peaceable Call, then to wade to the throne in the blood of God's precious people.

A fourth conjecture is from the multitudes of discontented spirits in the Land ready to embrace a Forreiner, as the Tarentines embraced Pyrrus, and the ten Tribes Jeroboam with his Calves from Egypt, in hope of ease of their Taxes. The good Lord preserve his Gospel and true Religion amongst us, and choose such Governors for us as may be men after his own heart as faithful David was.

A since ground of conjecture is from neighbor Presidents; When God has let out the wolves upon the neighbor flocks of France, and Poland, and Germany, yea and Ireland, do we think all secure with us?

A sixth is from the Impenitency of this Nation, their rejection of God, and meet applications to him in great fasting and prayer, and true humiliation and Reformation, that we might obtain his Counsel and Protection. For when a people stand it out with God to the utmost, what is more likely then that God will destroy them to the utmost? I will not persume to enlarge further but to beg our Excellency speedily to consider what is to be done for yourself and for your Country, confident of your faithfulness and tender care, things being so far gone as that it is almost impossible to prevent the common ruin: and the Lord God direct your heart thereunto, with Courage, Zeal, and resolution against all difficulties, which use to accompany men of high place. Build upon the rock not upon the sand, for a house built upon the sand, cannot outstand the Tempest. How vain were Israel's shifts in this kind as the prophet Isaiah notes, chap. 22? where we may see a fit president for our case: When a foreign invasion was at hand, they opened their Armories and magazins, & prepared like wise men for the sieg; and when they saw the breaches of the City of David, that they were many, they repaired their bulwarks, scoured the trenches, built their Pallizadoes; gathered about the City the waters of the lower pool both for defense, and use of water in the sieg; they numbered the houses of Jerusalem, to see which might be fortified, and those houses that were upon the walls they brake down to make the city more impregnable. What fault was there in all this? none at all, but they left out that one thing that was more necessary then all these, as God tells them, But ye have not looked unto the Maker thereof, saith the Lord, neither had respect to him that fashioned it long ago, and in that day did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping and to mourning, and to baldness and to girding with Sackcloth, (this was of more consequence then fortifying and preparing for the war, and they had a Call from heaven to it by the danger that was approaching) yet behold joy and gladness, slaying Oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine; Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die.

Oh desperate impenitency! What doth God conclude hereupon? Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord of Hosts. Heer's now the like case; this people are banning one against another, they trust to their wooden walls, and filling up of the house, and listing of Regiments (for its lawful to use the means) but in this day of so great danger the Lord called for our Christian Armoury, mighty prayers and tears powerful humiliation and fasting, and especially true and unfeigned Repentance, and turning from those crying sins, that call in trouble upon us, and will irresistibly and speedily ruin all: but where's this to be found? dull sottish stupid men! Surely, my Lord, I can tell you for a certain what will become of such a people: Death, and ruin, and confusion is at their gates: for its an infallible Note of wicked Rulers, and a wicked people, whom God will destroy, that they cast off fear and restrain prayer before God.

Go to therefore quickly, and gather yourselves together, yea gather together, O Nation, not desired, before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, bafore the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger come upon you. Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his Judgment, seek Righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger.