Letter to Lord Fleetwood

A Letter to the Lord Fleetwood.

TO you I make bold to address these few lines; 1. In compliance with that invitation of yours to us, to acquaint you with our dis-satisfactions. 2. To exonerate my own conscience, in not suffering sin to rest upon my brother. 3. Because you have the reputation (and I am persuaded justly) of a person truly fearing God, whose errors therefore I cannot judge incurable: However I shall contribute my poor endeavors to your conviction and satisfaction. 4. Because upon you principally the sin lies, and under God the remedy is much in your hands. You may easily imagine yourself an incompetent Judge in your own cause, there being even in good men too great a proneness to abet those actions which once they have been engaged in. Men's interests have a mighty power in the corruption of the judgment, Perit judicium, cum res transit in affectum. But I hope by the present straits, divisions and confusions we are in, God hath awakened you to a more impartial view of your actions, and opened your ear to Discipline.

My Lord, 1. If that be true, That when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh his enemies to be at peace with him; it may at the least afford you cause to suspect, that your ways are displeasing to God, whereby you have made thousands of your friends to be at enmity to you.

2. It is too too evident that these practices of yours carry a manifest contrariety to the spirit, rule and practice of the Apostles and ancient Christians, who always both pressed upon others, and practiced themselves subjection to those Civil Authorities under which God set them, and never durst entertain a thought of pulling them down no not although their intentions had been unquestionably good, and their necessity was evidently great, and sometimes the providence o • God fairly invited them; yet they always chose rather to suffer under them, then, being but private persons, sinfully to subver • them.

3. If your practices be justifiable, it may very well be doubted, Whether there be any such sins in the world, as Rebellion, Sedition, despising of Dignities, and the like? Forasmuch as there hardly is at this day in the world, and very seldom hath been in any age, more wise and religious Magistrates, than those Parliaments which have been the objects of your oppositions.

4. It may not a little stumble you, to consider what general offense your proceedings have given to the world, and particularly to this whole Nation. And if the offending of one little one be so heinous a crime, it must needs heighten the sin, and cause you to question your actions, if you consider, that none are more grievously offended at you, then the wisest and best men in the Nation, there being few or none such in the Nation (whose interests and concernments may not be suspected to balance their judgments) who are not mourning in secret for those abominations.

5. It is most evident and plain (what ever may be falsely suggested to you to the contrary) that you have turned against you the most fervent prayers of many thousands of God's elect, who cry day and night unto him for the vindication of his Name, and declaration of himself against all unrighteous persons and actions.

6. Your actions are manifestly repugnant unto all the rules of Righteousness Divine and Human. If Christ himself would not, and durst not meddle in the office of a Judge about private inheritances, because not legally called thereunto, what shall we think of you, who have taken this honor to yourselves, to make yourselves Judges, the Supreme Judges of three Nations, making even Parliaments (hitherto reputed the highest Judicatories of the Nation) give place to your private sentiments, and stand or fall at your Tribunals? Nor must you think it without sin, that you have trampled upon the Civil Laws and Rights of the Nation, by which alone Meum and Tuum are distinguished, and propriety secured, and by which alone those unrighteous actions are detected and discovered, which by Scripture are condemned.

7. What ever you who are concerned may think, and others, whose interests are in • erwoven in the same Cause, there are but few wise and serious Christians, who do not judge Necessity, good Intentions and Providences altogether incompetent to warrant men's transgressions of known rules, there being no action so wicked to which these fig-leaves may not easily be pretexed. To which may be added, That as your necessities have been very much of your own making, so there are many, and those as wise men, as any that have cooperated with you, that are altogether unsatisfied, as to the supposed necessity of your proceedings. And for your intentions, God only knows them; and however we have a sure Rule, To do no evil that good may come of it. And for providence, I think its voice speaks as loud against you, as it hath sometimes seemed to speak for you.

My Lord, I think all these put together, may a little make you to suspect yourselves guilty; and O that God would open your eyes, and put it into your hearts to repent with a repentance, no more to be repented of; to remember from whence you are fallen, and to do your first works; which the rather you have cause to do, because your sins are clothed with particular aggravations. My Lord, I beseech you believe it, I write it with a bleeding heart, Religion hath received its sorest wounds in the house of its friends. That those things should be done by men highly professing godliness, and that under the very pretence and profession of godliness, and they too tied up by so many and solemn engagements; O tell it not in Gath, &c. It had been better for some, that they had never been born (though for you I am persuaded better things, and that God will give you repenta • ce to the acknowledgment of the truth.) O my Lord, This is that which makes us weep in secret, which makes us sigh to the breaking of our loins, and we cannot cease to complain of it to God daily. Be not angry if I say, By you the name of God is blasphemed among the Heathen, and Religion really believed to be but a politick device and imposture to carry on designs by. My Lord, by those actions of yours it is, That Protestants abroad are judged, censured, reproached and threatened (as a people dangerous to Civil Authority, and despisers of Dignities) Protestants at home divided, as highly as can be (which hath always been the wish, design and endeavor of our most cunning and cruel adversaries) and exasperated one against another. You have made England naked to its shame before our enemies; you have uncover'd your Mothers nakedness, and exposed her to the danger of foreign invasions, and prepared the people of the Nation for a compliance with the very worst of their and our enemies. And, which is not the least (though mentioned last) you have done unspeakable wrong to all succeeding ages, in affording such Presidents, as will warrant and justify all imaginable tyrannies, oppressions, invasions of liberties, trampling upon Parliaments, and such other mischiefs, as will make posterity curse the day wherein their Parents were born, that had an hand in such • actions.

If you now inquire what is the remedy in this dangerous posture, that needs no taedious nor scrupulous disquisition; it is so obvious, that he that runs may read; vox populi (which ofttimes is vox Dei ) will tell you: There is one Remedy, (without which all other things are but palliative cures and skinnings over of the wound while it festers inwardly, and which alone is sufficient and satisfactory) and that is a Parliament, which though it be not universally free, yet if it have as much freedom for elections as former Parliaments have had in the late Protectors days, will give content to the generality of the sober and Parliamentary party in the Nation. My Lord, I hope you will pardon my plainness, The great grievance of the Nation, and burden upon the hearts and backs of the people, is the sovereignty of an Army: Nor will the spirits of English-men longer bear, that Parliaments should be empty titles without real power, or (as the King once said of his own) that the Power and Privileges of Parliaments should hang like Muhammad's Tomb by a Magnetick charm, between the strength and interest of an Army in an airy imagination of Authority. My Lord, The Privileges of Parliament are, as to civil things, our life, and the length of our days; and that solemn Covenant (which God remembers however men may forget) lays you under the highest obligation, that is possible, to maintain them, and having so notoriously violated them, you are the more engaged to a restitution of them: Nor will it any way satisfy, but exasperate the spirits of people, to have Titular Parliaments, while the power shall remain in other hands; it matters not whether Army or Senate or any other Name; for people are too wise to be deceived with Names, so long as the thing is the same for Substance.

I know it will be said against this, that you see no security for Religion, or the Interests of God's people; persecution will be brought in, and the cause you have fought for given up. But, my Lord, give me leave to mind you,

1. That a Parliament so constituted as before, will consist of Persons engaged in the Parliament cause, who have Estates to loose as well as you, (and in as much danger as yours) who also are as wise to discern and prevent such danger as those that dissent from them.

2. It were happy for us, if Christians would resume their ancient Principles, and mind duty more, and security less. It is indeed a distrust of God's Providence in the use of lawful means, that hath engaged you (as others in such cases) to sinful shifts, which yet you may observe, have been altogether insufficient to heal our maladies, and rather have increased and heightened them, and (which nothing else could have done) they have divided the sober godly Parliamentary Party among themselves, and thereby exposed all to ruin.

3. It is most evident (whatever is maliciously suggested or zealously surmised to the contrary) that there is in Presbyterians and many other sober persons, a real love and tenderness toward such as differ in lesser things; that Parliaments will consider the state of the Nation, and that in turbido statu, they will be necessitated to a Toleration of divers things, and the allowing of a liberty to them, which otherwise had not been fit nor lawful (it may be) to afford.

4. It is certain there must be a trust some where, and it is an hard case, that you will force all the people of the Nation to put their trust under your shadow, the influence whereof hitherto hath been very ungrateful to them, and deprive them of that experienced, approved, and generally desired way of Parliamentary authority, (by which, as such, England seldom or never received hurt.)

5. Although, if a suffering time comes, it is like Presbyterians as well as Congregational men, will feel it; yet really, when I consider all things, I do without haesitancy conclude, that it is unspeakably more desirable by true Christians, (though not by self-seeking Politicians) that some, yea all religious men should suffer, rather then Religion should suffer, as it doth beyond expression by such irregular courses.

6. Lastly, Though it must be confessed there is some danger, and so is like to be however things go, (and most of all when we enter into untrodden paths, the ill consequences whereof, because not yet experienced, are by few discerned,) yet it is not difficult to conceive of such a disposal of affairs as may give the generality of the sober and good people of the Nation, competent and moral security: And we must never expect an infallible and Mathematical certainty in political things.

If it be further suggested to you that you have gone to far to refear, I answer:

1. A retreat from sin is the most honorable part of that War: And the further men go on in sinful ways, the more are they out of the way.

2. When a man, returneth from his iniquity, and doeth righteous •• sse, as God hath graciously promised to remember his iniquity no • ore; so the prudence, conscience, and interest of men, will ob •… e them to deal very tenderly in such cases, and rather to bury such •• ings in oblivion, then by too strict a scrutiny into them, to occasion worse distempers.

3. Suppose the worst, which even jealousy itself can suggest, it will be no comfort to any at the last day, nor credit here (it may be nor security neither) rather to expose three flourishing Kingdoms (upon whose welfare under God the wellbeing of all the Protestant world depends) then to run a hazard for the personal conternments of some few men.

My Lord, I have done, I crave your pardon for my tediousness and boldness: I have delivered my mind with all freedom and plainness, as presuming that I write not to a worldly Politician, but a sincere Christian, and as behooves a Minister and Christian to write, and one who heartily wisheth your temporal and eternal welfare.

I Having by a good Providence met with this Letter of my much respected Friend, a Minister in London, to the Lord Fleetwood, which was delivered to him the 13th of this present December 1659, and perceiving it to be of very great Use to all persons, in reference to men's souls, and the Public, I found • y self much pressed in spirit, out of love to both, to publish it.