mmanders, that have sucked the sweet
of this Doctrine) had them never so much as entred into their thoughts,
nor could they be so depraved, though they were Masters only of the Light
of Nature to direct them. For Common sence will tell them, that whoever
are our lawful Superiours, and invested with the supreame Authority,
either by their own vertue, or the peoples due Election, have then a just
right to challenge submission to their precepts, and that we acquiesce in
their determinations; since there is in nature no other expedient to
preserve us from everlasting confusion: But it is the height of all
impertinency to conceive, that those which are a part of themselves, and
can in so great a Body, have no other interests, should (without the
manifest hand of God were in it to infatuate all your proceedings) fall
into such exorbitant contradiction to their own good, as a child of four
years old would not be guilty of; and as this Pamphleter wildly suggests
in pp. 6. 11. 27, &c. did they steer their course by the known laws of the
Land, and as obedient Subjects should do, who without the King and his
Peers, are but the Carkass of a Parliament, as destitute of the Soul which
should inform and give it being. And if so small a handful of men as
appeared in the Palace-Yard, without consent of a quarter of the English
Army, much lesse the tenthousand'th part of the Free-people that are not
clad in red, shall disturb and alter your Government when it thinks fit to
set aside a few imperious Officers, who plainly seek themselves, and
derive their Commissions from superiours to whom they swear obedience; how
can you ever hope, or live to see any government established in these
miserably abused Nations? Behold then with how weak a party you are
vanquish'd, even by those very instruments you had so long flatter'd with
the title of the _Free-people_; imputing all the direful effects of your
depraved principles to their desires, when as I dare report my self to the
ingenuity of the very Souldiers themselves, if they, who have effected all
these changes by your wretched instigations, and blind pretences, imagine
themselves the People of this Nation, but are{1} a very small portion of
them, compared to the whole, and who are maintained by them to recover,
and protect the Civill Government, according to the Good old Lawes of the
Land; not such as they themselves shall invent from Day to Day, or as the
interests of some few persons may engage