e to Gods omniscience) should be discovered
to the world without any of those dresses or popular captations which
some men use in their Speeches and Expresses; I wish My Subjects had a
cleerer sight into My most retired Thoughts.

Where they might discover, how they are divided between the love and
care I have, not more to preserve My own Rights, then to procure their
Peace and Happinesse, and that extreme grief to see them both deceiv'd
and destroyed.

Nor can any mens malice be gratified further by My Letters, than to
see my constancy to my Wife, the Laws, and Religion. Bees will gather
honey where the Spider sucks Poyson.

That I endeavour to avoid the pressures of my Enemies, by all fair
and just correspondences; no man can blame, who loves Me, or
the Common-wealth, since my Subjects can hardly be happy if I be
miserable, or enjoy their Peace and Liberties while I am oppressed.

The world may see how soon mens designe, like _Absoloms_, is by
enormous actions to widen differences, and exasperate all sides to
such distances, as may make all Reconciliation desperate.

Yet I thank God, I can not only with patience bear this, as other
indignities, but with charity forgive them.

The integrity of my intentions is not jealous of any injury my
expressions can do them, for although the confidence of privacy may
admit of greater freedome in writing such letters, which may be liable
to envious exceptions; yet the innocency of my chief purposes cannot
be so obtained, or mis-interpreted by them, as not to let all men see,
that I wish nothing more then a happy composure of differences with
Justice & Honor, nor more to My own, then My peoples content, who have
any sparks of Love or Loyalty left in them: who, by those my Letters
may be convinced that I can both mind and act My own, and My Kingdomes
Affaires, so as becomes a Prince; which Mine Enemies have alwayes been
very loth should be beleeved of me, as if I were wholly confined to
the Dictates and Directions of others; whom they please to brand with
the names of Evil Counsellours.

Its probable some men will now look upon me as my own Counsellour,
and having none else to quarrell with under that notion, they will
hereafter confine their anger to my self: Although I know they are
very unwilling I should enjoy the liberty of my own thoughts, or
follow the light of my own Conscience, which they labour to bring into
an absolute captivitie to themselves; not allowing me to t