to see themselves put in execution, and yet they ought to be subject to every man's will and humour (which you call his best light) and no man to them but in his own sense. That the scripture only ought to interpret itself (just as it can read itself) and every man is to take the interpretation in such a sense as best suits with his own capacity, or his occasions: That every man may do what he pleases in matters of religion, but only those that are in authority, who ought not to meddle in such matters, as being of so different a nature from their cognisance (or any other) that if it be their will to command the only true religion to be observed, it presently becomes unchristian, inhuman, and barbarous. That no man can serve God, nor save his own soul, but in a commonwealth; in this certainty you go after your own invention, for no man ever heard it before: But if it should be true, it is a sad thing to think, what is become of the apostles themselves, and all the saints in the primitive times, when there was never a christian commonwealth in the world? That any man may turn away his wife, and take another as often as he pleases, as you have most learnedly proved upon the fiddle, and practised in your life and conversation, for which you have atchieved the honour to be stiled the Founder of a Sect. All this you call liberty of conscience, and christian liberty, which you conclude no government is more inclinable, not only to favour, but protect, than a free commonwealth. In this, he said, you say right; for it is notorious enough, that since we have been but called a commonwealth, such pious doctrines, as these, have been so wonderfully propagated, that England does now abound with new christians, no less than Spain did of late years, and of the same mungrel breed; all which agree in nothing, but the extirpation of christian religion, and subversion of government, to which your. discipline does naturally conduce. For certainly, the most ready and easy way to root out religion, is to render it contemptible and ridiculous; which cannot be sooner done, than by giving licence and encouragement to all manner of frenzies, that pretend to new discoveries in matters of faith; these will quickly make it become a sport and mockery to the people, until it be utterly extinct; and this, some of the church of Rome found true, who gave a greater check to the growth of reformation, by cloathing some of the new professors in fools coats, and exposing them to the derision of the multitude, than by persecuting, and putting thousands to death. And this is the way you go, which will never fail you, as long as there are fools and mad-men to carry on the work. And with this, if you could but introduce the wholesome canons of the council of Munster, it would make an admirable model for the ecclesiastical part of the republick, if it were not for one unlucky circumstance, and that is, that Knipper Dolling proclaimed John of Leyden king, and not state-holder. This, he said, was an unhappy mistake, and no less out of your way, than that of the Fifth Mouarchy men,, who would have been admirable for your purpose, if they had but dreamed of a fifth free state.

By this time, they began to grow weary of your perpetual fals

hoods and mistakes, and a worthy knight of this assembly stood up and said, that, if we meant to examine all the particular fallacies and flaws in your writing, we should never have done; he would therefore, with leave, deliver his judgment upon the whole, which, in brief, was thus: That it is all windy foppery, from the beginning to the end, written to the elevation of that rabble, and meant to cheat the ignorant. That you fight always with the flat of your hand, like a rhetorician, and never contract the logical fist. That you trade altogether in universals, the region of deceits and fallacy, but never come so near particulars, as to let us know which, among divers things of the same kind, you would be at. For you admire commonwealths in general, and cry down kingship as much at large, without any regard to the particular constitutions, which only make either the one or the other good or bad, vainly supposing all slavery to be in the government of a single person, and nothing but liberty in that of many; which is so false, that some kingdoms have had the most perfect form of commonwealths, as ours had, and some republicks have proved the greatest tyrannies, as all have done at one time or other. For many, if they combine, have more latitude to abuse power, than a single person, and less sense of shame, conscience, or honour to restrain them; for what is wickedly done by many, is owned by none, where no man knows upon whom in particular to fix it. And this we have found true by experience in your patriots and assertors (as you call them) for no one person could ever have done half the mischief they have done, nor outlived the infamy they have suffered, without any sense of shame. Beside this, as all your politicks reach but the outside and circumstances of things, and never touch at realities, so you are very sollicitous about words, as if they were charms, or had more in them than what they signify. For no conjurer's devil is more concerned in a spell, than you are in a mere word, but never regard the things which it serves to express. For you believe liberty is safer under an arbitrary unlimited power, by vertue of the name Commonwealth, than under any other government, how just or restrained soever, if it be but called kingship. And therefore, very prudently you would have the name parliament abolished, because it signifies a parly of our commons with their Norman kings. But in this you are too severe a Draco, to punish one word, for holding correspondence with another, when all the liberty, you talk so much of, consists in nothing else but mere words. For though you brag much of the people's managing their own affairs, you allow them no more share of that in your Utopia, as you have ordered it, than only to set up their throats and baul, instead of every three years, which they might have done before, once in an age, or oftener, as an old member drops away, and a new one is to succeed, not for his merit or knowledge in state affairs, but because he is able to bring the greatest and most deep-mouthed pack of the rabble into the field; a more wise and equal way, in your opinion, of chusing counsellors, than any king is capable of. But he added, you had done worst of all, where you are most like

yourself, and that is in that false and malicious aspersion of Popish and Spanish counsels which you cast on the present king. For it is well known to all the world, he hath preferred his conscience before three crowns, and patiently endured to live so many years in exile, rather than change his religion; which if he would have done, or been moved with such counsels, he might long since have procured all the forces of the catholick world upon us; whereas it cannot be denied of his greatest opposers, that they are so jealous of their ill-gotten purchases bought with their crimes, that rather than be in danger of losing a pig, they would, with the Gergesenes, desire Christ to depart out of their coasts. After this said, he moved the assembly that I might be desired to deliver my judgment upon the book, as he and others had done, which being immediately past, I knew not, though unwilling, how to avoid it; and therefore, I told them as briefly as I could, that that which I disliked most in your treatise was, that there is not one word of the balance of propriety, nor the Agrarian, nor Rotation in it, from the beginning to the end; without which, together with a Lord Archon, I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not only in my writings but publick exercises in that coffee-house, that there is no possible foundation of a free commonwealth. To the first and second of these, that is, the Balance and the Agrarian, you made no objection, and therefore, I should not need to make any answer. But for the third, I mean Rotation, which you implicitly reject in your design to perpetuate the present members, I shall only add this to what I have already said and written on this subject, that a commonwealth is like a great top, that must be kept up by being whipped round, and held in perpetual circulation, for if you discontinue the Rotation, and suffer the senate to settle, and stand still, down it falls immediately. And if you had studied this point as carefully as I have done, you could not but know, there is no such way under heaven of disposing the vicissitudes of command and obedience, and of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of wheeling, by which, as Chaucer writes, a single fart hath been equally divided among a whole convent of friars, and every one hath had his just share of the savour. I told them, I could not but be sorry to find so learned a man so ignorant, in the nature of government, as to make disproportionate parallels of councils as you do, where you compare the senate of Rome with the grand council of Venice, between which there is no analogy at all; for the senate of Rome was never the supreme power of the people, as the grand council of Venice is, but merely a council of state. But I wondered most of all, at what politick crack in any man's scull, the imagination could enter of securing liberty under an oligarchy, seized of the government for term of life, which was never yet seen in the world. The Metropolitan of all commonwealths, the Roman, did but once adventure to trust its whole power and authority, in the hands of one council, and that but for two years, and yet they had like to have lost their liberty for ever; whereas they had frequently in all ages left it wholly in the power

of a single person, and found it so far from danger or inconveni ence, that the only refuge they had in their greatest extremity was, to create a dictator. But I could not but laugh, as they all had done, at the pleasantness of your fancy, who suppose our noble patriots, when they are invested for term of life, will serve their country at their own charge: This, I said, was very improbable, unless you meant as they do, that all we have is their own, and that to prey and devour is to serve; in which they have appeared so able and industrious, as if they had been made to no other pur. pose, but, like lobsters, were all claws and belly. For though many laugh at me for accounting 300,000 pounds in wooden ware, towards the erecting of a free-state, in my Oceana, but a trifle to the whole nation; because I am most certain that these little pills the ballots are the only physick that can keep the body politick soluble, and not suffer the humour to settle, I will undertake, that if the present members had but a lease of the government during life, notwithstanding whatsoever impeachment of waste, they would raise more out of it to themselves in one year, than that amounts to; beside the charge we must be at in maintaining of guards to keep the boys off them, and before half the term be expired, they would have it untenantable. To conclude, I told them, you had made good your title in a contrary sense; for you have really proposed the most ready and easy way to establish downright slavery upon the nation that can possibly be contrived, which will clearly appear to any man that does but understand this plain truth, that wheresoever the power of proposing and debating, together with the power of ratifying and enacting laws, is intrusted in the hands of any one person, or any one council, as you would have it, that government is inevitably arbitrary and tyrannical, because they may make whatsoever they please lawful or unlawful. And that tyranny hath the advantage of all others that hath law and liberty among the instruments of servitude. J. H.

THE

QUALIFICATIONS OF PERSONS,

DECLARED CAPABLE BY THE

RUMP-PARLIAMENT,

To elect, or be elected, Members to supply their House.

THE

Printed in the year 1660. Quarto, containing sixteen pages.

HE representative of the parliament of England, having for many years employed their constant endeavour, to impose freedom and liberty on the three nations; notwithstanding their ob

stinate reluctancy and opposition thereunto, who would take upon them, against all right and reason, to be their own judges; and being now, after two scandalous ejectments, and as many signal restorations, happily returned to discharge the remaining fragment of their trust; do find, to their unspeakable grief, the red-coats, in whom they always loyally acquiesced, failing of their pay, to fail likewise of their trust, and, seduced by evil counsel, to adhere unto the common enemy; that is to say, the said three nations, in comply. ing with their desires and addresses, which are, to have this present representative dissolved, and a free parliament speedily convened, which they tremble to think upon, or the secluded members re-admitted, which they equally abominate, or the present house supplied with new elections, which their bowels sigh to reflect on. Nevertheless they have, after serious and mature deliberation, resolved upon the last, that is to say, to fill up their house, as being, though of dangerous consequence, less horrible and dreadful to themselves, than any other way. And to the end the persons to be elected may be of as near a condition as may be, to match the present members, and so, possibly, go hand in hand with them, in carrying on the said work; they have agreed upon these following qualifications, and do enact, and be it hereby enacted, that no person whatsoever presume to elect or be elected, under pain of confiscation of his estate, and sale of his person, that is not allowed capable thereof, by the said qualifications, in which they do profess, before the Searcher of all Hearts, that they have freely discovered the naked truth of all their intentions, as, if their breasts were to be opened, and their hearts taken out, which God defend, it would manifestly appear to all the world.

Qualification I.—Whosoever hath at any time been known to take the name of God in vain, that is, to swear or forswear himself for nothing, without advantage to the publick, or his own particular concernments, but merely out of rash and needless prophanation, is hereby declared utterly incapable to elect, or be elected, as a member to serve in this present parliament. For oaths have been found, by experience, to be wonderful expedients in state-affairs; and ought not to be made or broken, but with great and serious consideration.

Qualific. 11.-Whosoever is noted to be a sabbath-breaker, or prophaner of the Lord's day, is declared incapable to elect, or be elected, &c. For he that cannot one day in seven observe, at least in shew, one commandment in ten, that costs nothing the keeping, nor gains any thing by being broken, is not fitly qualified to sit in this parliament: For all such sins, as have no immediate relation to the service of this house, must be openly detested, that there may be the less notice taken of such as are for the advantage and interest thereof.

Qualific. III.-Whosoever hath at any time, within the space of these twenty years last past, been observed to be disguised in drink, unless he can bring testimony that it is his usual custom to drink himself drunk in private alone, to avoid giving evil example,