Court-days after
this, and desired to see the Declaration, and still you denied us
unless we would fee an Attorney, so greedy are these Attornies
after money, more than to justify a righteous cause. We told them
that we could not fee any unless we would wilfully break our
National Covenant, which both Parliament and People have taken
jointly together to effect a Reformation. And unless we would be
professed Traitors to the Nation and Common-wealth of England, by
upholding the old Norman tyrannical and destructive Laws, when they
are to be cast out of equity, and reason to be the Moderator.

"Then seeing that you would not suffer us to speak, one of us
brought the following writing into Court, that you might read our
answer. Because we would acknowledge all righteous proceedings in
Law, though some slander us and say we deny all Law, because we
deny the corruption of Law, and endeavour a Reformation in our
place and calling, according to that National Covenant. And we know
if your Laws were built upon equity and reason, you ought both to
have heard us speak, and to have read our answer. For that is no
righteous Law, whereby to keep a Common-wealth in peace, when one
sort shall be suffered to speak and not another, as you deal with
us, to pass sentence and execution upon us, before both sides be
heard to speak. This principle in the forehead of your Laws
foretells destruction to this Common-wealth. For it declares that
the Laws that follow such refusal are selfish and thievish and full
of murder, protecting all that get money by their Laws, and
crushing all others.

"The writer hereof does require Mr. Drake, and he is a Parliament
man, therefore a man counted able to speak rationally, to plead
this cause of digging with me.[115:1] And if he show a just and
rational title that Lords of Manors have to the Commons, and that
they have a just power from God to call it their right, shutting
out others, then I will write as much against it as ever I wrote
for this cause. [A heavy forfeit, truly!] But if I show by the Law
of Righteousness that the poorest man hath as good a title and just
right to the Land as the richest man, and that undeniably the Earth
ought to be a Common Treasury of Livelihood for all without
respecting persons; then I shall requ