and mine, what am I that I should
charge thee foolishly?_

_Thou, o Lord hast given, and thou hast taken, Blessed be thy name._

_May my people and thy Church be happie if not by me, yet without me._

* * * * *

26. _Upon the Armies surprisall of the King at_ Holmby, _and the
ensuing distractions in the two Houses, the Army, and the City._

What part God will have me now to act or suffer in this new and
strange scene of affaires, I am not much solicitous; some little
practise will serve that man, who only seeks to represent a part of
honesty and honour.

This surprize of me tels the world, that a KING cannot be so low, but
he is considerable, adding weight to that party where he appears.

This motion, like others of the Times, seems excentrique and
irregular, yet not well to be resisted or quieted: Better swim down
such a stream, then in vain to strive against it.

These are but the struglings of those twins, which lately one womb
enclosed, the younger striving to prevail against the elder; what the
Presbyterians have hunted after, the Independents now seek to catch
for themselves.

So impossible it is for lines to be drawn from the center, and not to
divide from each other, so much the wider, by how much they go farther
from the point of union.

That the Builders of Babel should from division fall to confusion, is
no wonder; but for those that pretend to build Jerusalem, to divide
their tongues and hands, is but an ill Omen; and sounds too like the
fury of those Zealots, whose intestine bitterness and divisions were
the greatest occasion of the last fatall destruction of that Citie.

Well may I change my Keepers and Prison, but not my captive condition,
onely with this hope of bettering, that those who are so much
professed Patrons for the Peoples Liberties, cannot be utterly against
the Liberty of their KING; what they demand for their own Consciences,
they cannot in Reason deny to mine.

In this they seem more ingenuous, then the Presbyterian rigour, who
sometimes complaining of exacting their conformity to laws, are
become the greatest Exactours of other mens submission to their novel
injunctions, before they are stamped with the Authority of Laws, which
they cannot well have without my Consent.

'Tis a great argument, that the Independents think themselves
manumitted from their Rivals service, in that they carry on a
businesse of such consequence, as the assumi