d but will confess they have deserved much more of
these nations than they have undeserved. And I persuade me that God
was pleased with their restitution, signing it as He did with such
a signal victory when so great a part of the nation were
desperately conspired to call back again their Egyptian bondage
[Lambert's victory over Sir George Booth]. So much the more it now
amazes me that they whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving
thanks for that great deliverance should be now relapsing, and so
soon again backsliding into the same fault, which they confessed so
lately and so solemnly to God and the world, and more lately
punished in those Cheshire Rebels,--that they should now dissolve
that Parliament which they themselves re-established, and
acknowledged for their Supreme Power in their other day's _Humble
Representation_: and all this for no apparent cause of public
concernment to the Church or Commonwealth, but only for
discommissioning nine great officers in the Army; which had not
been done, as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions
against the Parliament. I presume not to give my censure on this
action,--not knowing, as yet I do not, the bottom of it. I speak
only what it appears to us without doors till better cause be
declared, and I am sure to all other nations,--most illegal and
scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled
among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause,
thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up. This, I say, other
nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so
renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us
here at home for the most conscientious. Certainly, if the great
officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces
should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison
against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of
France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like
disorder and confusion."

He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one
"jealous of their honour," to "manifest and publish with all speed
some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto
appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition
in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning
to these disorders,"--in other words, to disown and denounce