above the reach of question from human judicature, yet can we think it possible it should escape and go unpunished by the immediate hand of the righteous Judge of the whole world, when he ariseth out of his place to do right to the oppressed.

Nay, if, instead of favouring and promoting the people's common good and welfare, self-interest and private gain should evidently appear to be the things we have aimed at all along; if those very tyrannical principles and anti-Christian relics, which God by us hath punished in our predecessors, should again revive, spring up afresh, and show themselves lodged also and retained in our bosoms, rendering us of the number of those that have forgot they were purged from their old sins, and declaring us to be such as, to please a covetous mind, do withhold from destruction that which God hath designed to the curse of his vengeance: if all those great advantages of serving the Lord's will and design in procuring and advancing his people's true welfare and outward safety, which (as the fruit of his blessing upon our armies) have so miraculously fallen into our hands, shall at last be wrested and misimproved to the enriching and greatening of ourselves-if these things should ever be found among us (which the Lord in mercy forbid!), shall we need to look any farther for the accursed thing? will not our consciences show us, from the light of the Word and Spirit of God, how near a conformity these actions would hold therewith? which sin (Josh., vii.) became a curse to the camp, and withheld the Lord from being any more among them, or going out with their forces. And did the action of Achan import any more than these two things: First, he saved and kept from destruction the goodly Babylonish garment, which was devoted by God thereunto; secondly, he brought not in the fruit and gain of the conquest into the Lord's treasury, but covetously went about to convert it to his own proper use? To do this is to take of the accursed thing, which (Josh., vii.) all Israel was said to do in the sin of Achan, and to have stolen and dissembled likewise, and put it among their own stuff. This caused the anger of the Lord to kindle against Israel, and made them unable to stand before their enemies, but their hearts melted

as water. And thus far the Lord is concerned, if such an evil as this shall lie hid in the midst of us. But to return to what we were upon before.

The matter which is in question among the dissenting parts of the whole body of honest men is not so trival and of such small consequence as some would make it. 'Tis, in effect, the main and whole of the cause; without which all the freedom which the people have or can have is in comparison but shadow and in name only, and therefore can never give that peace and satisfaction to the body which is requisite unto a durable and solid settlement. This is that which makes all sound and safe at the root, and gives the right balance necessary to be held up between sovereignty and subjection in the exercise of all righteous government; applying the use of the sword to the promoting and upholding the public safety and welfare of the whole body, in preference, and, if need be, in opposition unto any of the parts; while yet, by its equal and impartial administration in reference unto each, it doth withal maintain the whole body in a most delightful harmony, welfare, and correspondency. The sword never can, nor is it to be expected ever will do this, while the sovereignty is admitted and placed anywhere else than in the whole body of the people that have adhered to the cause, and by them be derived unto their successive representatives, as the most equal and impartial judicature for the effecting hereof.

Where there is, then, a righteous and good constitution of government, there is first, an orderly union of many understandings together, as the public and common supreme judicature or visible sovereignty, set in a way of free and orderly exercise, for the directing and applying the use of the ruling power or the sword, to promote the interest and common welfare of the whole, without any disturbance or annoyance from within or from without; and then, secondly, there is a like union and readiness of will in all the individuals, in their private capacities, to execute and obey (by all the power requisite, and that they are able to put forth) those sovereign laws and orders issued out by their own deputies and trustees.

A supreme judicature, thus made the representative of the

whole, is that which, we say, will most naturally care, and most equally provide for the common good and safety. Though by this it is not denied but that the supreme power, when by free consent 'tis placed in a single person or in some few persons, may be capable also to administer righteous government; at least, the body that gives this liberty, when they need not, are to thank themselves if it prove otherwise. But when this free and natural access unto government is interrupted and declined, so as a liberty is taken by any particular member, or number of them, that are to be reputed but a part in comparison of the whole, to assume and engross the office of sovereign rule and power, and to impose themselves as the competent public judge of the safety and good of the whole, without their free and due consent, and to lay claim unto this, as those that find themselves possessed of the sword (and that so advantageously as it cannot be recovered again out of their hands without more apparent danger and damage to the whole body than such attempts are worth), this is that anarchy that is the first rise and step to tyranny, and lays grounds of manifest confusion and disorder, exposing the ruling power to the next hand that on the next opportunity can lay hold on the sword, and so, by a kind of necessity, introduces the highest imposition and bondage upon the whole body, in compelling all the parts, though never so much against the true public interest, to serve and obey, as their sovereign rule and supreme authority, the arbitrary will and judgment of those that bring themselves into rule by the power of the sword, in the right only of a part that sets up itself in preference before, or at least in competition with, the welfare of the whole.

And if this, which is so essential to the wellbeing and right constitution of government, were once obtained, the disputes about the form would not prove so difficult, nor find such opposition, as to keeping the bone of contention and disunion, with much danger to the whole; for if, as the foundation of all, the sovereignty be acknowledged to reside originally in the whole body of adherents to this cause (whose natural and inherent right thereunto is of a far ancienter date than what is obtained by success of their

arms, and so cannot be abrogated even by conquest itself, if that were the case), and then if, in consequence hereof, a supreme judicature be set up and orderly constituted, as naturally arising and resulting from the free choice and consent of the whole body taken out from among themselves, as flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, of the same public spirit and nature with themselves, and the main be by this means secured, what could be propounded afterward as to the form of administration that would much stick?

Would a standing council of state, settled for life, in reference to the safety of the Commonwealth, and for the maintaining intercourse and commerce with foreign states, under the inspection and oversight of the supreme judicature, but of the same fundamental constitution with themselves— would this be disliked? admitting their orders were binding, in the intervals of supreme national assemblies, so far only as consonant to the settled laws of the Commonwealth, the vacancy of any of which, by death or otherwise, might be supplied by the vote of the major part of themselves: nay, would there be any just exception to be taken if (besides both these) it should be agreed (as another part of the fundamental constitution of the government) to place that branch of sovereignty which chiefly respects the execution of laws in a distinct office from that of the legislative power (and yet subordinate to them and to the laws), capable to be intrusted into the hands of one single person, if need require, or in a greater number, as the legislative power should think fit; and, for the greater strength and honour unto this office, that the execution of all laws and orders (that are binding) may go forth in his or their name, and all disobedience thereunto, or contempt thereof, be taken as done to the people's sovereignty, whereof he or they bear the image or representation, subordinate to the legislative power, and at their will to be kept up and continued in the hands of a single person or more, as the experience of the future good or evil of it shall require?

Would such an office as this, thus stated, carry in it any inconsistency with a free state? Nay, if it be well considered, would it not rather be found of excellent use to the wellbeing of magistracy, founded upon this righteous bottom, that such

a lieutenancy of the people's sovereignty in these three nations may always reside in some one or more person, in whose administration that which is reward and punishment may shine forth?

And if now it shall be objected that (notwithstanding all these cautions), should once this sovereignty be acknowledged to be in the diffused body of the people (though the adherents to this cause, not only as their natural, but as their acquired right by conquest), they would suddenly put the use and exercise of the legislative power into such hands as would, through their ill qualifiedness to the work, spoil all by mal-administration thereof, and hereby lose the cause instead of upholding and maintaining it,

The answer unto this is, first, that God, by his providence, hath eased our minds much in this solicitude by the course he hath already taken to fit and prepare a choice and selected number of the people unto this work, that are tried and refined by their inward and outward experiences in this great quarrel, and the many changes they have passed through; in respect whereof well qualified persons are to be found, if due care be but taken in the choice of them. And if herein this people of the Lord shall be waiting upon him for his guidance and presence with them, we may have grounds and hope that God (whose name hath all along been called upon in the maintaining of this cause) will pour out so abundantly of his spirit upon his people attending on him in righteous ways, and will also move their hearts to choose persons bearing his image into the magistracy, that a more glorious product may spring up out of this than at first we can expect, to the setting up of the Lord himself as chief judge and lawgiver among us. And unto this the wisdom and honesty of the persons now in power may have an opportunity eminently to come into discovery; for in this case, and upon the grounds already laid, the very persons now in power are they unto whose lot it would fall to set about this preparatory work, and by their orders and directions to dispose the whole body, and bring them into the meetest capacity to effect the same, the most natural way for which would seem to be by a general council, or convention of faithful, honest, and discerning men, chosen for that purpose by the free