Ỳperēphanìaz Myzè̄rhion. Or, Machiavil redivivus Being an exact discovery or narrative of the priciples & politicks of our bejesuited modern phanaticks. By J. Yalden Esq;

PRINCIPLE VIII. Necessity of State is a very competent Apologie for the worst of Actions.

OUr late Usurpers never wanted a pre∣tence to justifie their most hellish En∣terprizes, and it has been observed, that in all Innovations and Rebellions (which ordinarily have their rise from pretences of Religion, or Reformation, or both) the breach and neglect of Laws, hath been constantly allowed and authorized by that great patroness of illegal actions, Necessity. Hence those of the Late Times metamor∣phosed the Common Law of the Land, into the Lands common Calamity; that instead of the common benefit which the Laws in community should yield to all; we have now perverted the same to the private in∣terest of some few.

Our Polititian is never without his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Sava Necessitas, either to insi∣nuate or enforce his ends and designes: He cares not to determine, whether the ne∣cessity be of his own creating, or from whence it grows; but for the most part it proceeds from himself, being indeed no∣thing else but an Appendix to the wrong he undertakes; and signifies no more than that (by the necessity of such mediums to compass his ends) he is compelled to heap Injury on Injury, and so to cover his past wrongs with renewed acts of Injustice and Oppression; as if the committing a second sin, were enough to warrant or justifie the iniquity of the former. Thus a worthy Patriot (speaking under an Allegorie) ur∣ging the doleful miseries of our late mar∣tyr'd Soveraign, as they were by degrees, both impiously and severely laid upon him; Mr. Speaker (says he) Our Adversaries do alleadge, That our obedience to his Majesty is apparently manifest many strange ways: We have disburthened him of his large Revennes; we have eased him of the charge of Royal House-keeping; we have cleared him from re∣pairing of or repairing to his stately Palaces, magnificent Mansions, and defensive Castles and Garrisons; and we have put him out of care of repairing his Armouries, Arms, Am∣munition, and Artillery; we have been at the

charge of keeping his Children and most trusty Servants for or from him; we have taken or∣der and given Ordinances, that he shall not be troubled either with much Money or Meat, and that his Queen and lawful Wife, shall not so much as darken his Doors; and we have striven by open Rebellion to release him of troublesome life and reign, by hunting him like a Partridge over the Mountains, and by shooting Bullets at his Person, for his Maje∣sties preservation, on purpose to make him glo∣rious in another world; we have also eased him of a great number of his Friends, Sub∣jects, and Servants, by either charitable Fa∣mishing, brotherly Banishing, liberal and free Imprisoning, Parliamental Plundering, friendly Throat-cutting, and unlawful Beheading and Hanging, or utterly ruinating as many as we could lay hold of, that either loved, served, or honoured him. All this was necessary to be done for the sake of their Thorough Refor∣mation; and in truth they did a great deal more, and never left, until they had undone us all.

Our Polititian may now learn from the Rabbies of Schism and Rebellion, how to justifie the most barbarous Villanies: He may now work on; and though his acti∣ons contradict all Humanity, yet shall he never want Vouchers even for the most un∣warrantable and horrendous Cruelties.

See what a pretended Levite (but a real Priest of Baal) urgeth, both to encourage and justifie such proceedings: Whensoever (says he) you shall behold the fall of Ba∣bylon, say, True, here is a Babylonish Priest trying out, Alas! alas! my Living! I have Wife and Children to maintain. Aye, but all this is to perform the Judgment of the Lord; though as little ones they call for pity, yet as Babylonish they call for justice, even to Bloud. Hear another: In vain (says he) shall you in your Fasts, with Joshua, lie on your faces, unless you lay your Achans on their backs: In vain are the high praises of God in your mouths, without a Two-edged Sword in your hands. The bloud thas Ahab spared in Benhadad, stuck as deep and as heavily on him as that which he spilt in Naboth. But what says another? The Lord is pursuing you, if you execute not vengeance on them betimes, p. 48. Why should life be further granted to them, whose very life brings death to all about them?!! p. 50. And again, Cursed be he that with-holdeth his sword from bloud; that spares, when God saith, Strike, &c. Thus our Polititian sees how to father his most hellish Enterprizes on the divine Goodness, and may hence learn to enforce the most sacred Oracles (God's holy Word) to sing Songs of Triumph, and plead his justifica∣tion amidst the most barbarous and impi∣ous

Cruelties, Massacres, and Murders.

Our Polititian must invert that old cha∣ritable advice, Benefacta, benefactis aliis per∣tegito nè perpluant, into Vitia vitiis aliis per∣tegito ne perpluant; that so heaping one Crime upon another, the latter may de∣fend the former from the stroke of Justice. He adores that Maxime in Livy, Justum est Bellum quibus necessarium; & pia arma, qui∣bus in armis spes est. It were very unnatu∣ral to desire that man to leave his Crutch, which cannot walk without it; 'tis no less a Soloecism to invite or perswade him to quit his Sword, whose Life and Fortunes lean intirely upon it.

That designe will certainly seem just and reasonable, which the people are bewitch∣ed to believe pious and legal; and the goodness of the end, will at once both le∣gitimate and commend the otherwise pro∣digious and unlawful means and circum∣stances: That of the Civilians must be re∣membred, Lioere in Bello, quae ad finem sunt necessaria: The divine oracles are too ten∣der for Sword-men; and it may be he had wit in his anger, who affirmed, That Mar∣tial Law was as great a Soloecism as Martial Peace; Inter arma silent leges. So that if our Polititian can by his Subtilties and Im∣postures convince the Rabble that he as much intends their good (in the redress

of grievances, &c.) ••s his aims are just, they will never expect that his methods should be retrenched by the strict bounda∣ries of Law; but where that stands in competition with his ends, and may seem, to oppose the project, they will give it Club-law, and cry out that summum j•••• est summa injuria: He manageth that rule very practically, Rem alienam, ex quà mibi certum periculum eminet, citra culpa alienae consider ationem invadere possum: Now he can very plausibly make this Peticulum either Certum or Incertion, as shall best suit with the emergency of his affairs. Hear what the learned Grotius says, the liberty that he concedes is very broad, Quare si vitam (inquit) aliter servare non possum, licet mibi vi qualicunque arcere eum, qui eum impelit, licet peccato vacet; & hoc ex jure quod mibi pro me natura concedit: When Life, Liberty, and Safety, come in question there ought to be no consideration had of just or un∣just, pitiful or cruel, honourable or other-wise.

When by these Arts our Polititian hath thus wrought the people into a good opi∣nion of his worst actions, so that according to his wishes and desires, they have either outlookt the mischiefs, or otherwise suffer∣ed them insensibly to slip their understan∣dings, and that under the brightness of the

delusion; it will then become a matter not difficult, to set all future proceedings (though never so bloudy) upon the score of Liberty and Religion: and if it so fall out, that he be constrained to use means grossly unlawful, he has then, notwithstan∣ding, nothing more to do than to sanctifie and make them seem holy in the applica∣tion, and all's well: for such are the hu∣mours of the unwary Multitude, that when they have once rushed into a Party impli∣citly, to prosecute it as desperatly as if they were under demonstrative convictions of its goodness.

In fine, because no Vertue can be indu∣ced to truckle under the service of our Po∣lititians base designes, he is therefore en∣forced to make a vertue of Necessity: she may well favour and smile upon Licen∣tiousness, who will be tyed up to and con∣fined by no Law. An habit of doing ill, and a daring impudence to maintain it, makes all things in a politick wisdom, law∣ful.

The ALLAY.

As in our Late Times, when people were strangely agog, and enamoured with Bar∣barisms and Cruelty; when every moment

produced new scenes of Bloud, as if Man∣kind in general were transmogrified into Beasts of Prey, and made for no other ends than to murder and devour one another: which prodigious deviation of Nature from her usual course, cannot be ascribed to any thing more properly than to that dismal and destructive poyson which dayly sprun•••• from the Invectives and venomous Libels of those times, against the then established Government: Even so the same danger is now to be feared, for that there is hardly one day passes without Satyr or Libel a∣gainst his Majesties Authority, Administra∣tion, Designes, and solemn Resolutions of State and Council; belying the condition of his Affairs, and endeavouring to create Distrusts and Jealousies, both at home and abroad, by false Intelligence; animating and exciting of turbulent Factions, and anticipating of Consederacies, to involve us all in Bloud.

And indeed we have Sedition preached as well as written amongst us, and our Con∣venticles both instructed themselves, and instructing others in the methods and prin∣ciples of Rebellion.

The Old Game seems now to be begun again; and the Dissenters will never be perswaded out of the necessity of a Tho∣rough Reformation, nor otherwise be con∣vinced

(though perhaps they believe the contrary) but that Popery and Arbitrary power are breaking in upon them, until once more (as heretofore) they trump up Fanaticism in the room of Episcopacy, and build up their new-fangled accursed Com∣monwealth, upon the lamentable Ruines of our ancient Monarchy. See what a stink a late Libeller makes, by raking into the Ashes of that Parliament which first burnt the Rump: Our Grandees (quoth he) do now see, that they did out-shoot them∣selves, and are full of Repentance for their rash and hasty dissolution of the late odious over-long Parliament; and are therefore at∣tempting to retrieve the Errour, by tiring out the people with frequent Changes, till they can get another to their tooth as manageable and inercenary as the former. Who means he by our Grandees? or who was rash and out∣shot himself in dissolving that Parliament, but the King? O impudent Libeller! re∣solve me but this Quere, Whether all thy seeming care tends, but to the involving three Kingdoms all in Bloud and Gore? But hold! We may guess what he is, and from whence these Libels spawn abroad, if we look but a little further, and observe how this Whelp of the Good old Cause scratches and claws the Church as well as State: I finde all persons (says he) very

forward, except the high-flown Ritualists and Ceremony-mongers of the Clergie, who being in the Conspiracy against the People, lay out to accommodate their Masters with the veriest Vil∣lains that can be pickt up in all the Country; that so we may fall into the hands again of as treacherous and lewd a Parliament, as the wisdom of God and folly of man have most mi∣raculously freed us from, These are the common Evulsions of ••••anaticism, and sowre Belchings from the abominable Cove∣nant, which lies stinking in our Author's loathsome guts: This a man would think might startle that Subject which has but one grain of Grace or Loyalty left; how∣ever this is ugly, yet it cannot be called but a Cub-monster, when we behold the terrible, prodigious, and ugly deformity of what follows; nor can it be said (though Monster enough of all conscience) to be worthy note, in comparison with those hatched and produced out of an universal concourse of Plagues and Curses; upon which the Devil himself sat in Hells blac∣kest antrum (fired with malice and envy against our Church and State, and that en∣flamed by the vigorous emission of Blasphe∣my, Murders, Massacres, &c. from the fla∣ming nostrils of Oliver, Bradshaw, Ireton, Peters, and the rest, constantly supplied with Fuel from the Good old Cause Faction,

Sedition, and Rebellion, by their Brethren and Confederates here on Earth) to bring forth those two too prodigious Monsters; the one called, An Appeal from the Country to the City; the other, An Answer to the Kings Declaration, concerning his Majesties Marriage with Mrs. Walter, &c. Those who ever read these two, will blame my temperance and lenity in their character, and be concerned that the deepest Hyper∣boles cannot afford terms expressive enough of their endless mischief and envy against his Majesty and the present Government. And all this is done to undeceive and satis∣fie the people, and in pity and devotion to their good. And were I now to define a Thorough Reformation, I must call it an universal State of Oppression and Slavery, brought upon us by the malice of our Ene∣mies, with the concurring help of our own folly.

If once Emergency and Necessity be ac∣counted a sufficient warrant or authority for a Thief whereon to ground the lawful∣ness of Stealing, it would soon cut asunder the strongest tyes of the eighth Command∣ment. But that which our Polititian calls Necessity, is no more than the necessity of convenience, nor indeed so much, unless we expound that to be Convenience which favours his by-ends; and so may seem ne∣cessary

or convenient in the conduct of pri∣vate designes, for the help and furtherance of Self-interest. He useth Necessity as the old Philosophers did an Occult quality, though to a different purpose; that was their Refuge for Ignorance, this is his San∣ctuary for Sin.

Pausanius tells us of a Chappel in Acro∣corinth dedicated to Necessity and Violence: Those Twin-goddesses may be fit Objects for the Worship of Heathens; yet how great pity is it that Christians should be of the same Communion, and be guilty of such hateful Idolatry! From hence proceed the most lamentable Disasters that can befal Mankind, and from hence arise the greatest Scandals to the very name and profession of Christianity. Let that great and good Rule be received, That no man can be ne∣cessitated to sin; our Divines generally damn an officious Lye, and the equity binds from any officious Sin.

This fundamental Errour most certainly lies in a greedy and unwary entertainment of those specious pretences, and seemingly candid propositions, which are at first made to us, before they have passed those Scru∣tinies and severe Enquiries they deserve, or have been duly examined by the Test of God's holy Word and National Laws: All the rest are but ugly consequences of

that absurdity we first granted; according to the ancient Philosophical Maxime, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.

Those Civilians which are most charita∣ble to this Doctrine of Necessity, allow it nevertheless to be no Plea at all, unless it be absolute and insuperable; as, by the Platonick Laws, onely those persons are al∣lowed to drink at their Neighbours Well, which before had in vain sought a Spring, by digging fifty cubits deep in their own ground. We approve of and allow the disburthening of a Ship, in imminent peril of wreck; but this will not excuse such who shall, upon a fond or seigned prevision of a State-Tempest, immediately cast Law and Conscience over-board, discard and quit Rudder and Steerage, and so assist the danger they pretend to fear.

Notes

• Speech in the Com∣mons House 1647.
• Massacres encouraged by the Fa∣naticks.
• Bridges, on Revelati∣ons 4.8.
• Herle, on Psal. 95.11. p. 31.
• Idem, on Gen. 22.5. p. 23.
• Faircloth. on Josh. 7.25.
• Case, on Dan. 11.32. p. 44.
• Victor. de Jure Belli. nu. 18.39.
• De Jure Belli, 424.
• Mach. on Livy, 627.
• Libels the foundation of our late Wars.
• Dr. Oater's Nar. 63.67.
• A Letter of Advice concerning Elections.
• The Clergie made Tray∣tors.
• Two terri∣ble Prodi∣gies!
• A strange Dilusion.
• Less. l. 11. c. 12. Dub. 12. nu. 70.