How much thou art concerned in this ensuing trial, where not only the prisoners, but the Fundamental Laws of England, have been most arbitrarily arraigned read, and thou mayest plainly judge.
Liberty of conscience is counted a pretence for rebellion; and religious assemblies, routs and riots; and the defenders of both are by them reputed factious and disaffected.
Magna Carta is Magna Farta with the Recorder of London; and to demand right, an affront to the Court.
Will and power are their great Charter; but to call for England's is a crime, incurring the penalty of the bale-dock and nasty hole; nay, the menace of a gag, and iron shackles too.
The Jury, though proper judges of law and fact they would have over-ruled in both, as if their verdict signified no more, than to echo back the illegal charge of the bench. And because their courage and honesty did more than hold pace with the threat and abuse of those who sat as judges after two days and two nights restraint for a verdict in the end they were fined and imprisoned for giving it.
Oh! what monstrous and illegal proceedings are these! Who reasonably can call his coat his own, when property is made subservient to the will and interest of his judges? Or, who can truly esteem himself a free man, when all pleas for liberty are esteemed sedition, and the laws that give and maintain them, so many insignificant pieces of formality.
And what do they less than plainly tell us so, who at will and pleasure break open our locks, rob our houses, raze our foundations, imprison our persons, and finally deny us justice to our relief? As if they then acted most like Christian men, when they were most barbarous, in ruining such as are really so; and that no sacrifice could be so acceptable to God, as the destruction of those that most fear him.
In short, that the conscientious should only be obnoxious, and the just demand of our religious liberty the reason why we should be denied our civil freedom (as if to be a Christian and an Englishman were inconsistent); and that so much solicitude and deep contrivance should be employed only to ensnare and ruin so many ten thousand conscientious families (so eminently industrious, serviceable, and exemplary;) whilst murders can so easily obtain pardon, rapes be remitted, public uncleanness pass unpunished, and all manner of levity, prodigality, excess, profaneness, and atheism, be universally connived at, if not in some respect manifestly encouraged, cannot but be detestibly abhorrent to every serious and honest mind.
Yet that this lamentable state is true, and in the present project in hand, let London's Recorder, and Canterbury's chaplain, be heard.
The first, in his public panegyrick upon the Spanish Inquisition, highly admiring the prudence of the Romish church in the erection of it, as an excellent way to prevent schism. Which unhappy expression at once passeth sentence, both against our Fundamental laws, and the Protestant reformation.
The second, in his printed mercenary discourse against toleration, asserting for a main principle,
"that it would be less injurious to the government to dispense with profane and loose persons,
than to allow a toleration to religious dissenters." It were to overdo the business to say any more,
where there is so much said already.
And therefore to conclude, we cannot choose but admonish all, as well as persecutors, to
relinquish their heady, partial, and inhumane persecutions (as what will certainly issue in disgrace
here, and inevitable condign punishment hereafter); as those who yet dare express their
moderation (however out of fashion or made the brand of fanaticism) not to be huffed, or
menaced out of that excellent temper, to make their parts and persons subject to the base humours
and sinister designs of the biggest mortal upon earth; but reverence and obey the eternal just God,
before whose great tribunal all must render their accounts, and where he will recompense to every
person according to his works.
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