Cromwell: Warning to Parliament on Domestic and Foreign Affairs, 1658; Pt. 4 of 4
Oliver Cromwell, Defender of the Protestant Faith
This incomparable Englishman and Servant of the Most High God, His Royal Highness King Oliver Cromwell (oh, would to God he had accepted the Kingship!), now concludes his speech to the Second Protectorate Parliament. This is his rhetorical coup d’ grace, the final crowning climax of this, yet another discourse for our learning. The Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, the Defender of Reformation Bible-based English Protestantism, as well as our sacred Christian right of “freedom of conscience,” gives us an insight to the thoughts and intentions of his heart. Oliver’s determination to resist Rome’s designs unto death rather than submit to the bogus, Satanic Temporal Power of the Pope, namely, to a certain execution by crypto-Roman Catholic Charles II, is absolutely exhilarating, inspiring the most apathetic of souls! Our Man of God has only seven months more to live, before he departs to be with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, a departure to be effected by the Black Pope’s “poison cup” slipped to our dear Oliver by his trusted doctor, the diabolical and cowardly George Bate. May you enjoy the Protector’s unabashed, closing exhortations to the men he sincerely entrusted legislative power to bring his beloved Three Nations to final Settlement of Government as much as did your Editor.
“And now having said this, I have discharged my duty to God and to you, in making this demonstration,—and I profess, not as a rhetorician! My business was to prove the verity of the Designs from Abroad; and the still unsatisfied spirits of the Cavaliers at Home,—how from the beginning of our Peace to this day have not been wanting to do what they could to kindle a fire at home in the midst of us. [The Jesuits, via their many stealthy agents, are presently at this very work of fomenting domestic insurrection and civil war in the midst of us Americans.---EJP] And I say, if this be so, the truth,—I pray God affect your hearts with a due sense of it! [Yea!---Carlyle] And give you one heart and mind to carry-on this work for which we are met together! If these things be so,—should you meet tomorrow, and accord in all things tending to your preservation and your rights and liberties, really it will be feared there is too much time elapsed ‘already’ for your delivering yourselves from those dangers that hang upon you!—[Such is the case also, presently here in America!---EJP]
“We have had not Six Years of Peace [1651-1657---EJP], and have had an interruption of Ten Years War [1642-1651---EJP]. We have seen and heard and felt the evils of War; and now God hath given us a new taste of the benefits of Peace. Have you not had such a Peace in England, Ireland and Scotland, that there is not a man to lift up his finger to put you into distemper? Is not this a mighty blessing from the Lord of Heaven? Shall we now be prodigal of time? Should any man, shall we, listen to delusions, to break and interrupt this Peace? There is not any man that hath been true to this Cause, as I believe you have been all, who can look for anything but the greatest rending and persecution that ever was in this world! [Peppery Scott's hot head will go up on Temple Bar, and Haselrig will do well to die soon.---Carlyle]—I wonder how it can enter into the heart of man to undervalue these things; to slight Peace and the Gospel, the greatest mercy of God. We have Peace and the Gospel! [What a tone!---Carlyle] Let us have one heart and soul; one mind to maintain the honest and just rights of this Nation;—not to pretend to them, to the destruction of our Peace, to the destruction of the Nation! [As yet there is one Hero-heart among you, ye blustering contentious rabble; one Soul blazing as a light-beacon in the midst of Chaos, forbidding Chaos yet to be supreme. In a little while that too will be extinct; and then!---Carlyle] Really, pretend what we will, if you run into another flood of blood and War, the sinews of this Nation being wasted by the last, it must sink and perish utterly. I beseech you, and charge you in the name and presence of God, and as before Him, be sensible of these things and lay them to heart! You have a Day of Fasting coming on. I beseech God touch your hearts and open your ears to this truth; and that you may be as deaf adders to stop your ears to all Dissension! And may look upon them ‘who would sow dissension,’ whoever they may be, as Paul saith to the Church of Corinth, as I remember: “Mark such as cause divisions and offences,” [Romans 16:17---EJP] and would disturb you from that foundation of Peace you are upon, under any pretence whatsoever!—
“I shall conclude with this. I was free, the last time of our meeting, to tell you I would discourse upon a Psalm; and I did it. I am not ashamed of it at any time—especially when I meet with men of such consideration as you. There you have one verse which I forgot.
“I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace “unto His people and to His saints; but let them not turn again to “folly.” [Psalm 85:8; AV1611---EJP]
“Dissension, division, destruction, in a poor Nation under a Civil War,—having all the effects of a Civil War upon it! Indeed if we return againg to “folly,” let every man consider, If it be not like turning to destruction? If God shall unite your hearts and bless you, and give you the blessing of union and love one to another; and tread-down everyting that rieseth up in your hearts and tendeth to deceive your own souls with pretences of this thing or that, as we have been saying,—[The Sentence began as a positive, "If God shall;" but gradually turning on its axis, it has now got quite round into the negative side (for the Protector knows this Parliament will continue its path of stalling inaction thereby favoring internal strife, civil war and ultimate foreign invasion by that "Cain" of previous mention, Charles Stuart II)---Carlyle (EJP)],—and not prefer the keeping of Peace, that we may see the fruit of righteousness in them that love peace and embrace peace,—it will be said of this poor Nation, Actum est de Anglia, ‘It is all over with England‘!
“But I trust God will never leave it to such a spirit. And while I live, and am able, I shall be ready—
[Courage, my brave one! Thou has but some Seven Months more of it, and then the ugly coil is all over; and thy part in it manfully done; manfully and fruitfully, to all Eternity! Peppery Scott's hot head can mount to Temple Bar, whither it is bound; and England, with immense expenditure of liquor and tar-barrels, can call-in its Nell-Gwynn Defender of the Faith---(Actress Eleanor Nell-Gwynn was the mistress of serial adulterer King Charles II, he practicing the standard sexual immorality of most Roman Catholic royals. Upon that damnable "Restoration" in 1660, a national party-fest ensued for days with accompanying drunkenness and adultery on every hand. When it came to punishment of those in opposition to the Jesuit-tutored Stuart devil, many were tarred and feathered---a favorite humiliation of the restored king, now Rome's "Defender of the Faith."), ---and make out a very notable Two-hundred Years under his guidance (that is, from 1660 to 1860 under the Stuart/Hanoverian British Monarchy, Hanoverian Queen Victoria reigning at the time of Carlyle's writing); and, finding itself now nearly got to the Devil (under secret Jesuit rule), may perhaps pause, and recoil, and remember: who knows? Nay who cares? may Oliver say. He is honourably quit of it, he for one; and the Supreme Powers will guide it farther according to their pleasure (aye, the Risen Son of God at the right hand of His Father in Heaven will enforce His law of "sowing and reaping" as it pertains to nations, especially to the Jesuit-ruled Hanoverian royals King George III, King George IV and Queen Victoria)---Carlyle (EJP)].
“—I shall be ready to stand and fall with you, in this seemingly promising Union [new Frame of Government---Carlyle] which God hath wrought among you, which I hope neither the pride nor envy of men shall be able to make void. I have taken my Oath [In Westminster Hall, Twenty-sixth of June last (1657)] to govern “according to the Laws” that are now made; and I trust I shall fully answer it. And know, I sought not this place. [Who would have "sought" it, that could have as nobly avoided it? Very scurvy creatures only. The "place" is no great things, I think;---with either Heaven or else Hell so close upon the rear of it, a man might do without the "place"! Know all men, Oliver Cromwell did not seek this place, but was sought to it, and led and driven to it, by the Necessities, the Divine Providences, the Eternal Laws.---Carlyle] I speak it before God, Angels, and Men: I DID NOT. You sought me for it, you brought me to it; and I took my Oath to be faithful to the Interest of these Nations, to be faithful to the Government. All those things were implied, in my eye, in the Oath “to be faithful to this Government” upon which we have now met. And I trust, by the grace of God, as I have taken my Oath to serve this Commonwealth on such an account, I shall,—I must!—see it done, according to the Articles of Government. That every just Interest may be preserved; that a Godly Ministry may be upheld, and not affronted by seducing and seduced spirits; that all men may be preserved in their just rights, whether civil or spiritual. Upon this account did I take oath, and swear to this Government!—[And mean to continue administering it withal.---Carlyle]—And so having declared my heart and mind to you in this, I have nothing more to say, but to pray, God Almighty bless you.”
Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations, (London: Chapman and Hall, Ld., 1894), Vol. V of V, pp. 120-124.
End of Part 4 of 4
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