Cromwell: Warning to Parliament on Domestic and Foreign Affairs, 1658; Pt. 1 of 3
Cromwell: Warning to Parliament on Domestic and Foreign Affairs, 1658; Pt. 1 of 3
Oliver Cromwell, Protector of the Protestant Faith
This is Oliver Cromwell’s second to last speech given to the Second Protectorate Parliament on January 25, 1658. Still, the Parliament has not taken its responsibility to legislate for the benefit of the Commonwealth’s Protestants and the Great Cause Oliver has spent the last 17 years of his life sustaining and defending. Rome and the Jesuits have conspired to overthrow the Three Nations (England, Scotland and Ireland), to submit them to the arbitrary and tyrannical power of the Stuarts, Jesuit Temporal Coadjutor Charles II plotting his invasion from Spain once a Jesuit-incited civil war had erupted. In describing Rome’s “design” against England, Cromwell, like a father entreating his children, warns of the fate of English Protestantism and thus the hope of world religious and political Protestant liberty should Parliament fail in its responsibility. Oliver, ever candid and never at a loss for words, begins (we remembering that all emphatic words and phrases are found in ‘singular quotations’ and also in italics, while all in bold are your Editor’s):
“MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN OF THE TWO HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT,
“(For so I must own you), in whom together with myself is vested the Legislative Power of these Nations!—The impression of the weight of those affairs and interests for which we are met together is such that I could not with a good conscience satisfy myself, if I did not remonstrate to you somewhat of my apprehensions of the State of Affairs of these Nations; together with the proposal of such rememdy as may occur, to the dangers now imminent upon us.
“I conceive the Well-being, yea, the Being of these Nations is now at stake. If God bless this Meeting,—our tranquility and peace may be lengthened out to us; if otherwise,—I shall offer it to your judgments and considerations, by the time I have done, whether there be, as to men [humanly speaking---Carlyle], ‘so much as’ a possibility of discharging that Trust which is incumbent upon us for the safety and preservation of these Nations! When I have told you what occurs to my thoughts, I shall leave it to such an operation on your hearts as it shall please God Almighty to work upon you. [His Highness, I think, looks earnest enough today. Oppressed with many things, and not in good health either. In those deep mournful eyes, which are always full of noble silent sorrow, of affection and pity and valour, what a depth today of thoughts that cannot be spoken! Sorrow enough, depth enough,---and this deepest attainable depth, to rest upon what "it shall please God Almighty" to do!---Carlyle]
“I look upon this to be the great duty of my Place; as being set on a watch-tower to see what may be for the good of these Nations, and what may be for the preventing of evil; that so, by the advice of so wise and great a Council as this, which hath in it the life and spirit of these Nations, such “good” may be attained, and such “evil” whatever it is, may be obviated. We shall hardly set our shoulders to this work, unless it shall please God to work some conviction upon our hearts that there is need of our most serious and best counsels at such a time as this is!—
“I have not prepared any such matter and rule of speech to deliver myself unto you, as perhaps might have been fitter for me to have done, and more servicable for you in understanding me;—but shall only speak plainly and honestly to you out of such conceptions as it hath pleased God to set upon me.
“We have not been now four years and upwards in this Government, to be totally ignorant of what things may be of the greatest concernment to us. Your dangers,—for that is the head of my speech,—are either with respect to Affairs Abroad and their difficulties, or to Affairs at Home and their difficulties. You are come now, as I may say, into the end of as great difficulties and straits as, I think ever Nation was engaged in. I had in my thoughts to have made this the method of my Speech: To have let you see the things which hazard your Being, and ‘those which hazard’ your Well-being. But when I came seriously to consider better of it, I thought, as your affairs stand, all things would resolve themselves into very Being! You are not a Nation, you will not be a Nation, if God strengthen you not to meet these evils that are upon us!
“First, from Abroad: What are the Affairs, I beseech you, abroad? I thought the Profession of the Protestant Religion was a thing of “Well-being;” and truly, in a good sense, so it is, and it is no more: though it be a very high thing, it is but a thing, it is but a thing of “Well-being.” [A Nation can still BE, even without Protestantism.---Carlyle] But take it with all the complications of it, with all the concomitants of it, with respect had to the Nations abroad,—I do believe, he that looks well about him, and considereth the estate of the Protestant Affairs all Christendom over; he must needs say and acknowledge that the grand Design now on foot, in comparison with which all other Designs are but low things, is, Whether the Christian world shall be all Popery? Or, whether God hath a love to, and we ought to have ‘a love to, and’ a brotherly fellow-feeling of, the interests of all the Protestant Christians in the world? He that strikes at but one species of a general to make it nothing, strikes at all.
“It is not so now, that the Protestant Cause and Interest abroad is struck-at; and is, in opinion and apprehension, quite under foot, trodden down? Judge with me a little, I beseech you, Whether it be so or no. And then, I will pray you, consider how far we are concerned in that danger, as to ‘our very’ Being!
“We have known very well, the Protestant Cause is accounted the honest and religious Interest of this Nation. It was not trodden under foot all at once, but by degrees,—that this Interest might be consumed as with a canker insensibly, as Jonah’s gourd was, till it was quite withered. It is at another rate now! For certainly this, in the general, ‘it is fact:’ The Papacy, and those that are upholders of it [the Jesuits---EJP], they have openly and avowedly trodden God’s people under foot, on this very motion and account, that they were Protestants. The money you parted-with in that noble Charity which was exercised in this Nation, and the just sense you had of those poor Piedmonts, was satisfaction enough to yourselves of this [proof enough that you believed in the Papacy's design against all Protestants---EJP], That if all the Protestants in Europe had had but that head, that head had been cut off, and so an end of the whole. But is this ‘of Piedmont’ all? No. Look how the House of Austria, on both sides of Christendom, ‘both in Austria Proper and Spain,’ are armed and prepared to destroy the whole Protestant Interest.”
Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations, (London: Chapman and Hall, Ld., 1894) Vol. V of V, pp. 102-106.
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We must take leave of Carlyle at this juncture and consult American Protestant author J. T. Headley’s account of the massacre of the Vaudois in the valley of Piedmont. For we White Anglo-Saxon-Celtic Protestants and Baptists have been robbed of the knowledge of our history, when, remarkably, the greatest historians of this era were White American, British and German Protestants.
“PERSECUTION OF THE VAUDOIS”
“In June, of this year, came the news of the persecution in the valley of Piedmont. Six Catholic regiments, three of which were Irish [the Company of Jesus using its Irish Roman Catholic cutthroats just as the Jesuits would later incite the Catholic Irish to fight alongside their Protestant British enemies during the Vatican's destruction of the anti-Jesuit, Protestant Lutheran, German Second Reich during World War I, the opening act of the Black Pope's Second Thirty Years' War (1914-1945)---EJP], were appointed to drive the Vaudois from their homes in mid-winter. The cruelties, the inhuman barbarity, that marked the proceedings against the poor Protestants, are well known. ‘Villages were burned to the ground; men were hewn in pieces; children’s brains dashed out against the rocks [in accordance with the bloody Jesuit Oath of the Fourth Vow and as later did the Order's Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen to Russian Jews during WWII---EJP], and women impaled naked—a hundred and fifty females were beheaded, and their heads used in a game of bowls.’ When the news of the atrocities reached Cromwell, he burst into tears—they were the siants of God who thus suffered, and all his compassion was roused within him. On that day [3rd of January, 1655---Headley] he was to sign the treaty with France, which had for a long time been under contemplation; but he immedately refused, declaring that negociations should proceed no further until the king and Mazarin, the prime minister, would pledge themselves to assist him in saving the Vaudois Protestants. He gave 2000 English pounds from his private purse towards relieving their wants, and appointed Milton to write letters to the several European powers, invoking their aid. The noble bard entered with all the zeal and enthusiasm of his Great Master into the work. His sublime sonnet on the Vaudois will live for ever, a monument both to his genius and his religion.
Avenge, O, Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones.
Forget not! in the Book record their groans,
Who were thy sheep, and, in their ancient fold,
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martr’d blood and ashes sow
O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
His Highness Oliver Cromwell
“A day of fasting and humiliation was appointed, and a collection ordered to be taken in all the churches. The contribution amounted to over 37,000 English pounds, showing how deeply Protestant England was stirred by the persecution of the Piedmontese Christians. It is said that Cromwell, in a burst of passion, replied to some obstacles that were mentioned as interfering with his plans, that ‘he would sail his ships over the Alps, but that he would put a stop to the persecution.’
“Bordeaux, the French ambassador, complained of his refusal to sign the treaty—declaring that the King of France [Jesuit-advised King Louis XIV, whose minister of finance was Knight of Malta Jean-Baptiste Colbert---EJP] could not meddle with the administration of an internal State, and that the Duke of Savoy had as good a right to make laws for his Protestant, as he, the Protector, had for his Catholic, subjects. But Cromwell would not yield a jot until France had promised to put a stop to the cruelties on the Vaudois. Bordeaux, in anger, asked audience to take leave—-still the former would not relent. War with France, nay, with the whole world, if necessary, he would wage, but this persecution of the children of God should cease. [Oh, had only an American president issued this same ultimatum to the Black Pope's Communist dictators Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, to stop the mass-murder of Chinese and Russian Bible-Believing Protestants and Baptists! But alas, with the Jesuits (via their wicked CFR overseen by their Archbishop of New York City) ruling the White House "Oval Office of the Virgin Mary," no such ultimatum would ever be issued! May God forgive us American Protestant and Baptist Christians as we repent and beg for his pardon and mercy, the blood of tens of millions of our Chinese and Russian brethren staining our hands!---EJP]
“The king of France at length yielded, and word was sent that the Duke of Savoy had granted an amnesty to the Vaudois, and restored their ancient rights [mere "privileges" granted from government as opposed to recognition of God-given, "common law rights" to worship God according to the Reformation Bible, rights later protected by the American Baptist-Calvinist First Amendment---EJP]. Mazarin, who, in fact, ruled France, had brought this about, for he stood in deadly fear of Cromwell. It is said that he always turned pale when he heard his name mentioned. [I love it!!!!---EJP]
“Oliver was the champion of Protestantism the world over, and he wished it so understood: he would defend it wherever his arm could reach. Not content with the efforts he had put forth for the Piedmontese, he sent a messenger to the Duke of Savoy, remonstrating against his conduct. He also took pains to let the Pope understand, the he knew him to be at the bottom of the unnatural persecution, and if he did not beware, he would see his ships in the harbor of Civita Vecchia, and hear the thunder of his cannon around the Vatican. . . .
“Thus the terror of his name became everywhere a shield for the persecuted Christians, and he was always remembered by them in their morning and evening devotions.
“This stern and decided interference of his, in behalf of the Vaudois, has given his [bigoted and deceptive] biographers another occasion to charge him with hypocrisy. He burst into tears—hazarded a war with France—defied the Pope—gave away ten thousand dollars, and all to deceive his subjects [so say Cromwell's attackers---EJP]. If he had shown no feeling, his enemies would have said with infinite zest, that his religious fervor disappeared so soon as he felt himself firmly seated in power. If he had blustered and remonstrated, but risked nothing, they would have exclaimed with pious horror, ‘behold his deceit!’ As he took neither course, but endangered the peace he had so long striven to secure, and awakened the hostility of foreign nations—nay resolutely and stubbornly carried his point, and rescued the suffering Vaudois, his actions are termed, with the utmost sang froid, ‘hypocritical pretence.’ It were desirable if English rulers of the present day [1848] would exhibit something of this hypocrisy. They will see Poland dismembered—Tahiti invaded by Catholics—Switzerland threatened with the legions of despots, and be content with a little bluster, a grave remonstrance or two, but never interpose their strength between the persecuted and the persecutors. Cromwell might have done the same; and if he had been as selfish and political as modern sovereigns are, he would. He who can find nothing but heartlessness in this conduct, can detect treason in heaven. His prejudice would turn gold into dross, beauty into deformity, nay, truth itself into falsehood [which diabolical falsehood has been the norm of Cromwellian history for the last three centuries!---EJP].”
J. T. Headley, The Life of Oliver Cromwell, (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1848), pp. 394-396, 397-398.
End of Part 1 of 3
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