note_hyde.txt

Notes on Edward Hyde's History of the Rebellion, ed. by Macray (1888) in 6
volumes.

That posterity may not be deceived,
    by the prosperous wickedness of these times,
    into an opinion
        that less than a general combination, 
            and universal apostasy in the whole nation from their religion and 
            allegiance,
        could,
            in so short a time,
        have produced such a total and prodigious alteration and confusion over
        the whole kingdom;
and so the memory of those few
    who,
        out of duty and conscience,
    have opposed and resisted that torrent
        which hath overwhelmed them
may lose the recompensate due to their virtue,
and,
    having undergone the injuries and reproaches of this,
may not find a vindication in a better,
    age;
it will not be unuseful,
    (at least to the curiosity if not the conscience of men,)
to present to the world a full and clear narration of the grounds,
circumstances, and artifices of this Rebellion,
    not only from the time
        since the flame hath been visible in a civil war,
    but,
        looking farther back,
    from those former passages, accidents, and actions,
        by which the seed-plots were made and framed 
            from whence these mischiefs have successively grown to the height
                they are now at.


And then,
though the hand and judgment of God will be very visible,
    in the infatuating a people
        (as ripe and prepared for destruction)
    into all the perverse actions of folly and madness,
    making the weak to contribute to the designs of the wicked,
    and suffering even those by degrees, 
        out of the conscience of their guilt,
    to grow more wicked than they intended to be;
    letting the wise to be imposed upon by men of no understanding,
    and possessing the innocent with laziness and sleep in the most visible
    article of danger;
    uniting the ill,
        though of the most different opinions, divided interests, and distant
        affections, 
    in a firm and constant league of mischief;
    and dividing those
        whose opinions and interests are the same into faction and emulation,
        more pernious to the public than the treason of the others:
whilst the poor people,
    under pretence of zeal to Religion, Law, Liberty, and Parliaments,
        (words of precious esteem in their just signification,)
are furiously hurried into actions introducing Atheism,
     and dissolving all the elements of Christian Religion,
     cancelling all obligations,
     and destroying all foundations of Law and Liberty,
     and rendering not only the privileges but very being of Parliaments
     desperate and impossible:
I say,
    though the immediate finger and wrath of God must be acknowledged in these
    perplexities and distractions,
yet he 
    who shall diligently observe the distempers and conjunctures of time, 
        the ambition, pride, and folly of persons,
        and sudden growth of wickedness,
    from want of care and circumspection in the first impressions,
will find all this bulk of misery to have proceeded, 
    and to have been brought upon us,
from the same natural causes and means 
    which have usually attended kingdoms swoln with long plenty pride, and
    access,
        towards some signal mortification, and castigation of Heaven.

And it may be,
    upon the view of the impossibility of foreseeing many things
        that have happened,
    and of the necessity of overseeing many other things,
we may not yet find the cure so desperate,
but that,
    by God's mercy,
the wounds may be again bound up,
    though no question many must first bleed to death;
and then this prospect may not make the future peace less pleasant and durable.