A96239:21
A letter from the Assembly of Divines in England, and the commissioners of the…
A letter from the Assembly of Divines in England, and the commissioners of the Church of Scotland, written, and sent by order of the honourable House of Commons assembled in Parliament, to the Belgic, French, Helvetian, and other reformed churches. Translated into English, and now published with the several inscriptions to those churches. By order of the said House.A letter from the Assembly of Divines in England, and the commissioners of the Church of Scotland, written, and sent by order of the honorable House of Commons assembled in Parliament, to the Belgick, French, Helvetian, and other reformed churches. Translated into English, and now published with the severall inscriptions to those churches. By order of the said House.
London: printed by Richard Cotes for Ralph Smith, 1644
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Letter: A Letter from the Assembly of Divines in England, and the Commissioners of the Church o…
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
And, to make up our misery to the full, they have now at last prevailed with his Majesty so far to own the bloody Rebels in Ireland, as not only to call them his Roman-Catholic Subjects now in Arms, &c. but even to grant them a Cessation for a year, (when they were brought into great extremity) and to hold what they have gotten, liberty to strengthen themselves, with Men, Money, Arms, Ammunition from any place, freedom to send or come to his Majesty; and thereby be not only enabled to destroy the remnant of the Protestants there, but to come over hither, (as many of them are already) to act the same butcheries upon us, as they have hitherto exercised upon our miserable and distressed Brethren among themselves.
And, to make up our misery to the full, they have now at last prevailed with his Majesty so farre to own the bloody Rebels in Ireland, as not onely to call them his Roman-Catholick Subjects now in Arms, &c. but even to grant them a Cessation for a yeare, (when they were brought into great extremity) and to hold what they have gotten, liberty to strengthen themselves, with Men, Money, Arms, Ammunition from any place, freedome to send or come to his Majesty; and thereby bee not only inabled to destroy the remnant of the Protestants there, but to come over hither, (as many of them are already) to act the same butcheries upon us, as they have hitherto exercised upon our miserable and distressed Brethren among themselves.
In these deplorable calamities are we involved: and in the midst of these troublesome times, have the honourable Houses of Parliament, called this Assembly, to give them our best Counsel for the Reformation of the Church, for the purging and preserving of Religion: and require us to make Gods Word only our Rule, and to endeavour the nearest conformity to the best Reformed Churches, and uniformity in all the Churches of the three Kingdoms. And in this work we are now exercised, though the enemy hath stirred up the heart of our ⟨p. 8⟩dear and dread Sovereign against us also: Yet through the good hand of God upon us, we have made some comfortable beginnings: The work is his, who commands us not to despise the day of small things.