_B._ It is methinks no great polity in neighbouring princes to favour, so often as they do, one another’s rebels, especially when they rebel against monarchy itself. They should rather, first, make a league against rebellion, and afterwards, if there be no remedy, fight one against another. Nor will that serve the turn amongst Christian sovereigns, till preaching be better looked to, whereby the interpretation of a verse in the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin Bible, is oftentimes the cause of civil war and the deposing and assassinating of God’s anointed. And yet, converse with those divinity-disputers as long as you will, you will hardly find one in a hundred discreet enough to be employed in any great affair either of war or peace. It is not the right of the sovereign, though granted to him by every man’s express consent, that can enable him to do his office; it is the obedience of the subject, that must do that. For what good is it to promise allegiance, and then by and by to cry out, as some ministers did in the pulpit, _To your tents, O Israel!_? Common people know nothing of right or wrong by their own meditation; they must therefore be taught the grounds of their duty, and the reasons why calamities ever follow disobedience to their lawful sovereigns. But to the contrary, our rebels were publicly taught rebellion in the pulpits; and that there was no sin, but the doing of what the preachers forbade, or the omission of what they advised. But now the King was the Parliament’s prisoner, why did not the Presbyterians advance their own interest by restoring him? _A._ The Parliament, in which there were more Presbyterians yet than Independents, might have gotten what they would of the King during his life, if they had not by an unconscionable and sottish ambition obstructed the way to their ends. They sent him four propositions, to be signed and passed by him as Acts of Parliament; telling him, when these were granted, they would send commissioners to treat with him of any other articles. The propositions were these: First, that the Parliament should have the militia, and the power of levying money to maintain it, for twenty years; and after that term, the exercise thereof to return to the King, in case the Parliament think the safety of the kingdom concerned in it. _B._ The first article takes from the King the militia, and consequently the whole sovereignty for ever. _A._ The second was, that the King should justify the proceedings of the Parliament against himself; and declare void all oaths and declarations made by him against the Parliament. _B._ This was to make him guilty of the war, and of all the blood spilt therein. _A._ The third was, to take away all titles of honour conferred by the King since the Great Seal was carried to him in May 1642. The fourth was, that the Parliament should adjourn themselves, when, and to what place, and for what time they pleased.