Saints No Smiters, Treatise · Section 1
§ 1. The Occasion of this Writing is declared.
IT was our Saviors injunction to his Disciples, Matth. 6. 33. that they should first seek the Kingdom of God; & it was his care to direct how they were to seek it; to wit, by Prayer for its coming, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, suffering patiently for it, and living holily according to his Precepts and Example: And accordingly the holy Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors and Believers in Christ have in the several Ages since Christs appearing in the flesh promoted the Kingdom of God by these means. Nevertheless (to omit other Instances, whether of former or later times) there hath been a company of men in this Nation, noted by the Name of Fifth-Monarchy-men, or Quintomonarchians, who have in Sermons and in Printed Writings asserted another way, which is like the barbarous proceedings of Turks, or bloudy Papists, of setting up the supposed visible Kingdom of God by bodily weapons, fighting against all the present Civil Powers on Earth as Antichristian, and in most cruel manner killing all that oppose them, and determining this to have been the Generation work they were to prosecute in this Age. By what degrees and means they came to such monstrous Opinions they can best tell, who have been acquainted with them. The cursed effects of such Opinions as have been hatched and vented by the men of that perswasion, after sundry other attempts before that time frustrated, brake out in the beginning of January 1660. in the City of London, a small number of men dementate by those Conceits in a most horrid furious manner, making a most bloudy Insurrrection, in a most violent audacious way not to be parallel'd. Those Principles by which they acted and their Practises, were, to my knowledge, opposed some years before in some of the Congregations to which some of the Assertors had joined themselves, and they thence solemnly ejected, and their Doctrine in the Confessions of Faith of those Congregations, and some other Apologetical and Polemical Writings rejected and impugned.
And after that Insurrection presently those persons who were obnoxious to suspition and obloquy as abettting or fomenting that Attempt, by reason of their dissent from the received way of Ecclesiastical Rites and Government, did by humble Apologies and otherwise acquit themselves from that crimination. Nevertheless, having met with some of the Writings of the men, whose Principles animated that Rising; and fearing, that there may yet some sparks of that fire lie unquenched, after the publishing of some Writings against the Papists, to shew the insufficiency of their proofs for the Truth, Visibility, Holiness, Infallibility of their Church, Supremacy of their Pope, the certainty of their unwritten Traditions▪ necessity of receiving the Trent Faith, and joining to the Roman Church as it is now governed; and some other against Quakers about the Light within each man, as an insufficient Rule to guide us to God; about the Oaths of the King's Supremacy and Allegiance to him; and upon that occasion somewhat an ample Treatise about Swearing; asserting, That under the Gospel there is yet a lawfull use of swearing; being now debarred of other Ministerial imployment, I have conceived it a necessary work to shew the weakness of those suppositions, upon which the Quinto-monarchians have been drawn to such an hideous practice, as that accursed action forementioned was.