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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34212	A missive to His Majesty of Great Britain, King James written divers yeers since by Doctor Carier ; conteining [sic] the motives of his conversion to Catholike religion ; vvith a notable fore-sight of the present distempers both in the church and state of His Majesties dominions, and his advice for the prevention thereof.	Carier, Benjamin, 1566-1614.; Strange, N., 17th cent.; James I, King of England, 1566-1625.	1649 (1649)	Wing C572; ESTC R8830	50,068	94

in the beginning and I remember M. Causabon told me when I brought him out of France that his Errand was nothing else but to mediate peace betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England Therefore I thought before I would submit my selfe to the Church of Rome I would write to M. Causabon such a Letter as hee might shew unto your Mdjesty containing such conditions as I thought might satisfie your Majesty if they were performed by the Church of Rome The copie of which Letter is too long here to set downe But when Mr. Causabon answered me that he knew your Majesty was resolved to have no society with the Church of Rome upon any condition whatsoever and that it would be my undoing if those my Letters should come to your Majesties hands or of those that bare the sway I began to despaire of my returne into England unlesse I would overthrow both the health of my body and the quiet of my mind and either utterly damne my own soule or greatly indanger not only my living and credit but my life it selfe also by reason of your Majesties displeasure and the severity of the Statutes made and in force against Catholikes and Catholike Religion 16. There is a Statute in England made by King Henry the 8. to make him supreme head of the Church in spirituall and Ecclesiasticall Causes which Statute injoynes all the Subjects of England on paine of death to believe and to sweare they do believe that it is true And yet all the world knowes if King Henry the 8. could have gotten the Pope to divorce Q. Katherine that he might marry Anne Boleigne that Statute had never been made by him and if that Title had not enabled the King to pull down Abbeyes and Religious Houses and give them to Lay-men the Lords and Commons of that time would never have suffered such a Statute to be made This Statute was continued by Q. Elizabeth to serve her own turne and it is confirmed by your Majesty to satisfie other men And yet your Majesty yeelds the Church of Rome to be the Mother Church and the Bishop of Rome to be the chiefe Bishop or Primate of all the Westerne Churches which I doe also verily believe and therefore I do verily thinke he hath or ought to have some spirituall Jurisdiction in England And although in my younger daies the fashion of the world made me swear as other men did for which I pray God forgive me yet I ever doubted and am now resolved that no Christian man can take that * .i. Of Supremacy Oath with a safe conscience neither will I ever take it to gaine the greatest preferment in the world 17. There is another Statute in England made by Q. Elizabeth and confirmed by your Majesty which makes it death for any Englishman to be in England being made a Priest by authority derived or pretended to be derived from the Bishop of Rome I cannot believe that I am a Priest at all unlesse I be made by authority derived from Gregory the great from whence all the Bishops in England have their being if they have any being at all 18. There is another Statute in like manner made and confirmed that it is death to be reconciled by a Catholike Priest to the Church of Rome I am perswaded that the Church of Rome is our Mother Church and that no man in England can be saved that continues wilfully out of the visible unity of that Church and therefore I cannot chuse but perswade the people to be reconciled thereunto if possibly they can 19. There is another Statute in like manner made and confirmed that it is death to exhort the people of England to Catholike Romane Religion I am perswaded that the Religion prescribed and practised by the Church of Rome is the true Catholike Religion which I will particularly justifie and make plaine from point to point if God give time and oportunity and therefore I cannot chuse but perswade the people thereunto It may be these are not all severall Statutes some of them may be members of the same for I have not my bookes about me to search but I am sure all of them do make such felonies and treasons as were the greatest vertues of the Primitive Church and such as I must needs confesse my selfe I cannot chuse if I live in England but indeavour to be guilty of and then it were easie to find Puritanes enough to make a Jury against me and there would not want a Justice of Peace to give a sentence and when they had done that which is worse then the persecution it selfe they would all sweare solemnly that Doctor Carier was not put to death for Catholike Religion but for Felony and Treason I have no hope of protection against the cruelty of those Lawes if your Majesty be resolved upon no conditions whatsoever to have any society at all or communion with the Church of Rome And therefore whilst the case so stands I dare not returne home againe But I cannot be altogether out of hope of better newes before I die as long as I do believe that the Saints in heaven do rejoyce at the conversion of a sinner to Christ and do know that your Majesty by your birth hath so great an interest in the Saints of heaven as you shall never cease to have untill you cease to be the son of such a mother as would rejoyce more then all the rest for your conversion Wherefore I assure my selfe that she with all the rest doe pray that your Majesty before you die may be Militant in the Communion of that Church wherein they are Triumphant And in this hope I am gone before to joyne my prayers with theirs in the unity of the Catholike Church And do humbly pray your Majesty to pardon me for doing that which was not in my power to avoid and to give me leave to live where I hope shortly to die unlesse I may hope to do your Majesty service and without the prejudice of any honest man in England to see some unity betwixt the Church of England and her mother the Church of Rome And now having declared the meanes of my conversion to Catholike Religion I will briefly also shew unto you the hopes I have to do your Majesty no ill service therein CHAP. II. The hopes I have to doe your Majestie no ill service in being Catholike MY first hope that your Majesty will accept of that for the best service I can do you which doth most further the glory of our Blessed Saviour and my own salvation Indeed there are Kingdomes in the world where the chiefe care of the Governor is Non quàm bonis sed quàm subditis regnent such were the heathen Kingdoms which S. Augustine describes in his 2. de Civit. Dei cap. 20. In such Common-wealths the way to be good Subjects is not to be good men but to serve the times and the turns of them that beare the sway

his decrees tell me again what Church or Prince or private person can promise himselfe security whilst every villaine hath that principle to justifie his attempt against them These and the like Doctrines dispersed up and downe in the written works of the late Reformers obvious to be met withall both in the Authors themselves and in others that write of them did D. Carier ponder and in them saw cleerly the effects that by an unavoidable connexion as long as the causes were kept in their vigour were to flow out of them and these were the overthrow of Church and State Nor did he see these effects only in their cause but really extant in themselves he saw the Germans till then commended for loyall to their Princes and obedient to their spirituall Pastors presently upon Luthers firing and blowing the coales with a pretence of Reformation divided among themselves in open Rebellion against their Liege Emperour Charles 5. without regard to Ecclesiasticall Superiours He saw their Churches wasted and prophaned and mens manners in a moment altered into worse he saw the Genevean tumults against their true Prince and Bishop their Reformer Calvin that so he might be more absolutely independent of all and chiefe over all being the Incendiary Nor can I thinke him ignorant of the Councell held at Geneva in the yeer 1560. for the murdering of the King and Queen of France the Queen Mother with the royall issue the Catholike Peers Magistrates of the Kingdom the two great Reformers Calvin and Beza being Authors and principalls in the Conspiracy as Bolsecus in the life of Calvin makes appeare out of a Letter of the said Calvin to his trusty friend Viretus he saw the ruinous devastations that fell upon the flourishing Kingdome of France from the same fiery spirit of Reformation which Herod-like was most malicious against the venerable Antiquities of the nation He saw again to omit others the rebellion of the Scots against their Soveraigne Queen Mary our present Kings Grandmother who afterwards by the arm and axe of the old cause was beheaded at Fodringham Castle in England the common Hang-man of London by publike authority O eternall shame to the English and Scottish Nation imbruing his hands in her royall blood And observing how hand in hand reall destruction rebellion with their issue out-rages and their sister pre●ence of Reformation traversed other Countreyes he saw that one could not stand long parted from the other throughout King James his Dominions so gave him a seasonable warning of it and as a provident Noe shewed his Majesty a safe Arke to prevent the Deluge if he pleased But to the present woe of his posterity and their loyall Subjects through ill private choice or counsell from others he neglected the wholesome advice of his knowing and faithfull servant the Doctor Now though the publishing of this Epistolar Treatise comes too late for the effect first intended to King James yet seeing the old principles still standing and the authority of their founders still maintained by the Reformed Church of England And againe seeing our Kingdome in blood from Sea to Sea with wounds inflicted doubled and redoubled by them though few reflecting whence the blowes do originally proceed I thought it no ill office of a Patriot though now in a kind of exile to endeavour a stop to my Countreyes evills as far forth as the reading of a sheet or two of printed paper might contribute thereunto by presenting all whom it may concern and whom doth it not concern with a fresh view of D. Cariers advice The old proverb out of the Prophet Isay cap. 28. v. 19. is Vexatio dat intellectum vexation gives understanding it sometimes cures mad men and brings them to themselves againe Perhaps the smart of so many blowes may make men reflect whence they have good and bad derived unto them and render them more capable to regard the Doctors remedy then whilst they were blinded with fulnesse ease and prosperity His remedie in a word is an obedient return of all unto that Church whence those Reformers rebelliously apostated the charge of which Church is to execrate to the pit of hell the blasphemies and seditious principles of Luther and Calvin to reduce all to a sound saveing beliefe with a good conscience to order all into their due postures of obedience to temporall and spirituall Superiours and in a word not to live prophanely as men destitute of the knowledge of the true God nor thirsting one anothers blood nor invading one anothers rights as Wolves and Tygers but as the Apostle saith Tit. cap. 2. v. 12. sobriè justè piè soberly for our selves justly towards our neighbour and piously to God or as the true patterne of all Justice Christ Jesus hath taught us reddentes quae sunt Caesaris Caesari quae sunt Dei Deo By this you have one reason why D. Cariers Letter is republished Another reason is to shew the world that the late conversion of D. Tho. Vane late Chaplaine to the Kings Majesty that now is and of Dean Cressey so much talked of in England and the more by reason of their learned bookes printed to satisfie all why they became Roman Catholikes and of many other prime wits of our Universities some whereof are hereafter particularly mentioned who have lately trodden the same paths utterly forsaking thir former Tenets in Religion not for temporall gain as all men know unlesse it be of poverty and persecution is not a thing new strange or to be wondred at When D. Carier listed himself into the Militia of the Roman Church choosing rather as Moses did in Exodus to be afflicted with the true Israelites then prosper among the Aegyptians and to be according to the Psalmists Dialect an abject in the House of God rather then inhabite the Tabernacles of sinners there were many circumstances that might make some inconsiderate people to wonder at it The Church then called Protestant whereof it seems he counted himselfe a member was at that time most flourishing in England they had a visible supreme head of above forty yeares standing without interruption after the title was first taken by Henry the eight to legitimate his Marriage with Anno Bolen whilest his first wife lived it ceased during the reigne of his daughter Q. Mary and so was interrupted in whom by Oath they acknowledged the supremest power in all things under heaven They gloried in their Prelats Bishops not found in any reformed Churches out of their Kings Dominions they had some colourable pretence to a succession of Ministeriall Ordinations and Missions from the Apostles and Christ They thought they had their Church well and properly marked by thirty nine Articles They boasted of a Liturgie consecrated with the blood of Martyrs more compleat for all uses and satisfactory to the people thou any of the neighbouring Reformations injoyed They had differences of daies some kept holy others fasted They used some solemnities in the administration

now then in Catholike times it had but it hath never the more wealth It is but the gain of the Tellers to have more money true wealth is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is the richest Prince that hath meanes to main●●ine the greatest Army to do most magnificent works both in war and peace wherein the facts of your Catholike Ancestors do appeare upon good Record your Majesties are but yet hoped for and if ever you have the help of Catholike Religion to assist you I hope you shall excell them all otherwise I assure my self the Schisme will do what it can to make you poore and then complaine that you are not rich It was indeed one of the main pretences in the Statutes of Henry the 8. that the Schisme might inrich the King and maintain his wars but God did not blesse it for notwithstanding No more will Church-lands inrich this Parliament or the Purchasers all the Church-lands and Goods and Tenths and Fruits and Praemunires King Henry the 8. was faine to abase his coine more then once and yet he died not so rich as his Catholike Father left him And since his time what is become of the Court of Augmentation what benefit you receive of all the Church-lands more then your Progenitors did when they were in the hands of the Clergie what case your Subjects have of Subsidies thereby or in briefe how much your Coffers are in iched you may be pleased to be informed by th●se that have to do with those offices and can readily give you an account for mine own part I have diligently read over all the Statutes made by Henry the 8. and do find that the Events are so clean contrary to the Prefaces and pretences of them as if God of purpose would laugh them to scorne 36. There is yet another objection or two in reason of State concerning your Majestie which seem to be harder to answer then all the rest whereof the one is that your Majestie hath undertaken the cause in writing and set out a booke in Print and it must needs be great dishonour to you to recall it This indeed is that which I have heard the Calvinists of England often wi●h for before it was done and much boast of after it was by means effected that your Majestie should be no longer able to shew your selfe indifferent as you did at the first but were now ingaged upon your honour to maintain their party and to oppugne the Catholikes and altogether to suppresse them But there is nothing in that book why your Majesty may not when you please admit the Popes Supremacy in spiritualls And you are partly ingaged thereby to admit the triall of the first Generall Councells and most Ancient Fathers And as for the question of Antichrist it is but an Hypotheticall proposition and so reserved as you may recall your self when you will and howsoever that booke came forth either of your owne disposition or by the daily instigation of some others that did abuse your Clemencie and seek to send you of their own Errand it cannot serve their turns nor hinder your Majesty from harkening to an end of contention For if King Henry the 8. in the Judgement of Protestants might save his Honour and contradict his Book from very good to stark naught they must not deny but that your Majesty may encrease your Honour by altering your Book from lesse good to much better 37. The other and the greatest objection that howsoever your Majesty before your coming to the Crowne and in the beginning of your Raigne were indifferent yet after the Gunpowder Treason you were so angred and averted as now you are resolved never to be friends And therefore he is no good Subject that will either himselfe be reconciled to the Church of Rome or perswade any of your Subjects thereunto It is true I confesse your Majesty had great cause to bee throughly angry and so had all good men whether Catholikes or Protestants but if your Majesty will harken to those that work their own purposes out of your anger you shall be driven to live and die out of Charity which although it be not so horrible to the body yet is it more harmfull to the soule then violent or suddain death It is hard I confesse for a private man to asswage his anger on the suddain and there is as much difference betwixt the anger of a private man and the indignation of a Prince as betwixt a blast upon the River which is soon down and a storme upon the Sea which having raised the billowes to the height is nourished by the motion thereof and cannot settle againe in a long time But there is a time for all things And seven yeares is a long time When a man is in the midst of his anger it pleaseth him not to be intreated by his neighbours much lesse by his servants but when a man hath chidden and punished untill he is weary he will be content to heare his servant speake reason And though he be not the wisest yet he is the lovingest servant that will venture to speake to his Master in such a case God himself is exorable and it pleaseth him to be intreated by his Servants for his Enemies I am perswaded there is no good Catholike in the world that can be your Majesties Enemy And therefore I doe assure my selfe that God will be pleased with you to heare them speake and not angry with me for moving you● thereunto And if your Majesty do but vouchsafe so much patience as to give equall hearing I doubt not but you shall receive such satisfaction as will give you great quiet and contentment and disquiet none of your Subjects but those only that do for their advantage misinforme your Majesty and mislead your people And if your Majesty have no such use of the Schisme as King Henry the 8. and Q. Elizabeth had and that it doth neither increase your authority nor your wealth nor your honour but rather hinder them all and deprive you of that blessing which otherwise you might expect from Christ and his Church from your Catholike neighbour Princes and Subjects and from the Saints 〈◊〉 heaven in whose communion is the greatest comfort of every Christian both in life and death then whatsoever some great Statesman may say to the contrary I do verily believe they doe but speak for themselves and that there is no true Reason that may concern your Majesty to hinder you from admitting a toleration of Catholikes and Catholike Religion that those who cannot command their understanding to think otherwise may find the comfort they do with so great zeale pursue in the unity of the Catholike Church amongst whom I confesse my self to be one that would think my self the happiest man in the world if I might understand that your Majesty were content that I should be so 38. But although your Majesty sit at the sterne and command all yet you are carried in the

out I say of their Seas of Government their Seats in Parliament out of their meanes and liberty into poverty and prison Why not trench on all mens proprieties and violently despoile them of their fortunes as well as former times for Reformation sake impropriated to themselves the Church and Abby-lands from their first true owners casting the Monks Friers and vowed Nuns a begging into the world D. Carier observed nor did he alone that Church and Abbey lands did seldome thrive with their new holders If I tell you now that the present ruine of a flourishing Kingdome is but the naturall off-spring of the old injurious depopulations of the Churches and Abbies you will hardly know how to refute me Why may not this present Parliament damne the Common Prayer Book first invented in Edward the sixths daies and afterwards confirmed by Act of Parliament in Q. Elizabeths Raigne since the birth of many now alive no long prescription as well as those of their times damned the Masse which was as ancient in England and generally throughout the world as Christianity it selfe Why may not King Charles that now is whom I honour and love from my heart as it is the duty of all Subjects to do in whatsoever Countrey they live overthrow the Reformation he swore at his Coronation to maintain as well as King Henry the eighth and Queen Elizabeth introduced their severall Reformations contrary to the old Religion which they found in the Kingdome and swore at their Coronations to preserve with all her Rights Liberties and Priviledges would King Charles be more perjured then they or his perjury worse then theirs why may not this Parliament yea particular Subjects rebell against their Soveraigne for a better Reformation as well as the Lutherans in Germany rebelled against their Soveraigne Charles the fifth to bring in their Reformation and to abolish Popery or to omit others all applauded justified and abetted by those of the reformed Churches as the Scots rebelled for the same end against Queen Mary our Kings Grandmother afterward beheaded in pursuance of the same cause you tell me I do C●me●in●m movere I desist with the proposall of one onely question more when the present Agitators of Reformation have purged themselves of all the pretended Religion they had eight or nine yeares ago and raised their work to a higher pitch then they have 〈◊〉 thought on will it not still be subject to a Babilonian confusion Why may not the children of the present Reformers cut the throats of their fathers and condemne them for ignorants or superstitious and rescind all the Acts of their predecessours for a better Reformation according to their new spirits as well as these present cut the throats of their forefathers undoing at a breath what bad been so long a doing in the Kingdome Damnosa quid non imminuit dies Aetas parentum pejor avis tulit Nos nequiores mox datura Progeniem vitiosiorem Joel ch 1. Where Grandsires Erukes are their issue may Wild Locusts prove next comes in Joels list The Bruke a plague of worse and greater sway And what comes then a blast or burning mist Thus men in tract of time from bad do fall To what is worse from worse to worst of all To pretend that what the present or past Reformers did was all done for the truth for the glory of the Lord for the light and liberty of the Gospell to abolish Idolatry and Superstition to ●nthrone Antichrist the whore of Babylon the Beast of the Apocalyps and the like is more then childish simplicity there is no Reformer so forgetfull or stupid but by his spirit pretends Scripture the glory of the Lord the light and liberty of the Gospell the planting of saving truth c. and whosoever is opposite to his spirit is Antichrist the Whore of Babylon the Beast of the Apocalypse and therefore must be pulled down whosoever he be Nor can it availe at any time to say that hitherto the work of Reformation hath been in fieri or in doing as some say Qu. Elizabeths broome did not sweep clean but now is in facto esse Now it is come to a Non plus ultra perfected beyond all addition or alteration this I say can never availe nor stop the confusions as long as the reforming private spirits for the pretences already specified which will never be at an end or the Calvinian Doctrine of Predestination sayes No. Perhaps the present pretended Bishops and the Party suffering with them may say The old Reformations against the Catholikes were good and necessary but the meanes used to begin and promote them naught and not to be imitated And that if there be any farther Reformation to bee made it must not be by prosecution of the old unlawfull meanes Their suffering by the meanes used for the present further Reformation makes them condemne the old This comes now too late they should have condemned them long ago before their testimony became invalidated by their private interest Certainly Luther and the first late Reformers never acknowledged the meanes they used to be naught or unlawfull And why should wee think the present or future Reformer will ever hold the meanes necessary for his ends unlawfull Endlesse then is the confusion of Church and State in England to be no end of sticklings and rebellions no end of our wounds and bloudshed no inheritance more intailed upon our posterity then violation of humane and divine Lawes nothing more certain then eternall damnation of mens souls as long as the first Reformers principles stand in force and their Reformations applauded Behold more then sufficient cause not onely not to wonder at the late conversion of divers learned Schollers to the Roman Fai●h but to admire that more do not follow their examples Behold more then sufficient cause for those that pretend to any feare of God or care of their own soules by regard to Religion or manners to the spirituall or politike weale utterly to anathematize all Reformation in Faith with the damnable principles of the late Reformers the sources of all the evills our Kingdome now groanes under Consequently behold more then sufficient cause for all to rank themselves into the number of Catholikes who have now the same unchanged Religion they had before this present Parliament and then had the same they had in the reigne of K. James ●u Elizabeth Qu. Mary K. Edward 6. and Henry the 8. in whose dayes the Reformation was commenced in Germany and through too generall a loosenesse in manners and desire of sensuall liberty began to creep into England as all Histories can evidence unto you Nor can any desire a more pregnant testimony of our being now and in former dayes of the same Faith without variation of one tittle then our reformed Adversaries are ready to afford us who have for the times past and still doe persecute us not as new Sactaries with old Lawes but with new Statutes for non-conformity to their new Reformation and