which assured him those cruelties should make him an absolute Monarch did help to absolve him of his Monarchy He had his punishment first his mother his two brethren the Cardinal Duke of Guise that had not only joyned with him in it but encouraged him to it they still survived him and for ought men saw were firmly stablished in much safety and prosperity though Guise might have been warned by the death of Claude Duke of Aumale his brother slain at the siege of Rochel in the yeare 1573. The first act by which Henry the third the new French King and brother and heir of Charles deceased discovered his impotency of spirit and want of judgement was his clandestine and sudden stealing out of Poland where he had been but a few moneths before elected and crowned King This was the first unfortunate step of his following his mothers weak Dictates and rejecting the able advises of his own Councell But her next instructions which shee as fatally gave him as he weakly pursued being to root out the Professors of the truth with fire and sword involved him and his kingdome into innumerable miseries The good Emperour Maximilian the second in the Kings passage out of Poland through Germany and the Venetian State during his stay there gave him both of them more faithfull counsell earnestly advising him to maintain the former Edicts of Pacification and not to enforce the consciences of men in matter of Religion The same opinion was generally held by his wisest Counsellers and by all sober and discreet Romanists at home who saw plainly that the Protestants encreasing was the onely meanes now left under heaven in time at length to draw the Pope and his Conclave to yeeld to some reformation of the Church which it exceedingly needed But other Papists there were of loose and Atheisticall lives as Lewes Lorainer Cardinall of Guise Henry Lorainer his elder brother Duke of Guise Renate Villoclare a man saith incomparable Monsieur de Thou fatally preferred to this Kings attendance by his mother and divers others who perswaded the King to break the former Edicts of Pacification and never to sheath his sword till he had utterly ruined the Protestants of France whom some of their foul-mouthed fellow-brethren Protestants of this age have stiled French Puritanes and would perhaps had they lived in his time have joyned their ghostly advices with those of the Cardinall of Guise for the utter extirpation of all such as dissented in judgement or practice from themselves in matter of Ceremony I have often wondred in the perusall of the story of this King whose troublesome raign did necessitate his frequent consultations that when divers advices were propounded he ever pitched upon the worst and most fatall to himselfe But I found the two main causes of it to be first his blind and inveterate hatred of the truth and secondly his weak and degenerate spirit by which the House of Guise the Arch-enemies of the Gospel became at the last so potent and triumphed so notoriously over his impotency as they forced him to seek to those very Protestants for support against whom himself had taken a most wicked and solemn oath as the head of a faction amongst his own Subjects for their utter subversion Infinite almost was the treasure he spent upon his Minions and pleasures his very expences for maintenance of his dogs onely in that age amounting unto twenty thousand pounds yearely at least but most was exhausted in the prosecution of his civill wars against the Protestants and his servile ancillating therein to the ambition of others Guise and his faction now grown strong and assured of support from Philip the second of Spain after his expelling the King out of Paris and heaping a world of other insolent affronts upon him was drawn by him in the yeare 1588. to the Assembly then held at Blois he came thither with Lewes Lorainer Cardinall of Guise his brother and Charles Prince of Jenvile his son upon the same royall assurance of safety with which Charles the ninth had by his advice deceived the Protestants before the inhumane massacre in the yeare 1572. And now let all Popish and Popishly addicted Pseudo-Lutherans who make it a sport to fine imprison suspend vex and impoverish their fellow-Christians for the lightest matter draw neer and stand amazed at Gods secret judgements For during this Assembly at Blois was this Henry Duke of Guise slaughtered against the publike faith given him not onely within the Castle of Blois but in that very room in which sixteen yeares before he had advised the bloudy massacre of Paris to be committed and executed Two circumstances also that attended his fatall minute do adde much horror to the punishment it selfe The first that he was but new risen from the bed of his adulterate lust the very morning he was murthered having not been able to conquer the chastity of a Gentlewoman attending the Queen-mother before that night and therefore was so eager upon reaping the fruits of his long fiege as he repaired not to the Councel-chamber till he was often sent for and scarce ready The second in the manner of his first wound which was given him in his throat and caused immediately the bloud so abundantly to stream out of his mouth as he never had time once to call on God for mercy or forgivenesse but spent the last minute of his life in the revenging himself on his murtherers A little after the Cardinall of Guise his brother a great gamester at Cards and Dice perished likewise in the same Castle of Blois by a violent death Katherine de Medices the Queen-mother who had been the chief cause for neer upon thirty yeers before her death of the shedding so much innocent blood in France being present at the same time in the Castle of Blois stormed secretly that so great an action should be entred into and gone through without her advice and when she understood that Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine was escaped being the younger brother of the murthered Duke of Guise presaged to the King her son the sad issue of that rash attempt which he interpretting as it seems to be rather the expression of her wishes then her fears and having by many wofull experiences seen the effects of her Italian revengefull spirit took a course to pacifie her wrath for not long after she there ended her unhappy life by poyson saith Elias Reusner in the same Castle also where she held the first secret and bloody Councell for the execution of the foresaid inhumane massacre Francis her youngest son died before her upon the tenth day of June 1584. in the one and thirtieth yeer of his age of so violent a poyson ministred to him doubtlesse by some of the Hispaniolized Guisards as it caused his very blood to gush out of his body in severall places the sight of which purple streams might well call upon him to remember with what inhumane triumph he trampled on the bloody streets
Great and Lewes the Good in France ordaine for such as were counted Sectaries in their times Neither did those three hundred and eighteen Fathers in the first Nicene Councell those six hundred and thirty in that of Chalcedon or those hundred and fifty in that of Constantinople use any other weapons against the same Arrians Nestorians and Macedonians then the Word of God nor stirred they up or permitted the Christian Magistrate in their dayes to punish them by death Paulus Aquiliensis and Cedrenus doe also both of them report that when the Emperour Justinus used clemency towards the very Arrian Heretiques Theodoricus the King of Italy being infected with the same poyson did notwithstanding led by that example suffer the Orthodox Christians to have the free exercise of their Religion in all his Dominions Wee shall need no further examples to prove this truth when it is confessed by one of the most learned and best Romanists of our age that there is no approved example in all the Monuments of Antiquity of any execution done upon the Sectaries of those times but that the Church of God did alwayes abhorre the shedding of bloud in matters that meerly concern Religion Jac. Aug. Thuanus Prooem. in Histor. p. 5. SECT. VI IT is likewise contrary to the practice of the best Princes and the wisest States of this latter age of the world to make matter of heresie it selfe a capitall crime Francis the first of that name King of France having decreed a persecution against the poore Protestants of Merindoll and Cabrieres and being informed by William Bellay Lord Langay Governour of the Province that they were harmless men very laborious in their callings just in their dealings loyall to their Prince charitable to the poore and very frequent in their prayers to God their innocency being likewise cleared in a great measure by Cardinall Sadolet himselfe he caused them to be freed from further persecution till being falsly informed by one Minerius a turbulent fellow that there were fifteen thousand of them up in armes in rebellion he rashly gave them over to the fury of their enemies yet not as Heŕetiques which he alwayes accounted them but as Traytors as he was then mis-informed of them In Germany Ferdinand the first taught by the error of Charles the fifth his elder Brother found no such meanes to make his Government happy and his Empire flourishing as to decree the liberty of Religion Which course the good Emperour Maximilian his Sonne following dyed as happy as he lived victorious The Venetian State indure no Inquisitors in matters of Religion nor if any of their Subjects be accused of Heresie doe they suffer it to be questioned before any of the Clergy alone who are thirsty after bloud but before them joyntly together with their Civill Judges The first Monarch in England that made matter of Religion a capitall crime by a publick Act or Statute was the usurper Henry the fourth who having by the perswasion and assistance of Thomas Arundell that traytor Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow-Prelates deposed and murdered his lawfull Soveraigne Richard the second to curry favour with those bloudy Canniballs was forced to yeeld to the murdering of Gods Saints since whose time the bloud of the Martyrs in England have proved the seed of the Church although by the short raigne of that Kingdomes unfortunate Mary their number comes far short of those in France and the seventeene Provinces in which two Dominions within the space of little more then five yeares the curious searcher may finde by diligent inquisition that Gods truth was sealed under Charles the ninth of France and Philip the second of Spaine with the bloud of near upon two hundred thousand Martyrs amongst whom were slaughtered divers great and eminent personages of both sexes a cruelty that very Mahumetans doe abhorre as it appeared by that which the Ambassadours sent from Abas-Meriza the Persian Sultan to the Emperour Rodolph in the yeare 1604. did alledge to justifie the mercifull Government of that Empire to wit that all Christians had free liberty of Conscience in all their Soveraignes Dominions and therefore they exhorted his Imperiall Majesty to joyn in a firme league with him against their common enemy the Turke SECT. VII AS it is against the practice of the Primitive Church the course held by the Christian Emperours and the observation of the wisest Princes and States of the latter age though otherwise Pontifician to make matter of heresie a capitall crime to inforce the Conscience and to put to death for the cause of Religion meerly so it is against the Rules of charitie and reason First It is against the Rules of charity if we had no other light to guide us but the most wise answer of Englands last matchlesse Edward being then but a childe when he was pressed to yeeld his assent to the burning of an Heretique What said he shall I send him to hell By which he truly intimated that whereas in all other offences the Malefactors are punished with death because it may be hoped they have repented the sinne but to destroy an Heretick before conviction is to be the Devils Catour and to send him in provision even to Hell it selfe For the very pertinacious holding of an Heresie is agreed on by all sides to be a damnable sinne and then the cutting them off in that sinne is to be the immediate Instrument of their perdition This doth that virulent Romanist or monster of men Nicholas Harpsfeild in his Wiclevian History openly boast of Cap. 16. p. 717. That those blessed Champions of Christ whom he calls Heretiques did in the fires that consumed their bodies taste the first-fruits of the eternall fire they endured afterwards On the other side if they suffer not but for feare of death hope of preferment or other base ends turne from one Religion to another especially from the truth to errour and Idolatry without instruction or reasonable conviction they onely dissemble outwardly as the Moores of Gran ido did under that bloudy Philip the second of Spaine who being enforced to be present at the Masse in the morning practised their own Mahumetanisme in the evening or els their conscience being shipwracked by their Apostasie before conviction with Francis Spira they are swallowed up of despaire or with Peter Espinae Archbishop of Lions of the Henetick faction in Henry the fourths time of France with lust and Epicurisme who practised that emasculating sinne with his own sister The Jews in England from Willian the firsts time till the eighteenth yeare of Edward the first were the onely Usurers of the Realme and brought in large contributions and tallages to the Kings under whom they lived and enjoyed here the freedome of their consciences At their deaths their whole Estates escheated to the King which their next heires commonly redeem'd for one full third part of three But to incourage them to turne Christians it was appointed in the Assize by which they were
other Anabaptists though most necessarily cut off by the sword of the Magistrate for their blasphemous opinions and lawless Tenets tending to the utter subversion of all Civill government The Anabaptists in their Dialogues published in the English tongue in Queen Maries dayes though they craftily withdrew many of their Anarchicall Tenets agreeing almost verbatim with the workes since penned by James Arminius and the latter Anabaptists doe extoll that Servetus as a Prophet of the Lord and their numbers are at this day so increased as they constitute or make a considerable party in divers parts of Christendome But those cursed enemies of the truth that thinke by persecuting it to abolish it as they fight against God himselfe in so doing so have they heretofore and shall still in despight of all their devillish policy for the time to come increase and propagate the same This if all other Instances wanted would sufficiently appeare in that famous example of an English Schoolmaster a most zealous Papist in the dayes of King Edward the sixt who afterwards in the beginning of Queen Maries government frequenting the fires of some of the Martyrs was so convinced with hearing what they spake and seeing how chearfully they suffered as he himselfe relinquishing the former ignorance and idolatry he had so long embraced at last witnessed the truth with his own bloud Not he onely but many thousands also besides were doubtless inabled by the cleare shining of those fires to discerne the foulnesse of those mysteries of darkness under which they had been so long held captive And after her short Raigne infamoused by so much bloud-shed was expired it facilitated the way for her royall sister Elizabeth to restore the truth at an easie rate When the Executioner came behind John Hus to kindle the pile that encompassed him Come hither my friend said he and kindle it here before for had I feared what thou bringest I had not appeared at this Stake to day His death brought so incredible progresse to the true Church in Bohemia as did also that of Jerome of Prague his Contemporanie that their bloudy persecutors had just cause within a few yeares after their decease to acknowledge their own errour in having hastened their ends As fruitfull a seed-time to the Church in France proved the death of Annas Burgus a Senator of Paris in the yeare 1559. under Francis the second A man he was so vertuous and innocent in his life as some of the very enemies of the Truth laboured his delivery when he was in prison and so resolute and chearfull in his death as it incouraged thousands in that Kingdome in the constant profession of the Reformed Religion What better successe had all the bloudy executions of Ferdinand de Toledo that merciless Duke of Alva and of his new erected Bishops in the lower Germany but that the Gospel at the last got the victory over hell and all the powers of darkness Neither indeed could those cruell Inquisitors have expected other issue had they but truly considered what Religion had been and that Princes and States may command the bodies but not the soules and consciences of men Which having been once perswaded by Instruction and Information to embrace and beleeve any opinions though hereticall and therefore much more the Truth it selfe can never be driven from them but by the same meanes of a further and more cleare Instruction The godly have ever lookt upon chaines prisons racks and fires as the tryall and reward of their faith more fearing to doe evill then to suffer evill well knowing that they shall neither suffer more nor their cruell enemies be able to inflict more then God shall turne to his own endlesse glory and their everlasting good Did the Heathen Poet desire to be sent back to the Mines a life more tedious then that of the Gallyes rather then he would commend a few bad Verses contrary to his judgement Could Epicurus that impure Philosopher say of a wise man that if he were scorched in Phalaris Bull he would not be moved with it but onely cry out Dulce est ad me non attinet Or the young Stoick in Gellius to maintaine the Apathie of his Sect neither groane nor frowne in the midst of a burning feaver And shall we thinke that Gods Saints who have their reason heightened and irradiated by grace and their soules immoveably founded upon a lively and living faith will feare to lose their estates liberties and lives for the Truths sake No doubtless but as the Gold is tryed by the Furnace and cleared from the drosse so in time of persecution they shall be discerned from all hypocrites Atheists Libertines and Time-servers whatsoever SECT. X. BUt oh that Princes and Great ones would shake off those fleshflyes and Sycophants who tell them the contrary and know the Truth to be that nothing can more infamouze their raignes and memories to Posterity nothing bring more inevitable ruine to their Persons nothing finally prove so deadly a Consumption amongst their posterity as to inforce the Consciences of their Subjects by fines imprisonments subscriptions recantations depauperations and death Charles the fift having obtained the Imperiall Chaire by the money and meanes of Henry the eighth of England was the most potent Emperour that ever Germany had as long as he maintained the peace of Religion but having yeelded to the Popes instigations and prospered a while in his intended extirpation of the Truth he found at last by experience what his brave and valiant Generall Castaldus had foretold him That these violent proceedings would in the end prove fatall to himselfe For having first fled away at mid-night in a cold and rainy season from Onspruch for feare of the Protestant Army he was afterwards in stead of setling his sonne Philip in his own Chaire which he had fully intended faine to surrender up the Empire to Ferdinand his Brother who for divers moneths before had entred into a secret league with the Protestant Princes of Germany and so having lived a few yeares after in a despised and disconsolate solitude heat last ended his life very ingloriously His sonne Philip the second the most inveterate enemy of the Gospel that ever lived did not onely set up Shambles and Butcheries for Gods Saints in most of his own large Dominions by his Inquisitors but continually ayded the Rebells in France England and Ireland against their lawfull Soveraignes and plotted to invade all other Protestant Dominions in Christendome that so at last by one generall carnage of them all he and his holy Father the Pope might have shared the Christian world by a double Monarchy of the Church and Empire between them But did this bloudy Prince prosper in these his ambitious and cruell designes Certainly nothing lesse for what got he by his invading France by land England and Ireland by Sea and by his large Pensions conferred on the traytors and secret enemies of either State but that in the issue having wasted about
of Paris in the great slaughter committed on Gods Saints and Martyrs about twelve yeers before There now only remained Henry the third the French King alive of all the first contrivers and principall executioners of that inhumane massacre which no age no time no action of the most barbarous nations of the world could ever pattern neither believe I can any ancient or modern History parallel the following punishments of the chief actors therein in all respects who not only all of them perished by violent and bloody ends but proved also the murtherers one of another Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine was presently upon the death of his brother made Generall of the holy League Paris it self and in a manner all the Popish cities beyond the Loire giving up their names and forces to the Henotick faction supported by Pope Sixtus the fifth from Rome and Philip the second from Spain When the King saw that neither his acting the Monk with the Flagellators nor his playing the Persecutor against the Protestants would secure him from a speedy ruine by the violent hands of the rebels He sends to the victorious King of Naver his brother in Law and to the Euangelicall Army before whose known valour the Popish Forces hastened back from the Loire to the Seine Henry the third pursues them and pitched his royall Pavilion at St Clou not far from the gates of Paris But his old cruelties and persecutions of the godly were doubtlesse the Remora of his new expected victories and the divine providence so ordered it that in the very place where the last resolution was taken by himself his Mother his brethren and others for the speedy execution of the before-mentioned belluine Massacre about seventeen yeers before nay in the very same house of Hierome de Gondy and in the very same roome or chamber saith John de Serres was he murthered by James Clement a Jesuited Monk in the yeer 1589. and in the thirty and ninth yeer of his age The assassination was furthered by the authority of Pope Sixtus the fifth by the seditious preachings of the Jesuites Priests and Friers in Paris who had secretly drawn infinite numbers into open rebellion before by their auricular confession and by the perswasion of the Lady Katharine Mary Dutchesse of Mompensier sister of the deceased Duke of Guise whose horrible transport with malice against the Protestant party and desire of revenge against the King himself did so far excaecate and blind her nobler endowments as she prostituted her body to that Jesuited wretch as impartiall de Thou himself relates to incourage him the more in the accomplishment of the murther and so to stupefie and harden his soul by that fatall sin of lust that it might not startle at the commission of any other wickednesse whatsoever Yet as this King some moneths before his death altered his former bloody resolutions against Gods servants so did the Divine providence at his death afford him some hours of repentance and sorrow after the bloody knife had been sheathed in his belly In which he acknowledged his error and sin his error in having been so long mis-led by his ambitious and factious Vassalls his sin in having persecuted his Protestant Subjects and inforced the consciences of many to submit to Popery against the known truth by cruelty and threatning SECT. XIV IN this fifteenth age also within the compasse of which wee shall confine our discovery of Gods Judgements upon persecuting Princes the truth began to spread forth its beames in this other world of Great Britain in a more resplendent lustre then formerly not but that I dare undertake to prove by some select and perhaps fearce known monuments of Antiquity that the Gospel was planted here in the Primitive time that the Protestants Religion flourished here neer upon four hundred yeers before Austine the Monk the first Popish Archbishop of Canterbury poysoned the purity of Gods worship with his burthensome Trinkets and Ceremonies Finally that it was from the first plantation preserved amongst the Welsh and Scots to the dayes of John Wickleffe without any interruption and was secretly practised also in England from Henry the seconds time at the least to the begun Reformation of King Edward the sixth But this requiring a reasonable Volume of it self to be at large deduced I must passe over as improper for this place We may begin in England with Henry the eighth in whose raign no Papist can deny but that divers Protestants were not only hunted after fined imprisoned compelled to abjure and otherwise disciplined but were likewise consumed in the merciless flames as Heretiques And therefore when the Papall side take so much pains to recount either the ill successes of his own raign or the dying issulesse of all his posterity as the signes and characters of Gods indignation against him they do but furnish the Orthodox party with weapons against themselves For the truth is he did only abolish the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome not the Pontifician or Papall Church which to this day as also in the former ages in France hath been so hedged up and incircled under certain restrictions and limits as it is of small consequence to help the Prelates and of little power to hurt the King So that Cuffetellus the Dominican proved it at large in an elaborate Work published in the yeer 1609. and the Sorbonists determined it in the yeer 1611. that the Pope had no power or Jurisdiction in that Kingdome in matter of Temporalities Neither did Henry the eighth in England proceed any further in this particular of abolishing the Popes power then those his two coaetaneous Princes Francis the first and Charles the fifth did at sundry times in their severall Dominions upon lesse provocations So the same Charles the fifth writing to the Councell assembled at Bononie superscribed his Letters only Conventui Bononiae as did afterwards Henry the second of France writing to the Tridentine Conspirators fule it only the Convention of Trent who also in the former and better part of his raign fairly cut shorter a great-part of the Popes Ecclesiasticall authority in France And how little Philip the second himself of Spain the sworn enemy of the godly regarded the Pope further then he did ancillate to his ambitious ends appeares plainly in this one particular that when upon the unfortunate death of Sebastian King of Portugall there were divers competitors for that kingdome and that Don Antonio had already assumed the title thereof he would not admit the Popes intercession to have the matter composed by Treaty or referre the cause to his decision Nay that bloody Charles of France of whose fatall end we have but a while before discoursed when Pius the fourth in the yeer 1563. had cited Odetus de Coligny Cardinall of Chastillion John de Monluce Bishop of Valence and others of his Subjects to appeare at Rome before his Inquisitors he sent him a stout Message by Henry Clutinius his Ambassador then
at Rome That if hee did not speedily withdraw that citation hee would no longer acknowledge him for Pope At which bold Declaration the Pope and his Conclave being affrighted the prosecution of that businesse ceased by the very withdrawing of the Citation it self and by the Popes future silence All which open affronts the Popes in this fifteenth age after our bleffed Saviours incarnation endured from these Kings not because they were more deare to their Subjects then their Predecessors or the Popes lesse potent then in former times for their strength in Italy was more encreased in that age then in ten fore-going but indeed it was the light of the Gospel that began about these times to dawn every where that made way for dispelling those chains of darknesse with which both Prince and people had in those former ages been enfettered So as the Pope fearing lest all should fall from him as some Germane Princes Republiques and Cities had already done was fain to comply with the French King to submit to the Emperor and to Court the King of England by the intercession of foraine Princes for a reconcilement But to proceed from Henry the eighth of England the Father to Mary Queen of the same Realm his daughter of whom and her wisdome the Pontificians so much boast It is certain that she entred her raign with the breach of her publique faith For whereas the Crown was set on her head by the German and Commons of Suffolk although they knew her to be a Papist which shewes that the godly Protestant usually nicknamed by those that are prophane lustfull and Popishly affected is the best Subject any Soveraign can be happy in yet she in one of her first acts of Councell took order for their restraint long before the Masse and Latine Service were generally received in London it self and caused that Diocesse to taste the sharpest Inquisition and persecution that raged during her raign which was happily shortened by her husbands contemning her person and her enemies conquering her Dominions neither of which she ever had power to revenge or recover so as though the cause of her death proceeded from no outward violence yet was her end as inglorious and miserable as her raign had been turbulent and bloody She might have taken warning by the sudden and immature death of James the fifth King of Scotland her cousin Germane who raising persecution in Scotland against his loyall and innocent Protestant Subjects in the yeere 1539. burning some exiling and imprisoning others and forcing many to blaspheme in abjuring the known Truth by the advice and procurement of James Beton Archbishop of St Andrews and David Beton Abbot of Arbroth his brother never saw good day after two brave young Princes his sons were the yeer following cut off by abortive ends in their cradles Wars to his great losse and disadvantage were raised between himself and his Uncle Henry the eighth King of England and all things fell out so crosse to his haughty and vast minde as it hastened his death which fell out in the yeere 1542. SECT. XV WEre the Histories of Popish Prelates worthy to be joyned to those of Kings and Princes wee might fill up a large Tract with Gods judgements powred upon them For as most of them have been given up to lust and crapulositie so have many of them been bitter enemies of the truth and stingie persecutors We have seen the fall of the Cardinall of Guise and all ages have cause to admire the exemplary judgements of God powred out upon that bastard-slip Stephen Gardner Bishop of Winchester in the very instant of his plauditees and caresses for the vivicombury of reverend Latimer and learned Ridley But I shall content my selfe to have abstracted as a taste for the rest the notorious punishments inflicted by a higher hand upon two Arch-Prelates the one of England the other of Scotland Thomas Arundell Arch-bishop of Canterbury having been the successefull traytor by the help of his reverend fellow-Bishops to establish Henry the 4th in the Throne of R. the second his liege Lord and Cousin-German pressed the new King whose broken title needed his Prelates supportment to use his temporall sword for the destroying the disciples of John Wicklesse whose numbers were so increased at that time as they even filled the kingdome the King assents and having by their mercilesse instigation shed the bloud of Gods Saints he raigned neither long nor happily H. 5. a brave and martiall Prince his son succeeding him the Protestants began to meet more publikely and to professe the truth more openly then before the Archbishop thereupon renews his former suit to the son he had before pressed with successe upon the father and prevailed In particular he first aimed at the destruction of Sir John de Old Castle Knight commonly called the Lord Cobham who had most affronted him This noble Gentleman was extracted from an ancient Family of Wales where he had large possessions and much alliance by whose means he after lay long-hidden there notwithstanding all the search his bloudy enemies made after him he had issue by Katherine daughter of Richard ap Yevan his first wife John who died before himself and Henry de Old Castle who survived him and to whom King Henry the sixth in the 7th yeare of his raign restored divers Mannors and Lands which had been entailed upon him he married to his last wife Joan the sole daughter and heire of Sir John de la Pole Knight whom he had begotten upon the sole daughter and heire of the Lord Cobham of Kent which Joan had been first married to Sir Robert de Hemenhale a Suffolk Knight and was secondly the wife of Sir Reginald de Braybroke Knight by whom shee had onely issue that survived her the said Sir John de Old Castle her third husband in her right enjoyed the Castle of Couling in Kent and many other large and great possessions and by the marriage of her also he was neerly allied to the Duke of Suffolk the Earl of Devonshire and many other great Peers of the Realme at that time and did doubtlesse enjoy the stile and title of Baron Cobham as is infallibly proved by severall Writs of Summons sent unto him being all entred upon Record in the Close Rolls by which he was summoned to assist in the House of Peers in Parliament by that name in the time of H. 4. and H. 5. All which I have thought fit to transmit to posterity touching this noble martyr being no where to be found in any publike story not onely to shew how many supportments he had besides the favour of King Henry himself to have retarded the Clergie from questioning him but also how easily he was destroyed by the bloudy Prelates of those endarkened times when the Soveraign had but permitted them the use of his power to ancillate to their cruell resolutions of which impotent act of the Kings saith Archbishop Parker himselfe Rex virum clarum sibique familiarissimum
imposture or if it were a true miracle then the Protestants alledged that it might much more justly be interpreted to the advantage of the Protestant Church then of their own That first the place where the tree grew being dedicated to the memory of Innocents argued the innocency of those who were martyred and that as the same tree at that season of the yeere being in August though it shewed life yet could not have blossomed without a miracle So the Protestant Church and Religion in France which seemed by this blow to be utterly extinct and ruined should again revive blossome forth and flourish by the miracalous power of God in as great splendor and beauty as over it had done formerly which the event and issue notwithstanding all the great Processions and high Masses of Pope Gregory the thirteenth and his Conclave at Rome did accordingly verifie SECT. XX HOw shall these sober minded and moderate Papists rise up in judgement at the last day against all loose ignorant and prophane Protestants of both orders who for the smallest offences and for the very tendernesse of conscience it self vex molest cite sue imprison fine suspend deprive and utterly undo their innocent godly and peaceable fellow Christians For if it be neither warranted by the practice of the Primitive Church nor consonant to reason policie or the property of the true Church to kill an Heretique by a long and noysome imprisonment or to adjudge and put him to a violent death If persecution for conscience sake be accounted and that justyl a brand of the Antichristian Church and that Luther and his followers had even necessary cause in the yeer 1517. in that respect only to depart out of the Romish Babylon as from a Malignant Synagogue how is it possible that Protestant Prelates should persecute any at all with imprisonment and despoiling them of their goods though convicted of Schisme it self but much more such sober and innocent Christians who by their own confession hold nothing in matter of doctrine contrary to the truth live inoffensively and vertuously in respect of their conversation and are ready in all humility to submit to any particulars in matters supposed to be indifferent which they shall be convinced out of Gods Word to be so It is confessed on all hands that it is a most dangerous sin to do any thing yea a lawfull act against the dictate and perswasion of Conscience and shall pious Christians in all other respects for this alone be persecuted and followed with greater violence then Adulterers Swearers or Fornicators themselves The authority and glory of a Prince had been as fully extended in removing those particulars which made the breach as in retaining them it being acknowledged on all hands that the removall of them is and was alwayes as lawfull as the retention of them but if the wisdome of any Church conceive it self upon great and sound motives rather obliged to retain them and to adde new burthens rather then to abolish or change the old yet doubtlesse withall some course may be considered of how those who in all main and fundamentall truths are the true servants of God the humble and obedient children of the Church and of innocent and vertuous lives might in the mean time enjoy the Ordinances of God in peace and quiet For doubtlesse if one Protestant may lawfully vex cite fine suspend deprive excommunicate and imprison another which in some cases necessitates a lingring death for things accounted by themselves no way essentiall to Gods worship normans salvation then is all we have said against the Romists Synagogue of no validity at all nay there being no Magis and Minus in persecution it will follow necessarily that for the same causes one Protestant may as well put to death another as imprison him and so Samaria shall of necessity justifie her sister Sodome That the supreme Magistrate in things lawfull ought to be obeyed for Conscience sake is a certain truth But yet it is too apparent that such as are more violent for these lesser matters so to ravage and trample on the weaker and more humble Christians by pressing obedience to the Magistrate are commonly themselves the most outrageously disobedient for though they seeme most eager to obey him in these formall and outward commands yet where the commands of God himself and the Magistrates meet together forbidding Adultery Fornication swearing blaspheming unlawfull gaming starving of souls maintaining erroneous doctrines and divers other horrible and Atheisticall offences here neither God nor Prince Law nor Gospel heaven nor hell can restrain their lustful practices or scandalous lives Did Cardinall Sadolet himself intercede with Francis the first the Grandfather and the Arcbishop of Vienne and Bishop of Valence with Francis the second the Grandchilde two of the French Kings for the Protestants of their times whom yet they accounted Heretiques and is it possible any Protestant Prelate or Divine should stir up any Protestant Prince or State to ruine their Protestant-fellow-Ministers and other Christians because they cannot submit to such particulars as in themselves can no way hinder or impeach the unity of faith nor could breake if Gods glory were only aimed at the bond of love The Apostle Paul having left the true Church that incomparable Catholike Rule That the stronger Christians should beare with the weaker and that the weaker Christians should not condemn the stronger SECT. XXI THere were in all ages even in the first and purest times Confessions set out by the Primitive Christians to be a Guide and a Rule for all Conditions to walk by and when the Nicene Creed was penned by the learned Fathers of that Councell it was all that was required of any to be publikly confessed that had been either accused or suspected of Heresie The Protestants in all ages when they were questioned and especially since the yeere 1500. that the differences about Religion have even filled Europe with the sharp disputes of the sword and pen have not only offered to do whatsoever the ancient Fathers required as an act sufficient to cleare and acquit such as were in their times suspected of heresie but further to put their cause to the triall of the Scriptures the best and surest Rule nay to admit the Decrees of the first Generall Councels and the united Tenets of the Orthodox Fathers for the first five hundred yeers But the Romish Synogogue degenerating first in manners and then in doctrine first introducing innumerable Trinkets and Ceremonies to pester Gods publique worship and afterwards severall Idolatries absolutely to kill and poison it could not satisfie themselves with pressing upon the Protestants the confession of those Truths they yet maintain'd an I held but that not a grain of corn might remain in their great heap of chaffe nor one true Professor be hidden amongst the multitude they invented four manner of unchristian and tyrannicall courses whereby to insnare and illaqueate not only the most innocent but even the most prudent and