of the Christian practise tend unto Peace Peace betwixt man and man in general by forbidding all men to Injure any man or to Revenge themselves if they be injured by commanding every man to do good unto all men and each of us to love one another as our own selves Peace in private Families by commanding Husbands to love their Wives and Wives to obey their Husbands Parents to provide for their Children and Children to be dutiful unto their Parents Masters to be just and kind unto their Servants and Servants to be faithful and diligent and obedient unto their Masters Lastly Peace in publick Societies whether Civil or Ecclesiastical nay even in Camps and in Armies also by teaching all Superiors to Govern justly and prudently and moderately and carefully and by teaching all Inferiors to Obey readily willingly and chearfully when their Superiors command things lawful and never to resist or rebel but to suffer meekly and patiently when they cannot obey that is when their Superiors commands are absolutely and evidently unlawful Whence it is as I told you before that the Gospel of Christ is called the Gospel of Peace not only because it makes men to be at Peace with God and at peace with themselves but at peace with one another nay with all the World as much and as far at least as the World will suffer them to be so And consequently whatsoever Doctrine there is the belief and practise whereof doth cause disorder distraction and confusion that Doctrine though it be Preached in the Name of Christ is no part of the Gospel of Christ or of Christian Religion truly so called Which truth being so evidently grounded upon this Theological Principle or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my Text and sufficiently cleared from the only Objection that I can imagine may be made against it let us proceed to make that Use which the Apostle intended we should make of it which is the fourth and last particular I proposed unto you and which I am now to speak of by way of Application of all that hath been said in General to the occasion of this present meeting of ours in Particular which is with all humble and hearty Thankfulness unto God to commemorate that Great and Wonderful and almost Miraculous Deliverance of the then King Queen and Prince and likewise of all the Lords both Spiritual and Temporal together with all the Representatives both of the Clergy and of the Laity from being all of them destroyed at once by the most horrid Conspiracy and most Diabolical design that ever was hatched in Hell or attempted here on Earth and yet was no more than what those who were the Contrivers of it and were to be the Actors in it were prompted unto by some of the Doctrines of that Religion that was professed by them I mean the Religion of the Church of Rome Which that it may the better appear unto you the first Use I will make of St. Paul's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Touchstone in my Text shall be by way of Discovery or Conviction For if according to the Apostolical Aphorisme or Canon in my Text God be not the Author of Confusion but of Peace then whatsoever Church it is that makes God the Author of Confusion by teaching such Doctrines in his Name as must if they be believed and practised of necessity produce Confusion it is not an Orthodox or true believing Church how confident soever it may pretend to be so but a Company of Hereticks and Schismaticks so far forth at least as they teach and practice any such Doctrines And such indeed are all the several Sorts and Sects of Dissenters from our Church at this time here in England by what denomination soever they are called and distinguished from us and from one another who though they differ in many things among themselves yet in these two Particulars they all agree namely First In maligning and opposing of the Church of England and Secondly In teaching such Doctrines as must necessarily if they be believed and practised produce Faction and Sedition and Confusion amongst us and consequently must needs if the teachers of them be not suppressed or restrained be finally at one time or another destructive to the Peace and Safety of the present Government in the State as well as in the Church Which though it might be verified more or less of all the several Sects that dissent from us yet because the Doctrines tending to Sedition and Rebellion which are held by all the rest seem to be derived and borrowed from those of the Church of Rome and because the Deliverance we this day Celebrate was from a Popish and not from a Presbyterian Conspiracy though some of the Popish Party did give it out it was I shall at this time make use of the Touchstone in the Text in relation only to such Doctrines and Maxims as are held and taught in the Church of Rome and which must needs be false if S. Paul's Touchstone be true because by evident and necessary consequence they make God to be the Author of Confusion or at least to be believed to be so Such are First The Doctrine of the Popes Supremacy and that not of Order or Precedency only but of Authority and Jurisdiction also Absolute Authority and Universal Jurisdiction supra universam Ecclesiam saith Bellarmine over the Universal Church that is over all Christians and consequently over all Christian States as well as Churches and over Kings as well as Subjects and that not in Spiritualibus only but in Temporalibus also For omne jus Regum à me pendet All the Right which Kings have is from me said Pope Clement the V. in the Council of Vienna He should have said Per me Reges regnant by me Kings reign and then he had spoken like a Rex Regum and Dominus Dominantium a King of Kings and Lord of Lords indeed as some of his Flatterers are not ashamed to call him In the mean time whether this Plenitudo Potestatis this fulness of Power in Temporals as well as in Spirituals be in the Pope directly as Baronius Carerius and all the Casuists hold or indirectly only or in order to the enabling him for the better exercising of his spiritual jurisdiction as Bellarmine and with him the whole Tribe of Jesuits say it matters not For which way soever it be held this Doctrine is destructive to the Soveraignty of Princes over their own Subjects and consequently to the Obedience of Subjects to their own Soveraigns than which what can be more destructive to the Peace and Safety of a State And yet this is that Article of Faith which Bellarmine in his chiding Letter to Blackwell the Arch-Priest here in England calls the foundation of the Catholick he should have said of the Roman Catholick Religion for so indeed it is And that you may see what they mean to build upon this Foundation it is a second Doctrine of theirs That
Princes Excommunicated and Deposed by the Pope may be not only deserted but destroyed by their Subjects as being not only absolved from their Allegiance but obliged to put the Popes Sentence in execution which if they cannot do themselves they are to joyn with any foreign Prince to whom the Pope shall please to give away the Kingdom as he did this of England to Lewis of France in King Johns time And against this Doctrine it was that the Oath of Allegiance was specially intended and for this Doctrine sake it was that the Pope forbad all of his party to take the Oath Again to the end that Subjects might with the less scruple of Conscience conspire and rebel against their Soveraigns when they shall be Excommunicated or declared Hereticks by the Pope there is another Doctrine of the Church of Rome which teacheth them That all power which Sovereign Princes have over their People is derived from the People and may be resumed by the People to be transferred and collated upon any whom the Supreme Pastor shall think fit to invest with it This Doctrine was proposed and defended in the Council of Trent by Jacobus Laynez the Popes Divine there emphatically so called and one of the first Jesuits who is herein followed by Bellarmine and by all of the same Order And this Doctrine saith King James in his Admonition to Christian Princes is fundamentum seditionis the ground or foundation of Sedition Fourthly That the Pope may always have a Party of his own and immediately depending upon himself in all States and Kingdoms it is another of their Doctrines that all the Clergy in all places are exempted from all secular Jurisdiction in all Causes criminal whether Civil or Ecclesiastick so that there is no Prince whether he be of the Roman Communion or no but he hath thousands that are born and bred and live under the Protection of his Laws and that are not subject to him but to a foreign Power neither are they answerable to him for any Crime they do or may commit whether Murder Felony or Treason unless the Pope will give him leave to proceed against them which Exemption where it is allowed of gives that Clergy courage to attempt any thing for the Pope against Princes especially being unmarried and consequently not having that obligation of Wife and Children upon them which other men have to indear them unto their Country and their Country unto them they are always the readier and the willinger to serve him upon whom wholly and only they depend And in order to that end no doubt it was that both Marriage was forbidden and Exemption from Secular Jurisdiction was granted unto the Clergy though Suarez saith the latter of these is of Divine Right and therefore is so general that it admits of no exception and so certain that it cannot be denied without contradicting an Article of Faith I suppose he means the Article of the Pope's Supremacy whereunto the Exemption of the Clergy from Secular Jurisdiction is subservient in a very high degree and no less dangerous to the safety of Kings and Princes as King James observes in the aforesaid Admonition Now if Kings or States to prevent the danger they are in by the aforesaid Doctrines shall require an Oath of Allegiance from their Subjects upon such Penalties as that they dare not but take it they have another Doctrine of Equivocation or Mental Reservation whereby they are qualified to say or unsay to swear or forswear any thing that shall be or can be proposed unto them and thereby to avoid both the Penalty of refusing and the Conscience of performing this or any other Oath whatsoever But if the Oath be so warily and so strictly worded as that as it obligeth them to take God to witness that they swear what they do swear without any Equivocation or Mental Reservation as they must if they take the Oath of Allegiance then the Gordian Knot which cannot be untied must be cut asunder by the omnipotent power of Papal Dispensation For Catholici omnes intelligunt saith Tortus or Bellarminus larvatus All Catholicks understand that it belongs to the Popes Power to Absolve not only from Sins but from Penances from Censures from Laws and from Vows and from Oaths too But what if it be part of the Oath to abjure the Popes Power of Dispensing with that Oath as it is in the Oath of Allegiance why yet they have another Doctrine to help them at a dead lift which is that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks and it is not to be supposed that Catholick Princes or States will tender such an Oath as takes away one of the best flowers of the Popes Triple Crown especially if his Power of Dispensing be taken in the largest extent or according to the practise of it for so it reacheth to the ratifying or making void of any thing not as it is right or wrong lawful or unlawful but as it is or is not for the Interest of him and of his See though it be to the undoing of Families the dis-inheriting of right Heirs or the embroyling of Kingdoms in long and bloody Wars as hath been often done by his Dispensing with Incestuous Marriages by his Legitimating unlawful Issues and by his permitting causeless Divorces which must needs produce endless Disputes and irreconcileable Quarrels in the World To these I will add but one Doctrine of theirs more and that is the Indispensable Obligation of their Priests to conceal I suppose they mean from all but the Pope whatsoever they hear in Confession though it be the intended murder of Kings or destruction of States saith Cardinal Tolet nay the ruin of the World saith Henriques which is so horrid a Doctrine as King James saith in his before-cited Admonition that no Prince or State can be safe where there be such Confessors no nor Romish Catholick Princes themselves as appears by Henry the III. and Henry the IV. of France who would neither of them have been so barbarously murdred as they were had not Fryar Clement and Ravilliac's Confessors been of this opinion So that of what Religion soever they be neither Princes nor States can be secured from the danger of this Doctrine much less from the danger of this and all the former of all which I may boldly say that if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or touchstone of my Text be true every one of them is false and consequently none of them from the God of truth who is the Author of Peace but all and every one of them from him who is the Author of Lies who is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the stirrer up of Strife and the Author of Confusion whence it follows that the Church that teacheth such Doctrines is so far from being the Catholick that she is not so much as an Orthodox Church so far from being the only true Church that she is not so
much as a true Church I mean in a moral sence or so far at least as she teacheth such Doctrines If it be replyed that it is not the Church of Rome it self but only some particular Doctors of that Church that teach all or any of the aforesaid seditious Doctrines I answer that these and the like Doctrines being publickly asserted and maintained by the chief Pillars and Professors of that Church and notoriously countenanced and abetted by the Head of that Church and never condemned censur'd or disclaimed by the Representative Body of that Church no nor so much as taken notice of as dangerous or erroneous by their Index expurgatorius which censures all such Authors and Opinions as that Church doth not approve of we must needs conclude them to be the Doctrines of the Church it self and not of some of her particular Doctors and Professors only though some of her particular Doctors may Dissent from some of them which signifie little or nothing as long as the Head of the Church approves them and as long as they all hold the Pope to be Head of the Church whereunto the whole Body of the Church must submit and whereby it must be guided and consequently they all hold he hath an Universal Jurisdiction over all Christians which is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first of those false seditious Doctrines I before named and whereunto all the rest are but instrumental and subservient as being at first invented and ever since maintain'd in order either to the bringing in or keeping up of that grand Imposture as one of our Bishops calls it I mean the pretended Soveraignty of the Papacy over all Christendom which whosoever will acknowledg and submit unto he may hold either pro or con in almost all of the Controverted points besides and yet be a good Catholick as they call him as appears by the offer made by Paul the IV. to Queen Elizabeth which was this That if she would acknowledg his Supremacy and take it as a Favour from him or as an Indulgence granted by him and by his Authority Gratiam facturum Pontificem ut sacra hìc omnia hoc ipso quo nunc sunt apud nos modo procurari fas esset his Holiness would graciously dispence with our way of serving of God in all things pertaining to his Worship in the very same manner as now we do They are the words of Bishop Andrews one of the Worthiest most Pious and most Learned of my Predecessors in his Tortura Torti from whence as he infers it plainly appears that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which is so much contended for by the Pope and those of his Party is not that Faith or any part of that Faith which was once delivered to the Saints as Saint Jude tells us and which he exhorts us earnestly to contend for but the exorbitant power of the Papacy in and over the Church of Christ for the gaining or keeping or recovering of which exorbitant power that Ball of contention hath been kept up for so many hundreds of years in the Christian World For what was that which made that great Schism in the Church whereby the Eastern were and still are divided from the Western Christians or what is that which now divides that of the Roman from all other Christian Churches but the Popes affecting and assuming the title of Universal Bishop or of being Head of the whole Church as if all other Patriarks Metropolitans and Bishops were all of them but his Vicars and he Christs Again what made all those quarrels first betwixt the Popes and the Senate and People of Rome and afterwards betwixt the Popes and the Roman Emperors as likewise betwixt the Popes and the Kings of France and betwixt the Popes and the Kings of England whereby all Europe was sometime in one place and sometimes in another distracted and divided and torn in pieces as it were by Feuds and Factions and by causeless and cruel Wars sometimes the Father against the Son and sometimes the Son against the Father and always Christians against Christians What was the cause of all this I say but the extending of the Popes aforesaid Primacy over the whole Christian Church in spiritual things to a Supremacy over the whole Christian World or over all Christian Princes and States in the World Lastly what was the cause of so many Conspiracies against Queen Elizabeth especially after her Excommunication by the Pope which was seconded first by a Rebellion in the North of England and afterwards by the Spanish Invasion in Eighty Eight or what was the cause of the Gunpowder-Treason it self was it not a zeal for the recovering and re-establishing of the aforesaid pretended power of the Pope here in England I am sure those that were the Contrivers of it and Actors in it as many of them I mean as were brought to Tryal for it did all and every one of them confess that to be the only cause for what they did and for what they suffered namely their zeal for the Catholick Religion as they call it of which as I told you before their great Cardinal tells us the Popes Supremacy est unum ex praecipuis fundamentis one of the chief foundations And as it was the restoring of the Popes pretended Authority that was the cause of that horrid Conspiracy so the Bull of Clement the VIII whereby a little before the Queen died he had forbidden all of his Party here to suffer any but a Roman Catholick to succeed her was the ground or warrant whereupon they undertook it as appears by what Catesby the chief of the Lay Conspirators said when some of his Complices seemed loth to proceed in it without the Popes express command for it or approbation of it To what end said he should we trouble his Holiness any farther was not the forbidding us to receive him warrant enough for the removing of him assoon and by what means soever it might be effected He might have added that Heretical Princes might be Deposed or taken away by their Subjects even before the sentence of Excommunication or Deposition be pronounced by the Pope against them as some of their Doctors hold and therefore there was no reason they should stand upon such formalities in a matter of such Importance and which required a speedy Execution And thus no doubt they were resolv'd in point of Conscience by Garnett the Provincial of the Jesuits at that time here in England and the chief manager of this inhumane Conspiracy together with Oldcorn and three more of the same Order of all whom it was confessed by their Lay Complices that they were not only privy to it but Authors of it I mean of the aforesaid Conspiracy and that they were the aforesaid Jesuits that had encouraged them to undertake it and had often by the Sacrament of Penance and the Eucharist confirmed them in the Resolution of it as of a most Catholick and meritorious Undertaking and now