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A58811
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A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, and Court of Aldermen, at Guild-Hall Chappel, upon the 5th of November, 1673 in commemoration of Englands deliverance from the Gun-powder treason / by John Scott, Minister of St. Thomas's in Southwark.
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Scott, John, 1639-1695.
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1673
(1673)
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Wing S2065; ESTC R15382
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20,135
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39
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Spur to make them as swift to shed blood as ever For thus at present the French King may allow his Hugonots what liberty he pleases and his Holiness is fain to sit still and be silent being kept in aw by that Puissant Monarch whose Cannon Bullets are grown too strong for his Thunder-bolts But the Case was otherwise with Charles the 9th who being weakened by Faction and impoverished by civil Broils was in a manner necessitated to that Infamous Butchery at Paris to appease the Pope and prevent the Excommunication he threatned him unless he speedily destroyed the Hugonots with Fire and Sword And indeed the Pope is bound both by their Councels and Canons to destroy Hereticks if he can and which is all one to Excommunicate their Favourers for this is decreed in the 4th Lateran Councel that all Hereticks should be Excommunicated and then delivered up to the lash of the Secular Powers but if the Prince or Secular Power being Required and Admonished by the Church do not endeavour to their utmost to exterminate and destroy these Hereticks he shall be presently Excommunicated by the Metropolitan or Arch-Bishop and if within a year he doth not amend his obstinacy shall be signifyed to the Pope Vt ex tunc ipse Vasallos ab ejus fidelitate denuntiet absolutos c. That from that time the Pope may denounce his Subjects absolved from their Allegiance to him and Gregory the 13th in that famous Bull of his Intituled Literae processus lectae die Coenae Domini Excommunicates all Hussites Wiclivites Zuinglians Calvinists Hugonots and other Hereticks together with their Concealers and Favourers and in general all those which desend them so that according to this Bull a Child cannot conceal his Parents nor a Prince Rescue his Subjecte from the Popes Blood-hounds under the Penalty of Excommunication And Pope Julius the 3d in another Bull hath determin'd That if any man examin the Doctrines of the Pope by the Rule of Gods Word and seeing it is different chance to contradict it he shall be rooted out with Fire and Sword Was not this a precious Vicar do you think thus to doom men to slaughter for not believing his own unreasonable dictates before the infallible Oracles of God himself And yet these Bulls of the Popes with the rest of their Decretals Extravagants and Clementines are all inserted in the body of the Canon Law of the Church of Rome aud so are made as good and current Popery as ever was coyned in the Councel of Trent and now after all this me thinks 't is impossible we should be so besorted as to trust to the cruel courtesies of Rome whose Religion breaths nothing but blood and slaughter The cry indeed of the Roman Factors among us is nothing but Toleration and liberty of Conscience and since the Laws have proscribed them for their Treasonous Practices and for swearing themselves Vassals to the Pope whose countermands if they are faithful to their own Principles must evacuate all their obligations to their natural Prince What Tragical Exclamations do they make against Persecution as if they meant to have the monopoly of it that no body might persecute but themselves and though in the Popish Dominions they are as fell and rabbid as so many Lybean Tygers yet no sooner do they set foot upon the English shores but as if there were an Inchantment in the soil the Wolves turn Sheep immediately or at least disguise themselves in Sheeps cloathing but if ever these sweet and merciful Gentlemen get into the Saddle again we shall soon find them in another note and Persecution will be zeal again and Racks and Gibbets Catholick Arguments and there will be no way to illuminate the understandings of us Hereticks like the light of a flaming Fagget For how can we expect it should be otherwise when we reflect upon what is past when the Marian days are yet within our prospect and 't is not half an Age ago since Ireland swam in Protestant blood which was spilt by the instigation of some of these fawning Hypocrites who now declaim forsooth for liberty of conscience and defie persecution and all its works But this pretence its evident is only a coppy of their countenances and without all controversie the bottom of their design is only to perswade us to let them grow till they are strong enough to cut our throats for 't is the subtilty of these Harpys never to show their talons till they have their prey within their reach but if what they pretend were Real Why do they not allow what they plead for and indulg that liberty to dissenters abroad which here they crave for themselves Why do they not as much exclaim against the Spanish Inquision which hath been confirmed by so many Bulls of their own Popes as they do against the English Laws and condemn the barbarous cruelties of the one as well as the milder severities of the other for till they do so we have reason to believe that 't is not against Persecution they exclaim but against being persecuted But in the mean time how can we expect that they should be merciful to our bodies whose Religion damns our souls or that if ever they get uppermost which God prevent they that are so uncharitable now as to shut us out of Heaven should be so charitable then as not to drive us out of the world For this is a Maxim founded upon the experience of all Ages That that Religion which damns us when it is weak will burn us when it is able Wherefore since God in his mercy hath delivered us from the Romish Tyranny let us with thankful hearts extoll and praise his goodness and take heed for the future least by our divisions or apostacies we return again unto that yoak of bondage and since the Emissaries of Rome are now so busily pursuing their old Maxim Divide Impera and blowing the coals of our divisions in hope at last to warm their hands at our flames O that we would now study the ways of peace and reconciliation and not like the miserable Jews fall out among our selves while the Roman is at our Gates for all the time we are contending in the Ship our Enemy is boring a hole in the bottom and while we are fomenting our unhappy differences and tearing our own wounds wider the Priest and Jesuit are at work in our Doublets who ever since their Gunpowder-Treason was defeated have been strewing trains of Wild-fire among our selves to make us our own Executioners and blow us up by our own hands For what else hath been their business among us but only to raise sects and factions and sow discords and Divisions in the Church of England which they know is the only Bulwork of the Protestant Religion among us O would to God we would once heartily attempt to countermine them as we might yet easily do Would we but once lay aside our unchristian passions and prejudices and study mutual compliances and prefer Religion before a Faction and abate some little Punctilioes to the soberer and more governable Dissenters These things if they might obtain amongst us would yet undoubtedly secure us against all the attempts of our Adversaries and Render their most hopeful design desperate and unseasable but if we will be deaf to all the Arguments which our common Interests and dangers suggest to us if we will still squander into Sects and Parties and nothing will serve our turns but the Ruine of that poor Church which for so many years hath been the Shelter and Sanctuary of the Protestant Religion The time may come perhaps when we may dearly repent of our own Follies and remember with tears in our eyes that we had once an opportunity to be happy Let me therefore beseech you even by all that love you bear to the Protestant Religion to your own safety and to the lives and souls of your Posterity to lay aside all Faction Bitterness and Animosity lest by your unchristian Divisions you open the Flood-gates of Popery on your selves and out a gap to let in the Stygian Lake of Ignorance Idolatry Superstition and Blood which God of his Infinite Mercy avert To whom be Honor and Glory and Power and Dominion For ever FINIS ☞ There is lately Printed a Sermon Preached before the Honorable the Military Company at St. Clements Danes July 25. 1673. by the same Author And are to be Sold by T. Tayler at the Hand and Bible on London Bridge Sulp. Sev. Hist. lib. p. 152. Antinin pars 3. Tit. 19. cap. 1. Ger. Busdrag Epist. ad Câ—rdid Pisar. â—hilâ—p 1 edict Elizab p. 149. De Rom Pont. lib. â—5 c. 8â— Tâ—m 3. in Thom dil 1. q. 1â— p. â— De Reg. Inst. l. 1. c. 6. Orat. Sixt. 5th Prited at Paris 1589. Thuan. Hist. lib. 53. Conc. Lat. 4. c. 3. Collect. divers constit pars 3. p. 72. De Vita Ignati l. 3. c 21. p. 335.