Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	liberty_n	papist_n	protestant_n	1,212	5	9.6046	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33333	A looking-glass for persecutors containing multitudes of examples of God's severe, but righteous judgments, upon bloody and merciless haters of His children in all times, from the beginning of the world to this present age : collected out of the sacred Scriptures, and other ecclesiastical writers, both ancient and modern / by Sam. Clarke ...	Clarke, Samuel, 1599-1682.	1674 (1674)	Wing C4541; ESTC R12590	51,164	142

in the mean time those very Enemies of the Truth themselves cannot deny that the lives of such as profess this Doctrine which they so hate are full of integrity and virtue And therefore although the profane and bloody Prelates could never be drawn to pity Gods Children much less to love them for their piety and innocency being therein more inhumane than diverse of the Heathen Emperors themselves who upon the information of the virtuous and harmless deportment of the Christians by their Governours of Provinces caused their Persecutions to be slacked and ceased Yet diverse Princes and moderate Pontificians have been moved by the upright and honest lives of Gods Children to further their Liberty of Conscience and to abhor the cruelties which other Papists have practised upon them 175. Maximilian the Emperour son of Ferdinand the Second and Francis the First the French King were hence perswaded to grant unto their own subjects freedom of Conscience 176. The Earl of Egmont and Horn though zealous Papists laboured with the Dutchess of Parma that the Low-Country Protestants might be free from Fines imprisonments and all other manner ●f Persecutions in respect of Religion 177. Under Francis the Second the French King Anno Christi 1560. by the excellent and learned speeches of Charles Marillack Arch-Bishop of Vienne and John de Monlu Bishop of Valence freely spoken before the King himself in behalf of the French Protestants all Persecution against them was restrained The said Bishop among other particulars affirming boldly that a great encrease of the Sectaries proceeded from the ignorance and evil lives of the Bishops who having laid aside the care of their Flocks had for many years made it their business to enhanse their Fines and Rents and to live deliciously and loosely so as there were sometimes forty of them seen at once together wasting their time in Luxury and idleness in Paris the care of their Churches being in the mean time turned over to young and ignorant Fellows And so the Bishops becoming blind and useless the Parish Priests also following the Example of their Diocesans were only intent upon spoiling and vexing their people about their Tithes but were wholly unskilful and negligent in preaching to them And that therefore it was no wonder though diverse of the Nobility as well as of the common people did so readily hearken to new Opinions and Doctrines The same Counsel that the Conscience ought not to be forced nor any to be persecuted for matters of Religion meerly did Michael Hospitalius Chancellour of France give unto Charles the Ninth the same year that he succeded to the Crown after the death of the said Francis his Brother 178. By these foregoing Examples we may plainly see that their self-love and wallowing in all manner of sensuality is the great cause of their hatred to the godly whose lives and principles oppose their wickedness and errors The persecutions of the Arrians against the Orthodox exceeded the cruelty of the Heathen Emperours but this of the Romanists far surpasseth and exceeds them both being joined together 179. Pope Paul the Third left this bloody Legacy to his Conclave when he dyed Anno Christi 1359. as is testified by Mounsieur de Thou For having called diverse of the Cardinals into his Bed-chamber he exhorted them by all means to continue and maintain the Office of the Inquisition as the only means left upon earth to establish the Romane Religion 180. It may cause wonder in any serious man to consider that amongst the Turks Jews Indians yea and the Papists themselves the most zealous strict and precise in their several Religions are the most esteemed and honoured and only in the greater part of the Protestant Churches the most knowing and resolute retainer of the truth and the most strict and godly in their lives are most hated nick-named disgraced and persecuted And Grace which should add a lustre to Learning Riches Honours Noble Extraction and all other outward endowments whether natural or acquired that alone obscures all the rest and brings the contempt not only of great ones but even of the scum and dregs of the multitude upon the persons so qualified 181. Sir John Oldcastle Lord Cobham in the Reign of our King Henry the Fifth being convented before Thomas Arundel Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and diverse other lustful and bloody Bishops spake thus unto them Whilest I was said he a Swearer a Rioter and every way else vicious you never reproved me nor questioned me But since I have embraced this despised Doctrine of John Wickliff which hath taught me how to conquer my Sins and to lead an honest and a godly life now you are enraged against me with malice and seek my destruction 182. The same observation was made by Annas du Bourg that brave Senator of Paris Anno Christi 1559. under King Henry the Second of France That there were many Adulteries Perjuries Oaths and other infamous offences dayly committed and already punishable by the Laws and yet such as were guilty of all or any of those crimes were countenanced and advanced But against the Professors of the Truth all cruelty was practised who were guilty of no other offence but of embracing the truth of the Gospel revealed unto them by the Spirit and Word of God and of discovering by the same Light the horrible vices and errors of the Popish power that so there might follow an amendment 183. Experience sufficiently manifests that Persecution hath never been a way to suppress the Truth and surely it s against the Dictates of Charity and Christianity to enforce the conscience without a full and clear conviction This was confessed by King Henry the Third of France one of the most impotent Princes saith a learned Gentleman that ever swayed that Scepter and the most inveterate Enemy that ever the Protestants had having been instructed to hate betray and persecute them by Katherine de Medices his bloody Mother even from his very cradle yet when James Clement a Jesuited Monk had sheathed a knife in his Bowels and that he saw himself near to the Minute in which he was to give an account of all his cruelties to the supreme Judge of Heaven and Earth he made an effectual speech to the chief Commanders of his Army being most of them Papists wherein he exhorted them to acknowledge and obey the King of Navar then a Protestant as their lawful Soveraign and the undoubted Heir of the French Crown and to know this undoubted truth for the future That Religion which is instilled into the Souls of men by God himself cannot be forced by man 184. The same Truth also and almost in the same words did the Lord Brederode and the other Protestants in the Low-Countries alledge for their just excuse in their joint Apology published in the year 1566 and farther added That if the Papists did conceive their Religion to be the Truth they should instead of Blood Fines Imprisonings and Banishments take the good and seasonable

and destroy them The same Council was again held in the house of Hieronimo de Gondy at S. Clou and the time and order of the bloody Marriage Banquet to be served in at the Nuptials of the King of Navar with the Lady Margaret the French Kings Sister almost in the same manner and order as it was afterwards put in execution on Bartholomews Day Anno Christi 1572. In which were most inhumanely murthered of men women and children many also of them being great and honourable Personages of either Sex about thirty thousand And while the Duke of Guise was prosecuting that most inhumane Butchery a Cabinet Council was held in the Queen-Mothers Chamber whether it were not necessary that both the Duke and the rest of his Family who were then present should not be dispatched at the same time in that disorderly tumult King Charles himself never saw good day after this bloody Massacre though the Court-Sycophants had promised him that it should prove the first happy day of his absolute Monarchy For though he had been long drenched in Lust a sin seldom separated from a Persecutor by his ordinary Adultery with a mean Wench of Orleance of whom he begat Charles of Engolism afterwards Earl of Auvern And though he had been trained up by his Mother to see the slaughter of Beasts and ever in his Chases had been accustomed to bath his hands in the Blood of the slain Game which might have served to stupifie his Conscience as they did inflame his fierce and cruel nature yet a very stinging remorse in his Conscience did ever pursue and haunt him after that merciless slaughter brought about chiefly by his own swearing and forswearing by which the King of Navar and the Admiral Coligni were deceived His eyes ever rolled up and down uncertainly in the Day-time with fear and suspition and his sleep was usually interrupted in the night with dismal Dreams and Apparitions like our King Richard the Third of England after he had murthered his two Nephews in the Tower Nay though he survived that Massacre not fully two years yet had he in that time plotted the death of the said Henry Duke of Guise and the removal of the Queen-Mother and her Instruments from the Helm of State But as he a little before the Massacre had poisoned that incomparable Princess for Learning and Piety Joan Queen of Navar So did his Mother or the Duke of Guise by way of prevention or anticipation minister to him his fatal sharp Phisick of which after many and grievous torments he deceased upon Whitsunday Anno Christi 1574. being not full twenty five years old 150. The Queen-Mother the Kings two Brethren the Cardinal and the Duke of Guise that had not only joined with him in his Persecution but encouraged him to it they still survived and for ought men saw were firmly setled in Peace and Prosperity Though Guise might have taken warning by the Death of Claude Duke of Aumal his Brother slain with a Musket-Bullet from the walls of Rochel as he lay in Siege before it Anno Christi 1573. 151. Henry his Brother who succeeded King Charles was not long before chosen King of Poland where he then was but hearing of the Death of his Brother he clandestinly stole away from that Kingdom to return to France In his return the good Emperor Maximilian the Second and the Venetian State earnestly advised him to maintain the former Edicts of Pacification inviolably and not force the Consciences of men in matters of Religion Of the same Opinion also were all his wisest Councellors who saw plainly that the encreasing of the Protestants was the only means now left under Heaven to draw the Pope and his Conclave to yield some Reformation of the Church which it needed exceedingly But his Mother advised him by all means to root out the Professors of the truth by Fire and Sword And others there were of loose and Atheistical Lives as Henry Duke of Guise Lewis the Cardinal of Guise Renalt Villoclare A man saith the incomparable Monsieur de Thou fatally preferr'd to be an attendant upon this King by his Mother and diverse others who perswaded the King to break the aforesaid Edicts for Pacification and never to sheath his Sword till he had utterly ruined all the Protestants in France And the King being of a weak and degenerate Spirit the House of Guise being the Arch-enemies of the Gospel became at length so potent and triumphed so notoriously over the impotency of the King that at last they forced him to seek to those very Protestants for support against whom he had taken a Solemn Oath for their utter destruction Infinite almost were the Treasures which he spent upon his Minions and Pleasures His expenses upon his Dogs only amounted in those times to twenty thousand pounds yearly at the least but most was exhausted in the prosecution of his Wars against the Protestants 152. Guise and his Faction now grown strong and assured of support from King Philip the Second of Spain after he had expelled his King out of Paris and heaped a world of other insolent affronts upon him was drawn by him Anno Christi 1588. to the Assembly then held at Blois He came thither with his Brother Lewis Lorainer Cardinal of Guise and Charles Prince of Ionvile his Son upon the same Royal Assurance of safety with which Charles the Ninth had by his advise deceived the Protestants before the abhorred Massacre in the year 1572. But during this Assembly this Duke of Guise was slain against the Publick Faith given him not only within the Castle of Blois but in that very room wherein sixteen years before he had advised the bloody Massacre of Paris to be executed Two circumstances also do add much horror to the punishment it self One was that he was but newly risen from the bed of his adulterate Lust having not been able before this night to conquer the chastity of a Gentlewoman that waited on the Queen-Mother and therefore was so eager in reaping the fruits of his long Siege that he came not to the Council Chamber till he was oft sent for and even then scarcely ready The other was in the manner of his first wound which was given him in his Throat and immediately caused the Blood so abundantly to stream out of his Mouth as he never had time so much as to call upon God for mercy or forgiveness but spent his last minute in endeavouring to revenge himself upon his Murtherers 153. A while after the Cardinal of Guise his Brother who had been a great Gamester at Cards and Dice perished also in the same Castle of Blois by a violent Death Katherine de Medices the Queen-Mother who had been the chief cause for thirty years together of the shedding of so much innocent Blood being present at the same time in the said Castle stormed secretly that so great an action should be entred into and effected without her advice And when she heard that