in the meane time those very enemies of the truth themselves cannot deny but that the lives of such as professe this doctrine they hate are full of integrity and vertue And therefore although the prophane and bloudy Prelates could never be drawn to pitie Gods children much lesse to love them for their piety and innocency being therein more inhumane then divers of the Heathen Emperours themselves who upon information of the vertuous and harmlesse deportments of the Christians by their governours of Provinces under them did cause their persecutions to be slackned and ceased Yet have divers Princes and other moderate Pontificians in the fore-going age been moved by the upright and honest lives of Gods children to further their libertie of conscience and to abhorre the cruelties of their fellow-Romanists practised upon them Maximilian the Emperour sonne of Ferdinand the second and Francis the first the French King were hence drawn to permit unto their own Subjects freedome of conscience The Earles of Egmont and Horne though zealous Papists laboured with the Dutchesse of Parma that the low-countrey Protestants might be free from fines imprisonments and all other persecutions in respect of Religion Under Francis the second the French King in the yeare 1560. by the elaborate and learned speeches of Charles Marillack Archbishop of Vienna and John de Monâ—â—â—e Bishop of Valence freely pronounced before the King himselfe in behalfe of the French Protestants all persecution against them was for a time remitted the said Bishop amongst other particulars not fearing to affirm plainly That a great increase of the Sectaries did proceed from the ignorance and evill lives of the Bishops who having cast away the cares of their flocks had for many yeares studied to inhaunce their fines and rents and to live deliciously and loosly so as sometimes there were seene fortie of them at once together mouldering and wasting themselves in Paris in luxury and idlenesse the care of their Churches being in the meane time delegated over to young and ignorant fellowes and so the Bishops themselves becoming blind and uselesse the Parish Priest also following the example of their Diocesans were onely carefull to spoile and vex the people for their tythes and wholly unskilfull and negligent in preaching to them and that therefore it was no wonder though divers of the Nobilitie as well as of the common people did readily hearken to new opinions and doctrines The same counsell That the conscience ought not to be forced nor any to be persecuted for Religion meerly did Michael Hospitalius Chancellor of France give unto Charles the ninth the same yeare upon his new succession to the Crown after the decease of the said Francis his brother and Paulus Foxius to Henry the third in the yeare 1574. very copiously and most eloquently couched in two severall Orations inserted at large by Monsieur de Thou in his unparallel'd History in their due places who was himselfe nineteen yeares old when that horrible massacre was committed in Paris in the yeare 1572. on Saint Bartholomenes day which fell out that yeare on the Lords Day and did in his very soule abhorre the crueltie and savagenesse thereof when in his passage through the streets to Mattins that morning he encountred with divers villaines dragging along the dead body of Hierome Grolote late the Governour of Orleance all weltring with gastly wounds in his own bloud at which sight his heart relenting and mourning inwardly not daring to shed teares publickly he hastened home to the house of Christopher de Thou his father at that time the chief President of the Court of Parliament at Paris there freely to deplore and execrate that Heathenish butchery as did also the said Christopher his father Vidus Faber Pibracius John Merviller Belieureu all eminent men with all the judicious and morally vertuous Papists in the Citie who Christianly hid up and so preserved many Protestants secretly in their houses from a wretchlesse massacring nay Arman Guntald the old Marshall Biron father of Charles Duke of Biron that was beheaded in Henry the fourths time when the Deputies of Rochel repaired unto him some few weeks after that bloudy execution to treat of a peaceable accommodation of their affaires with him he shed many teares in their presence upon his execrating the authors of that cruelty and acknowledged it the great blessing of God upon him that he neither knew of it nor had any hand in it At the City of Lions also where the inhumanity of the murtherers almost equalled that of Paris Mandelot the Governour there did his best to have prevented it and in his heart with many other grave and sober Citizens of the Romish Religion utterly detested it And when the slaughtered bodies were tumbled into the River Rosne and carried down with the stream to Tornou Valence Vienne and Burg contiguous to the same River the Papists generally detested the cruelty And at Arles where for want of springs and ponds they had most use of that river-water they so much abhorred that butchery as they would neither drink thereof nor yet eat any of the fish taken therein for divers dayes after and generally in all Provence those of the Romish Religion drew out the mangled bodies out of the water and with great humanity interred them Monsieur Carragie a noble Gentleman the Governour of the great city of Robin in Normandy did likewise oppose the massacres there to the utmost of his power as did also James Benedict Lagabaston the prime Senator of Burdeaux who thereby became himself in danger to have been slain by those seditious varlets who had been at first stirred up to commit those murthers by the wicked sermons of a lustfull Jesuite named Enimund Auger Claudus Earle of Tende a descendent of the illustrious House of Savoy Governour of Provence Monsieur de Gordes Governour of Daulphinie Monsieur Sauteran Governour of Auvergne and Francis Duke of Memorancie particularly and absolutely refused to suffer any massacres to be committed in such places as were under their severall government so as the Rochellers in their Declaration set out the same yeer do acknowledge and confesse that all such Rom mists who had but any humanity left in them did in their hearts abhor and with their mouths detest those hellish outrages and cruelties And it well appeared what base varlets they generally were in most places who were the executioners of those villanies because their Religion consisted chiefly in robbing and spoiling the Protestants houses suffering many of them in the mean time beyond their cruell resolutions to escape safely away Nay whereas the furious people of Paris already inraged with a blinde zeale came to a certain white Thorne-tree that blossomed the day of the massacre in St. Innocents Churchyard in that city as if God by a miracle had approved their barbarous and sanguinary action the more judicious Papists conceived this to have happened by powring of hot water upon the root of that tree or by some other secret
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
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
at any time excused by the inadvertent default of the Priest admits the losse opposition And I have often wondred why some of that active rabble could not as well and as secretly on the sudden have supposited true flesh instead of the Hostia as they have by an insensible legerdemaine sprinkled pure and lively bloud from a lancinated singer upon the Wafer Cake it selfe Certainly there is no truth in Scripture more plainly set down then that doctrine of the Church of England and of the more Orthodox reformed Churches in which they maintaine and teach that Christs body is ascended into heaven and there remaineth as visibly and circumscriptively as it did upon earth before it ascended that it is onely present given and taken in the Sacrament after an heavenly and spirituall manner and that to worship it or make it a sacrifice are blasphemous and dangerous deceits from all which it will undoubtedly and necessarily follow that Christs body is no more present at the Sacrament really and carnally after the words of Consecration then it was present with the Bread before it was brought into the Church or with that which is left after the administration of the Sacrament ended and is carried againe out of the Church where also it may as lawfully be adored as at any time during the holy administration it selfe each adoration being grosse Idolatry Were the ignorantest men and silliest women able in Queene Maries dayes to assert this truth even by dispute against those bloudy Bishops and Idolatrous Priests that would have obtruded Christs reall presence in the Sacrament and their blasphemous sacrifice of the Masse upon them and after to die for it and shall wee not thinke thousands will be now ready also in all humilitie and patience to lay downe their lives for the same Truth How dangerous in all ages this idolatrous adoration or bowing to Images Altars the Hostia Reliques and such other trumpery hath been to the very moderate Papists themselves appeares by a pretty relation in the History of learned De Thou That Francis the second in the yeare 1559. being perswaded by the Cardinall of Lorraine and some others of his faction that there was no way to discover and irretiate the Protestants like that of their Images did cause them to be erected and set up with Candles burning before them in severall streets and eminent places of Paris to which there assembled divers tankard-bearers scullions and other such like of the dregs and scumme of the people who to the shame of the Priests and all Church-Discipline prophanely chanted and sang before them And when any passed by were he Papist or Protestant if he did not presently deliver them money towards the maintenance of those Tapers and adore the Idoll they fell upon him and not contented to make him tast of their fists and handy-blowes or to throw him into the dirt and trample on him did after all those grosse abuses carry him to prison there to be further questioned many sober Papists having hast of businesse not seeing the Images or otherwise not regarding the disorderly carroling of such a company of Varlets were by them basely assaulted beaten and spoiled to the great distaste and open repining of the best and discreetest Citizens though otherwaies truly caec-obedient and zealous Romanists SECT. XXII YEt must we not think that Heresie or Heretiques ought so to be indulged as thereby to be confirmed and made more pertinacious in their heresies They ought to be instructed reproved and discountenanced and if they prove irrecoverably obstinate exiled Wee see God himself commanded the Jewes to put an Idolater and a blasphemer to death and though I do not conceive that to be an Evangelicall precept but onely a judiciall law proper and peculiar to that people and Church yet doubtlesse it may thence by the rule of Analogie be concluded that where Idolatry and Heresie are mixed together as amongst Papists and Montanists or Altar-adorers or where blasphemy and heresie meet in one as amongst the Arrians Pelagians or Anabaptists the followers of Sebastian Castellio and James Arminius there a more severe course may be warrantably practised to stop the dispersing of that poyson then for the suppressing of any other Heretiques who are not guilty of those two abominations but onely hold some lesser errours Incomparable Monsieur de Thou saith in the Preface before his History dedicated to Henry the Great of France that exile or banishment was the first and greatest punishment that ever the ancient Church inflicted upon Heretiques which on all sides is acknowledged to have been a true Church as wee see in the banishment of the Manichees under those two pious Emperors Theodosius Valentinian and in the exilement of divers kinds of Heretiques under Constantine and Marcianus But when men have joyned either open rebellion and treason or proditorious positions to their Religion as the Papists or have maintained Anarchicall Theses as a part of their doctrine condemning Monarchie Magistracie and all civill government as the Anabaptists In these cases although they did absolutely defend dogmaticall and fundamentall errors yet were their exilement or a greater punishment justly inflicted on them because the case is now altered from matter of conscience to matter of offence crime Had the Protestants been but once guilty of such an unmatched villanie as the Powder-plot was in any part of the world where they are tolerated they had doubtlesse been for ever rooted out from thence for though some desperate Romanists only were ingaged in the execution yet in the generall questionlesse all the Recusants of England knew that a great action was in hand against Church and State and that their Romish Synagogue was to be erected in Great Britain upon the ruines of them both And for the prosperity of it as Henry Garnet himself confessed they all prayed Nay when divers English Papists admonished by the guilt of their own conscience fled upon the discovery thereof into France and were kindly received there by the Governour of Callis and he comforting them in respect they had left their countrey estates and friends No saith one of them to him again Wee grieve not at all for those losses but that so brave and excellent an action meaning the Powder-treason had no better successe At which answer the said Governour was so extremely incensed as hee often after himself related to the same de Thou who delivers the Story that hee verily thought to have precipitated the varlet headlong into the sea And as for their Romish doctrines manifestly tending to treason conspiracy and rebellion they were so exactly collected together into one bo ly by learned Bishop Morton and published in the yeere 1605. a little after the discovery of that treason as wee shall need a great deal of charity to believe they can be good subjects in and under any Protestant Prince or State Neither do the Anabaptists come much short of the Papists in their dangerous tenets or
practices although they exactly imitate their old master Pelagius in one particular which Vossius himselfe confesseth of him teaching many of their desperate doctrines as he did privately which yet they conceale and suppresse in their published Tractates which have given so many fatall wounds to the true Church of God in this and the last preceding age for the proofe whereof wee shall need to produce no other witnesses then those two sincere and impartiall Historians John Sleidane and the same Monsieur de Thou from whom wee may learne that after Melchior Hofman had broached his wicked Tenets in Germany about the yeere 1520. and with his disciples Thomas Muncer Bernard Rotman and John Leyden had assumed to themselves the name of Anabaptists and drawn many of the baser sort after them whom they perswaded not to suffer any of Noble blood to remain and that there could be no other lawfull Magistrate but one of their Sect they easily drew them to take armes and possessing themselves of the city of Munster in Westphalia had like to have proved the utter ruine of it had it not been delivered by the armes of some of the Germane Princes after which followed the execution of divers of those rebels After these men succeeded as chiefe propagators of their errours John Cerdo hanged at Brussels Michael Servetus the Spaniard burnt at Geneva and Cornelius Apelman executed at Vtrecht in the yeare 1570. all three of them though guiltie of divers grosse heresies yet were condemned and put to death for blasphemie and other notorious crimes John Williams their successor finding their treasonable and Anarchicall positions to afford them no safety in any well governed Monarchie or Republique got him to Ruremund in the Dutchie of Guelders and there having drawn to his partie some three hundred varlets and mean fellowes hee told them no goods could rightly appertain to any man but of their own Sect and therefore assured them whatsoever they could get by pillaging and robbery was a lawfull gain by which means many horrible and grievous thefts and spoiles were committed in Guelderland and in the Dutchie of Cleve adjoyning The said Williams also being taken was for his many abominable offences and villanies burnt at Buslaken in the Dutchie of Juliers yet died so courageously like Servetus his fellow Anabaptist as that their Sect was exceedingly confirmed and increased thereby so as had not their other portentous crimes justly necessitated their capitall punishment it had been much better for the true Church of God their lives had been spared For whereas before ignorant men had for the most part presidented their Church and kingdom for their chief Prophets commonly governed all the rest after their own wills these mens sufferings drew on as may be easily gathered Theodore Bibliander and Sebastian Castellio to give up their names to the maintenance of the same blasphemies who cunningly defended only in their publique writing those points which Pelagius had formerly broached whom Arminius Vorstius and the other Anabaptists of the nether Germany have since followed but for those dangerous and unsafe doctrines of condemning Magistracy extirpating Nobility and permitting robberies howsoever they may still in private teach and adhere to them and would perhaps if they could once make the stronger partie in any State soon enough practise them yet they have most politickly omitted not onely the maintenance but the very mention of them also in the said published Works and Tractates Thus also the Papists themselves upon occasion being pressed with any of their seditious tenets will deny them as Peter Cotton the Jesuite did their allowing of the murther of Kings after Henry the fourth of France was stabbed by that wicked Jesuited varlet Ravaillac and Henry Garnet at his execution protested that he ever abhorred the Gunpowder-plot The Pelagians in the time of the ancient Britaines were the undoubted instruments of the ruine of England then called Britaine of murthering Constantine the father and Constans the son both successive Kings there and of setting the Royall Crown upon the head of Vortigern Duke of Cornwall a Pelagianized traytor against his Soveraign who in lieu thereof to gratifie them soon filled up as may be probably collected the Bishops Seas to which neither Baronies nor Sericality were then nor for five hundred yeares after annexed with hereticall and lazie droanes who had well-neere ruined the true Church of God in those dayes All the world may know what warning King James of England that learned Prince gave to the united States of the Netherlands by his published Works upon the death of the Anabaptist Arminius and succession of that blasphemous Vorstius in his roome and chaire at Layden that if they did not in time look to the suppression of those blasphemous Heretiques they would in the end prove the ruine of their Church and State God of his infinit mercy grant that they may never be able to bring desolation or subversion to them nor to any other Church Kingdome or State of Christendome where the Gospel and the truth are established by the increasing of their numbers and powers to an excessive and formidable proportion SECT. XXIII WE have seen the greatest and uttermost punishment that the Primitive Church thought fit to be inflicted on the Heretiques of those times was exilement in which case they had alwayes a competent time allowed to provide conveniences before they receded safe conduct for their departure and a full power given them either to retain their praediall and fixed estates they left and to receive by their deputed agents the yeerly revenues of them or else sell them And if wee do seriously peruse the Histories of later times we shall finde the cruellest Tygres and most Wolvish Prelates that ever miscarried the affaires of any Kingdome or State since the yeare 1500. never to have grown to that senslesse and belluine height of malice against the godly as neither to suffer them to enjoy their liberty and quiet of their consciences at home nor yet peaceably and innocently to leave their deare and native countrey and to plant themselves in such parts of the world as they may enjoy their inward peace without offence or scandall to any Philip the second of Spain who was one of the most prodigious offenders against God in his time having vitiated women of the noblest rank violated contracts of the deepest nature murthered his eldest son and third wife unjustly detained the Kingdome of Navarre broken his oath with Arragon Naples and the Netherlands and the most resolved and premeditated persecutor of Christendome being wholly actuated precipitated to it by Nicholas Perenot Cardinall of Granvellan and the bloody Inquisitors yet in the yeer 1575. he set out a publick Declaration touching all the Inhabitants of the Netherlands that it should be lawfull for any that would not embrace the Rom m Religion to depart from thence whither soever they would and to sell their estates or else to retain them and to receive the
profits of them And not many yeers after he gave liberty also to the very Mahometan Moores in Spain amounting to divers thousands to depart freely thence into any Province of Africa there to enjoy freedome from the bloody Inquisitors and with his own shipping conveyed many of them safe into France through which by the graclous permission of Henry the Great they had safe and free passage Charles the ninth also the French King did by his Agents earnestly sollicite Lewes de Clermont Prince of Conde and Gaspar de Colignie Earle of Cistillion Admirall of that Kingdome being the chief Commanders and Directors of the Protestants affaires to depart the Kingdome with the rest of the Religion and that they might begin a Plantation in the Island of Florida in America hee not only gave leave to the first expedition which was undertaken by John Ribald in the yeer 1562. but also at the same Admirals intreaty did contribute very largely himself to the second navigation which was entred upon not long after the first by Renate Laudonere and divers other Protestants But it pleased God that this fair occasion not only of enlarging the French Empire but also of planting a blessed Church amongst those Heathen people was in the very bloome and infancy prevented and brought to nothing by the precipitation of Luidonere himself and by those factious Romanists about the King who occasioned new civill wars and tumults in the Realme After the horrible and inhumane massacre of Paris in the yeer 1572. which was partly resolved upon because the Protestants would not upon any terms remove out of France and so desert and leave their deare and native countrey Charles Duke of Loraine intending to take that occasion to extirpate the true Religion out of his own Dominions which he might have done by their slaughters yet gave them liberty to depart whithersoever they would in safety and full time to sell and dispose of their goods and estates Nay Queen Mary of England whose bloody persecutions shall make her raign infamous to the worlds end yet in her first yeer expressed so much mercy as having publikely declared that she meant to restore the Romish Religion shee further permitted to all her subjects that would not professe the same free liberty to depart out of her kingdome by which the lives and ravagings of many hundreds were saved and amongst them divers of the Clergie for the first sensible persecution began then in St. Johns Colledge in Cambridge where the Idolatrous bowing to the Masse and Altar being wickedly practised and pressed divers immediatly left the same Colledge thereupon Now if the Popish Prelates of those times who accounted the Protestants arch-heretiques and mortally hated them did yet perswade the Kings and Princes they served and too often misadvised to permit the Protestants freedome of departure with liberty and time to sell their goods and estates is it possible that there should live in and under any Protestant Church such inveterately hating Prelates against the weaker and humbler Christians who dissent from them as themselves pretend only in matters of form and order arbitrary to be abolished or retained by the supreme Magistrate as neither to suffer them to live quietly at home without vexation suites fines suspension deprivation and imprisonment which in many cases occasioneth their immature deaths nor yet suffer them to depart quietly to plant a Church amongst the very Heathens themselves to the honour of God and the inlargement of their Soveraignes Empire and profit Is it possible that so many miles distance should not abate and asswage the very malice of Rome it self against them Were their departure like that of the fugitive Romanists a few yeers since to joyn with the publike enemies of the Kingdome to invade it and to be more forward to subdue it to a cruell and barbarous Nation as they were in eighty eight then the adversaries themselves then might there be some colourable reason to use all extremity and cruelty against them for their ruine and extirpation but when their hearts and soules breath forth nothing but loyaltie and innocencie the throne and kingdome fare the better for their prayers and humiliations and the worst they desire is but the quiet of their own consciences how is it possible they should be so prodigiously hated of any that would but pretend truly to love the Gospel and heartily to vote the flourishing of it Certainly it is impossible they should be so transported with barbarous rage as some of the Popes have been who rather desired to see the ruine of those innocent Christians then of the very Turks and Mahometans unlesse they will yeeld themselves to be as deeply toxicated with the dregs of that Romish cup as the Jesuites are who in the yeere 1578. began to preach and teach publikely that it was a more acceptable work to God for Christian Princes to root out and persecute all Sectaries and Schismatikes amongst themselves then for them to joyn their forces against the Turks and Infidels A doctrine saith Monsieur de Thou one of their own Historians contrary to all Christian pietie and mansuetude who with the rest of the sober and moderate Romanists by their charitable and advised censures given of the strictest and most tender conscienced Christians notwithstanding they most abhor any the least intermixtures and additions in Gods Worship which have been introduced by the Papists shall at the last day rise up in judgement against the invectives of many seeming Protestants of both orders against the same persons endeavouring thereby to prepossesse the eares and fascinate the judgements of the greatest Princes that so they may obtain license and power under them utterly to ruine and destroy their humble and pious fellow-Christians who are notwithstanding permitted quietly and safely to enjoy the publike liberty of their conscience in those Kingdomes and States where the Romish Religion it self flourisheth SECT. XXIV UNder Henry the fourth the late great and victorious French King the major part of the Papists of that kingdome continued in a most obstinate and furious war against him during the first four yeers of his raigne calling into their succours the Spaniards the sworn enemies of that Crown and State and yet he offered them not only to permit all his Romanized subjects the publike exercise of their Religion but also to continue it in all places in the same forme and freedome as it had been used at the time of the murther of Henry the third his predecessor by a Jesuited assassinate And further implored his own Subjects Not to endeavour to force him to the change of his Religion which he knew to be the truth being a cruelty hee desired not to practise upon the meanest of them The Protestants will yeeld up their Religion as false and wicked if ever such an example can be produced against them where they had libertie of conscience sincerely afforded them and yet took up armes against their lawfull Soveraign But those
unreasonable French Papists being true limbs of the Romish Synagogue whose faith was then faction and whose Religion was then rebellion would embrace no conditions of peace no offers of pacification from their own undoubtedly lawfull and warlike King as long as he continued in the open profession of that truth in which he had been educated under Joan D'Albret hereditary Queen of Navarre his royall and godly mother who also upon her death-bed had expresly charged him never to recede from it This brave Prince seeing nothing but an utter ruine threatened to his kingdome of France either by cantonizing it into Provinces or setting a forainer on the Throne which Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine had out of some ambitious and self-respects of his own a while opposed and prevented in the yeer 1593. submitted himself to a publike recidivation which though it brought on an outward peace to that Realme yet was the King himself never freed from continuall Treasons and Conspiracies hatched against him in the dens and nests of the Jesuites till at the last he perished under one of them to the irreparable losse not only of France but likewise of all Christendome Neither did the Papists cease to vilifie his very act of reconciling himself to their Church saying as Monsieur de Thou himself confesseth that either his conversion was fained as it had been before in the yeer 1572. and that a false Catholike would do more hurt in their Church then a true Heretique or else that he loved the Crown of France better then he did the kingdome of Heaven that to gain that without any inward convincement would turn from one Religion to another SECT. XXV AFter this martiall Prince had deserted the Protestant Religion to the great astonishment and excessive griefe of all the Professors of the Gospel both at home and abroad What did his French Subjects of the Helvetick Confession instantly rebell against him and deny him due and lawfull obedience as his Popish Subjects had done before Nothing lesse but all the disobedience they shewed to him or expressed towards him consisted in humble supplications and Remonstrances that they might still enjoy the publique libertie of their Consciences and he as graciously yeelded to their just and Christian Petitions and all the time he raigned never forgat their cause or prayers or suffered any of his bloudy Prelates or Jesuited Counsellors to molest vex cite fine suspend deprive or imprison any of them and much lesse to butcher them or draw bloud from them because he knew every one of those acts are essentially true and down-right persecution as well as shedding their blouds onely there is a graduall difference in the Martyrdomes of the sufferers as well as in the cruelty of the destroyers As strange was the example of Henry the eight of England who led by the advice of some of his Sycophanticall Popish Prelates thought to have established the Romish Religion without admitting the influence of the Papacy whose unerring spirit is to that Synagogue like the soule to the body or the Sunne to the firmament But he soone saw his error and would doubtless had he lived have made that integrall and saving Reformation which his Royall Sonne so piously finished for he himselfe and his new Popery were more abhorred by the Bishop of Rome and his Vassalls as a monstrous and inconsistent Church then the Princes of Germanie themselves who had made a rationall and intire defection from that man of sonne For the Pope and his Conclave employed Cardinall Poole Henry the Eighths neare kinsman as their Ambassadour to Charles the fifth the Emperour to exhort and perswade him instantly to invade the King of Englands Dominion rather then to make warre against the Turke himselfe And the reason why the Pope was so vehement in his prosecution against that King doth palpably and fully appeare from the very words ensuing of the Decree of Pope Boniface the eighth in his Extravagants set forth by himselfe in the eighth yeare of his Papacy about the yeare 1300. Subesse Romano pontifici saith he omni humanae creaturae declaramus dicimus definimus pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salut is We declare define and pronounce that it is necessary for every one that is to be saved to be subject to the Pope of Rome The same doctrine doth the Bull of Pope Pius the fifth bearing date there in the yeare 1564. the Romish Catechisme set out a little after doth maintain and confirme in the tenth eleventh and twelfth Sections thereof in their exposition of the twentieth Article of their new Creed to which Creed their Prelates and other Ecclesiasticks are compelled to sweare that they hold it to be the true Catholick faith it being strongly disputed for also by Suarez in his first booke and twelfth Chapter against the Lutherans by Gregorie de Valentia in his Analysis lib. 6. cap. 1. and by Bellarmine in his third booke and fifth Chapter of the Church Militant That though any Prince Prelate Priest State or Church should receive all the other parts of the Romish faith Religion abolishing the doctrine and discipline of the Protestants and should onely deny the Popes Supremacy and subjection to him yet they should still remaine damnable and wicked hereticks So as the light of the Sunne is not more cleare then that the Pope in this one particular imitates God himselfe hating more a linsey-woolsey mungrell halting Popish Protestant then a true and zealous one Blessed therefore are those Monarchs Princes and States who preserve the Evangelick truth without the least intermixtures of false doctrine and Pontificall additions for to halt between light and darknesse and to intermix Idolatrous actions or Popish errors with saving truths will necessarily draw on the ruine of the godly and the hatred of the Papacy and bring downe Gods judgements as causally as an absolute entire and plenary defection and recidivation And then if the Popes headship be once admitted a volume would not suffice how not onely every proud Prelate but even every Popish Priest might trample on the Soveraignes Crowne and Dignitie murther their fellow-subjects and be guilty of a thousand other villanies without dreading or regarding the punishment of the Temporall sword SECT. XXVI MAtthew Paris the Monke of St Albanes a witnesse without exception doth truly relate a pithy Story to shew the ancient deplorable and base state and condition of the English Kings under the Papall tyranny That Pope Innocent the 4th in the year 1253. in the 37th yeare of Henry the third being set in his Conclave in the middle of his Cardinalls after mature deliberation and advisement upon a very small and trifling occasion brake out into this vehement Interrogation Nonne Rex Anglorum saith he noster est vafsallus ut plus dicam mancipium qui possumus eum nutu nostro incarcerare ignominiae mancipare That is Is not the King of England our vassall or to say more is he not our slave who have power as often as wee please either to mue him up in prison or to expose him to ignominy Justly therefore did Henry the eight of England free himselfe from this Papall Tyranny and if he had been possibly sensible of those bodily pangs or inward remorses and horrors upon his death-bed which the Papists mention yet could not these divine flagellations be imputed to his defection from Rome and error as they pretend but to his shedding of so much innocent bloud of Gods Saints by the instigation of his sanguinary Prelates For in France after that barbarous and cruell Massacre in the yeare 1572. upon the eighth day of November the same yeare there appeared a dreadfull Comet touching which some learned Protestant immediately published an elaborate and exquisite Poem presaging that it was Gods Herald or Messenger to denounce his judgement shortly to ensue upon that Kingdome for their newly perpetrated inhumane butcherie His verses were 〈◊〉 dispersed when there suddainly broke out in Poitou a new 〈◊〉 and before unknowne disease commonly called the Poitâ—vin Cholick which wasted that goodly Kingdome for above thirty yeares after It was accompanied with so many extreame paines and torments not onely in the outward parts of the body but in the inwards and vitals also as it drew on divers horrid convulsions and in many blindnes it self before they dyed The strange originall the hidden nature and those unparalleld torments it produced sometimes resembling the very stabs and gashes made with swords and poygnards gave all impartiall judgements just ground to conclude it to be the finger of God himself in punishing the mercilesse murthers of his dear Saints And a blessed warning it may be to all Christian Kingdoms and States that a seasonable remedie to stop the growing of the plague pestilence and other severall diseases and judgements may questionlesse be applyed by inhibiting and abolishing the power and malice of such Popish Prelates as count it their chiefest solace to waste and persecute the pious and godly Protestants that so the true Catholick Church might againe flourish as it did in the Primitive times under learned religious sober faithfull preaching Pastors and Ministers Which incomparable blessing the Divine Providence vouchsafed to the Scottish French and Helvetick Churches upon their first Reformation The Printer to the Reader I Am here courteous Reader instead of troubling thee with an Index of the Errata to give thee notice that so great care hath been used in this second Impression as it needs none neither was it my fault but my mis-fortune that the first had so many greater errours as well as lesser slips for I had the use of a very imperfect Copie transcribed from the Originall by two or three severall hands in some hast by which I was mis-led almost in every Section Those errours and such as escaped the Presse are now amended to thy hand FINIS * Lutherus paulò ante mortem ageâ— cum Philâ—ppo Melancthone fatetur in negotio Coenaeâ—n mium esse factum c. Dr Rainoldus prelectione 4a. in lib. Apocryphos p. 53. Col. 1. Et Orat. Isaac Bootii Vesalii de controversiis Sacramentariis Edit. Basilere Ao Dm. 1601. ad Calcem Polani Analys. in Hoâ—â—seam p. 405. * John Dudley Duke of Northumberland The late inhumane maâ— sacre and buâ—chery in Ireland hath since exceeâ—ed it