Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A34533
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A discourse of the religion of England asserting, that reformed Christianity setled in its due latitude, is the stability and advancement of this kingdom.
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Corbet, John, 1620-1680.
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1667
(1667)
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Wing C6252; ESTC R19414
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29,523
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57
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being found unmoveable the Pope published his Declaratory Sentence against Her by which all Her Subjects were absolved from the Oath of Allengiance and an Anathema denounced against those that thence forth obey Her The Popish Rebellion in the North breaks out Many horrid attempts of Violence upon Her Majesties Person were plotted one after another for many years together as that of Dr. Story of Parry of Arden and Somervile of Throgmorton of Babington and his Complices besides the concurrent Commotion in Ireland In these several Treasons many of the Seminary Priests were forward and active The great and setled Design was the advancing of the Queen of Scots to the Crown of England wherein were ingaged the Pope and Spaniard and French King and Duke of Guise in conjunction with the English Papists making use of her Title to set on foot those many desperate Enterprises against the Queen After the death of the Queen of Scots they raised a new Title to the Crown in the House of Spain The memory of Eighty Eight will be an everlasting Monument of Papistical Cruelty and Treason Cardinal Allen the first founder or procurer of the Foreign Seminaries a person admired as well by the Secular Priests as Jesuits penned a Treatise with all the Rhetorick he had to excite the English Catholicks to joyn with the Spaniards Among the Forces in the Low-Countries prepared for this Invasion were seven hundred English Fugitives After the Spanish Armado was dissipated the Jesuits had not done They would have stirred up the Earl of Derby to assume the Title of the Kingdom they plotted the poysoning of the Queen by Lopez her Physician they excited Villains to dispatch her by bloody hands and they never left soliciting the King of Spain till he twice attempted another Invasion In those times Parsons his Book of Titles was famous wherein he set up divers Competitors for the Crown preferring the Infanta before all others and slighting King James his Title as having but few Favourers and little accounted by Catholicks The Roman party could be provoked to these mischiefs by no other impulse then the impetuous zeal of their Superstition Some of their own did then publsh to the world their important Considerations to move all true Catholicks to acknowledg That the proceedings of Her Majesty and the State with them since the beginning of Her Reign had been mild and merciful In the several times of those mischievous designments though some priests were executed yet those that were found moderate in their Examinations obtained Mercy and a great number of them that by Law were obnoxious to death were spared from that extremity and only banished It is true that certain Secular priests did impute all those Treasons to the Jesuits and their Adherents and fully charged them with all the aforefaid matters of Fact in terms of highest aggravation acquitting all other Catholicks But it must be noted that the Jesuits were in greatest reputation and had the predominant influence upon the English Papists in general and as appears by the Seculars loud Complaints had such a power of disposing the Alms collected for their prisoners and other sufferers that such as complied not with their purposes were debarr'd of relief and pined for want And by their counsels the Foreign Seminaries those Nurseries of Disloyalty were wholly swayed And 't is observable That the agrieved Seculars never published their pretended abhorrency of these Treasons till they were over-past and themselves being driven to despair by the Jesuits potency were forced to take shelter under a great Prelate of the Church of England The same Spirit of Disloyalty was as active and vigorous in that Kings time who at his first entrance found himself excluded from Title to the Crown by two Papal Breves the ground-work of that Infernal Plot of matchless Villany and Cruelty the GUNPOWDER-TREASON After the defeat of which horrid Conspiracy the Projects of Rome proceeded not in such down-right Rebellions which always miscarried but in ways more secretly undermining Religion and as truly destructive to the Interest of King and Kingdom SECT IV. That it Persecutes all other Religions within its reach THE second Branch of the Charge against Popery is That it persecutes all other Religions within its reach In the Church of Rome for many by-past Ages the Meekness of Christ and the Dove-like nature of his Spouse hath not appeared but the Cruelty of that great Whore that was drunken with the Blood of the Saints and of the Martyrs of Jesus All that cast off her yoke and disown her pretended Infallibility are with her no better then Hereticks though they intirely own all the Articles of the Christian Faith received by the ancient Church And Hereticks are esteemed more vile then dogs and it is held meritorious to abuse and torment them Her Laws have made their punishment to be the sharpest kind of death Burning alive inexorably inflicted By this Romish Wrath and Fury were Three hundred Martyrs sacrificed in Queen Maries time for not believing the Sacramental Bread to be turned into the Substance of Christs Body against the most clear and distinct perception and reason of all Mankind But can humane Nature hear without horror the report of that direful Consistory called the Holy Inquisition established in those Countries where Popery is in full sway Doubtless that Church whose Religious Orders in a solemn and Sacred Judicatory shall commit such horrid Outrages as are indeed acted by those Infernal Judges upon pretence of Justice and Piety must needs be a School of Universal Cruelty for all her Adherents The Popish hath outgone the Pagan Cruelty What Treachery and Villany hath been acted What barbarous Indignities have been offered in ways as immodest and shameless as outragious and merciless upon pretence of zeal against Hereticks What varieties of strangely-devised Torments have been inflicted upon the Servants of Christ without sparing Age Sex or Condition Nor hath such work been done onely in our Age or Country but in all Ages successively and Countries universally that were imbued with Romish Principles Witness the huge slaughters of the Waldenses the persecutions of the Bohemian Brethren and of many others throughout Christendom in the former Ages And since Protestant-Reformation how have the Romish Zealots filled Europe with the slaughters of Christians within their reach in France Germany Spain Italy England Scotland the Netherlands In Ireland Piedmont and Poland their Cruelty is fresh in memory And the slain cannot be numbred for multitude they were killed by Thousands Ten thousands Hundred thousands at one and the same Persecution And the Tragedies have been acted where the Name of Protestant was well known yea where Protestants were under the shelter of the Law For the Jesuits uncessantly stir up the Princes to fall upon their people against Law and without provocation given and after things have been setled to break their Agreements with them And the Pope himself is the Contriver or Applauder of these Mischiefs and
of the Roman Church for the Interest of the people and the Consent of the Cities and the Peers in Defensive Arms. Which they have written over and above their peculiar Principle of the Popes Universal Power of Deposing Kings that are unfit for Government As for the woful Catastrophe of those Commotions it hath been manifested to the world by such as undertook to justifie it when Authority should require That the year before the Kings death a select number of Jesuits being sent from their whole Party in England consulted both the Faculty of Sorbon and the Conclave at Rome touching the Lawfulness and Expediency of promoting the Change of Government by making away the King whom they despaired to turn from his Heresie It was debated and concluded in both places That for the Advancement of the Catholick Cause it was Lawful and Expedient to carry on that Alteration of State This Determination was effectually pursued by many Jesuits that came over and acted their parts in several Disguises After that execrable Fact was perpetrated on the Person of our Soveraign if we may believe most credible reports there were many Witnesses of the great joy among the English Convents and Seminaries and other companies of Papists beyond Sea as having overcome their great Enemy and done their main work Many of their Chief ones sought the favour of the Usurpers with offers of doing them service One of great note among them in a Book entituled Grounds of Obedience and Government undertook the solution of the Grand Case of those Times That if a People be dissolved into the State of Anarchy their Promise made to their expelled Governour binds no more they are remitted to the force of Nature to provide for themselves That the old Magistrates Right stands upon the Common Peace and that is transferred to his Rival by the Title of Quiet Possession Conformably to these Principles they address their Petition To the Supream Authority the PARLIAMENT of the Commonwealth of England They affirmed They had generally taken and punctually kept the Engagement and promised That if they might enjoy their Religion they would be the most quiet and useful Subjects Of their Actings since His Majesties Restauration and the Jealousies and Rumours about them let men judg as they find by the Evidences that are given SECT VII The Result of the whole Discourse touching the Popish Party AND now let it be duly weighed Whether the Papists of these Dominions have in later times changed their former Principles and Interests or have only taken another method of greater Artifice and Subtilty as the change of times hath given them direction and advantage The scope of the whole preceding Discourse is to call in question those high pretensions of theirs and to cross their Aims at great Power and Trust But it is not directed against the Security of their Persons or Fortunes or any meet Indulgence or Clemency towards them Let them have their Faith to themselves without being vexed with snares or any afflicted the State always providing to obviate the forementioned Principles and Practices of Disloyalty and the diffusing of the leaven of their Superstition The Inference of the whole is this That they be not admitted to a capacity of evil and dangerous influence upon the Affairs of the Kingdom or of interrupting and perplexing the course of things that concern the publike SECT VIII That the Reformed Religion makes good Christians and good Subjects AS true Religion is the most Noble End so it is the best Foundation of all Political Government And it is the felicity of the State of England to rest upon this Basis even Reformed Christianity or the Primitive and Apostolick Religion recovered out of the Apostacy of the later times and severed from that new kind of Paganism or Pagano-Christianism under which it lay much oppressed and overwhelmed but not extinguished It s wholsome Doctrine contained in its publick Confessions makes good Christians and good Subjects It teacheth obedience to Civil Magistrates without the controle of any Superior or Collateral Power Nor is it concerned if dangerous Positions fall from the Pens of some Writers And notwithstanding the Adversaries Cavils the Divines of Authority and solid Reputation in the Protestant Churches do with a general Consent maintain the Rights of Princes and Soveraign Powers against all Disobedience If any aberration in Practice hath been found in its Professors it is not to be charged therewith because it condemns it but the general practice in this point hath been conformable to the Doctrine The Reformation in England for its Legality and Orderliness is unquestionable In Germany it was setled and defended by Princes and free Cities that governed their own Signiories and Territories paying only a respect of Homage to the Emperor In Helvetia it began by the Senates of the Cantons It was received in Geneva by that Republick after the Civil Government had been reformed by strong Papists In the Provinces of the Netherlands it was spread many years before the Union against the Spaniard which Union was not made upon the score of Religion but of State The manner of its beginning in Scotland is by some attributed to a National Disposition the asperity and vehemency thereof is said to be greater in times of Popery and to be much mitigated by the Reformation For France we may take the Testimony of King JAMES who was jealous enough for the Power of Kings He said That he never knew yet that the French Protestants took Arms against their King In the first Troubles they stood only upon their Defence before they took Arms they were burned and Massacred every where The first Quarrel did not begin for Religion but because when King Francis the Second was under Age they had been the refuge of the Princes of the Blood expelled from the Court who knew not else where to take Sanctuary and that it shall not be found that they made any other Warr. It is not for this Discourse to intermeddle with all the Actions of Protestant Subjects towards their Princes that have happened in Christendom Let them stand or fall by the Laws and Polity under which they live Whensoever they have been disloyal they have swerved from the known and received Rules of their Profession Through the corruption of Mankind Subjects of whatsoever perswasion are prone to Murmurings and Mutinies Sometimes Oppression makes them mad Sometimes a Jealousie of Incroachments upon their Legal Rights and Liberties raiseth Distempers and Contests And sometimes an unbridled wanton affecting of inordinate Liberty makes them insolent and licentious But over and above these common Sources of Rebellion Popery hath a peculiar one and that of the greatest Force the Conscience of Religious Obligations and the Zeal of the Catholick Faith Protestants have never disowned their King for difference in Religion as the most of the Roman Catholieks of France dealt with Henry the Fourth by the Popes instigation And in their greatest Enormities they have never attempted