disloyalty be purged out My sixth To offer even your selves an advantage if your courage and cause will stretch to improve it For the following Doubts are many of them such as Protestants themselves urge against your Reasons and are communicated here to you partly on purpose that you may provide better satisfaction My last to satisfie even the passionate too is Because your unchristian spirit of Calumny is still as unquiet as ever having of late most unjustly aspersed Principal Persons of almost every Body but your own which comportment of yours makes it but fit if Truth and the Common Good favour you not neither should I. To think and declare thus much satisfies me if it do not others I cannot help it Only I wish your favourers to beware of doing any thing that may be interpreted an abetment of you till you approve your selves heartily loyal lest they discover themselves too deeply tainted with your Principles and temper The Jesuits Reasons Vnreasonable DOVBTS 1. TO begin then My first Doubt shall be Whether you Jesuits have ground to hope the same favour with others For if you by your unjust and wicked practices provoked the Magistrates to enact those Laws if the rest of Priests and Catholicks were by you plunged in such miseries upon discovery of your Negotiations which were imputed to the whole Body of them how can you be thought to deserve remission whose seditious Principles are too deeply guilty of the Blood of Priests and Catholicks shed in the Kingdom ever since you first came into it Those who know your practices in the Countries where you by the means ordinarily of deluded Wives govern the Great Ones know this to be your Maxime to manage Religion not by perswasion but by command and force This Principle did your chief Apostle of England Robert Parsons bring in with him His first endeavours were to make a List of Catholicks which under the conduct of the Duke of Guise should have changed the state of the Kingdom using for it the pretence of the Title of Queen Mary of Scotland But her Council at Paris which understood business better were so sensible of his boldness that they took from him the Queens Cypher which he had purloyned and commanded him never more to meddle in Her affairs Poor Edmund Campian who is generally accounted an innocent and learned man and others suffered for such practices of his Parson's endeavours being suppressed by this Queen he turned himself to the Spaniard and with all his might fostered the Invasion of Eighty eight which is known to have been another occasion of Sanguinary Laws He wrote on that occasion his Dolman to justifie the Spaniards Title to England degrading the Scottish succession and Title of our Soveraign He wrote also Leicester's Common-wealth at that time called commonly Blewcoat because it was sent into England bound in blew paper which extremely exasperated the State and augmented its indignation against Catholicks The same man at Queen Elizabeths death procured a Bull from the Pope to the Catholicks in England against King James to hinder his coming to the Crown unless he would give liberty of Conscience and as his friends gave out had twenty thousand men listed for that effect had not his Majesty prevented the danger with sweet words Next followed that detestable Machination of blowing up that Royal Race and the whole Nobility with the House of Commons which was the occasion of the Oath of Allegiance and all the Persecution of Catholicks following upon it King James professing not to persecute for Religion but for Treason This you alledge not to be originally your Invention but is it no guilt to follow another mans wickedness when it leads to so horrid a crime For without doubt both by prayers before-hand and by publick testifications after the Fact was discovered you were highly accessary to it nay many years after you did and peradventure to this very day still do pertinaciously adhere to it I could urge great and manifest instances of this were it not to lose time That monstrous Straw of which all Christendom rung so long and the Pictures of Garnet and Oldcorne cannot be denied nor want they evidence of your inward minds After these came out the ridiculous and satyrical Books against King James the Corona Regia and the Quaeries And yet your so well affected spirits could not be at rest till your Patriarch Parsons was shamefully turned out of Rome by Monsieur Bethunes the French Ambassador and order from the King of France being discovered to plot a new Treason against his Country to introduce the Duke of Parma Thus you followed King James to his death Direct Treason against King Charles of glorious memory before the Wars I cannot accuse you of but how refractory you were to the Queens desires and orders at Rome for his late Majesties assistance is well known and what you have done since the beginning of the Wars and how you have behaved your selves both in and out of England is fitter for me to remit to his Majesty and the Courts Informations than to eâ—gage my pen in far fewer and weaker which I could produce Only I shall add this word If Colonel Hutchinson were well examined and pressed he would perhaps discover â—â—â—ange secrets about your treating with Cromwel no doubt much to his Majesties advantage So that leaving you this Doubt to ruminate upon whether the condition of them who have guiltily provoked and deserved the Sanguinary Laws be the same with theirs who have suffered for being mistaken to be their Fellows I proceed to 2. My Second Doubt about your first Reason That the Jesuits are free-born Subjects as well as others In which methinks I find one of your usual sleights of Equivocation For a Jesuit may signifie the man who is a Jesuit and may signifie with the complexion of being a Jesuit In the former sense there is no difference between any other Priest Regular or Secular and a Jesuit as to free-born but in the second there 's a wide one For the others have nothing against them but such Laws as had their beginning from difference in Religion their degrees and communities having been accepted by the Laws of the Kingdom in virtue of which they are free-born Subjects and parts of the Common-wealth as far as difference of Religion permits Now it being the Law of England that no Ecclesiastical Community may settle here unless admitted by the Civil Power as we see in proportion practised in all Catholick Estates and Jesuits never having participated of this favour all your practices of usurping Jurisdiction making Colledges and Provinces in or for England possessing your selves of great sums of monies for such ends and the like actions have been hitherto all usurpations unlawful both in respect of the Donors and Acceptors 'T is unlawful for any man even according to the sense and practice of Catholick times by virtue of your priviledges to live or preach in England or any of his Majesties
the Laws of God and Man and nothing agreeable to a pastural Officer not only all the rabble of the foresaid Traitors that were before fled but also all other persons that had forsaken their Native Countries being of divers conditions and qualities some not able to live at home but in beggery some discontented for lack of preferments which they gaped for unworthily in Universities and other places some Bankrupt Merchants some in a sort learned to contentions being not contented to learn to obey the Laws of the Land have many years running up and down from Country to Country practised some in one Corner some in another some with seeking to gather Forces and money for Forces some with instigation of Princes by untruths to make War upon their natural Country some with inward practises to murder the Greatest some with seditious Writings and very many of late with publick infamous Libels full of despiteful vile terms and poisoned lies altogether to uphold the foresaid Antichristian and Tyrannous Warrant of the Popes Bull. And yet also by some other means to further these intentions because they could not readily prevail by way of Force finding Foreign Princes of better consideration and not readily inclined to their wicked purposes it was devised to erect up certain Schools which they called Seminaries to nourish and bring up persons disposed naturally to Sedition to continue their race and trade and to become Seedmen in their Tillage of Sedition and them to send secretly into these the Queens Majesties Realms of England and Ireland under secret Masks some of Priesthood some of other inferior Orders with Titles of Seminaries for some of the meaner sort and of Jesuits for the stagers and ranker sort and such like but yet so warily they crept into the Land as none brought the marks of their Priesthood with them but in divers Corners of her Majesties Dominions these Seminaries or Seedmen and Jesuits bringing with them certain Romish trash as of their hallowed Wax their Agnus Dei many kind of Beads and such like have as Tillage-men laboured secretly to perswade the people to allow of the Popes foresaid Bulls and Warrants and of his absolute Authority over all Princes and Countries and striking many with pricks of Conscience to obey the same whereby in Process of small time if this wicked and dangerous traitorous and crafty course had not been by Gods goodness espied and stayed there had followed imminent danger of horrible uprores in the Realms and a manifest bloody destruction of great multitudes of Christians For it cannot be denied but that so many as should have been induced and throughly perswaded to have obeyed that wicked Warrant of the Popes and the Contents thereof should have been forthwith in their hearts and Consciences secret Traitors and for to be indeed errant and open Traitors there should have wanted nothing but opportunity to feel their strength and to assemble themselves in such numbers with Armour and Weapons as they might have presumed to have been the greater part and so by open civil War to have come to their wicked purposes But Gods goodness by whom Kings do Rule and by whose blast Traitors are commonly wasted and confounded hath otherwise given to her Majesty as to his Handmaid and dear Servant ruling under him the spirit of Wisdom and Power whereby she hath caused some of these seditious Seedmen and Sowers of Rebellion to be discovered for all their secret lurkings and to be taken and charged with these former points of High Treason not being dealt withal upon questions of Religion but justly condemned as Traitors At which times notwithstanding all manner of gentle ways of perswasions used to move them to desist from such manifest traitorous courses and opinions yet was the Canker of their Rebellious humours so deeply entred and graven into the hearts of many of them as they would not be removed from their traiterous determinations And therefore as manifest Traitors in maintaining and adhearing to the capital Enemy of her Majesty and her Crown who hath not only been the cause of two Rebellions already passed in England and Ireland but in that of Ireland did manifestly wage and maintain his own people Captains and Souldiers under the Banner of Rome against her Majesty so as no Enemy could do more These I say have justly suffered Death not by force or form of any new Laws established either for Religion or against the Popes Supremacy as the slanderous Libellers would have it seem to be but by the antient temporal Laws of the Realm and namely by the Laws of Parliament made in King Edward the Thirds time about the year of our Lord 1330. which is above 200. years and more past when the Bishops of Rome and Popes were suffered to have their Authority Ecclesiastical in this Realm as they had in many other Countries But yet of this kind of Offenders as many of them as after their Condemnations were contented to renounce their former traiterous assertions so many were spared from Execution and do live still at this day such was the unwillingness in her Majesty to have any blood spilt without this very just and necessary cause proceeding from themselves And yet nevertheless such of the rest of the Traitors as remain in Foreign parts continuing still their Rebellious minds and craftily keeping themselves aloof off from dangers cease not to provoke sundry other inferiour seditious persons newly to steal secretly into the Realm to revive the former seditious practises to the Execution of the Popes foresaid Bulls against her Majesty and the Realm pretending when they are apprehended that they came only into the Realm by the commandment of their Superiours the Heads of the Jesuits to whom they are bound as they say by Oath against either King or Country and here to inform or reform Mens Consciences from errors in some points of Religion as they shall think meet but yet in very truth the whole scope of their secret labours is manifestly proved to be secretly to win all people with whom they dare deal so to allow of the Popes said Bulls and of his Authority without exception as in obeying thereof they take themselves fully discharged of their Allegiance and Obedience to their lawful Prince and Country yea and to be well warranted to take Arms to Rebell against her Majesty when they shall be thereunto called and to be ready secretly to join with any Foreign Force that can be procured to invade the Realm whereof also they have a long time given and yet do for their advantage no small comfort of success and so consequently the effect of their labours is to bring the Realm not only into a dangerous War against the Forces of Strangers from which it hath been free above 23. or 24. years a Case very memorable and hard to be matched with an example of the like but into a War Domestical and Civil wherein no blood is usually
Pamphlet set out shortly after saying Where are now the old Tyrants of the World Nero Decius Dioclesian Maxentius and the rest of the great persecutors of the Christians Where is Genserick and Hunricus with their Arrian Hereticks alluding to the State here we think both him and divers others that have written to the same effect very greatly to blame Sure we are that the general cause of Religion for the which both we and they contend as oft we have said getteth no good but hurt by it and contrary to the old saying be he never so bad yet let him have justice though some hard courses have been taken by the State against us yet hath it not by many degrees been so extreme as the Jesuits and that crew have falsely written and reported of it But to return to Father Parsons in Spain and to proceed in the course of things which have happened since 1590. The said Father Parsons so managed the said Seminary erected in Valledolyd as within three years viz. 1591. twelve or thirteen Priests were sent hither from thence Also he procured some other Seminaries to be erected in Spain and furnished them with such Students as he thought fit which for our parts we greatly commend in him if he took this pains and imployed his favour with the King to a good end whereof we have some doubt knowing the Jesuits fetches but the State here did utterly condemn him for it finding that both he and some others were plotting and labouring by all the means they could for a new Invasion Whereupon a Proclamation was set out 1591. as well for an inquiry or search for all such Seminary Priests as either were or should hereafter come from Spain as also from any other Seminaries beyond the Seas upon suspicion that they were sent hither for no other end but to prepare a way for the said Invasion Whereas we are verily perswaded in our consciences and do know it for many that the Priests themselves had no such intention whatsoever the Jesuits had that sent them Against the said Proclamation three or four have whet their Pens but still whilst they seek to disgrace and gall the State they have ever thereby wounded and beaten us being themselves in the mean time void of all danger One of them Mr. Parsons by name as we suppose writing in his said Pamphlet of the new intended Invasion mentioned in the said Proclamation telleth us That the King hath just cause to attempt again that enterprise And again he saith That the King is so interessed together with the Pope to seck as he termeth it her Majesties reformation that he the said King is bound in Justice to do it and cannot without prejudice of his high estimation and greatness refuse at the soonest opportunity to attempt it Marry withal to comfort us he writeth That the King intendeth no rigorous dealing with our Nation in the prosecution of his Invasion when he cometh hither Which great favour of the King towards us we are to ascribe to good Father Parsons if we may believe his dutiful Subject Mr. Southwell the Jesuit For thus he telleth us If ever saith he the King should prevail in that designment of his new Invasion Father Parsons assisted with Cardinal Alanes Authority hath done that in our Countries behalf for which his most bitter enemies and generally all her Majesties Subjects shall have cause to thank him for his serviceable endeavours so far hath he inclined fury to clemency and rage to compassion Sure we are greatly beholding to this good Father that hath had so kind a remembrance of us But we wish that he had rather imployed himself as a religious man in the service of God and his private meditations than thus to have busied himself in setting forward and qualifying it when he hath done so outragious a designment and do pray with all our hearts that neither we nor this Kingdom do ever fall into the hands of the Spaniards whose unspeakable cruelties in other Countries a worthy Catholick Bishop hath notably described to all posterity The same Mr. Parsons also together with his fellow Jesuit Mr. Creswell as men that pretend extraordinary love to their Country have written a large Volume against the said Proclamation wherein what malice and contempt can devise that might provoke her Majesty to indignation against us is there set out very skilfully they themselves well knowing that no other fruit or benefit could come unto us by that discourse except it were still to plague us Whilst the said Invasion was thus talked of and in preparation in Spain a shorter course was thought of if it might have had success Mr. Hesket was set on by the Jesuits 1592. or thereabouts with Father Parsons consent or knowledge to have stirred up the Earl of Derby to rebellion against her Highness Not long after good Father Holt and others with him perswaded an Irish man one Patrick Collen as he himself confessed to attempt the laying of his violent and villanous hands upon her Majesty Shortly after in the year 1593. that notable Stratagem was plotted the whole State knoweth by whom for Doctor Lopez the Queens Physician to have poysoned her for the which he was executed the year after This wicked designment being thus prevented by Gods providence the said traiterous Jesuit Holt and others did allure and animate one Yorke and Williams to have accomplished that with their bloody hands that the other purposed to have done with his poyson we mean her Majesties destruction Hereunto we might add the late villanous attempt 1599. of Edward Squire animated and drawn thereunto as he confessed by Walpole that pernicious Jesuit But we must turn again to Father Parsons whose turnings and doublings are such as would trouble a right good Hound to trace him For in the mean time that the said Traiters one after another were plotting and studying how best they might compass her Majesties death they cared not how nor by what means he the said Father Parsons so prevailed with the King as he attempted twice in two sundry years his new Invasion meaning to have proceeded therein not with such great preparation as he did at the first but only to have begun the same by taking some Port Westward toward which he came so far onward as Silley with his Fleet. At both which times God who still hath fought for her Majesty and this Realm did notably prevent him by such winds and tempests as the most of his Ships and men perished in the Sea as they were coming hitherward Furthermore the said good Father in the midst of all the said traiterous enterprises both at home and abroad devised and set forward by him and his Companions was plodding amongst his Papers and playing the Herald how if all his said wicked designments failed he might at the least intitle the King of Spain and consequently the Infanta his Daughter to the Crown and Kingdom of England To which purpose he framed and afterwards published
allowed in all other Catholick Kingdoms c Does this sound as if the Jesuits had changed their inclination to that Doctrine whilst one of their eminentest Writers strives thus to defend nay applaud even Suarez one of the most offensive and extragavant even Jesuits that ever medled with that Subject 7. My Seventh Doubt is about your dependence on the Pope which you gloriously explicate to consist in this that The Jesuits are obliged by a particular Vow to be ready to go even unto the utmost Bounds of the Earth to preach the Gospel to Infidels I desire to know by what virtue you explicate your Vow in these words the terms of your Vow are these In super promitto specialem Obedientiam summo Pontifici circa missiones which by the tenour of the words signifies to go whither he shall send you and do what he shall command you in your Missions First there 's never a word of preaching the Gospel nor of Infidels and your Missions may be as well to Catholicks as to Infidels as we see the Peres de la Mission in France for the most part are imployed among Catholicks and I would demand whether your Mission into England be not as well to Catholicks as to Protestants Wherefore by this Vow you are bound to do whatever the Pope commands you as for example if the Pope should excommunicate or depose the Prince and command you to move the Catholicks to take Arms you were bound by your Vow to do it And therefore 't is no wonder if you give the Pope a Catalogue of these men and their qualities for they are generally speaking those who are eminentest in your Order and brag to him how great an Army of Pens and Tongues you bring devoted to him to further any attempt or design he shall command Besides is it not well known that none of your Order go into Infidels Countries but such as desire it whereof no small part do it for discontentment they find in your Colledges and that the Pope may as well send one of the Pillars of St. Peter's Church in Rome to preach to Infidels as one of your professed Fathers if it be against your General 's and his own will Therefore this special obedience is but a flash of vanity above others by which the Pope has a Chimerical power over you such as your subtilty in Divinity will call potentiaremota which without your own wills shall never come into Act. Yet do I not think that His Majesty will quarrel with you for this Vow as you explicate it though to tell you my sence of it I do not know how it stands with His Prerogative that the Pope shall have power over his Subjects which may be useful to him to send them without his leave to Japan and China But this Authority you assume to your selves and further For you do not only oblige your Subjects to come in or go out of the Kingdom when you command them but play the Judges of life and death upon the Kings natural Subjects without his leave or any crime that according to Civil Laws deserves punishment You presume by your power to send them to Watten or some such place wherein either your selves have high Justice or the high Justice is at your Devotion there frame Process against them and execute them without making account to His Majesty of the life of his Subject for pretended crimes committed in England This taking the whole story together I conceive to be no less than making your selves Soveraigns over His Majesties Subjects that is to be an Act of high Treason Yet all parts of this Action are evidently in your hands in virtue of your obedience and your having such places of high Justice in your Command so that your Subjects have other Soveraigns than the King's Majesty whom by consequence they ought to fear more than him since their power is more immediate and pressing and pressed on their Consciences As for the practice 't is said to have been used upon one Thomas Barton an eminent Scholar among you who wrote a Book called The agreement of Faith and Reason How true it is I undertake not to justifie but if you 'l justifie your selves from High Treason it behoves you to produce the man And so you have my seventh Doubt 8. My Eighth Doubt is that you equivocate with us in this word Dependence for you turn it to be dependence by Vow whereas more likely it means dependence of Interest and signifies that 't is your interest to ingage the Pope to you by maintaining all height of Supreme Authority in him though it be never so irrational and against Gods Law For by so doing you also can use it all for your own Interest in procuring for your selves and friends whatever lies either in the Popes Authority or Grace as Exemptions Priviledges Benefices c. For men look not on your Body as on others whose Generals have no other power than according to their Rules to look to their Discipline But on you they look as on an Army managed by one man whose Weapons are Pens and Tongues and the Arts of Negotiation and all plausible means of commending your selves to the World Which you exercise in such a height as to have had the boldness to threaten the Pope with a Schism to tell the King of Spain your Tongues and Pens had gotten him more Dominions than his Armies to attempt breaking the Liberties of Venice to be able to raise Seditions in most Countries and to be dreadful to the very Kings and Princes And all this because as Christ proposed to his Disciples the love of one another for the Badge of Christianity so your Generals propose to you blind obedience for the Badge of a Jesuit that is by cooperating with them to make them powerful and great Lords and your selves invincible and terrible to all that oppose you For this end you exalt the Popes Infallibility that you may get your Opponents condemned in Rome and then cry them down for Hereticks For this reason you teach the Pope to have all Authority in the Church and other Bishops to be but his Deputies so joyning with your Brother-Presbyters in really destroying the Hierarchy that when you by Grace or surreption have purloyn'd a Command from that Court you may treat all that resist you as Schismaticks and Rebels to the Church Yet if we believe Mr. White acknowledged an able man they are both damnable Heresies and destructive of Faith and Church and many others also of our most learned dislike them though their courage c. reaches not to brand them so severely In this complication of Interests then and not in your glorious Vow consists the dependence you have so specially on the Pope in a matter not of Religion but of Temporal profit and greatness 9. My Ninth Doubt is about the comparison you make between your selves and others telling us how you are by special Vow excluded from all Benefices and