the Bishop of Eureux his house which was accordingly executed This happened in the yeare 1453. In the raigne of the same King 1457 there was a certaine Curate of a village neere to Soissons who to revenge himselfe of a Farmer that retained from him the tenths which were appointed to the Knights of the Rhodes went to a Witch of whom he received in gift a fat toad in an earthen pot which she had a long while fed and brought up which she commanded him to baptise as he also did and called it by the name of Iohn albeit I tremble to recite so monstrous and vile a fact yet that every man might see how deadly besotted those sort of people are that give themselves over to Satan and with what power of errour he overwhelmeth them and beside how full of malice this uncleane spirit is that as it were in despight of God would prophane the holy Sacrament of Baptisme This good holy Curate after he had consecrated the holy host gave it also to the toade to eat and afterward restored it to the Witch again who killing the toade and cutting it in pieces with other such like sorceries caused a young wench to carry it secretly into the Farmers house and to put it under the table as they were at dinner whereupon immediately the Farmer and his children that were at the table fell suddenly sicke and three dayes after died the Witch her selfe being detected was burned but the Curate suffered onely a little imprisonment in the Bishop of Paris house and that not long for what with friendship and money he was soone delivered Froissard who was Treasurer and Canon of Chymay reporteth of another Curate in the countrey of Beare under Charles the seventh that had a familiar spirit which hee called Orthon whose helpe hee used to the disturbance of the Lord of Corosse by causing a terrible noise to bee heard every night by him and his servants in his castle because the said Lord withheld his tythes from him and converted them to his owne use In the yiare 1530 at Nuremburg a certaine Priest studied Art Magick and being very covetous of gold and silver the Devill whom hee served shed him through a Chrystall certaine treasures hidden in the city he by and by greedy of this rich prey went to that part of the city where hee supposed it to have lien buried and being arrived at the place with a companion whom he brought to this pretty pastime fell a searching and digging up a hollow pit untill he perceived a coffer that lay in the bottome of the hole with a great blacke dog lying by it whither he was no sooner entred but the earth fell downe and filled up the hole and smothered and crushed him to death So this poore Priest was entrapped and rewarded by his master no otherwise than he deserved but otherwise than he expected or looked for Howbeit they are not onely simple Priests and Friers that deale with these cursed Arts but even Popes themselves Silvester the second as Platina and others report was first a conjuring Frier and gave himselfe to the Devill upon condition he might be Pope as he was indeed and having obtained his purpose as it seemed he began earnestly to desire to know the day wherein he should die which also his Schoolmaster the Devill revealed unto him but under such doubtfull tearmes that he dreamed in his foolish conceit of immortality and that he should never die It chanced on a time as he was singing Masse at Rome in a Temple called Ierusalem which was the place assigned him to die in and not Ierusalem in Palestina as he made himselfe falsly to beleeve he heard a great noise of Devils that came to fetch him away note that this was done in Masse while whereat he being terrified and tormented and seeing himselfe not able any way to escape hee desired his people to rend his body in pieces after his death and lay it upon a charriot and let horses draw it whither they would which was accordingly performed for as soone as he was dead the pieces of his carkasse were carried out of the Church of Laterane by the wicked spirit who as he ruled him in life so he was the chiefe in his death and funerals By like means came Benedict the ninth to the Popedome for he was a detestable Magitian and in the ten yeares wherein he was Pope having committed infinite villanies and mischiefs was at last by his familiar friend the Devill strangled to death in a forrest whither he went to apply himselfe the more quieter to his conjurings Gregory the sixth scholler to Silvester as great a conjurer as his master wrought much misery in his time but was at last banished Rome and ended his life in misery in Germany Iohn the two and twentieth being of no better disposition than these we have spoken of but following judiciall astrology sed himselfe with a vain hope of long life whereof he vaunted himselfe among his familiars one day above the rest at Viterbum in a chamber which he had lately builded saying that he should live a great while he was assured of it presently the floore brake suddenly in pieces and he was found seven daies after crushed to pieces under the ruines thereof All this notwithstanding yet other Popes ceased not to suffer themselves to be infected with this execrable poison as Hildebrand who was called Gregory the seventh and Alexander the sixth of which kinde we shall see a whole legend in the next booke Doe but marke these holy Fathers how abhominable they were to be in such sort given over to Satan Cornelius Agrippa a great Student in this cursed Art and a man famous both by his owne works and others report for his Necromancy went alwaies accompanied with an evill spirit in the similitude of a blacke dogge but when his time of death drew neer and he was urged to repentance hee tooke off the inchanted collar from the dogs neck and sent him away with these termes Get thee hence thou cursed beast which hast utterly destroyed mee Neither was the dog ever after seen some say he lept into Araris and never came out againe Agrippa himselfe died at Lyons in a base and beggarly Inne Zeroastres King of Bactria is notified to have bin the inventer of Astrology and Magicke But the Devill whose ministry he used when he was too importunate with him burned him to death Charles the seventh of France put Egedius de Raxaâ— Marshall of his Kingdome to a cruell and filthy death because he practised this Art and in the same had murthered an hundred and twenty teeming women and yong infants he caused him to be hanged upon a forke by a hot fire and roasted to death Bladud the sonne of Lud King of Britaine now called England in the yeare of the World 3100 hee that builded the city of Bath as our late Histories witnesse and also
so high a point the popish horn when at the request of Boniface he ordained That the Bishop of Rome should have preheminence and authority over all other Bishops which he did to the end that the staine and blame of his most execrable murther might be either quite blotted out or at least winked at Vnder his regency the forces of the Empire grew wondrously into decay France Spaine Almaigne and Lombardy revolted from the Empire and at last himselfe being pursued by his son in law Priscus with the Senatours was taken and having his hands and feet cut off was together with the whole race of his off-spring put to a most cruell death because of his cruell and tyrannous life Among all the strange examples of Gods judgements that ever were declared in this world that one that befell a King of Poland called Popiel for his murthers is for the strangenesse thereof most worthy to be had in memory he reigned in the yeare of our Lord 1346. This man amongst other of his particular kinds of cursings and swearings whereof he was no niggard used ordinarily this oath If it be not true would rats might devoure me prophesying thereby his owne destruction for hee was devoured by the same meanes which he so often wished for as the sequell of his history will declare The father of this Popiel seeling himselfe neere death resigned the government of his kingdome to two of his brethren men exceedingly reverenced of all men for the valour and vertue which appeared in them He being deceased and Popiel being growne up to ripe and lawfull yeares when he saw himselfe in full liberty without all bridle of government to doe what hee listed he began to give the full swinge to his lawlesse and unruly desires in such sort that within few daies he became so shamelesse that there was no vice which appeared not in his behavior even to the working of the death of his owne uncles for all their faithfull dealing towards him which he by poison brought to passe Which being done he caused himselfe forthwith to be crowned with garlands of flowers and to be perfumed with precious oyntments and to the end the better to solemniâ—e his entry to the crowne commanded a sumptuous and pompous banquet to be prepared whereunto all the Princes and Lords of his kingdome were invited Now as they were about to give the onset upon the delicate cheere behold an army of rats sallying out of the dead and putrified bodies of his uncles set upon him his wife and children amid their dainties to gnaw them with their sharp teeth insomuch that his gard with all their weapons and strength were not able to chase them away but being weary with resisting their daily and mighty assaults gave over the battell wherefore counsell was given to make great cole â—ires about them that the rats by that means might be kept off not knowing that no policy or power of man was able to withstand the unchangeable decree of God for for all their huge forces they ceased not to run through the midst of them and to assault with their teeth this cruell murtherer Then they gave him counsell to put himselfe his wife and children into a boat and thrust it into the middest of a lake thinking that by reason of the waters the rats would not approach unto them but alas in vaine for they swum through the waters amaine and gnawing the boat made such chinkes into the sides thereof that the water began to run in which being perceived of the boatman amased them sore and made them make poste haste unto the shore where hee was no sooner arrived but a fresh muster of rats uniting their forces with the former encountred him so sore that they did him more scath than all the rest Whereupon all his guard and others that were there present for his defence perceiving it to be a judgement of Gods vengeance upon him abandoned and for sooke him at once who seeing himselfe destitute of succour and forsaken on all sides flew into a high tower in Chouzitze whither also they pursued him and climbing even up to the highest roome where hee was first eat up his wife and children she being guilty of his uncles death and lastly gnew and devoured him to the very bones After the same sort was an Archbishop of Mentz called Hatto punished in the yeare 940 under the reigne of the Emperour Otho the great for the extreme cruelty which he used towards certain poor beggers whom in time of famine he assembled together into a great barn not to relieve their wants as he might and ought but to rid their lives as he ought not but did for he set on fire the barne wherein they were and consumed them all alive and comparing them to rats and mice that devoured good corne but served to no other good use But God that had regard and respect unto those poore wretches tooke their cause into his hand to quit this proud Prelate with just revenge for his outrage committed against them sending towards him an army of rats and mice to lay siege against him with the engines of their teeth on all sides which when this cursed wretch perceived he removed into a tower that standeth in the midst of Rhine not far from Bing whither hee presumed this host of rats could not pursue him but he was deceived for they swum over Rhine thick and threefold and got into his tower with such strange fury that in very short space they had consumed him to nothing in memoriall whereof this tower was ever after called the tower of rats And this was the tragedy of that bloudy arch-butcher that compared poore Christian soules to brutish and base creatures and therefore became himselfe a prey unto them as Popiel King of Poland did before him in whose strange examples the beames of Gods justice shine forth after an extraordinary and wonderfull manner to the terrour and feare of all men when by the means of small creatures they made roome for his vengeance to make entrance upon these execrable creature-murtherers notwithstanding all mans devises and impediments of nature for the native operation of the elements was restrained from hindering the passage of them armed and inspired with an invincible and supernaturall courage to feare neither fire water nor weapon till they had finished his command that sent them And thus in old time did frogs flyes grashoppers and lice make war with Pharaoh at the command of him that hath all the world at his becke After this Archbishop in the same ranke of murtherers we finde registred many Popes of all whom the most notorious and remarkable are these two Innocent the fourth and Boniface the eighth who deserved rather to be called Nocents and Malefaces than Innocents and Boniface for their wicked and perverse lives for as touching the first of them from the time that he was first installed in the Papacie he alwayes bent his hornes against
together riches for he exercised his wit in devising new tributes and payments and rejoyced his heart in nothing more for which causes there arose a grievous sedition at Constantinople against him wherein not onely the excellent and famous monuments of the Empire were burned but also forty thousand men slain and this was no small punishment for his oppression At Paris there is to be seene in the corne market a certaine monument hard at the mouth of the common sinke which conveyeth away all the filth out of the City the occasion whereof is reported to be this A certaine courtier seeing the king sad and melancholly for want of treasure counselled him to exact of every countriman that brought ware into the city but one penny and that but for two yeares together which when the King put in practise and found the exceeding commodity thereof he not onely continued that tax but also invented divers others to the great dammage of the common-wealth and enriching of his owne treasurie Wherefore he that put it first into his head when hee saw that he had not so much authority in dissuading as he had in persuading it to take punishment of himselfe for that inconsiderate deed and to warne others from attempting the like he commanded by his testament that his body should be buried in that common sinke to be an example of exaction and the filthinesse thereof Barnabe Vicount of Milan by the report of Paulus Iovius was an unconscionable oppressor of his subjects and tenants for he did not onely extort of them continuall imposts and payments but enjoyned them to keepe every one a dogge which if they came to any mishap or were either too fat or too leane the keeper was sure to be beaten or at least some fine to be set on his head This Tyran was taken by Iohn Galeacius and after seven moneths imprisonment poysoned to death Archigallo brother to Gorbonianus in nature though unlike in conditions for he was a good Prince whereas this was a tyran was crowned King of Britaine in the yeare of the world 3671 we may well place him in the ranke of oppressours for he deposed the Noblemen and exalted the ignoble he extorted from men their goods to enrich his treasure for which cause the Estates of the Realme deprived him of his royall Dignity and placed his younger brother Elydurus in his room after he had raigned five yeares Hardiknitus King of Denmarke after the death of Harold was ordained King of England in the year of our Lord 1041. This King as he was somewhat cruell for he caused the body of Harold to be taken up out of the Sepulclire and smiting off his head to be cast out into the River Thames because he had injured his mother Emma when he was alive so he was burdensom to his Subjects in tributes and exaction for which cause growing into hatred with God and his Subjects he was strucken with sudden death not without suspition of poysoning after he had raigned three yeares William Rufus second son of William the Conquerour succeeded his father as in the Kingdom of England so in disposition of nature for they were both cruell inconstant and covetous aud burdened their people with unreasonable taxes insomuch that what by the murraine of men by postilence and oppressions of them by exactions the tillage of the earth was put off for one year being the year 1099 whereby ensued great scarcity the year following throughout all the Land but for the oppression William was justly punished by sudden death when being at his disport of hunting he was wounded with an arrow glauncing from the bow of Tyrill a French Knight and so his tyranny and life ended together And here is further to be noted that the place where this King was slain was called New Forest in which same place Richard the Cousin germane of King William son to Duke Robert his brother was likewise slain This New Forest was made by William the Conquerour their father who plucked downe and depopulated divers Townes and Churches the compasse of 30. miles about to make this a Forest for wilde Beasts a most beastly sin yea a bloudy crying sin too too much practised in these dayes and that by great persons that make no conscience to turne Townes into pastures and men into sheep but let all them behold the just vengeance of God upon this Kings posterity for when then either cannot or will not revenge then God revengeth either in them or their posterity In the year 1548. the Commons of Guyenne Santonge and Augoulemois fell into a great Rebellion by reason of the extortions of the Customers and Farmours of Salt the Rebels in a few weekes grew to the number of fourty thousand men armed with clubs and staves who joyning with the Islanders by a generall consent ran upon the Officers of the Custome and with extreme sury put to sword all that they could take notwithstanding the King of Navarre sought by all meanes to appease them About the same time the Commons of Gascoigne rose in divers places upon the same causes and notwithstanding all that the Lord of Monneins the Kings Lieutenant and all other Officers could do they made a great spoil of many honourable Houses and massacre of much people insomuch that the Lord of Moneins himselfe was slain by them whilest he was making an Oration to them to pacifie their rage but at length these Rebels were suppressed by Francis of Lorraine Earle of Aumale and Anne of Mommorancye high Constable of France and the chief King-leaders and Captaines of them executed according to their deserts La Vergne was drawne in pieces by four horses L'Estonnac and the two brothers of Saulx had their heads cut off Tallemoigne and Galeferâ— the two Colonels of the Commons were broken upon the Wheele being first crowned with a crowne of burning iron as a punishment of the Soveraignty which they had usurped Thus the Lord punished both the one and the other and the one by the other the exactors for their oppression and the tumultuous Commons for their Rebellion Neither doth the Lord thus punish oppressours themselves but also they that either countenance or having authority do not punish the same as it appeareth by this example following In the year of our Lord 475. there lived one Corrannus a King of Scots who though he governed the people in peace and quietnesse a long space and was indeed a good Prince yet because his Chancellour Tomset used extortion and exaction amongst his Subjects and he being advertised thereof did not punish him he was slain traiterously by his owne Subjects It is not unworthy to be noted how Edward the Third King of England prospered a long while in the warres against France and got many worthy and wonderfull victories but when Prince Edward son unto the aforesaid Edward after conditions of peace concluded began to set taxes and impositions upon the Country
and the advertisement of his own wise yet he condemned Christ Iesus the just and innocent to the death of the crosse albeit hee could not but know the power of his miracles the renowne whereof was spread into all places But ere long having been constrained to erect the image of the Emperour Caligula in the Temple of Ierusalem to be worshipped he was sent for to make personall appearance at Rome to answer to certaine accusations of cruelty which were by the Iewes objected against him And in this journey being afflicted in conscience with the number and weight of his misdeeds like a desperate man to prevent the punishment which he feared willingly offered violence to his owne life and killed himselfe The first Emperour that tooke in hand to persecute the Christians was Nero the Tyrant picking a quarrell against them for setting the City on fire which being himselfe guilty of hee charged them withall as desirous to finde out any occasion to doe them hurt wherefore under pretence of the same crime discharging his owne guilt upon their backs hee exposed them to the fury of the people that tormented them very sore as if they had been common burners and destroyers of Cities and the deadliest enemies of mankinde Hereupon the poore Innocents were apprehended and some of them clad with skinnes of wilde beasts were torne in pieces by dogges others crucified or made bone-fires of on such heapes that the flame arising from their bodies served in stead of torches for the night To conclude such horrible cruelty was used towards them that many of their very enemies did pitty their miseries But at last this wretch the causer of all seeing himselfe in danger to be murthered by one appointed for that purpose a just reward for his horrible and unjust dealing hastened his death by killing himselfe as it shall be shewed more at large in the second booke The author of the second persecution against the Christians was Domitian who was so puft up and swolne with pride that he would needs ascribe unto himselfe the name of God Against this man rose up his houshold servants who by his wives consent slue him with daggers in his privy chamber his body was buried without honour his memory cursed to posterity and his ensignes and trophies throwne downe and defaced Trajan who albeit in all things and in the government of the Empire also shewed himselfe a good and sage Prince yet did hee dash and bruise himselfe against this stone with the rest and was reckoned the third persecuter of the Church of Christ for which cause he underwent also the cruell vengeance of God and felt his heavy hand upon him for first he fell into a palsie and when he had lost the use of his sences perswading himselfe that he was poisoned got a dropsy also and so died in great anguish Hadrian in the ninth yeare of his Empire caused tenne thousand Christians to be crucified in Armenia at one time and after that ceased not to stirre up a very hot persecution against them in all places But God persecuted him and that to his destruction first with an issue of bloud wherewith he was so weakned and disquieted that oftentimes he would faine have made away himselfe next with a consumption of the lungs lights which he spate out of his mouth continually and thirdly with an unsatiable dropsie so that seeing himselfe in this horrible torment he desired poison to hasten his death or a knife to make quicke riddance but when all those means were kept backe he was inforced to endure still and at last to die in great misery Whilest Marcus Antonius sirnamed Verus swayed the empire there were exceeding cruelties set abroach against the poore Christians every where but especially at Lions and Vienna in Daulphin as Eusebius in his Ecclesiasticall History recordeth wherefore he wanted not his punishment for he died of an Apoplexy after he had lien speechlesse three dayes After that Severus had proclaimed himselfe a profest enemy to Gods Church his affaires began to decline and he found himselfe pestered with divers extremities and set upon with many warres and at length assaulted with such an extreme paine throughout his whole body that languishing and consuming he desired oft to poison himself and at last died in great distresse Vitellius Saturninus one of his Lievtenants in those exploits became blinde another called Clandius Herminianus Governour of Capadocia who in hatred of his owne wife that was a Christian had extremely afflicted many of the faithfull was afterwards himselfe afflicted with the pestilence persecuted wiâ—h vermine bred in his owne bowels and devoured of them alive in most miserable sort Now lying in this misery he desired not to be knowne or spoken of by any lest the Christians that were lest unmurthered should rejoice at his destruction confessing also that those plagues did justly betide him for his cruelties sake Dicius in hatred of Philip his predecessor that had made some profession of Christianity wrought tooth and naile to destroy the Church of Christ using all the cruelties and torments which his wit could devise against all those which before time had offered themselves to be persecuted for that cause But his devillish practises were cut short by means of the war which he waged against the Scythians wherein when he had raigned not full two yeares his army was discomfited and he with his son cruelly killed Others say that to escape the hands of his enemies he ran into a whirlâ—pit and that his body was never found after Neither did the just hand of God plague the Emperour onely but also as well the heathen Gentiles throughout all Provinces and dominions of the Romane Empire For immediately after the death of this Tyrant God sent such a plague and pestilence amongst them lasting for the space of ten yeares together that horrible it is to heare and almost incredible to beleeve Dionysius writing to Hierax a Bishop of Aegypt declareth the mortality of this plague to have been so great at Alexandria where hee was Bishop that there was no house in the whole city free And although the greatnesse of the plague touched also the Christians somewhat yet it scourged the heathen Idolaters much more beside that the behaviour of the one and the other was most divers for as the foresaid Dionysius doth record the Christians through brotherly love and piety did not refuse one to visit and comfort another and to minister to him what need required notwithstanding it was to them great danger for divers there were who in closing up their eies in washing their bodies and intâ—rring them in the ground were next themselves which followed them to their graves Yet all this sâ—ayed not them from doing their duty and shewing mercy one to another Whereas the Gentiles contrarily being extremely visited by the hand of God felt the plague but considered not the striker neither yet
writeth of him That the apple of his eye fell out before he died Maxentius and Licinius the one Emperour of Italy the other of the East perceiving how the Emperour Constantine that raigned in the West was had in great reputation for maintaining the cause of the Christians began also to doe the like but by and by their malice and hypocrisie discovered it selfe when they undertook to trouble and afflict those whom before they seemed to favour For which cause Constantine taking arms against them destroyed them both one after another for Maxentius thinking to save himselfe upon a Bridge on Tyber was deceived by the breaking of the Bridge and so drenched and drowned in the water Licinius was taken and put to death And thus two Tyrants ended their dayes for persecuting the Church of Christ. In the tenth yeare of the persecution of Dioclesian Galerius his chiefe minister and instrument in that practise fell into a grievous sicknesse having a sore risen in the neither part of his belly which consumed his privy members from whence swarmed great plenty of wormes engendred by the putrefaction This disease could not be holpen by any Chirurgery or Physick wherefore he confessed that it justly happened unto him for his monstrous cruelty towards the Christians and called in his proclamations which he had published against them Howbeit notwithstanding he died miserably and as some write slew himselfe CHAP. X. More examples of Persecutors SAint Bartholomew one of the twelve Apostles after hee had preached Christ Jesus unto the Indians and delivered them the Gospell written by Saint Mathew and had converted many unto the Faith albeit the miracles which he wrought were strange and supernatural for hee restored many diseased persons to their health and clensed King Polemius his daughter from an unclean spirit wherewith she was possessed yet in regard that he destroyed their Idoll Astaroth and bewraied the subtilties of Satan he was by Astyages Polemius younger brother at the instigation of the Idolatrous Priests first cruell beaten with clubs after fleyed and last of all beheaded But within thirty dayes after both the wicked King and the sacrilegious Priests were poffessed with devills and brought to a wretched and miserable death Aphraats that heavenly Philosopher going out of his Cloyster towards the Temple to feed the flocke of Christ with some wholesome food of sound Doctrine and being perceived by the Emperour Valeus and demanded whither he went he answered To pray for him and his kingdome Yea but said the Emperour it were more convenient for thee that professest thy selfe a Monke to remaine at home in contemplation than to stray abroad True answered this holy man if Christs sheep enjoyed peace but as it becommeth an honest Matron to sit still within doors nevertheles if her house were on fire and the flame inviâ—oned her should she not stirre to helpe to quench it And should I lye still and see my Countrey set on fire by the persecution Whereat the Emperour being netled threatned him with death and one of his chamberlaines taunting him for his boldnesse used him most currishly But presently as he went to the Baths to make them ready for the Emperour the hand of God stroke him with an Apoplexy that he fell downe dead into the waters Under the Empire of Iulian the Apostate all they that either conspired or practised the death of Cyrillus a Deacon of Heliopolis scituate neer to Libanus came to a miserable end for after that Constantine was deceased by whose authority the holy Martyr had broken downe many of their Images and Idoils the abhominable Idolaters did not onely murther him but also devoured his liver with bread as if it had been the sweetest morsell of meat in the world But the all-seeing eye of God saw their villany and his revengefull rod bruised them in peeces for their teeth wherewith they chewed that unnaturall food fell all out of their heads and their tongues wherewith they tasted it rotted and consumed to nothing and lastly their eyes which beheld it failed them and they became blinde And thus were they all served not one excepted bearing justly the markes of Gods wrath for so inhumane and unnaturall a deed At Tyre a City of Phoenicia under the raigne of Dioclesian many Christians that stoutly professed and maintained the Faith and Religion of Christ Jesus were after many tortures and destructions exposed to wilde beasts to be devoured as Beares Libards wilde Boares and Buls the savage basts though made fierce and furious by fires and swords yet I know not by what secret instinct resused once to touch them or to come neere them but turned their teeth upon the Infidels that were without and came to set them on upon the Saints and tore many of them in pieces in their steads Howbeit although they escaped the jawes of wilde beasts yet they escaped not the swords of them that were more savage than any beasts and though the bowels of Beares refused to entombe them yet were they intombed in the flouds and crowned with the Crowne of sacred martyrdome Processus and Martianus Keeper of the Prison wherein the Apostles Peter and Paul were inclosed at Rome seeing the miracles which were wrought by their hands believed in Christ and together with seven and forty other prisoners were baptized Which when Paulinus the Judge perceived hee injoyned them to lay aside their conscience and offer sacrifice to Idols But they readier to obey God than man could neither by threats nor violence bee brought to it but chose rather to bee beaten with clubs or consumed with fire or scourged with Scorpions as they were than to yeeld to deny their Maker by doing worship to devilish and monstrous Idols But that Judge the procurer of their martyrdomes shortly after became himselfe an object of Gods wrath when his eye-sight failed him and an evill spirit so possessed and tormented him that in the extremity of terrours and griefe he breathed out ere long his last and miserable breath Nicephorus reporteth How the Emperour Trajan having caused five holy Virgins to be burned for standing in the profession of the Truth commanded certaine Vessells to be made of their ashes mingled with brasse and dedicated them to the service of a publique Bath but the Bath that before time instilled a wholesome and healthfull vapour into mens bodies now became pernitious and fatall unto them for all that washed themselves therein felt presently such a giddinesse in their braines and such a dimnesse of sight that they fell downe dead forthwith The cause of which mischiefe being perceived by Trajan he melted againe the Virgin-moulded Vessells and erected five statues to the honour of them so choaking as it were one superstition with another to his owne eternall infamy and disgrace Agapitus a youngman of fifteene yeares of age being apprehended by the inhabitants of Preneste and grievously tormented for refusing to offer sacrifice to their Idols and when
containeth a description of so many miseries as this doth as it may appeare by Iosephus record of it For after that they had been afflicted in divers countries and tossed up and downe by the Deputies a long while there were slaine at Caesarea in one day twenty thousand At Alexandria another time fifty thousand at Zabulon and Joppe eight thousand and foure hundred besides the burning of the two Towns at Damascus ten thousand that had their throats cut As for Jerusalem when it had a long time endured the brunt of the warre both within and without it was pinched with so sore a famine that the dung of Oxen served some for meat others fed upon the leather of old shooes and buckles and divers women were driven to the extiemity to boyle and eat their owne children Many thinking to save their lives by flying to the Enemy were taken and slit in pieces in hope to finde gold and silver in their guts in one night two thousand were thus piteously dealt withall and at the last the whole City was by force taken and the holy Temple conslumed by fire And this in generall was the miserable issue of that lamentable warre during which fourscore and seventeen thousand Iewes were taken Prisoners and eleven hundred thousand slaine for within the city were inclosed from the beginning to the ending all those that were assembled together from all quarters of the earth to keep the Passeover as their custome was As touching the prisouers some were carried to Rome in triumph others were here and there massacred at their conquerors wils somes lot it was to be torn in pieces and devoured of wild-beasts others were constrained to march in troops against their fellowes and kill one another as if they had been enemies All which evils came upon them for the despight and fury which they used towards the Sonne of God and our Saviour and that was the cause why he foreseeing this desolation wept over Jerusalem and said That it should be besieged on every side and rased to the ground and that not one stone should be left upon another because it knew not the time of her visitation Likewise said he to the woman that bewailed him as he was led to the Crosse That they should not weep for him but for themselves and their children because of the dayes of sorrow which were to come wherein the barren and those that had no children and the dugs that never suckled should bee counted happy So horrible and pitifull was the destruction of this people that God would not suffer any of his owne children to bee wrapped in their miseries nor to perish with this perverse and unbelieving Nation for as Eusebius reporteth they were a little before the arrivall of these mischiefes advertised from heaven by the speciall providence of God to forsake the City and retire into some far Country where none of these evils might come neer them The reliques of this wretched people that remained after this mighty tempest of Gods wrath were dispersed and scattered throughout all nations under heaven beeing subject to them with whom they sojourned without King Prince Judge or Magistrate to lead and guide them or to redresse their wrongs but were altogether at the discretion and commandement of the Lords of those Countries wherein they made their abode so that their condition and kind of life is at this day so vile and contemptible as experience sheweth that no nation in the world is halfe so miserable which is a manifest badge of Gods vengeance yet abiding upon them And yet for all this these dispersed reliques ceased not to vomit out the foame of their malice against Christ it being so deep rooted an evill and so inveterate that time nor reason could revoke them from it And no marvell seeing that God useth to punish the greatest sinnes with other sinnes as with the greatest punishment so they having shut their eyes to the light when it shined among them are now given over to a reprobate and hardened sence otherwise it were not possible they should remain so obstinate And albeit God be thanked we have many converts of them yet I dare say for the most part they remain in malitious blindnesse barking against and despighting both our Saviour himselfe and all that professe his name although their punishments have been still according to their deserts as by these examples following shall appeare The Jewes of Inmester a Towne lying betwixt Calchis and Antioch being upon a time celebrating their accustomed playes and feasts in the midst of their jollity as their use is they contumeliously reviled not only Christians but even Christ himselfe for they got a Christian childe and hung him upon a Crosse and after many mocks and taunts making themselves merry at him they whipt him to death What greater villany could there be than this Or wherein could these Devils incarnate shew forth their malice more apparently than thus not content once to have crucified Christ the Saviour of the World but by imitation to performe it againe and as it were to make knowne that if it were undone they would doe it So also handled they a boy called Simeon of two years and an halfe old in the yeare of our Lord 1476. and an another in Fretulium five years after that But above all they massacred a poore Carpenters son in Hungary in hatred of Christ whom they falsly supposed to bee a Carpenters son for they cut in two all his veines and suckt out his blóud with quills And being apprehended and tortured they confessed that they had done the like at Thirna foure yeares before and that they could not be without Christià n bloud for therewithall they anointed their Priests But at all these times they suffered just punishment for being still taken they were either hanged burned murthered or put to some other cruell death at the discretion of â—he Magistrates Moreover they would at divers times buy the Host of some Popish Priest and thrust it through with their knives and use it most despightfully This did one Bleazarus in the yeare of our Lord 1492 the 22 of October but was burnt for his labour and eight and thirty at another time for the same villanie by the Marquesse Ioachinus for the caitifes would suffer themselves to be baptised for none other end but more securely to exercise their villanies Another Jew is recorded in the yeare of our Lord 147 to have stoln the picture of Christ out of a Church to have thrust it through many times with his sword whereout when bloud miraculously issued hee amazed would have burned it but being taken in the manner the Christians stoned him to death The truth of which story though I will not stand to avow yet I doubt not but it might be true considering that either the Devill might by his cunning so foster and confirme their superstition or rather that seeing Christ is the subject of their religion as well as
so rotten within that no man could abide the smell of him His sonne called Iames after hee had spent all his fathers substance riotously fell downe suddenly in Newgate market and there wretchedly dyed Iohn Peter sonne in law to the said Alexander and no lesse cruell to the poore Christians rotted away and so dyed Cox an earnest Protestant in King Edwards dayes and in Queene Maries time a Papist and a Promoter going well and in health to bed as it seems was dead before the morning All these almost with many more which I could recite dyed suddenly being most cruell and horrible persecutors of the flocke of Christ. Many there were which though they escaped sudden death yet did not avoid a most miserable and wretched end In the number whereof I may place first Alexander the Keeper of Newgate together with his sonne in law Iohn Peter of whom mention was made before Also Master Woodroofe the Sheriffe of London who used to rejoyce at the death of the poore Saints of Christ and would not suffer Master Rogers going to his Martyrdome to speake with his children this man lay seven or eight yeares bed-rid having one halfe of his body all benummed and so continued till his dying day Also one Burton the Bayliffe of Crowland in Lincolneshire who having been a Protestant in outward shew in King Edwards dayes as soone as Queene Mary was quietly seated in the kingdome became very earnest in setting up the Masse againe and constrained the Curate by threats to leave the English Service and say Masse This blinde Bailiffe not long after as he was riding with one of his neighbours a Crow flying over his head let her excrements fall upon his face the poysoned stinke and savour whereof so annoyed his stomacke that he never lest vomiting untill he came home and there after certaine dayes with extreame paine of vomiting crying and cursing the Crow desperately he dyed without any token of repentance Also one Robert Baldwine who being stricken with lightning at the taking of William Seaman pined away and dyed Robert Blomfield also Bailiffe to Sir Iohn Ierningham after he had prosecuted one Master Browne pined away both in his goods and body by a consumption of both William Swallow the cruell tormentor of George Egles was shortly after plagued of God that all the haire of his head and nailes of his fingers and toes went off his eyes were well neere closed up that he could scant see his wife was also stricken with the falling sicknesse with the which malady she was never infected before Lastly to omit many others one Twiford is not to be forgotten who in King Henries dayes was a busie doer in setting up stakes for the burning of poore Martyrs and seeing the stakes consume so fast provided a big tree cutting off the top and set it up in Smithfield saying I will have a stake that shall hold But behold Gods hand before ever that tree was consumed the state of Religion turned and he fell into an horrible disease rotting alive above the ground before he dyed Besides these many there were that hanged themselves As for example one Clarke an open enemy to the Gospell in King Edwards dayes hanged himselfe in the Tower So did Pavier the Towne Clarke of London another bitter enemy to the Gospell So did the sonne of one Levar a husbandman that mocked and scorned at the holy Martyr Master Latimer being dead and that at the same houre as neere as could be gathered whilst his father was railing upon the dead Martyr So did Henry Smith a Lawyer who having been a Protestant became a Papist Others drowned themselves as namely Richard Long at Calice in King Henry the eights dayes Iohn Plankney a Fellow of New Colledge in Oxford in the yeare of our Lord 1566. And one Lanington a Fellow of the same Colledge in a Well at Padua or as some thinke at Rome Others were stricken with madnesse in which ranke place first Justice Morgan of whom wee made mention a little before Then a Sheriffes servant that railed upon Iames Abbes a godly Martyr as he was going to be burned saying That hee was an Heretique and a mad man but as soone as the fire was put to the Martyr such was the fearefull stroke of Gods justice upon him he was there presently in the sight of all the people stricken with a frenzy crying out aloud that Iames Abbes was saved but he was damned and so continued till his dying day So likewise one William a Student in the inner Temple in the midst of his railing against the Gospell of Christ and the Professors thereof fell starke mad Many other examples of the like kind I could here adde but he that desireth to know and read more thereof let him have recourse unto the latter end of the Acts and Monuments of the English Church where he shall find a whole Catalogue of such like examples The overthrow of many mighty ones in our Age serve for a looking glasse to represent the high exploits of the wonderfull judgements which the King of Kings hath sent upon those that have in any place or countrey whatsoever resisted and strove against the Truth whereof some after great victories which by their singular dexterity and worldly wisedome in the mannaging of their affaires have atchieved by a perverse and overthwart end contrary to their former prosperity have darkned and obscured the renowne and glory of all their brave deeds their good report dying with their bodyes and their credit impaired and buried with them in their graves Others in like manner having addressed all their forces and laid their battery and placed all their Pieces and Canons against the wals of Sion and thinking to blow it up and consume it to ashes have made many breaches into the sides thereof yea they have so bent all their strength against it and afflicted it with such outragious cruelty and unmercifull effusion of bloud that it is pitifull and lamentable to remember howbeit after all their policies and practises their courage hath been at length abated and themselves raked one after another out of this world with manifest markes of the just vengeance of God upon them For though it may seem for a time that God slepeth and regardeth not the wrongs and oppressions of his servants yet he never faileth to carry a watchfull eye upon them and in his fittest time to revenge himselfe upon their enemies CHAP. XIV A Hymne of the persecution of Gods Church and the deliverance of the same ALong the verdant fields all richly dy'd With Natures paintments and with Flora's pride Whose goodly bounds are lively Chryst all streames Begirt with bow'rs to keep backe Phoebus beames Even when the quenchlesse torch the Worlds great eye Advanc'â— his rayes orethwartly from the skie And by his power of heavenly influence Reviv'd the seeds of Springs decay'd essence Then many flockes unite in peace and love Not seeking ought but naturall behove Past quietly uncharg'a
and til the land Now what was the cause of this lamentable destruction of this holy City of the Temple and Sanctuary of the Lord and of his owne people it is set downe by the holy-Ghost in expresse word 2 Chro. 36. 15 16. That When the Lord sent unto them by his Messengers rising early and sending because he had compassion on them and on his habitation they mocked the Messengers of God despised his words and misused his Prophets and therefore the wrath of the Lord arose against his people and there was no remedy Behold here the grievous judgement of the Lord upon such as contemned his Word and despised his Prophets Thus was the first city and temple destroyed and did the second fare any better no verily but far worse for as their sinne was greater in that the former Iews contemned only the Word spoken by the Prophets which were but servants these despised the Word spoken by the Sonne himself which is the Lord of life so their punishment was also the greater for as the Apostle saith If they which despised Moses Law died without mercy how much sorer punishment are they worthy of which tread under foot the Sonne of God and count the bloud of the Testament as an unholy thing and neglect so great salvation which first began to be preached by the Lord himselfe and afterward was confirmed by them which heard him Therefore the destruction of the second city and temple by Titus and Vespasian Emperours of Rome was far more lamentable than that of the former yea so terrible and fearefull was the judgement of God upon that nation at this time that never the like calamitie and misery was heard or read of there at the siege of Ierusalem the famin was so great within the walls and the sword so terrible without that within they were constrained to eat not only leather and old shoo 's but horse-dung yea their owne excrements and some to devour their owne children and as many as issued out were crucified by the Romans as they had crucified the Saviour of the world till they had no more wood to naile them on So that it was most true which our Saviour foreprophesied That such should be the tribulation of that time as was not from the beginning of the world nor should be againe to the end At this destruction perished eleven hundred thousand Iewes as Historians report besides them which Vespasian slew in subduing the country of Galilee over and besides them also which were sould and sent into Aegypt and other provinces to vile slavery to the number of seventeene thousand two thousand were brought with Titus in triumph of which part he gave to be devoured of wilde beasts and part otherwise most cruelly were slaine By whose case all nations may take example what it is to reject the visitation of Gods verity being sent unto them and much more to persecute them which be sent of God for their salvation And here is diligently to be observed the great equity of this judgment they refused Christ to be their King and chose rather to be subject unto Caesar now they are by the said their owne Caesar destroyed when as Christs subjects the same time escaped the danger The like example of Gods wrathfull punishment is to be noted no lesse in the Romans also themselves for despising Christ and his Gospel for when Tiberius Nero the Emperor having received by letters from Pontius Pilat a true report of the doings of Christ Iesus of his miracles resurrection and ascention into heaven and how he was received as God of many good men was himselfe mooved with beleefe of the same and did confer thereof with the whole Senat of Rome to have Christ adored as God But they not agreeing thereunto refused him because that contrary to the law of the Romans he was consecrated said they for a God before the Senat of Rome had decreed and approved him Thus the vaine Senat which were contented with the Emperor to raign over them were not contented with the meeke King of glory the Sonne of God to be their King yea they contemned also the preaching of the two blessed Apostles Peter and Paul who were also most cruelly put to death in the later end of Domitius Nero his raigne and the yeare of Christ 69 for the testimony and saith of Christ. And therefore after much like sort to the Iews were they scourged and entrapped by the same way which they did prefer for as they preferred the Emperour and rejected Christ so did God stirre up their owne Emperours against them in such sort that both the Senators themselves were all devoured and the whole city most horribly afflicted the space almost of three hundred yeares together Neither were they only thus scourged by their Emperors but also by civill wars whereof three were sought in two yeares at Rome after Nero's death as likewise by other casualties for in Suetonius is testified five thousand were hurt and slaine by fall of a Theatre How heavy and searefull the judgement of God hath beene towards those seven famous Churches of Asia to the which the holy Ghost writeth his seven Epistles Revel 2 and 3. histories sufficiently testifie and experience sheweth for whereas in the Apostles time and long after in the dayes of persecution no Churches in the world more flourished after when they began to make light account of the word of God and to fall away from the truth to errors from godlinesse to impieties the Lord also made light account of them and removed his Candlesticke that is the ministery of his Gospell from amongst them and made them a prey unto their enemies and so they which before were subjects to Christ are now slaves to Mahomet and there where the true God was worshipped is now a filthy Idol adored and instead of the Gospel of Christ is the Turks Alcoran in stead of the seven stars and seven candlesticks are seven thousand priests of Mahomet and worshippers of him and thus for the contempt of the Gospel of Christ is the Chrurch of Christians made a cage of Divels Venerable Bede in his Ecclesticall history of England reporteth That about the yeare of our Lord 420 after that the Brittons had been long afflicted by the Irish Picts and Scots and that the Lord had given them rest from all their enemies and had blessed them with such great plenty of corn and fruits of the earth as had not been before heard of they fell into all manner of sins and vices and in stead of shewing themselves thankfull to the Lord for his great mercies provoked his indignation more fiercely against them for as he saith together with plenty grew ryot and this was accompanied with a train of many other foule enormities especially the hatred of the truth contempt of the Word and that not only in the Laity and ignorant people but even also in the Clergy and Sheepheards of the
fled to a Church of purer Religion and there was entertained into the Church by baptisme Socrates in his Ecclesiasticall History reporteth the like accident to have happened to a Iew who had beene oftentimes baptised and came to Paulus a Novatian Bishop to receive the Sacrament againe but the water as before vanished and his villany being detected he was banished the Church Vrbanus Formensis and Foelix Iducensis two Donatists by profession rushing into Thipasa a city of Mauritania commanded the Eucharist to be throwne among the dogs but the dogs growing mad thereby set upon their owne Masters and rent them with their teeth as being guilty of despising the body of Christ. Certainly a notable judgement to condemne the wicked behaviour of those miscreants who were so prophane as not only to refuse the Sacrament themselves but also to cast it to their dogs as if it were the vilest and contemptiblest thing in the world Theopompus a Phylosopher being about to insert certaine things out of the writings of Moses into his prophane works and so to abuse the sacred Word of God was stricken with a frenzy and being warned of the cause thereof in a dreame by prayers made unto God recovered his sences againe This story is recorded by Iosephus As also another of Theodectes a Poet that mingled his Tragedies with the holy Scripture and was therfore stricken with blindnesse untill he had recanted his impiety In a towne of Germany called Itzsith there dwelt a certaine husbandman that was a monstrous despiser and prophaner of the Word of God and his Sacraments he upon a time amidst his cups railed with most bitter termes upon a Minister of Gods Word after which going presently into the fields to overlooke his sheepe he never returned alive but was found there dead with his body all scortched and burnt as blacke as a cole the Lord having given him over into the hands of the Divell to be thus used for his vile prophanenesse and abusing his holy things This D. Iustus Ionus in Luthers Conferences reporteth to be most true In the yeare of our Lord 1553 a certain Coblers servant being brought up among the professors of the reformed Religion and having received the Sacrament in both kinds after living under Popery received it after their fashion in one kinde but when he returned to his old Master and was admonished by him to go againe to the Communion as he was wont then his sleepy conscience awaked and he fell into most horrible dispaire crying that he was the Divels bondslave and therewithall threw himselfe headlong out of the window so that with the fall his bowels gushed out of his mouth and he died most miserably When the great persecution of the Christians was in Persia under king Sapor in the yeare of our Lord 347 there was one Miles an holy Bishop and constant Martyr who preaching exhorting and suffering all manner of torments for the truth of the Gospel could not convert one soule of the whole city whereof he was Bishop to the faith wherefore in hatred and detestation of it he forewent it cleane but after his departure the Lord made them worthily â—ue their contempt of his Word for he sent the spirit of division betwixt King Sapor and them so that he came with an army of men and three hundred Elephants against it and quickly subverted it that the very apparance and memoriall of a city was quile defaced and rooted out For certainly this is a sure position where Gods word is generally despised and not regarded nor profited by there some notable destruction approcheth In a certaine place there was acted a tragedy of the death and passion of Christ in shew but in deed of themselves for he that played Christs part hanging upon the Crosse was wounded to death by him that should have thrust his sword into a bladder full of bloud tyed to his side who with his fall slew another that played one of the womens part that lamented under the Crosse his brother that was first slaine seeing this slew the murtherer and was himselfe by order of justice hanged therefore so that this tragedy was concluded with foure true not counterfeit deaths and that by the divine providence of God who can endure nothing lesse than such prophane and rediculous handling of so serious and heavenly matters In the Vniversity of Oxford the history of Christ was also played and cruelly punished and that not many yeares since for he that bore the person of Christ the Lord struck him with such a giddinesse of spirit and brain that he became mad forthwith crying when he was in his best humour That God had laid this judgment upon him for playing Christ. Three other Actors in the same play were hanged for robbing as by credible report is affirmed Most lamentable was the judgement of God upon Iohn Apowel sometimes a Serving-man for mocking and jeasting at the Word of God This Iohn Apowel hearing one William Malden reading certaine English prayers mocked him after every word with contrary gaudes and flouting termes insomuch that at last hee was terribly afraid so that his haire stood upright on his head and the next day was found besides his wits crying night and day without ceasing The Divell the Divell O the Divell of Hell now the Devill of hell there he goeth for it seemed to him as the other read Lord have mercy upon us at the end of the prayer that the Devill appeared unto him and by the permission of God depilved him of his understanding This is a terrible example for all those that be mockers at the Word of God to warne them if they doe not repent lest the vengeance of God fall upon them in like manner Thus we see how severely the Lord punisheth all despisers and prophaâ—â—rs of his holy things and thereby ought to learne to carry a most dutifull regard and reverence to them as also to note them for none of Gods flocke whosoever they be that deride or contemne any part of Religion or the Ministers of the same CHAP. XXXV Of those that prophane the Sabbath day IN the fourth and last Commandement of the first Table it is said Remember to keepe holy the Sabbath day By which words it is ordained and enjoyned us to separate one day of seven from all bodily and servile labour not to idlenesse and loosenesse but to the worship of God which is spirituall and wholesome Which holy ordinance when one of the children of Israel in contempt broke as they were in the wildernes by gathering sticks upon the Sabbath he was brought before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation by them put in prison untill such time as they knew the Lords determination concerning him knowing well That he was guilty of a most grievous crime And at length by the Lords owne sentence to his servant Moses condemned to be stoned to death without the host as was
King of England sonne of Geffrey Plantagenet and Maud the Empresse after he had raigned twenty yeares was content to admit his young sonne Henry married to Margaret the French Kings daughter into participation of his Crowne but he like an unnaturall son to requite his fathers love sought to dispossesse him of the whole for by inciting the King of France and certaine other Nobles hee tooke armes and raised warre against his owne naturall father betwixt whom divers strong battels being fought as well in England by the Deputies and friends of both parties as also in Normandy Poytou Guian and Britain the victory alwayes inclined to the father so that the rebellious son with his allies were constrained to bend to his fathers will and to desire peace which he gently granted and forgave his offence Howbeit the Lord for his disobedience did not so lightly pardon him but because his hasty mind could not tarry for the Crowne till his fathers death therefore the Lord cut him short of it altogether causing him to die six yeares before his father being yet but young and like to live long Lothair King of Soissons in France committed the rule of the province of Guian to his eldest son Cramiris who when contrary to the mind of his father he oppressed the people with exactions and was reclaimed home he like an ungratious and impious son fled to his uncle Childebert and provoked him towarre upon his owne father wherein he himselfe was by the just vengeance of God taken and burned with his wife and children to death Furthermore it is not doubtlesse but to a very good end enacted in the law of God That he which curseth his father or mother should die the death and that rebellious children and such as be incorrigible should at the instance and pursuit of their owne parents by order of law be stoned to death As children by all these examples ought not onely to learne to feare to displease and revile their parents but also to feare and reverence them lest that by disobedience they kindle the fire of Gods wrath against them so likewise on the other side parents are here advertised to have great care in bringing up and instructing their children in the feare of God and obedience to his will lest for want of instruction and correction on their part they themselves incurre a punishment of their carelesse negligence in the person of their children And this is proved by experience of the men of Bethel of whose children two and forty were torne in pieces by Beares for that they had been so evill taught as to mocke the holy Prophet Elizeus in calling him bald-pate Heli likewise the high priest was culpable of this fault for having two wicked and perverse sonnes whom no feare of God could restraine being discontent with that honourable portion of the sacrifices allotted them by God like famished and unsatiable wretches fell to share out more than was their due and by force to raven all that which by faire meanes they could not get and that which is worse to pollute the holy Tabernacle of God with their filthy whoredomes in such sort that the Religion of God grew in disgrace through their prophane dealings And albeit it may seem that their father did his duty in some sort when he admonished and reproved them yet it is manifest by the reprehension of the man of God that he did no part of that at all or if he did yet it was in so carelesse loose and cold manner using more lenity than hee ought or lesse severity than was necessary that God turned their destructions when they were slaine at the overthrow of Israel by the Philistins to be his punishment for understanding the dolefull newes of his sonnes death and the Arkes taking at once he fell backewards from his stoole and burst his necke being old and heavy even fourescore and eighteene yeares of age not able either to help or stay himselfe David also was not free from this offence for hee so much cockered some of his children that they proved the greatest plagues and scourges unto him especially Absolon and Adonijah for the one openly rebelled against him and almost drove him out of his kingdome the other usurped the title and honour of the kingdome before his fathers death of this it is recorded That David so cockered and pampered him that he would never displease him from his youth But see how he was punished in them for this too great lenity both of them came to an untimely death and proved not onely the workers of their owne destruction but also great crosses to their father Ludovicus Vives saith That in his time a certain woman in Flanders did so much pamper and cocker up two of her sonnes even against her husbands will that she would not suffer them to want money or any thing which might furnish their roiotous life both in drinking banquetting and dicing yea she would stoale from her husband to minister unto them but as soone as her husband was dead she was justly plagued in them both for they fell from royoting to robbing which two vices are commonly linked together and for the same one of them was executed by the sword and the other by the halter she her selfe looking on as a witnesse of their destructions whereof her conscience told her that her indulgence was the chiefest cause Hither may we referre that common and vulgar story and I suppose very true which is almost in every childes mouth of him that going to the gallowes desired to speake with his mother in her care ere he dyed and when she came unto him in stead of speaking bit off her care with his teeth exclaiming upon her as the causer of his death because she did not chastise him in his youth for his faults but by her flatteries established him in vice which brought him to this wofull end and herein she was doubly punished both in her sonnes destruction and her owne infamy whereof she carried about her a continuall maâ—ke This ought to be a warning to all parents to looke better to the education of their children and to root out of them in time all evill and corrupt manners lest of small sprigs they grow to branches and of qualities to habits and so either be hardly done off or at least deprave the whole body and bring it to destruction but above all to keep them from idlenesse and vaine pleasures the discommodity and mischiefe whereof this present example will declare At a towne called Hannuel in Saxony the Devill transforming himselfe into the shape of a man exercised many jugling trickes and pretty pastime to delight young men and maids withall and indeed to draw after him daily great companies one day they followed him out of the city gates unto a hill adjoyning where he played a jugling tricke indeed with them for he carried them all away with him so that they were never
King of Macedonia had a minion called Cratenas whom hee loved most entirely but he againe requited him not with love but with hatred and stretched all his wits to install himselfe in his kingdome by deposing and murthering him which though he accomplished yet his deserts were cut short by the vengeance of God for he continued not many dayes in his royalty but he was served with the same sauce that he had made Archelaus before him to taste of even betraied and murthered as he well deserved Lodovicus Sfortia to the end to invest himselfe with the Dukedome of Millain spared not to shed the innocent bloud of his two Nephewes the sonnes of Galenchus together with their tutors and one Francis Calaber a worthy and excellent man but the Lord so disposed of his purposes that he in stead of obtaining the kingdome was taken prisoner by the King of France so that neither he nor any of his off spring injoyed that which he so much affected When Numerianus was to succeed â—arus his father in the Empire Arrius Axer his father in law to the end to translate the Empire unto himselfe entered a conspiracy and slew his sonne in law that nothing mistrusted his disloyalty but the Pretorian army understanding the matter discharged Arrius and elected Dioclesian in his roome who laying hold upon his competitour laied an action of treason to his charge and put him to death in the sight of the multitude Theodoricke and Fredericke conspired against their owne brother Thurismund King of the Visigothes to the intent to succeed him in his Kingdome And albeit that nature reclaymed them from the act yet they slew him without all compassion But after thirteene yeres reigne the same Theodericke was requited by his other brethren with the same measure that he before meted to his brother Thurismund And so though vengeance slept a while yet at length it wakened Aelias Antonius Gordianus Emperour of Rome though so excellent a young Prince that he deserved to be called the Love and Iewell of the World yet was he slaine by one promoted by himselfe to high honour called Philip Arabs when he was but two and twenty yeres old after whose decease this Philip got himselfe elected Emperour by the Band and confirmed by the Senate All which notwithstanding after five yeres Decius rebelled and his owne souldiers conspired against him so that both he at Verona and his sonne at Rome were slaine by them about one time After the death of Constantine the Great his three sonnes dividing the Empire betwixt them succeeded their father Constantine the eldest had for his share Spaine France the Alpes and England Constance the second held Italy Africa Graecia and Illyricum Constantine the younger was King and Emperour of the East But ambition suffered them not to enjoy quietly these their possessions for when the eldest being more proud and seditious than the other not content with his alotted portion made warre upon his brother Constance his Provinces and strove to enter Italy he was slaine in a battell by Aquileia when he was but five and twenty yeares old by which meanes all the provinces which were his fell to Constance and therewithall such a drowsinesse and Epicurisme for want of a stirrer up after his brothers death that he fell into the gout and neglected the governement of the Empire Wherefore in Aâ—sourge and in Rhetia they created a new Emperour one Magnentius whose life before time Constance had saved from the souldiers and therefore his treachery was the greater This Magnentius deprived and slew Constance but was overcome by Constantine the third brother in Illyricum yet in such sort that the conqueror could not greatly brag for he lost an infinit company of his men and yet missed of his chiefe purpose the taking of Magnentius for he escaped to Lyons and there massacring all that he mistrusted at last growing I suppose in suspition with his owne heart slew himselfe also and so his traiterous ingratefull and ambitious murther was revenged with his owne hands Victericus betrayed Lnyba king of Spaine and succeeded in his place seven yeares after another traitour slew him and succeeded also in his place Mauritius the Emperor was murthered by Phocas together with his wife and five of his children he seating himselfe Emperour in his roome Howbeit traitors and murtherers can never come to happy ends for as he had slaine Mauritius so Priscus Heraclianus and Phorius three of his chiefest captaines conspiring against him with three severall armies gave him such an alarme at once at his owne doores that they soone quailed his courage and after much mangling of his body cut him shorter by the head and the kingdome at one blow In the time of Edward the second and Edward the third in England one Sir Roger Mortimer committed many villanous outrages in shedding much bloud and at last King Edward himselfe lying at Barkley castle to the end that he might as it was supposed enjoy Isabel his wife with whom he had very suspitious familiarity After this he unjustly accused Edmund Earle of Kent of treason and caused him to bee put to death therefore and lastly he conspired against King Edward the third as it was suspected for which cause he was worthily and deservedly beheaded Among this ranke of murtherers of Kings we may fitly place also Richard the third usurper of the Crowne of England and divers others which he used as instruments to bring his detestable purpose to effect as namely Sir Iames Tirrèl Knight a man for natures gifts worthy to have served a much better Prince than this Richard if he had well served God and beene endued with as much truth and honesty as he had strength and wit also Miles Forest and Iohn Dighton two villaines fleshed in murthers But to come to the fact it was on this sort When Richard the usurper had enjoyned Robert Brackenbury to this piece of service of murthering the young King Edward the fifth his Nephew in the Tower with his brother the Duke of Yorke and saw it refused by him he committed the charge of the murther to Sir Iames Tirrel who hasting to the Tower by the Kings Commission received the keyes into his owne hands and by the helpe of those two butchers Dighton and Forest smothered the two Princes in their bed and buried them at the staires feet which being done Sir Iames rode back to king Richard who gave him great thankes and as some say made him knight for his labour All which things on every part well pondered it appeareth that God never gave the world a notabler example both of the unconstancy of worldly wâ—ale and also of the wretched end which ensueth such despightfull cruelty for first to begin with the ministers Miles Forest rotted away peecemeale at Saint Martins Sir Iames Tirrel died at the Tower hill beheaded for treason King Kichard himselfe as it is declared elsewhere was slaine
were there overthrown killed and hanged by troups In the yeare of our Lord 1525 there were certain husbandmen of Souabe that began to stand in resistance against the Earle of Lupsfen by reason of certaine burthens which they complained themselves to be overlaid with by him their neighbors seeing this enterprised the like against their Lords And so upon this small beginning by a certaine contagion there grew up a most dangerous and fearefull commotion that spread it selfe almost over all Almaine the sedition thus increasing in all quarters and the swaines being now full forty thousand strong making their owne liberty and the Gospels a cloake to cover their treason and rebellion and a pretence of their undertaking armes to the wonderfull griefe of all that feared God did not onely fight with the Romane Catholickes but with all other without respect as well in Souabe as in Franconia they destroyed the greater part of the Nobility sacked and burnt many castles and fortresses to the number of two hundred and put to death the Earle of Helfest in making him passe through their pikes But at length their strength was broken they discomfited and torn in pieces with a most horrible massacre of more than eighteen thousand of them During this sedition there were slaine on each side fifty thousand men The captaine of the Souabian swaines called Geismer having betaken himselfe to flight got over the mountaines of Padua where by treason he was made away In the yeare of our Lord 1517 in the Marquesdome of the Vandales the like insurrection and rebellion was of the commonalty especially the baser sort against the Nobility Spirituall and Temporall by whom they were oppressed with intolerable exactions their army was numbred of ninety thousand men all clowns and husbandmen that conspired together to redresse and reforme their owne grievances without any respect of civill Magistrate or feare of Almighty God This rascality of swaines raged and tyranized every where burning and beating down the castles and houses of Noblemen and making their ruines even with the ground Nay they handled the Noblemen themselves as many as they could attaine unto not contumeliously only but rigorously and cruelly for they tormented them to death and carried their heads upon speares in token of victory Thus they swayed a while uncontrolled for the Emperour Maximilian winked at their riots as being acquainted with what in juries they had been overcharged but when he perceived that the rude multitude did not limit their fury within reason but let it runne too lavish to the damnifying as well the innocent as the guilty he made out a small troup of mercinary souldiers together with a band of horsemen to suppresse them who comming to a city were presently so environed with such a multitude of these swaines that like locusts overspread the earth that they thought it impossible to escape with their lives wherefore feare and extremity made them to rush out to battell with them But see how the Lord prospereth a good cause for all their weak number in comparison of their enemies yet such a feare possessed their enemies hearts that they fled like troups of sheep and were slaine like dogges before them insomuch that they that escaped the sword were either hanged by flocks on trees or rosted on spits by fires or otherwise tormented to death And this end befell that wicked rebellious rout which wrought such mischiefe in that country with their monstrous villanies that the traces and steppes thereof remaine at this day to bee seene In the yeare of our Lord 1381 Richard the second being King the Commons of England and especially of Kent and Essex by meanes of a taxe that was set upon them suddenly rebelled and assembled together on Blackheath to the number of 60000 or more which rebellious rout had none but base and ignoble fellowes for their captaines as Wat Tiler Iacke Straw Tom Miller but yet they caused much trouble and disquietnesse in the Realme and chiefly about the city of London where they committed much villany in destroying many goodly places as the Savoy and others and being in Smithfield used themselves very proudly and unreverently towards the King but by the manhood and wisedome of William Walworth Major of London who arrested their chiefe captain in the midst of them that rude company was discomfited and the ringleaders of them worthily punished In like manner in the raigne of Henry the seventh a great commotion was stirred up in England by the Commons of the North by reason of a certaine taxe which was levied of the tenth peny of all mens lands and goods within the land in the which the Earle of Northumberland was slain but their rash attempt was soon broken and Chamberlain their captain with divers other hanged at Yorke for the same Howbeit their example feared not the Cornishmen from rebelling upon the like occasion of a tax under the conduct of the Lord Audley untill by woefull experience they felt the same scourge for the King met them upon Blackheath and discomfiting their troups took their captaines and ring leaders and put them to most worthy and sharp death Thus we may see the unhappy issue of all such seditious revoltings and thereby gather how unpleasant they are in the sight of God Let all the people therefore learne by these experiences to submit themselves in the feare of God to the higher powers whether they be Lords Kings Princes or any other that are set over them CHAP. VI. Of Murtherers AS touching Murther which is by the second commandement of the second Table forbidden in these words Thou shalt not kill the Lord denounceth this judgment upon it That he which striketh a man that hee dieth shall die the death And this is correspondent to that Edict which he gave to Noah presently after the universall floud to suppresse that generall cruelty which had taken root from the beginning in Cain and his posterity being carefull for mans life saying That he will require the bloud of man at the hands of either man or beast that killeth him adding moreover That whosoever sheddeth mans bloud by man also his bloud shall be shed seeing that God created him after his owne Image which he would not have to be basely accounted of but deare and precious unto us If then the bruit and unreasonable creatures are not exempted from the sentence of death pronounced in the law if they chance to kill a man how much more punishable then is man endued with will and reason when malitiously and advisedly he taketh away the life of his neighbour But the hainousnesse and greatnesse of this sinne is most lively expressed by that ordinance of God set downe in the 21 of Deutronomy where it is enjoyned That if a man be found slain in the field and it be not knowne who it was that slew him then the Elders and Iudges of the next towne assembling together should offer up an expiatory sacrifice
grace of Gods spirit saw his Sorbonicall errors and renounced them betaking himselfe to the profession of the purer religion and the company and acquaintance of godly men amongst whom was Bucer that excellent man who sent him also to Nurnburge to oversee the printing of a booke which he was to publish Whilest Diazius lived at this Nurnburge a city scituat upon the river Dimow his brother a lawyer and judge laterall to the Inquisition by name Alphonsus came thither and by all meanes possible endevoured to dissuade him from his religion and to reduce him againe to Popery But the good man persisted in the truth notwithstanding all his perswasions and threats wherefore the subtill fox took another course and faining himselfe to be converted also to his religion exhorted him to goe with him into Italy where he might do much good or at the least to Angust but by the counsell of Bucer and his friends he was kept back otherwise willing to follow his brother Wherefore Alphonsus departed and exhorted him to constancy and perseverance giving him also fourteene crowns to defray his charges Now the wolfe had not been three dayes absent when he hired a rakehell and common butcher and with him flew again to Nurnburge in post hast and comming to his brothers lodging delivered him a letter which whilest he read the villain his confederat cleft his head in pieces with an axe leaving him dead upon the floore and so fled with all expedition Howbeit they were apprehended yet quit by the Popes justice so holy and sacred are the fruits of his Holinesse though not by the justice of God for within a while after hee hung himselfe upon his mules necke at Trent Duke Abrogastes slew Valentinian the Emperour of the West and advanced Eugenius to the crowne of the Empire but a while after the same sword which had slain his lord and master was by his owne hands turned into his owne bowels Mempricius the sonne of Madan the fourth King of England then called Britaine after Brute had a brother called Manlius betwixt whom was great strife for the soveraigne dominion but to rid himselfe of all his trouble at once he slew his brother Manlius by treason and after continued his raigne in tyranny and all unlawfull lusts the space of twenty yeeres but although vengeance all this while winked yet it slept not for at the end of this space as he was hunting he was devoured of wilde beasts In the yeare of our Lord God 745 one Sigebert was authorised king of the Saxons in Britaine a cruell and tyrannous Prince towards his subjects and one that changed the ancient Lawes and customes of his Realme after his owne pleasure and because a certaine Nobleman somewhat sharpely advertised him of his evill conditions hee maliciously caused him to bee put to death But see how the Lord revenged this murder hee caused his Nobles to deprive him of his kingly authority and at last as a desolate and forlorne person wandring alone in a wood to be slaine of a swineheard whose master he being king had wrongfully put to death About the yeare of our Lord 793 Ethelbert king of the East Angles a learned and right godly Prince came to the court of Offa the king of Mercia perswaded by the counsell of his nobles to sue for the marriage of his daughter well accompanied like a prince with a great traine of men about him whereupon Offa's Queene conceiving a false suspition of that which was never minded That Ethelbert under the pretence of this marriage was come to worke some violence against her husband and the kingdome of Mercia so perswaded with king Offa and certaine of his Councell that night that the next day following Offa caused him to be trained into his palace alone from his company by one called Guymbertus who tooke him and bound him and after strooke off his head which forthwith he presented to the king and Queene Thus was the innocent King wrongfully murdered but not without a just revenge on Gods hand for the aforesaid Queene worker of this villany lived not three moneths after and in her death was so tormented that she bit and rent her tongue in pieces with her teeth which was the instrument to set abroach that murtherous practise Offa himselfe understanding at length the innocency of the king and the hainous cruelty of his fact gave the tenth part of his goods to the Church bestowed upon the Church of Hereford in remembrance of this Ethelbert great lands builded the Abbey of S. Albons with certaine other Monasteries beside and afterward went to Rome for his penance where hee gave to the Church of S. Peter a peny through every house in his dominion which was commonly called Romeshot or Peterpence and there at length was transformed from a king to a monke Thus God punished not only him and his wife but the whole land for this vile murder One principall cause of the conquest of this land by the Normans was a vile and horrible murder committed by one Goodwin an Earle in England upon certaine Mormans that came overwith Alfred and Edward to visit their mother Emma that had beene married to King Canutus This matter thus fell out When these two came from Normandy to England to visit their mother as I have said Earle Goodwin having a daughter called Godith whom hee thought to marry to Edward and advance him to the kingdome to bring his purpose to passe used this practise that is to perswade King Hardeknout and the Lords not to suffer those Normans to bee within the Realme for jeopardy but rather to punish them for example by which meanes hee got authority to order the matter himselfe Wherefore hee met them on Guild downe and there wretchedly murdered or rather martyred the most part of the Normans killing nine and leaving the tenth alive throughout the whole company and then tything againe the said tyth he slew every tenth knight and that by cruell torment as winding their guts out of their body after a most savage manner among the rest he put out the eyes of the elder of the two brethren Alfred and sent him to an Abbey at Elie where being fed with bread and water hee ere long ended his life Now albeit hee obtained his purpose hereby and married his daughter to Edward who was after King called Edward the Confessor yet did not Gods justice sleepe to punish this horrible murder for he himselfe died not long after suddenly having forsworne himselfe and the Normanes with William their Duke ere long came into this Iland to revenge this murder as also to claime a right of inheritance bequeathed unto him by Edward his Nephew and how hee succeeded and what misery he brought this whole Nation unto who knoweth not But heere is the justice of God As the Normans comming with a naturall English Prince were most cruelly and barbarously murdered of Englishmen so afterwards the Englishmen were slaine and
conquered by the Normans comming with a forreine King being none of their naturall countrey In the yeare of our Lord sixe hundred threescore and eighteene Childerich King of France caused a Nobleman of his Realme called Bolyde to bee bound to a stake and there beaten to death without the pretence of any just crime or accusation against him For which cruelty his Lords and Commons being grievously offended conspired together and slew him and his wife as they were hunting In the raigne of Edward the second and Edward the third Sir Roger Mortimer committed many villanous outrages in shedding much humane bloud but he was also justly recompenced in the end first he murdered King Edward the second lying in Barkeley Castle to the end he might as it was supposed enjoy Isabel his wife with whom he had very suspitious familiarity Secondly he caused Edward the third to conclude a dishonorable peace with the Scots by restoring them all their ancient writings charters and patents whereby the Kings of Scotland had bound themselves to be feudaries to the Kings of England Thirdly he accused Edmund Earle of Kent uncle to King Edward of treason and caused him unjustly to bee put to death And lastly he conspi redagainst the King to worke his destruction for which and divers other things that were laid to his charge he was worthily and justly beheaded In the reigne of Henry the sixt Humfrey the good duke of Gloucester and faithfull protectour of the King by the meanes of certaine malicious persons to wit the Queene the Cardinall of Winchester and especially the Marquesse of Suffolke as it was supposed was arrested cast into hold and strangled to death in the Abbey of Bure For which cause the Lords hand of judgement was upon them all for the Marquesse was not onely banished the land for the space of five yeares but also banished out of his life for ever for as hee sailed towards France hee was met withall by a Ship of Warre and there presently beheaded and the dead corps cast up at Dover that England wherein he had committed the crime might be a witnesse of his punishment The Queene that thought by this meanes to preserve her husband in honour and her selfe in estate thereby both lost her husband and her state her husband lost his realme and the Realme lost Anjou Normandy with all other places beyond the sea Calice onely excepted As for the Cardinall who was the principall artificer of all this mischiefe he lived not long after and being on his death bed murmured and grudged against God asking wherefore hee should die having so much wealth and riches and saying That if the whole Realme would save his life he was able either by policy to get it or by riches to buy it but death would not be bribed for all his aboundant treasure he died miserably more like a Heathen than a Christian without any shew of repentence And thus was the good Dukes death revenged upon the princiall procurers thereof As the murder of a gentleman in Kent called master Arden of Feversham was most execrable so the wonderfull discovery thereof was exceeding rare This Arden being somewhat aged had to wife a young woman no lesse faire than dishonest who being in love with one Mosbie more than her husband did not onely abuse his bed but also conspired his death with this her companion for together they hired a notorious Ruffin one Blacke Will to strangle him to death with a towell as he was playing a game at tables which though secretly done yet by her owne guilty conscience and some tokens of bloud which appeared in his house was soone discovered and confessed Wherefore she her selfe was burnt at Canterbury Michael master Ardens man was hanged in chaines at Feversham Mosbie and his sister were hanged in Smithfield Greene another partner in this bloudy action was hanged in chaines in the high way against Feversham And Blacke Will the Ruffian after his first escape was apprehended and burnt on a seaffold at Flushing in Zeeland And thus all the murderers had their deserved dues in this life and what they endured in the life to come except they obtained mercy by true repentance is easie to judge CHA. XI Of the admirable discovery of Murders AS the Lord hath shewed himselfe a most just Judge in punishing most severely this horrible sinne of shedding mans bloud so hath he alwaies declared his detestation thereof and his will to have it punished by those who are in his stead upon the earth and have the sword of vengeance committed unto them by his miraculous and superhaturall detecting of such murderers from time to time who have carried their villanies so closely as the eye of man could not espy them plainely shewing thereby that the bloud of the slaine crieth to the Lord for vengeance from the earth as Abels did upon Cain and that God will have that law stand true and firme which he made almost before all other lawes He that sheddeth mans bloud by man shall his bloud be shed If I should commit to writing all the examples of this kinde which either are recorded in Authors or which dayly experience doth offer unto us it would require rather a full Booke than a short Chapter for that subject And therefore I will be content with some few and those for truth most credible and yet for strangenesse most incredible And to begin with our owne countrey About the yeare of our Lord 867 a certaine Nobleman of the Danes of the kings stock called Lothebrocus father to Inguar and Hubba entring upon a certaine time with his hawke into a cockboat alone by chance through tempest was driven with his hawke to the coast of Northfolke in England named Rodham where being found and detained he was presented to king Edmund that raigned over the East-Angles in Northfolke and Suffolke at that time The King as hee was a just and good man understanding his parentage and seeing his cause entertained him in his Court accordingly and every day more and more perceiving his activity and great dexterity in hunting and hawking bare speciall favour unto him insomuch that the Kings Faulconer bearing privy malice against him for this cause secretly as they were hunting together in a wood did murther him and threw him in a bush Lothebroke being thus murthered and shortly missed in the Kings house no tydings could be heard of him untill it pleased God to reveale the murther by his dog which continuing in the wood with the corps of his Master at sundry times came to the Court and fauned on the King so that the King suspecting some such matter at length followed the trace of the hound and was brought to the place where Lothebroke lay Whereupon inquisition being made at length by some circumstances of words and other suspitions it was knowne that he was murdered by Berikâ— the Kings Faulconer who for his punishment he was set into the same boat of Lothebroke
of money and sets up a shop at Roane Now this Merchant being expected at Luca a whole yeare together whither he had sent word he would shortly repaire when he came not a messenger was dispatched to seeke him out and after much enquiry at London and Roan and elsewhere he learnt at last in an Inne that a Lucquois Merchant about sixe moneths before had lodged there and was gone to Paris where also not hearing any tydings of him he suspected that he was murthered made his complaint to the Court of Parliament at Roan Which imbracing this businesse being directed by Gods providence made enquiry up and downe the Towne Whether there were any that within seven or eight moneths had set up a new shop and finding one caused him to be arrested for a supposed and a pretended debt but in the end examined him upon this murther and laid it to his charge herewith the prisoner solicited partly bythe remorse of his conscience partly by hope of freeing himselfe by a bribe confessed the fact in private to the Justice but as soone as he perceived that he went about to call in witnesses to his confession hee denyed it againe in briefe the new Merchant is committed to prison and he sueth the Justice for forgerie and false imprisonment the Justice can by no meanes cleare himselfe but onely by the assurance that all men had of his honesty The matter hangs thus in suspence till at length the dead carkasse of the Lucquois was â—eard of and the blind man also came to light who heard the noyse of the murther to make short this blind man was brought to confront the prisoner and twenty men were caused to speake one after another and still the blinde man was demaunded whether hee knew their voices and said That that was the man that answered him on the mountaine This course being ofttimes re-iterated the blind man hit alwayes on the right and never missed Whereupon the Court condemned him to death and before he dyed he confessed the fact to the great glory of Gods Justice and the great amazement and strange astonishment of all men At Paris in the yeare of our Lord 1551 a certaine young woman was brained by a man with a hammer neere unto Saint Opportunes Church as she was going to midnight Masse and all her rings and jewels taken from her This hammer was stolne from a poore Smith there by the same evening who therefore being suspected of the murder was cruelly handled and put to extraordinary torture by reason of the vehement presumptions made against him in such sort that hee was quite lamed and deprived of the meanes to get his living whereby being reduced into extreame poverty he ended his life in great misery All this while the murderer remained unknowne almost for the space of twenty yeares and the memory of the murder seemed to be buried with the poore woman in her grave now marke the justice of God who hath promised that nothing shall be so hid but shall be brought to light It hapned that one Iohn Flaming Sergeant of the Subsidies at Paris being upon occasion of businesse at S. Leups a Village by Montmorency chanced among other talke at Supper to say how he had left his wife at home sicke and no body with her but a little boy there was an old man then present named Monstier and a sonne in law of his who immediatly upon this speech went away that night with each of them a basket of cherries and a greene goose and came about ten of the clock the next morning to Flamings house where they intended to murder both the woman and the boy and to possesse themselves of all the goods that they could conveniently carrie away but the Lord prevented them of their purpose for being let in at the dores by the boy pretending that they came from the husband with thâ—se remembrances to his wife they presently slew the boy thinking also to surprise the woman but she hearing the cry of the boy lockt fast her chamber dore and cried for helpe out at her window whereupon the neighbors running to the house tooke these two villaines one hidden in the funnell of the Chimney and the other in a Well in the Cellar with nothing but his nose above water Now these two wretches being thus apprehended arraigned and condemned being on the seaffold at the place of execution the old man desired to speake with the Smithes widow whose husband was suspected for the first murder of whom when she came hee asked forgivenesse saying that it was he which had killed the young woman by S. Opportunes Church Thus the Lord discovered both the innocency of the Smith and the guiltinesse of this vile murderer and that twenty yeeres after the fact was committed Not long since the like discovery of a murderer was made here in England in Leicestershire not farre from Lutterworth almost twenty yeeres after the fact committed The murder was committed by a Miller upon one in his Mill whom he buried in the ground hard by This Miller removed unto another countrey and there dwelt a long space untill at last guided by Gods Almighty providence to the manifestation of his justice he returned unto that place to visit some of his friends Now in the meane time whilest he was there the Miller that now possessed the former Mill had occasion to dig deepe into the ground where he found the carkasse of a dead man presently it was suspected that some had beene murdered and was there buried whereupon the Lord put it into their hearts to remember how about twenty yeares before a certaine neighbour of theirs was suddenly missed and could never be heard of insomuch that all supposed him to have beene dead in some strange countrey this carkasse they suspected to be his and bethinking themselves who was then Miller of that Mill behold he was there ready in the towne not having been there for many yeares before This man was suspected nd thereupon examined and without much adoe confessed the fact and received deserved punishment Who seeth not here manifest traces and footsteps of Gods providence First in reducing the murderer to that place at that time Secondly in stirring up the Miller to digge at the same time also thirdly in putting into the hearts of the people the missing of such a man whose memory was almost forgotten and lastly in causing the murderer to confesse his deed when as no proofe nor witnesse could be brought against him but here is the justice of God against all such Vengeance will not suffer the murderer to live Henry Ranzovius Lieutenant for the King of Denmarke in the Duchie of Holsace makes relation in a letter of his of an ordinary meanes of finding out Murderers practised in the kingdome of Denmark by King Christiernus the second and permitted over all his Kingdome the occasion whereof he saith was this Certaine Gentlemen being on an evening together in a
then is the murdering of Parents especially detestable when a man is so possessed with the Devill or transported with a hellish fury that he lifteth up his hand against his own father or mother to put them to death this is so monstrous and inormous an impiety that the greatest Barbarians ever have had it in detestation wherefore it is also expresly commanded in the Law of God That whosoever smiteth his father or mother in what sort so ever though not to death yet he shall die the death If the disobedience unreverence and contempt of children towards their Parents are by the just judgements of God most rigorously punished as hath beene declared before in the first commandement of the second Table how much more then when violence is offered and above all when murder is committed Thus the Aegyptians punished this sinne they put the committants upon a stacke of thornes and burnt them alive having beaten their bodies beforehand with sharpe reeds made of purpose Solon being demanded why he appointed no punishment in his Lawes for Paricides answered that there was no necessity thinking that the wide world could not afford so wicked a wretch It is said that Romulus for the same cause ordained no punishment in his Common wealth for that crime but called every murderer a Paricide the one being in his opinion a thing execrable and the other impossible And in truth there was not for 600 yeeres space according to Plutarchs report found in Rome any one that had committed this execrable fact The first Paricide that Rome saw was Lucius Ostius after the first Punicke warre although other Writers affirme that M. Malliolus was the first and Lucius the second how soever it was they both underwent the punishment of the Law Pompeia which enacted That such offenders should be thrust into a sacke of Leather and an Ape a Cocke a Viper and a Dog put in to accompany them and then to be throwne into the water to the end that these beasts being enraged and animated one against another might wreke their teene upon them and so deprive them of life after a strange fashion being debarred of the use of the aire water and earth as unworthy to participate the very Elements with their deaths much lesse with their lives which kinde of punishment was after practised and confirmed by the constitution of Constantine the Great And albeit the regard of the punishment seemed terrible and the offence it selfe much more monstrous yet since that time there have beene many so perverse and exceeding wicked as to throw themselves headlong into that desperate gulfe As Cleodoricke sonne of Sigebert King of Austria who being tickled with an unsatiable lust of raigne through the deceivable perswasions of Cleodovius King of France slew his father Sigebert as he lay asleepe in his Tent in a forrest at noone time of the day who being weary with walking laid himselfe downe there to take his rest but for all that the wicked wretch was so farre from attaining his purpose that it fell out cleane contrary to his expectation for after his fathers death as he was viewing his treasures and ransacking his coffers one of Cleodovius factors strooke him suddenly and murdered him and so Cleodovius seised both upon the Crowne and Treasures After the death of Hircanus Aristobulus succeeded in the government of Judea which whilest he strove to reduce into a kingdome and to weare a crown contrary to the custome of his predecessors his mother other brethren contending with him about the same he cast in prison took Antigonus his next brother to be his associate but ere long a good gratefull son he famished her to death with hunger that had fed him to life with her teares even his naturall mother And after perswaded with false accusations caused his late best beloved Antigonus to be slaine by an ambush that lay by Strato's tower because in the time of his sicknesse he entred the Temple with pompe But the Lord called for quittance for the two bloodsheds immediately after the execution of them for his brothers blood was scarce washed off the ground ere in the extreamity of his sicknesse he was carried into the same place and there vomiting up blood at his mouth and nosthrils to be mingled with his brothers he fell downe starke dead not without horrible tokens of trembling and despaire Nero that unnaturall Tyran surpassed all that lived as in all other vices so in this for he attempted thrice by poyson to make away his mother Agrippina and when that could not prevaile by reason of her usuall Antidotes and preservatives hee assayed divers other meanes as first a devise whereby she should be crushed to death as she slept a loosened beame that should fall upon her and secondly by shipwracke both which when she escaped the one by discovery and the other by swimming he sent Anicâ—tus the Centurion to slaughter her with the sword who with his companions breaking up the gate of the City where she lay rushed into her Chamber and there murdered her It is written of her that when she saw there was no remedy but death she presented her belly unto the murderer and desired him to kill her in that part which had most deserved it by bringing into the world so vile a monster and of him that he came to view the dead carkasse of his mother and handled the members thereof commending this and discommending that as his fancy led him and in the meane time being thirsty to call for drinke so farre was he from all humanity and touch of Nature but he that spared not to embrue his hands in her blood that bred him was constrained ere long to offer violence to his own life which was most deere unto him Henry the son of Nicolotus Duke of Herulia had two wicked cruell and unkind sonnes by the yonger of whom with the consent of the elder he was traiterously murdered because he had married a third wife for which cause Nicolotus their cousin-german pursued them both with a just revenge for he deprived them of their kingdome and drove them into exile where they soon after perished Selymus the tenth Emperour of Turkes was so unnaturall a childe that he feared not to dispossesse his father Bajazet of the crown by treason and next to bereave him of his life by poyson And not satisfied therewith even to murder his two brethren and to destroy the whole stock of his own blood But when hee had raigned eight yeares vengeance found him out and being at his backe so corrupted and putrified his reins that the contagion spread it selfe over all his body so that he dyed a beast-like and irksome death and that in the same place where he had before oppressed his father Bajazet with an army to wit at Chiurle a city of Thracia in the year of our Lord 1520. in the moneth of September Charles the younger by surname called Crassus
Arabians to make warre against him who forraged his countrey sacked and spoiled his cities and tooke prisoners his wives and children the youngest onely excepted who afterwards also was murdered when he had raigned King but a small space And lastly as in doing to death his own brethren he committed cruelty against his owne bowels so the Lord stroke him with such an incurable disease in his bowels and so perpetuall for it continued two yeares that his very entrails issued out with torment and so he dyed in horrible misery Albeit that in the former booke we have already touched the pride and arrogancy of King Alexander the Great yet we cannot pretermit to speake of him in this place his example serving to fit for the present subject for although as touching the rest of his life he was very well governed in his private actions as a Monarch of his reputation might be yet in his declining age I meane not in yeares but to deathward he grew exceeding cruell not onely towards strangers as the Cosseis whom he destroyed to the sucking babe but also to his houshold and familiar friends Insomuch that being become odious to most fewest loved him and divers wrought all meanes possible to make him away but one especially whose sonne in law and other neere friends he had put to death never ceased untill he both ministred a deadly draught unto himselfe whereby he deprived him of his wicked life and a fatall stroke to his wives and children after his death to the accomplishment of his full revenge Phalaris the Tyran of Agrigentum made himselfe famous to posterity by no other meanes than horrible cruelties exercised upon his subjects inventing every day new kinds of tortures to scourge and afflict the poore soules withall In his dominion there was one Perillus artificer of his craft one expert in his occupation who to flatter and curry favour with him devised a new torment a brasen bull of such a strange workmanship that the voyce of those that were roasted therein resembled rather the roaring of a Bull then the cry of men The Tyran was well pleased with the Invention but he would needs have the Inventor make first triall of his owne worke as he well deserved before any other should take taste thereof But what was the end of this Tyran The people not able any longer to endure his monstrous and unnaturall cruelties ran upon him with one consent with such violence that they soone brought him to destruction and as some say put him into the brasen Bull which hee provided to roast others to bee roasted therein himselfe deserving it as well for approoving the devise as Perillus did for devising it Edward the second of that name King of England at the request and desire of Hugh Spencer his darling made warre upon his subjects and put to death divers of the Peeres and Lords of the Realme without either right or form of the law insomuch that queen Isabel his wife fled to France with her yong son for fear of his unbrideled fury after a while finding opportunity and means to return again garded with certain small forces which she had in those countreyes gathered together she found the whole people discontented with the Kings demeanours and ready to assist her against him so she besieged him with their succour and tooke him prisoner and put him into the Tower of London to be kept till order might be taken for his deposition so that shortly after by the Estates being assembled together he was generally and joyntly reputed and pronounced unworthy to be King for his exceeding cruelties sake which he had committed upon many of his worthy Subjects and so deposing him they crowned his young sonne Edward the third of his name King in his roome he yet living and beholding the same Iohn Maria Duke of Millan may be put into this ranke of Murtherers for his custome was divers times when any Citizen offended thim yea and somtimes without offence too to throw them amongst cruell Mastives to be torne in pieces and devoured But as he continued and delighted in this unnaturall kinde of murther the people one day incensed and stirred up against him ranne upon him with such rage and violence that they quickly deprived him of life And he was so well beloved that no man ever would or durst bestow a Sepulchre upon his dead bones but suffered his body to lie in the open streets uncovered save that a certaine harlot threw a few Roses upon his wounds and so covered him Alphonsus the second King of Naples Ferdinands sonne was in tyranny towards his subjects nothing inferiour to his father for whether of them imprisoned and put to death more of the Nobility and Barons of the Realme it is hard to say but sure it is that both were too outragious in all manner of cruelty for which so soone as Charles the eight King of France departing from Rome made towards Naples the hatred which the people bore him secretly with the odious remembrance of his fathers cruelty began openly to shew it selfe by the fruits for they did not nor could not dissemble the great desire that every one had of the approach of the Frenchmen which when Alphonsus perceived and seeing his affaires and estate brought unto so narrow a pinch he also cowardly cast away all courage to resist and hope to recover so huge a tempest and he that for a long time had made warre his trade and profession and had yet all his forces and armies complete and in readinesse making himselfe banquerupt of all that honour and reputation which by long experience and deeds of armes he had gotten resolved to abandon his kingdome and to resigne the title and authority thereof to his sonne Ferdinand thinking by that meanes to asswage the heat of their hatred and that so young and innocent a King who in his owne person had never offended them might be accepted and beloved of them and so their affection toward the French rebated and cooled But this devise seemed to no more purpose than a salve applyed to a sore out of season when it was growne incureable or a prop set to a house that is already falne Therefore he tormented with the sting of his owne conscience and finding in his minde no repose by day nor rest by night but a continuall summons and advertisement by fearefull dreames that the Noblemen which hee had put to death cryed to the people for revenge against him was surprised with so terrible terrour that forthwith without making acquainted with his departure either his brother or his owne sonne he fled to Sicilie supposing in his journey that the Frenchmen were still at his backe and starting at every little noyse as if he feared all the Elements had conspired his destruction Philip Comineus that was an eye-witnesse of this journey reporteth That every night he would cry that he heard the Frenchmen and that the very trees
whose father hight Virginius would needs make her his servant to the end to abuse her the more freely and whilest he endeavoured with all his power and policy to accomplish his immoderate lust her father slew her with his owne hands more willing to prostitute her to death than to so soul an opprobry and disgrace but every man stirred up with the wofulnesse of the event with one consent pursued apprehended and imprisoned the foul lecher who fearing the award of a most shamefull death killed himselfe to prevent a further mischief In the year of our Lord 1271. under the Raigne of the Emperour Rodolph the Sicilians netled and enraged with the horrible whoredomes adulteries and Rapes which the Garrisons that had the government over them committed not able any longer to endure their insolent and outragious demeanour entered a secret and common conspiracy upon a time appointed for the purpose which was on Easter Sunday at the shutting in of the evening to set upon them with one accord and to murder so many as they could as they did for at that instant they massacred so many throughout the whole Island that of all the great multitude there survived not one to bear tidings or bewail the dead At Naples it chanced in the Kings Palace as young King Fredericke Ferdinands son entered the Privy Chamber of the Queen his mother to salute her and the other Ladies of the Court that the Prince of Bissenio waiting in the outward chamber for his returne was slain by one of his owne servants that suddenly gave him with his sword three deadly strokes in the presence of many beholders which deed he confessed he had watched three yeares to performe in regard of an injury done unto his sister and in her to him whom he ravished against her will The Spaniards that first took the Isle Hispaniola were for their whoredomes and Rapes which they committed upon the wives and virgines all murdered by the inhabitants The inhabitants of the Province Cumana when they saw the beastly outrage of the Spanish Nation that lay along their Coasts to fish for Pearle in forcing and ravishing without difference their women young and old set upon them upon a Sunday morning with all their force and slew all that ever they found by the Sea-coasts Westward till there remained not one alive and the fury of the rude uncivill people was so great that they spared not the Monkes in their Cloysters but cut their throats as they were mumbling their Masses burnt up the Spanish houses both religious and private burst in pieces their bels drew about their Images hurld downe their Crucifixes and cast them in disgrace and contempt overthwart their streets to be troden upon nay they destroyed whatsoever belonged unto them to their very dogs and hennes and their owne countrymen that served them in any service whether religious or other they spared not they beat the earth and cursed it with bitter curses because it had upholden such wicked and wretched Caitises Now the report of this massacre was so fearfull and terrible that the Spaniards which were in Cubagna doubted much of their lives also and truly not without great cause for if the Indians of the Continent had been furnished and provided with sufficient store of barkes they had passed even into that Island and had served them with the same sauce which their fellowes were served with for they wanted not will but ability to do it And these are the goodly fruits of their Adulteries and Rapes which the Spanish Nation hath reaped in their new-found land The great calamity and overthrow which the Lacedemonians indured at Lectria wherein their chiefest strength and powers were weakened and consumed was a manifest punishment of their inordinate lust committed upon two virgins whom after they had ravished in that very place they cut in pieces and threw them into a pit and when their father came to complain him of the villany they made so light account of his words that in stead of redresse he found nothing but reproach and derision so that with grief he slew himselfe upon his daughters sepulchre but how grievously the Lord revenged this injury Histories do sufficiently testifie and that Leuctrian calamity doth bear witnesse Brias a Grecian Captain being received into a Citizens house as a guest forced his wife by violence to his lust but when he was asleep to revenge her wrong she put out both his eyes and afterward complained to the Citizens also who deprived him of his Office and cast him out of their City Macrinus the Emperour punished two Souldiers that ravished their Hostesse on this manner he shut them up in an Oxes bowels with their heads out and so partly with famishment and partly with wormes and rottennesse they consumed to death Rodericus King of the Gothes in Spain forced an Earles daughter to his lust for which cause her father brought against him an Army of Sarasens and Moores and not onely slew him with his son but also quite extinguished the Gothicke kingdom in Spain in this war and upon this occasion seven hundred thousand men perished as Histories record and so a kingdom came to ruine by the perverse lust of one lecher Anno 714. At the sacking and destruction of Thebes by King Alexander a Thracian Captain which was in the Macedonian Army took a noble Matron prisoner called Timoclea whom when by no perswasion of promises he could intice to his lust he constrained by force to yeeld unto it but this noble minded woman invented a most witty and subtle shift both to rid her selfe out of his hands and to revenge his injury she told him that she knew where a rich treasure lay hid in a deep pit whither when with greedinesse of the gold he hastened and standing upon the brinke pried and peered into the bottome of it she thrust him with both her hands into the hole and tumbled stones after him that he might never finde meanes to come forth for which fact she was brought before Alexander to have justice who demanding her what she was she answered that Theagenes who led the Thebane Army against the Macedonians was her brother Alexander perceiving the marvellous constancy of the woman and knowing the cause of her accusation to be unjust manumitted and set her free with her whole Family When Câ— Manlius having conquered the Gallo-Grecians pitched his Army against the Tectosages people of Narbonia towards the Pyrene monntaines amongst other prisoners a very fair woman wife to Orgiagous Regulus was in the custody of a Centurion that was both lustfull and covetous this lecher tempted her first with fair perswasions and seeing her unwilling compelled her with violence to yeeld her body as slave to fortune so to infamy and dishonour after which act somewhat to mitigate the wrong he gave her promise of release and freedom upon condition of a certain sum of money and to that purpose sent
worth for he survived not three daies after the vile excesse besides the rest that strove with him in this goodly conflict of carousing one and forty of them dyed to beare him company The same Alexander was himselfe subject to wine and so distempered divers times therewith that he often slew his friends at the table in his drunkennesse whom in sobriety he loved dearest Plutarch telleth us of Armitus and Ciranippus two Syracusians that being drunk with wine committed incest with their owne daughters Cleomenes King of Lacedemonia being disposed to carouse after the manner of the Scythians dranke so much that he became and continued ever after sencelesse Anacreon the Poet a grand consumer of wine and a notable drunkard was choaked with the huske of a grape The monstrous and riotous excesses of divers Romane Emperours as Tiberius by name who was a companion of all drunkards is strange to be heard and almost incredible to be beleeved he loved wine so well that in stead of Tiberius they called him Biberius and in stead of Claudius Caldus and in stead of Nero Mero noting by those nicknames how great a drunkard he was The Earle of Aspremont after he had by infinite excesse exhausted all his substance being upon a day at S. Michael dranke so excessively that he dyed therewith Cyrillus a Citizen of Hippon had an ungracious son who leading a riotous and luxurious life in the middest of his drunkennesse killed his owne mother great with childe and his father that sought to restraine his sury and would have ravished his sister had she not escaped from him with many wounds Bonosus the Emperour is reported to have been such a notorious drunkard that he was said to be borne not to live but to drinke if any Embassadours came unto him he would make them drunke to the end to reveale their secrets he ended his life with misery even by hanging with this Epitaph That a tun not a man was hanged in that place Philostrates being in the bathes at Sinuessa devoured so much wine that he fell downe the staires and almost broke his neck with the fall Zeno the Emperour of the East was so notoriously given to excesse of meates and drinkes that his sences being benummed he would often lie as one that was dead wherefore being become odious to all men by his beastly qualities his wife Ariadne fell also in detestation of him and one day as he lay sencelesse she transported him into a tombe and throwing a great stone upon it pined him to death not suffering any to remove the stone or to yeeld him any succour and this was a just reward of his drunkennesse Pope Paulus the second beside the exceeding pompe of apparell which he used he was also very carefull for his throat for as Platina writeth of him he delighted in all kinde of exquisite dishes and delicate wine and that in superfluity by which immoderate and continuall surfeiting he fell into a grievous Apoplexy which quickly made an end of his life It is reported of him that he eat the day before he dyed two great Melons and that in a very good appetite when as the next night the Lord struck him with his heavy judgement Alexander the son of Basilius and brother of Leo the Emperour did so wallow and drowne himselfe in the gulfe of pleasure and intemperance that one day after he had stuffed himselfe too full of meat as he got upon his horse he burst a veine within his body whereat upwards and downewards issued such abundance of blood that his life and soule issued forth withall The moderne examples of Gods fearefull judgements upon drunkards not only in other countries but even in this Nation of ours are many and terrible all which if I should stand to report it would be matter for a whole booke Our reverend Judges in their severall circuits doe finde by experience that few murthers and manslaughters are committed which are not from this root of drunkennesse for when mens braines are heat with wine and strong drinke then their tongues are let loose to opprobrious speeches and thence proceed both sudden quarrels and deliberate challenges wherewith thousands are brought to their untimely ends Besides the Lord punisheth the Drunkard many waies first in his soule with impenitency and hardnesse of heart which commonly followeth this vice for as Saint Augustine saith As by too much raine the earth is resolved into durt and made unfit for tillage so by excessive drinking our bodies are altogether unfitted for â—he spirituall tillage and so can bring forth no good fruits of holinesse and righteousnesse but rather like biggest and marishes are fit to bâ—â—ed nothing but serpents frogâ— and vershine that is all manner of abominable sins and leathsome wickednesse Secondly in his body with deformednesse of feature filthy diseases and unseasonable death for excessive drinking breedeth crudities Rheumes Imposthumes Gouts Consumptions Apoplexies and such like whereof men perish before they are come to the halfe of their naturall yeares and this is one principall cause why men are now so short lived in respect of that they have â—â—en heretofore Thirdly in his estate for commonly poverty yea penury followeth this vice at the heeles as Solomon teacheth Pâ—ov 21. 27. And lastly with sudden death and destruction even in the middest of their drunken fits as wofull experience doth make manifest every day and almost in every corner of this land Within these few yeares of mine owne knowledge three not far from Huntington being overcome with drinke perished by drowning when being not able to rule their horses they were carried by them into the maine streame from whence they never came out alive againe but left behinde them visible markes of Gods justice for the terrour and example of others and yet what sin is more commonly used and lesse feared than this Concerning Dancing the usuall dependants of feasts and good cheare there is none of sound judgement that know not that they are baits and allurements to uncleanenesse and as it were instruments of bawdrie by reason whereof they were alwaies condemned among men of honour and reputation whether Romanes or Greekes and left for vile and base minded men to use And this may appeare by the reproach that Demosthenes the Orator gave to Philip of Macedony and his Courtiers in an Oration to the Athenians wherein he termed them common dancers and such as shamed not as soone as they had glutted their bellies with meate and their heads with wine to fall scurrilously a dancing As for the honourable Dames of Rome truly we shall never reade that any of them accustomed themselves to dance according to the report of Salust touching Sempronia whom he judged to be too fine a dancer and singer to be honourable withall as if these two could no more agree then fire and water Cicero in his apologie of Muraena rehearseth an objection of Cato against his client wherein
â—â— these murdering 〈…〉 together in the market Place the same cranes appearing unto 〈…〉 they whispered one another in the care and said â—onder 〈…〉 which though secretly spoken yet was overheâ—rd 〈…〉 they being examined and found guilty were put to death for their 〈◊〉 The like story Martin Luther reporteth touching a traveller only 〈…〉 in this that as Cranes detected the former so Crowes laid open the latter In the yeare 138â— when as all Saxony was so infested with Theeyes that no man could travell safely in the countrey the Princes calling a Councell for downe this order That not only the Theeves themselves should be severely punished but all that did protect or harbour any of them which 〈…〉 as Theodoricke Country of Weâ—ingrâ—de impugned the body of 〈◊〉 Councell sent for him and adjudged him to a most cruell and shamefull 〈◊〉 In the yeare 1410 Henry Duke of Luneburg a most just and severe Prince went about to purge his Countrey from all thefts and robberies insomuch that the least offence committed in that kinde he suffered not to go unpunished now it hapned as the Duke went towards Lunâ—burge he sene before him one of his chiefest officers to provide necessaries against his comming who riding without a cloak the weather being cold 〈◊〉 a ploughman to lend him his cloak till his returne which when the clowne refused to do he took it without leave but it cost him his life for â—â— for the ploughman awaited the Dukes comming and directed his complaint unto him on this manner What availeth iâ— Oâ— most noble Princeâ— to seek to suppres the courage of thieves and spoilers when as thy chiefest officers dare commit such things uncontrolled aâ— the Lieutenant of 〈◊〉 but now taken from me my cloak The Duke hearing this complaint and considering the cause dissembled his counsell 〈◊〉 his returne 〈◊〉 from Luneburge unto the same place where calling for his Lieutenant and rating him for his injury he commanded him to be hunged upon a tree A wonderfull severity in justice and worthy to be commended for what hope is it to root out small and pity thieves if we suffer grand thieves to go uncorrected There is another kinde of these practised of them that be in authority who under the title of confiscation assume unto themselves stollen goods and so much the reâ—dilier by now much the value of the things amounteth to more worth an action altogether unjust and contrary to both divine and humane lawes which ordain to restore unto every man his owne and truly he that in stead of restitution withholdeth the goods of his neighbour in this manner differeth no more from a 〈◊〉 than that the one stealeth boldly without fear the other â—nâ—orously and with great danger and what greater corruption of justice can there be than this For who would follow the Law upon a thiefe when he knoweth he shall rather run into further charge than recover any of his old losse Beside this it hapneth that poor small theeves are often drawne to the whip or driven to banishment of sent to the gallowes when rich grand theeves lie at their case and escape uncontrolled albeit the quality of their 〈◊〉 be far unequall according to the Poet The simple dove by law is censured When ravenou◠〈◊〉 escape unpunished The world was ever yet full of such ravenouâ— Raâ—ens so nimble in pilling others goods and so greedy of their owne gain that the poor people in stead of being maintained and preserved in the peaceable enjoying of their portions are gnawne to the very boneâ— amongst them for which cause Homer in the person of Agamemnon calleth them devourers of men Likewise also the Prophet David in the 〈◊〉 Psalme calleth them Eaters of his people and yet want they not flatterers and 〈◊〉 friends canker wormes of a Common-wealth that urge them forwards and devise daily new kinde of exactions like horse-leadâ—es to suckt out the very bloud of mens purses shewing so much the more wit and deceit therein by how much the more they hope to gain a great part 〈◊〉 of unto their selves being like hunger-starved Harpeis that will never be fortified but still match and catch all that commeth near their 〈◊〉 and these are they that do good to no man but hurt to all of whom the Merchant findeth himselfe agrieved the Artificer trodden under foot the poor labourer oppressed and generally all men endammaged CHAP. XXXVIII Of the excessive burdenings of the Comminalty AS it is a just and approved thing before God to do honour and reverence to Kings and Princes and to be subject under them in all obedience so it is a reasonable and allowable duty to pay such tributes and subsidies whereby their great charges and honourable estate may be maintained as by right or equity are due unto them and this is also commanded by our Saviour Christ in expresse words when he saith Give unto Caesar that which is Caesars And by the Apostle Paul more expresly Pay tributes render unto all men their due tribute to whom tribute belongeth and custom to whom custom Marke how he saith Give unto all men their due and therein observe that Kings and Princes ought of their good and just disposition to be content with their due and not seek to load and overcharge their subjects with unnecessary exactions but to desire to see them rather rich and wealthy than poor and needy for thereby commeth no profit unto themselves Further it is most unlawfull for them to exact that above measure upon their Commons which being in mediocrity is not condemned I say it is unlawfull both by the law of God and man the Law of God and man is tearmed all that which both God and man allow and agree upon and which a man with a safe conscience may put in practise for the former we can have no other schoolmaster nor instruction save the holy Scripture wherein God hath manifested his will unto us concerning this very matter as in Deuteronomy the eighteenth speaking of the office and duty of a King he forbiddeth them to be hoorders up of gold and siluer and espousers of many wives and lovers of pride signifying thereby that they ought to contain themselves within the bounds of modesty and temperance and not give the raines to their owne affections nor heape up great treasures to their peoples detriment nor to delight in war nor to be too much subject to their owne pleasures all which things are meanes of unmeasurable expence so that if it be not allowable to muster together multitudes of goods for the danger and mischief that ensueth thereof as it appeareth out of this place then surely it is much lesse lawfull to levy excessive taxes of the people for the one of these cannot be without the other and thus for the Law of God it is clear that by it authority is not committed unto them to surcharge and as it were trample downe their poor subjects by
did most pill and pull the people and would often say That the gold and silver of the Kingdom pertained in right to none but him Being reproved of his mother at a time for his immoderate and excessive expences saying That there was almost not so much more treasure left as he had already spent he made her this answer That she should take no care for that for as long as his hand was able to wield his sword which he held naked before her he would not want money This is the sword which many now adayes after the example of Caracalla have taken up to cut out by force and violence a way to their owne wils and to cut the throat of equity and justice and to compell the poor people to forgo their goods and surrender them into their hands Now how odious and hatefull these three were made unto the people by their owne wicked demeanours their miserable ends do sufficiently testify which wee have already before ment ioned and mean afterward more at large to speak of The Emperour Constance son to Constantine whose father was Heraclius comming at a time out of Greece into Rome abode there but five dayes but in that short space committed so much outrage in ransacking the Temples and other publike places and carrying away so many rich ornaments and pictures whereof those places then abounded that in mans remembrance no forreigne barbarous enemy having taken the City by force of war ever went away with the like spoil besides he did so oppresse the Allies and Tributaries of the Empire and chiefly the Sicilians with taxes and imposts that many of them were constrained to sell their children for money to satisfie his extortion and by this meanes he scraped together an infinite masse of rapines and evill gotten goods but enjoyed the sweet of them not very long for very soon after he was murdered by his owne men of wat in his returne out of Sicily and all that spoil which he had unjustly surprised was suddenly taken and transported into Africa by the Sarasens that then inhabited the City Panorme Lewis the eleventh King of France after he had overcharged his subjects with too grievous burdens of payments and taxes fell into such a timorous conceit and fear of death as never any man did the like he attempted all meanes of avoiding or delaying the same as first during his sicknesse he gave his Physitian monethly ten thousand crownes by that meanes to creep into his favour wherein he being in all other things a very niggard and pinch-penny shewed himself on the other side more than prodigall next he sent into Calabria for an Hermit reported to be an holy and devout man to whom at his arrivall he performed so much duty and reverence as was wonderfull and unseemly for he threw himselfe on his knees and besought him to prolong his decaying life as if he had been a God and not a man but all that he could do was to no purpose no nor the reliques which Pope Sextus sent him to busie himselfe withall nor the holy viall of the Rheimes which was brought him could prorogue this life of his nor priviledge him from dying a discontent and unwilling death he suspected the most part of his nearest attendants and would not suffer them to approach unto him in his sicknesse after he had thus prolonged the time in hope and yet still languished in extream distresse of his disease it was at length told him in all speed that he should not set his minde any longer upon those vain hopes nor upon that holy man for his time was come and he must needs die And thus he that during his Raigne shewed himselfe rough and cruell to his subjects by too many and heavy impositions was himselfe in his latter end thus roughly and hardly dealt withall Christierne the eleventh King of Denmarke Norway and Suecia after the death of King Iohn his father reigned the year of our Lord 1514. and was too intolerable in imposing burdens and taxes upon his subjects for which cause the Suecians revolted from his government whom though after many battels and sieges he conquered and placed amongst them his garisons to keep them in awe yet ceased they not to rebell against him and that by the instigation of a mean Gentleman who very quickly got foâ—ting into the Kingdom and possessed himselfe of the Crowne and government Now Christierne having lost this Province and being also in disdain and hatred of his owne Countrey and fearing least this inward heat of spight should grow to some flame of danger to his life seeing that the inhabitants of Lubecke conspiring with his uncle Fredericke began to take armes against him he fled away with his wife sister to the Emperour Charles the fifth and his young children to Zealand a Province of the Emperours after he had reigned nine yeares after which the Estates of the Realme aided by them of Lubecke assembling together exalted his uncle Fredericke Prince of Holsatia though old and antient to the Crowne and publishing certain writings addressed them to the Emperour and the Princes of his Empire to render a reason of their proceeding and to make knowne unto them upon how good considerations they had deposed and banished Christierne for the tyranny which hee exercised among them Ten yeares after this he got together a new Army by sea in hope to recover his losses but contrary to his hope he was taken prisoner and in captivity miserably ended his dayes Henry King of Suecia was chased from his Scepter for enterprising to burden his Commons with new contributions those that were devisers of new Taxes and Tributes for the most part ever lost their lives in their labours for proof whereof let the example of Parchenus or Porchetes serve who for giving counsell to King Theodebert touching the raising of new subsidies was stoned to death by the multitude in the City Trieves Likewise was George Presquon cruelly put to death by the people for perswading and setting forward Henry of Suecia to the vexation and exaction of his subjects CHAP. XL. More examples of the same subject AIstulphus the nineteenth King of Lumbardy was not onely a most cruell Tyran but also a grievous oppressour of his subjects with taxes and exactions for he imposed this upon every one of them to pay yearly a Noble for their heads against this man Pope Stephen provoked King Pepin of France who comming with an Army drove the Tyran into Tycinum and constrained him to yeeld to partiall conditions of peace Howbeit Pepin was no sooner gone but he returned to his old byas wherefore the second time he came and drove him to as great extreamity insomuch as another peace was concluded after the accomplishment whereof perverse Aistulph still vexing his subjects was plagued by God with an Apoplexy and so died Iustinian the Emperour as he was profuse and excessive in spending so was he immoderate and insatiable in gathering
of Aquitain then did King Edwards part begin to incline and the successe of war which the space of fourty yeares never forsook him now frowned upon him so that he quickly lost all those lands which by composition of peace were granted unto him CHAP. XLI Of such as by force of armes have either taken away or would have taken away the goods and lands of other men NOw if they that oppresse their Subjects and devour them in this manner be found guilty then must they needs be much more that are carried with the wings of their owne hungry ambitious desire to invade their lands and Seigniories attended on with an infinite retinue of pillages sackings ruines of Cities and people which are alwayes necessary companions of furious unmercifull war There are no flouds so broad nor mountaines so steep nor rokces so rough and dangerous nor sea so long and furious that can restrain the rash and headstrong desire of such greedy minded Sacres so that if their body might be proportioned to the square and greatnesse of their mindes with the one hand they would reach the East and with the other hand the West as it is said of Alexander howbeit hereof they boast and glory no lesse than they that took delight to be sirnamed City-spoilers others burners of Cities some conquerours and many Eagles and Faulcons seeking as it were fame by infamy and by vice eternity But to these men it often commeth to passe that even then when they thinke to advance their Dominion and to stretch their bounds and frontiers furthest they are driven to recoil for fear of being dispossessed themselves of their owne lands and inheritances and even as they dealt with others rigorously and by strength of weapons so shall they be themselves rehandled and dealt withall after the same measure according to the Word of the Prophet denounced against such as they Cursed be thâ—â— that spoilest and dealest unfaithfully when thou hast made an end of spoiling others thâ—â— thâ— selfe shalt be spoiled and when thou hast done dealing traiterously then treason shall begin to be practised against thee And this curse most commonly never faileth to seise upon these great Theeves and Robbers or at least upon their children and successours as by particular examples we shall see after we have first spoken of Adonias who not content with his owne estate of being a Kings son which God had allotted him went about to 〈◊〉 the Crowne and Kingdome from his brother Solomon to whom by right it appertained for God had manifested the same by the mouth of his father David but both he and his assistants for their overbold and rash enterprise were iustly by Solomon punished with death Crassus King of Lydia was the first that made war against Ephesus and that subdued the Greekes of Asia to wit the Phrygians Mysians Chalybeans Paphlagonians Thracians Bythinians Ionians Dorians Aeolians and Pamphilians and made them all tributeries unto him by meanes whereof he being growne exceeding rich and puissant by the detriment and undoing of so many people vanted and gloried in his greatnesse and power and even then thought himselfe the happiest man in the world when most misery and adversity grief and distresse of his estate and wholehouse approuched nearest for first and formost one of his sonnes that was dear unto him was by oversight slain at the chase of a wilde Bore next himselfe having commenced war with Cyrus was overcome in battell and besieged in Sardis the chief City of his Kingdom and at last taken and carried captive to Cyrus despoiled of all his late glory and dominion And thus Crassus as saith Plutarch after Herodotus bore the punishment of the offence of his great Grandfather Gigas who being but one of King Caâ—daules attendants slew his master and usurped the Crowne at the provokement of the Queen his mistresse whom he also took to be his wife And thus this Kingdom decayed by the same meanes by which it first encreased Polycratâ—s the Tyran was one that by violence and tyrannous meanes grew from a base condition to an high estate for being but one of the vulgar sort in the City Samos he with the assistance of fifteen armed men seised upon the whole City and made himselfe Lord of it which dividing into three parts he bestowed two of them upon his two brethren but not for perpetuity for ere long the third part of his usurpation cost the elder of them the best part of his life and the younger his liberty for he chased him away that he might be sole possessour of the whole Island After this he invaded many other Islands besides many Cities in the same Land he raised the Lacedemonians from the fiege of Samos which they had begirt and when he saw that all things fell out so well to his owne wish that nothing could be more fearing so great prosperity could not but carry in the â—ail some terrible sting of adversity and mischance attempted by voluntary losse of something of value to prevent the mischief which he feared to ensue and this by the advice of his dear friend and allie the King of Aegypt therefore he threw a ring which he had of great price into the sea to the end to delude Fortune as he thought thereby â—ut the ring was after found in a fishes belly and offered as a present unto him and this was an evident presage of some inevitable this for tune that waited for him neither did it prove vain and frivolous for he was hanged upon a gibbet of Sardis by the commandment of Orates the Governour of the City who under pretence of friendship and colour of rendring his treasure into his hands and bestowing upon him a great part thereof promising also to passe the rest of his dayes under his wing for fear of the rage of Cambyses drew him to come privately to speak with him and so easily wrought his will upon him Aristodemus got into his hands the government of Câ—ma after he had made away the principall of the City and to keep it the better being obtâ—ined he first worme the vulgars hearts by presents then banished out of the City their children whom he had put to death and entertained the rest of the youth with such variety of pleasures and delights that by those devices he kept himselfe in his tyrannous estate many yeares but as soon as the children of those slain Citizens were growne to ripe yeares of strength and discretion being desirous to revenge their fathers deaths they set upon him in the night so at unawares that they put him and all his family to the slaughter Timophanes usurped a principality power and rule in Corinth a free City and became so odious thereby to the whole people yea and to his owne brother Tymoleon also that laying aside all respect of nature he slew him with his owne hands preferring the liberty of his Countrey before any unity or bond of
is one kinde of theft to usurpe any mans goods by unlawfull meanes wherefore no such sports ought to finde any place amongst Christians especially those wherein any kinde of lot or hazard is used by the which the good blessings of God are contrary to their true and naturall use exposed to chance and fortune as they tearme it for which cause Saint Augustine is of this opinion concerning them That the gaine which ariseth to any party in play should be bestowedupon the poor to the end that both the gamesters as well the winner as the loser might be equally punished the one by not carrying the stake being won the other by being frustrated of all his hope of winning Players at dice both by the Elibertine Constantinopolitan Councell under Iustinian were punished with excommunication and by a new constitution of the said Emperour it was enacted That no man should use Dice-play either in private or publique no nor approve the same by their presence under paine of punishment and Bishops were there appointed to be overseers in this behalfe to espie if any default was made Horace an heathen Poet avouched the unlawfulnesse of this thing even in his time when he saith that Dice-playing was forbidden by their law Lewis the eighth King of France renouned for his good conditions and rare vertues amongst all the excellent laws which he made this was one That all sports should be banished the Common-wealth except shooting whether with long bow or Crosse bow and that no Cards nor Dice should be either made or sold by any to the end that all occasion of gaming might bee taken away Surely it would be very profitable and expedient for the Weale-publique that this Ordinance might stand in use at this day and that all Merchants and Mercers whatsoever especially those that follow the reformation of Religion might forbeare the sale of all such paltry Wares for the fault in selling such trash is no lesse than the abuse of them in playing at them for so much as they upon greedinesse of so small a gaine put as it were a sword into a mad mans hand by ministring to them the instruments not onely of their sports but also of those mischiefes that ensue the same There a man may heare curses as rife as words bannings swearings and blasphemies banded up and downe there men fret themselves to death and consume whole nights in darke and divelish pastimes some lose their horses others their cloakes a third sort all that ever they are worth to the undoing of their houses wives and children and some again from braulings fall to buffetings from buffets to bloudshedding from bloudshedding to hanging and these are the fruits of those gallant sports But this you shall see more plainely by a few particular examples In a towne of Campania a certaine Iew playing at dice with a Christian lost a great summe of money unto him with which great losse being enraged and almost beside himselfe as commonly men in that case are affected hee belched out most bitter curses against Christ Iesus and his mother the blessed Virgin in the midst whereof the Lord deprived him of his life and sense and strooke him dead in the place as for his companion the Christian indeed he escaped sudden death howbeit he was robbed of his wit and understanding and survived not verie long after to teach us not onely what a grievous sinne it is to blaspheme God and to accompanie such wretches and not to shun or at least reprove their outrage but also what monstrous effects proceed from such kinde of ungodly sports and how grievously the Lord punisheth them first by giving them over to blasphemy secondly to death and thirdly and lastly to eternall and irrevocable damnation Let our English gamesters consider this example and if it will not terrifie them from their sports then let them looke to this that followeth which if their hearts be not as hard as adamant will mollifie and perswade them In the yeare 1533. neere to Belissana a citie in Helvetia there were three prophane wretches that played at dice upon the Lords day without the wals of the citie one of which called Vlrich Schraelerus having lost much mony and offended God with many cursed speeches at last presaging to himselfe good lucke he burst forth into these tearmes If fortune deceive me now I will thrust my dagger into the verie body of God as farre as I can now fortune failed him as before wherefore forthwith he drew his dagger and taking it by the point threw it against heaven with all his strength behold the dagger vanished away and five drops of bloud distilled upon the table before them and without all delay the divell came in place and carried away the blasphemous wretch with such force and noyse that the whole city was amased and astonished thereat the other two halfe beside themselves with feare strove to wipe away the drops of bloud out of the table but the more they wiped it the more clearly it appeared The rumor of this accident flew into the citie and caused the people to flocke thicke and threefold unto the place where they found the other two gamesters washing the boord whom by the decree of the Senate they bound with chaines and carried towards the prison but as they passed with them through a gate of the citie one of them was stroken suddenly dead in the midst of them with such a number of lice and wormes creeping out of him that it was both wonderfull and lothsome to behold the third they themselves without any further inquisition or triall to avert the indignation which seemed to hang over their heads put incontinently to death the table they tooke and preserved it for a monument to witnesse unto posterity both how an accursed pastime dicing is and also what great inconveniencies and mischiefes grow thereby But that we may see yet more the vanitie and mischievous working of this sport I will report one storie more out of the same authour though not equall to the former in strangenesse and height of sinne yet as tragicall and no lesse pitifull In the yeare 1550 there lived in Alsatia one Adam Steckman one that got his living by tximming pruning and dressing vines this man having received his wages fell to dice and lost all that he had gotten insomuch that he had not wherewith to nourish his family so that he fell into such a griefe of minde and withall into such paines of the head that he grew almost desperate withall one day his wife being busie abroad left the care of her children unto him but he tooke such great care of them that he cut all their throats even three of them whereof one lay in the cradle and lastly would have hanged himselfe had not his wife come in the meane while who beholding this pitifull tragedie gave a great outcrie and fell downe dead whereupon the neighbours running in
escape unpunished for his perfidie and impietie For first his warre-like affaires in the East prospered not then a little before the end of his life he grievously complained that he had innovated the faith in his kingdome At last in those sighings and complaints he parted this life with a grievous and violent disease The Unkle of Iulian the Apostata called also Iulianus at Antioch in the temple prophaned the holy table with pissing upon it And when Eusoius the Bishop rebuked him for it he stroke him with his fist Not long after he was taken with a grievous disease of his bowels putrifying and miserably died his excrements comming from him not by their ordinary passages but by his wicked mouth Under the Emperour Valence a wonderfull haile the stones being as big as a man could hold in his hand was sent upon Constantinople and slew many both men and beasts for that the Emperour had banished many famous men that would not communicate with Eudoxius the Arrian and for the same reason a great part of Germa a Citie of Hellespont was throwne downe by an earthquake and in Phrygia such a famine succeeded that the Inhabitants were faine to change their habitation and to â—lee to other places After the martyrdome of Gregory the Bishop of Spoleta Flacchus the Governour who was author thereof was strucke with an Angel and vomited out his entrailes at his mouth and died Under the Empire of Alexander Mammea Agrippitus fifteene yeares old because he would not sacrifice to their Idols was apprehended at Praeneste whipt with scourges and hanged up by the heeles and at last slaine with the sword in the middest of whose torments the Governour of the Citie fell from the Tribunall seat dead Bajazet a most cruell enemy of the Christians was taken by Tamerlane the Tartarian King and bound in golden chaines and carried about by him in an iron cage latised and shewne unto all being used for a stirrop unto Tamerlane when he got upon his horse Gensericus the King of the Vandales exercising grievous cruelty against the Orthodox Christians he himselfe being an Arrian was possessed of the Devill and died a miserable death in the yeare 477. Honoricus the second King of the Vandales having used inexplicable cruelty against the Orthodox Christians hanging up honest matrons and virgins naked burning their bodies with torches cutting off their dugges and armes because they would not subscribe to the Arrian heresie was surprised himselfe with the vengeance of God for his land was turned into barrennesse through an exceeding drought so that numbers of men women and beasts died with famine the pestilence also seised upon them and he himselfe was stricken with such a disease of his body that his members rotted off one after another Anastatius Dicorus a grievous persecutor of the Church of Christ being admonished in a dreame that he should perish with thunder built him an house wherein he might defend himselfe from that judgement but in vaine for in a great thunder he fled from chamber to chamber and at last was found dead blasted with lightning to the great horror of the beholders Chasroes the King of Persia a grievous enemy to Christ and Christians committed horrible outrages against them for first he slew at Jerusalem ninety thousand men with Zachariâ— the Patriarch of Jerusalem and also raged in like manner in Aegypt Lybia Aethiopia and would grant them no condition of peace unlesse they would forsake Christ and worship the Sunne he also put to death with most cruell torments Anastatius a godly Monke because he constantly confessed the faith of Christ. But God met with him to the full for his eldest sonne Syroes tooke him prisoner and handled him in most vile manner he hanged an iron weight upon his neck and imprisoned him in an high tower which he had built to keepe his treasure denying him food and bidding him eat the gold which he had gathered together then he slew all his children before his face and exposed him to the scoffes and railings of the people and lastly caused him to be shot to death and so that great terror of the world and shedder of Christian bloud breathed out his soule after a miserable manner Regnerus the King of Denmarke abrogating Christian Religion and setting up Idolatrie in his Kingdome anew the divine vengeance overtooke him for Helles whom he had cast out of the Kingdome returned upon him with an army of the Gaules and overcomming him in battell tooke him prisoner and shut him up in a filthie prison full of serpents which setting upon him with their venomous bitings and stings brought him to a most horrible end Lysius the Emperour gave Heriâ—a his daughter a virgin because she was a Christian to be trampled under foot of horses but he himselfe was sâ—ain by the byting of one of the same horses A Popish Magistrate having condemned a poore Protestant to death before his execution caused his tongue to be cut out because he should not confesse the truth in requitall whereof the next childe that was borne unto him was borne without a tongue CHAP. II. Of Perjurie Pâ—ilip King of Macedon who was a great contemner of all oathes and held the Religion thereof as a vain thing for this cause as all Writers affirme the vengeance of God followed him and his posteritie for when he had lived scarce forty and sixe yeares he himselfe was slain and all his whole house in short time in short time after utterly extinguished 〈◊〉 one of his sonnes was slaine by Olympias his wife Also another sonne which he had by Cleopatra the 〈◊〉 of Aâ—â—alus â—he tormented to death in a brazen vessell compassed about with fire The â—est of his sonnes periffied in like manner and at last the famous Alexander his sonne after great conquest atchieved by him in the middle course of his victories periffied miserably some thinke by poyson In the Countrey of Arbernum there was a certaine wicked man that used ordinarily to for sweare himselfe but at one time after he had thus sinned his tongue was tyed up that he could not speake but began to low like an oâ—e yet repenting and grieving for his sinne he found the bond of his tongue loosed and a readinesse of speech given unto him againe whereby we see both the Iustice of God in punishing them that sinne in this kinde and his mercy in pardoning when they truly repent At this day we have an example fresh and famous of a certaine maid that had stolne and pilfered many things away out of her mistresses house of which being examined she forswore them and wisht that she might rot if she ever touched them or knew of them but notwithstanding she was carried to prison and there presently began so to rot stink that they were forced to thrust her out of prison and to convey her to the Hospitall where she lies in lamentable miserie
his companions to a feast together with his Concubine the Divell entered in amongst the guests snatching away the young woman and saying Thou art mine neither could the Priest or any of the companie deliver her out of his hands And thou also sayeth the Divell to the Priest and I meane to fetch thee shortly Martin Luther reporteth this storie out of the mouth of Doctor Gregorius Pontanus how two Noblemen falling out in the Court of the Emperour Maximilian vowed each others death Now the Divell taking occasion out of this malicious vow slew the one of the Noblemen in the night with a sword taken out of the others sheath into the which hee put the same againe all bloudie whereupon this Nobleman was arraigned of this murther and had bin condemned but that it was prooved that he stirred not out of his chamber all that night and therefore they concluded that it was the malicious fact of Sathan And yet the Nobleman because hee intended this murther though hee acted it not was condemned by the Emperour to perpetuall banishment And thus much concerning persons infested by the Divell Now a word or two for places Saint Augustine in his two and twentieth Booke De Civitate Dei chapter the eighth reporteth of a certaine Gentleman that lived not far from him in Affrica who had his house so infested with evill Spirits that both his servants and his Cattell died frequently This man getting unto him the company of the Priests offering up the sacrifice of the body and bloud of Christ in his house with servent prayers unto God against these evill Spirits was thereby freed from any further molestation by them as this holy Father writeth Saint Gregorie telleth us of the Spirit of one Paschasius that haunted the Bathes and was seene by Sermanus the Bishop of Capua by whose meanes and prayers the place was freed from that Ghost or rather the Ghost was freed from that place Greg. lib. 4. Dialog Cap 39. Gregorie Nissen writes also of a certaine Bath which was grievously infested by evill Spirits wherein they tooke away the lives of many men The like whereof is reported by Georgius Presbyter of another house thus molested where the evill Spirits would throw stones upon the table while they were at dinner and filled the house with myce and Serpents so that no man durst dwell therein The like storie reporteth mataphrastes in the life of Saint Pautheneus and Lycas in the life of the Emperor Anastasius Pliny in his seventh Booke the twentie seventh Epistle telleth us that in an house in Athens there appeared continually a tall and leane shape of a man drawing chaines after him which when it was seene to sinke downe and vanish into a certaine place of the ground they digged and found the dead body of a man which being removed the house was freed from the molestation What should I speake of the house of Eubatis in Corinth written by Lucian or of Pausanias the King of the Spartans whose house was haunted by an evil spirit presently after he had slain his wife Cleonice as Plutarch writeth Or of the evil spirits that haunted the grave of that cruel Tyrant Caesar Caligula Suet. Or of Nero that slew his mother Agrippina who was continually after pursued with a spirit in his mothers shape or of Otto that slew his predecessor Galba after which he never ceased to be molestred with fearful and terrible visions Or a number more which I might insert but these shal suffice as a taste of a number more that Tyraeus the Iesuite hath set down in his Book De infestis Locis I adde onely two or three and so an end Alexander of Alexandro dwelling in Rome in an house so infamous for strange sights that no man durst dwell therein reporteth that beside the night tumults and horrible and fearefull noyses there appeared unto him the shape of a map of a filthie looke threatening countenance and blacke and fearfull in bodie from which the house could by no meanes be set free Cardanus Lib. 26. c. 93. De rerum varietate reporteth the like to haye happened to an house of a certaine Nobleman in Parma In which house alwaies before the death of some of the family an old woman of an hundred yeares old appeared sitting in the chimney corner In an Island neere unto the Articke Pole there is an hill out of the which like mount Aetna there bursteth out continually fire and smoake There everie night appeareth a companie of evill Spirits representing perfectly the shape of some friends which they know whom when they go to speake unto they presently vanish out of their sight Olaus magnus But enough enough of this unsaverie subject onely let us learne hereby to beware of this ambitious enemie of mankinde who as Saint Peter sayeth Goeth about somtime like a Lion to devour us Other times like a subtill Serpent to molest us but all with a desire of our destruction I may be thought too prolix in this Argument of Gods Iudgements but considering the fiercenesse of Gods wrath against notorious sinners and the hardnesse of mens hearts to be drawne to repentance nothing I thinke can be judged too much But yet to sweeten these soure pills let me cover them a little with the sugar of Gods mercifull protection of his children by his holy Angels CHAP. XV. The conclusion concerning the protection of holy angels over such as feare God NOtwithstanding all these Judgements upon the wicked yet God is good unto Israel even to those that are of an upright heart Psalme seventie three Verse the first for as he executeth his Judgements upon the one so hee defendeth the other by his mightie providence especially by the protection of Angels Of which I purpose to give you many examples in this place and first out of the holy Scriptures Two Angels came to Lâ—t in Sodome strooke the inhabitants with blindnesse and led Lot by the hand out of Sodom readie to be destroyed by fire and brimstone Genesis the nineteenth When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac an Angell held his hand and forbad him to kill his sonne promising him from God a blessing for his obedience Genesis 22. Iacob in his returne homeward was comforted and strengthened against his brother Esau by the blessed Angels Genesis the two and thirtieth An Angell of the Lord when the children of Israel came out of Aegypt stood betwixt the campe of the Aegyptians and the Israelites in a pillar of clouds by day to protect the Israelites against the Aegyptians Exodus 14. Balaam when being sent for by Balaac King of Moab to curse the Israelites an Angell with a sword drawne in his hand withstood him in the way and commanded him to speake nothing but what the Lord should put into his mouth Numbers 22. An Angel of the Lord apeared unto Gedeon comforted him and appointed him captain over the people to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Madianites Iudges
made therein the Bathes addicted himselfe so much to the Devillish art of Necromancy that hee wrought wonders thereby insomuch that he made himselfe wings and attempted to flee like Dedalus but the Devill as ever like a false knave forsooke him in his journey so that hee fell downe and brake his necke In the yeare of our Lord 1578 one â—â—mon Penbrooke dwelling in Saint Georges parish in London being a figure setter â—nd vehemently suspected to be a Conjurer by the commandement of the Iudge appeared in the parish Church of Saint Saviour at Court holden there where whilest he was busie in eutertaining a Proctor and leaned his head upon a pew a good space the Proctor began to lift up his head to see what he ayled and found him departing out of this life and straightwayes he fell downe ratling in the throat without speaking any one word This strange judgement happened before many witnesses who searching him found about him five devillish books of conjuration and most abhominable practises with a picture in tin of a man having three dice in his hand with this writing Chance dice fortunately and much other trash so that every one consessed it to be a just judgement against Sorcery and a great example to cause others to feare the just judgement of God Now let every one learne by these examples to feare God and to stand firme and stedfast to his holy Word without turning from it on any side so shall he be safe from such like miserable ends as these wicked varlets come unto CHAP XXII Of those that through pride and vaine-glory strove to usurpe the honour due unto God AForgetfull and unthankfull minde for the benefits which God bestoweth upon us is a branch of this first Commandement as well as those which went before And this is when we ascribe not unto God the glory of his benefits to give him thanks for them but through a foolish pride extoll our selves higher than we ought presuming above measure and reason in our owne power desire to place our selves in a higher degree than is meet With this sond and foolish affection I know not how our first fathers were tickled and tainted from the beginning to think to impaire the glory of God and they also were puffed up with the blast of ambition that I know not with what fond foolish rash and proud conceit went about after the floud to build a city and tower of exceeding height by that means to win same and reputation amongst men In stead whereof they ought rather to have praysed God by remembring his gracious goodnesse in their miraculous deliverance in their fathers persons from that generall deluge and shipwracke of the world but forasmuch as with a proud and high stomacke they lifted up themselves against God to whom all glory onely appertaineth therefore God also set himselfe against them and against their over bold practises interrupting all their determined presumptuous purposes by such a confusion and alteration of tongues which he sent among them that one could not understand another so that with shame they were constrained to leave their begun worke And besides in stead of that strong and sure habitation which they dreamed on to maintain and defend themselves by against all enemies and 〈◊〉 fortresse and castle wherby they went about to keep other in subjeâ—â—â—on to them they were forced to forsake the place by the just judgement of God who scattered and dispersed them hither and thither that he might bring them to that estate and condition which they most of all feared and strove to shun And thus God resisteth the proud and favoureth the humble loe here the punishment wherewith God punished their sin remaining still upon them this day for a chastisement of their proud spirits With the staine of this sinne most commonly the mightiest Potentates of this world are defiled who although both by word and writing avouch and confesse their power to be by the grace of God yet for the most part they are very unthankfull for the same and so proud and high minded that they shew themselves most obstinate and ungratefull of all men for oftentimes they rob him of the honour and glory which is peculiar unto himselfe and attribute it to themselves in setting forth their brave and sumptuous shewes and triumphs this is the sinne whereof Nabuchadnezzar King of Babell was reproved for God having bestowed upon him a kingdome with such pompe and renowne that he made whole nations to tremble before his face and putting many people in subjection under him he in stead of giving thanks for these great benefits exalted himselfe suffering his heart to swell and his understanding to waxe hard with pride not regarding the Lord who extolled him so high and yet notwithstanding he was constrained to confesse and acknowledge him for the true God to have an everlasting Kingdome and an infinite power as well by the forewarning of dreames which Daniel interpreted as by the miraculous deliverance of three young men out of the burning furnace therefore as he walked one day in his royall palace at Babylon and vaunted of his greatnesse and magnificence saying to himselfe Is not this great Babell which I have built for the house of the Kingdome by the might of my power and for the honour of my Majesty Now whilest the word was yet in his mouth a voyce was heard from heaven saying O King to thee it is spoken Thy Kingdome shall depart from thee and according to the tenour of the voyce hee was immediately deposed from his royall seat spoiled of all his glory driven from the society of men deprived of sense and made a companion for the bruit beasts and wilde asses eating grasse like oxen even so long untill his haire was growne stiffe like Eagles feathers and his nailes like the clawes of birds In which estate he continued the space of seven yeares even he that a little before was so proud and arrogant and he that had conquered so many kingdomes and nations that triumphed over Ierusalem with the Kings thereof This is a most excellent looking glasse for Kings to behold the ficklenesse and instability of all their power and pomp when it pleaseth God to humble and bring them under there is neither Scepter Crowne stay or strength of man that is able to hinder and turne aside the hand of the Almighty the King of Kings from abasing and weakning the most high and strong of this world let them be never so brave and jolly and bringing them into a low contemptible and brutish estate Besides this which we have already touched there is another kinde of pride and presumption most damnable and detestable of all and it is when a man doth so much forget himselfe as to seise and take upon him that honour which onely appertaineth to God ascribing to himselfe a certaine deity One would hardly thinke that there were any such in the world so proud as to commit this