very proposing of these four Particulars 1. That they so exempt all Ecclesiastical persons from Subjection to Princes as to allow these no co-active but only a directive Power over them 2. That by the Seal of Confession they tye up their Priests from revealing any traiterous Plots of Rebels against their Soveraigns 3. That the Pope by his Authority can when he pleases absolve Subjects from their Oaths of Fidelity to them 4. That 't is not lawfull for Christians to obey an Heretical Prince By which Maximes 't is evident how impossible it is for any Man that believes them to be a good Subject He must be no Papist if he be true to his Prince since he can be so no longer than the Pope will suffer him Whatever such a Man's practice may be as no doubt many noble Gentlemen of that persuasion have been Loyal to their last breath yet his Principles are rebellious and if his natural generosity or some other respect keeps him fast to his King his Religion I am sure does not bind him And when there happens a contest between Honour and Religion 't is odds but the latter will carry it For put the case the Pope should command one thing and the King another I would fain know whether of the two a Papist conceives himself oblig'd to obey If he says His King he can be no good Roman Catholick If the Pope as he must say unless he will renounce his profession 't is impossible for him to be a good Subject since the Pope whom with Bellarmine he acknowledges the Head of the Church one that cannot err and that has power to make Articles of Faith according to the determination of the Council of Trent hath ex Cathedra declared these forenamed Principles of Rebellion to be such Articles of Faith and the denying them to be so no less than Heresie You see the doctrines of these false Prophets of Rome and they have exemplified them all by their practices The Pharisees were great boasters of their Father Abraham and so are these of the Fathers of the Church as if they were their only legitimate offspring and the sole heirs of their learning and piety And these two they have so engross'd to themselves that they look upon all the world besides as bankrupt As to learning 't is so confin'd to the Colleges of Jesuits that if we may believe them it very seldom travels beyond their walls who being the only Rabbi's have appropriated to themselves the swelling Titles of Angelical Seraphical and the like All besides them having but one eye while these like the Chineses have two As to piety and devotion the Catholick-church like the Temple of the Lord among the Jews is ever in their mouths They are the only godly Party the Favorites and Minions of heaven Nothing to be seen in their Churches but miracles and nothing on their Walls but devotion and indeed all their religion is but paint The very habit of a Monk with them is miraculous beyond St. Paul's handkerchief and a Franciscan's frock wrapt about a dying man shall as infallibly make him a Saint as Rablais his gown a Physician All the Pharisee's arts of dawbing and pargetting are but rude and gross and his colours faint to those of a Mendicant View him with his shaven head his long beard and longer beads his ill habit and worse looks prostrating his body to the ground before his woodden god and what Pharisee can compare with him And yet this is the best side of the man and of his religion which like an Egyptian Temple belies and shames its fair frontispiece with some ridiculous Ape within There is no such hypocrisie as that which lurks under a Cowle no pride to that of a feigned and voluntary humility nor any such lewdness as that which is gilded over with devotion Should I lay the dirt of their Cells before you or rake up the bones of buried Infants the prospect would be too nasty and dismal We know what good use they make of their Confessions They who are well acquainted with them find them one thing abroad and another at home one thing at their Altars and another in their Chambers These Pedlers of devotion carry all on their backs abroad while their storehouses lye empty They can appear to the eye of the world like so many Baptists with their Camels hair and leathern girdles which they brag of as Antisthenes of old did of the rents of his garment that served only to let in light to sober Spectators to view the Wearer's vanity And what is all their Tinsel devotion but a Pharisaical will-worship That rabble of insignificant and superstitious ceremonies wherein they out-doe the most hypocritical Pharisees in Crosses Relicks Agnus's Exorcising of devils of their own raising and ridiculous cringings and postures not to be found among the Pharisees whose behaviour was sober and grave in comparison of that antick Mascarading and religious Mummery practised by these Romish Augurs who cannot chuse but laugh sufficiently at themselves for them and do no doubt much more at them who are so silly as to admire them The Pharisees had their superstitious washings 'tis true but they had no holy water to fright away the Devil nor did they wear their Philacteries as these men doe a piece of St. John's Gospel about their necks to charm him Indeed those many Sects of religious orders among Papists derive from them but are far more numerous and ridiculous exceeding them as much in their Crimes as they doe in their Fopperies Did they compass sea and land to gain a Proselyte these will run farther than the Indies to gain Souls that is to extend Empire like subtle Foxes preying far from home or rather going about like roaring Lyons seeking whom they may devour And when they have gained men they make them much more the children of the Devil than themselves being sure when once they have them to keep them fast and tame enough either by a gross ignorance or the consciousness of those sins which they have pickt out from them by Confessions and which they continually nurse up by their Indulgencies Had the Pharisees subtle ways to entrap men these their disciples can out-wit them and a Pharisee is but a Dunce to a Jesuit in his art of Legerdemain spiritual juggling and holy frauds whose fundamental Principle 't is That Gain is Godliness If the Pharisees were covetous these have hearts exercised with all manner of covetous practices Let the Quarry be never so mean these Hauks will stoop to it To say the truth The religion of these men is founded in policy and interest and the whole current of their doctrines and practices run that way as 't is easie for any one to see that well considers them 'T is this that sets the Fryars and Jesuits together by the ears all the quarrel between them being this Who shall bring most grist to their several mills A man can
Devil says Mass Sure I am that if once these evil spirits get possession of you you will find it a harder task than you are ware of to turn them out But in vain do I speak to such men as are fast in the Snare Let us take heed how we fall into it To this end let us compare the doctrines of Protestants contained in their several publick Confessions with those of Papists set forth by their Council of Trent and such a comparison will shew who are the true or false Prophets whose doctrines suit best with the Gospel and the Analogy of Faith and whose practices with those of Christ and his Apostles I dare say should a sober rational Heathen who had seriously read over the New Testament judge impartially between us his very natural reason would tell him that all that Popish trash which is obtruded on men as Gospel does not so much as look like it I put this case becaûse we had the like instances in a late converted Jew who upon a serious consideration of each Party's tenets chose rather to be baptized with us though much to his own temporal disadvantage than with them merely upon such an account But to come nearer home to our present purpose and to speak to the point of Obedience I confess indeed that some Protestants in the World have been Rebels But there is no Protestant Church that ever taught and constantly maintained Rebellion or allow'd the practice of it as that of Rome does I appeal to their several Confessions extant in print The difference between Protestants and Papists in this case is indeed this That disobedience with them is a crime and with these a law That they punish Rebels and the Pope rewards them promising them no less than Remission of sins and Eternal life That they abhor the Murtherers of Kings but the Pope sets them on by his Excommunications and after the murther is committed makes Panegyricks on them But whatever the doctrines and practices of other Churches may be nothing can be more clear of Rebellion than the Church of England is Let any man judge of their doctrine as to that point by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which Priests and Jesuits will no more own than they will doe us for a Church and can no more swallow such a morsel than a Pharisee could Swines-flesh Some Priests indeed as Blackwell for one took the Oath of Supremacy and Withrington wrote a book in defence of Obedience to the Civil Magistrate but were so far from having any Thanks from that they were severely checkt by their Masters But as to the generality of these False Prophets they are still the same and bear the same bad fruit These Wolves in Sheeps-cloathing will sooner change their Hair than their Opinions Try them by this Shiboleth and they will quickly appear to be Ephraemites 'T is true indeed some who would be thought Protestants have been guilty of the same Jesuitical Doctrines and Practices but they were no more Protestants than Jesuites are Protestants They went out from us but were not of us They never suckt such Principles from the Breasts of that Church they were born in but from those Emissaries of Rome who debaucht them Before the Troubles began we were most of us Orthodox 'T was Anarchy brought in Schism into our Church and Rebellion into our State While Penal Laws were in full force we could scarce ever see a Priest but in a Prison or on a Gallows Let not Rome then charge our Church with their own Principles nor tell us we have been Rebels since they made us such No true Member of our Church ever was nor indeed could be one He could no more be a bad Subject than a Christian as Athenagoras said could be a bad Man Many of us have died for our Prince but none of us have taught to kill him either by Precept or Example as some Popish Priests have done or else they are very much bely'd Our Ministers were never found preaching Rebellion in Conventicles as Jesuites have been found to doe some faces having been seen there which never appeared to any before but in Rome or Madrid In a word we have confuted the Church of Rome as much by our Lives as by our Writings in this point and undergone as many tryals for the defence of this Truth as Primitive Christians have done for that of their Religion Patience and Meekness are the fruits we own others are of a forreign growth By these our Church desires to be known and when the Church of Rome can shew the like she shall be ours too but she must then cease to be what now she is But if she will not come to us as 't is to be feared her pride will not suffer her to bow though it be to the Sceptre of Christ let us not go to her but keep where we are nor forsake our own Church till we can be sure to find a better And surely no better argument of her being a good one than this That the Church of Rome persecutes her as Nero did her when once Apostolical And should the time ever come that she should use her strongest and best arguments Inquisition and the Faggot I hope by God's help we should be as ready to confute them by our Patience as we have done others by our Pen. But God who in his Mercy has so miraculously preserved us from their fury this day will no doubt still doe so while we continue true Sons to him and his Church Nor is it possible that his Vicegerent should ever have a good opinion of those False Prophets who would have blown up his Grandfather and in Him himself and would no doubt were there the like occasion endeavour to blow up his Royal Person their principles and their malice being still the same To summ up all Let us bless God that we can meet here to bless him Without the wonderfull Mercy of this Day some of us had never been and perhaps this Church had not too No place then so fit to praise God in since 't is its self so great and signal a Monument of his Goodness in its own and our preservation And while we praise him with joyfull Lips let us at the same time beg of him still to preserve our Church and the Nursing Father of it our Soveraign from all attempts and practices against his Crown or Person either by Heretical or Schismatical Men Forraign or Domestick Traytors praying God that under him we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty and that obeying God and his Laws God may own us for his by those fruits of righteousness we bring forth that so having our fruit unto holiness we may obtain everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour To whom c. Amen Soli Deo gloria A SERMON Preached on the Fifth of NOVEMBER JOHN XVI 2 3. They shall put you out of the Synagogues yea
others who were willing to doe so Taking away that key of knowledge which might unlock the gate thereof and hood-winking the people that they might not find their way thither being very jealous lest Christ should shew it them or the Multitudes run after any but themselves every Proselyte of Christ's being an Apostate from them And accordingly they dealt with him thrusting some out of their Synagogues scourging others contriving the death of a third and finally of Christ himself who as He was a Rock of Offence to them so by falling on them at last ground them to powder To conclude this point for 't were endless to follow a Pharisee through all his windings and turnings They were as great Boutefeus in their time as Jesuits are in ours sowing Sedition and Rebellion where-ever they went especially against the Romans whom they most suspected and feared as those who would take away their place and nation which at last they did being enraged by the frequent insurrection of the Jews whom the Pharisaical Zealots continually stirr'd up as you may reade at large in Josephus Thus have I shown you the Pharisee the grand Original as I may so style him of all succeeding False Prophets pluckt off his vizard and his sheeps-cloathing in this brief account I have now given you of his Doctrines and their Tendencies together with his practical Commentary on his corrupt Text. 'T were to be wisht that that Hypocrisie which was the very soul and form of a Pharisee had not by an unhappy kind of Transmigration pass'd into others This spreading Leprosie like the Jews themselves is the Catholick plague of all other Sects too and particularly of those many ones among us so that that leaven or bread of faces grown stale in Jewry is now become the ordinary Entertainment at an English Table The Wolf which by the care of our prudent Ancestors has been long since banished hath of late days to our great annoyance cross'd the Seas and walkt uncontroll'd in the staple dress of the Land our sheeps-cloathing The difference between that of the ancient and of our modern ones being only this That theirs was of a courser and ours is of a finer-spun thread Were they dress'd up in all manner of gaudy appearances we out-shine them Their Fringes were neither so long nor their Phylacteries so broad Our Pharisees out-doe them in Eyes lifted up to Heaven in sowred Looks whining Tones seraphical Expressions and starcht Behaviour Our Principles are of a higher strain too If they justled out God's Law with their Traditions we quite extinguish the Gospel with our New Lights Did they corrupt That with their Cabalistical Glosses we wrest This to our own and others Damnation by our false and carnal Interpretations making it speak to Interest and Ambition If they plac'd Religion in the Hand we place it in the Ear in those many Sermons we hear but never practice gadding after those corrupt Teachers we heap up to our selves While Pharisees boast of their legal Righteousness we quite cast off that and Evangelical too being above the Ordinances of God some among us making perfection to consist in sinning and not being troubled at it others by a contrary but as bad an error being so far from owning an Inherent Righteousness that they make it wholly Imputative crying up Faith even to the decrying of all good works and making Christ's Cross a Ladder to get up to Heaven by though they never climb one Round of it Were ancient Pharisees so over-strict in keeping the Sabbath some among us are as strict even to the exclusion of Charity and Mercy Wherein did their Stoical fatality differ from our absolute Decree Or their Temporal conquering Messiah from that which our Millenaries have shap'd to themselves I dare say in these and many the like instances our Christian Pharisees doe as far surpass the Jewish ones in their corrupt Doctrines as in all the pernicious Consequences of those Doctrines either in Hypocrisie or Ambition Covetousness or Cruelty Hatred and malitious Uncharitableness to all Dissenters blind Zeal and indefatigable Industry in gaining Proselytes or lastly in all those factious schismatical and rebellious Practices which the most Pharisaical Zealots among the Jews were ever guilty of and that upon the very same account of a more peculiar relation to God I cannot stand to make out the Parallel but must leave it to your own thoughts being in pursuit of other Wolves wrapt up in as fair a sheeps-cloathing as any of those I have mention'd and who come to us with all deceivableness of unrighteousness Give me leave to uncase them too and that I shall endeavour to doe by displaying their Doctrines and Practices the natural fruits whereby we are to know Them also As to their Doctrines I shall instance first in their Traditions which they not only equal to the written Word of God in the modest language of the Council of Trent requiring them to be received with the same affection of godliness and reverence that is due to the books of the Old and New Testament but impudently preferr them as most of their eminent Doctors doe for this reason because the Scriptures say they have no Being unless they be established by Traditions whereas Traditions without Scripture are firm and stable in themselves Thereby charging the Holy Writ with obscurity and imperfection which the Pharisees never had the face to doe whose corrupt Glosses and Interpretations were Orthodox in respect of those which these Men give us and which doe indeed much more make void all the Commandments of God than ever theirs did For we do not find that the Jewish Pharisees were wrong as to the first and second Commandments whereas the Doctrines of the Romish ones are injurious to both 2. Not only to the first by dispensing with God's Laws and coyning new ones which they obtrude on the Consciences of Men as equally binding but to the second much more having quite raz'd it out of their Decalogue and divided their Worship between the Creator and his Creatures not the highest only as Saints and Angels but the very lowest and most contemptible of them even Stocks and Stones for such are their Images which rather than they will forego they will part with one of God's Commandments 3. What are their many impertinent repetitions but so many takings of God's Holy Name in vain Or their Maxime of not keeping Faith with Hereticks but a Doctrine of flat Perjury 4. The Sabbath which was sacred even to Superstition with a Pharisee has far less respect with them than a Saint's Holy-day though of their own Canonization 5. When God commands us to be obedient to our civil or natural Parents they can not only dispense with our Allegiance to but give us withall remission of Sins as a reward for our Treason to the former and by their Pharisaical Corban defeat the latter of that Obedience which is due to them from their Children forcing
Engines who under pretence of greater light and stricter severity might easily beguile unstable Souls and by speaking perverse things draw Disciples after them Such were the false Prophets mention'd in the precedent Verse of whom our Saviour bids us beware as the most dangerous Enemies of the Gospel and by so much the more dangerous by how much the more sly and cunning who since they should come in their Sheep's-cloathing in the disguise and with the taking pretences of Innocence and Meekness when inwardly they were ravning Wolves full of Hypocrisie Malice and Cruelty he gives us here a badge or cognizance whereby to distinguish them Ye shall know them by their fruits Our Saviour speaks here in general of false Prophets and by them no doubt principally designs all such cunning Seducers as should in process of time pervert the Truth of the Gospel by introducing damnable Heresies into the Christian Church yet so as to glance at the Scribes and Pharisees who by their false Doctrines and Glosses had corrupted the Mosaical Law as he shows they did all along ch 5. expresly naming them there ver 20. and not obscurely describing them here by their Sheep's-cloathing the ordinary habit of the true Prophets in the time of the Law and abus'd by these false ones who had nothing of those Prophets but their Mantle Accordingly I shall consider these words in a twofold Capacity First As they relate to all false Prophets in general And secondly as they concern the Scribes and Pharisees and their Successors in particular And so the Parts will fall out to be three 1. That notwithstanding all their paint and daub false Prophets are to be found out by the true Disciples of Christ Ye shall know them 2. That the proper marks or signs whereby to distinguish them are their fruits Ye shall know them by their fruits This for the Doctrinal part 3. The third thing shall be the Application of it where after some reflexion on the Scribes and Pharisees here pointed at I shall endeavour to show you how far their Modern Successors may be concern'd in their imitation which I suppose will bring all home to our present occasion I begin with the first thing proposed The discovery of False Prophets Ye shall know them That the Church of God has ever been pester'd with False Prophets and shall still be so to the end of the World we learn from 2 Pet. 2. 1. There were false Prophets among the People even as there shall be false Teachers among you A Prophecy sufficiently verified by the constant experience of former and latter Ages God in his most wise Providence so permitting it partly for the tryal of men's Faith partly in his just Judgment on those who love not the Truth and partly for the clearing of that Truth by that very opposition that should be made against it For these and the like reasons as the Scripture plainly tells us there must be Heresies so does it at the same time assure us that they may easily be discovered if we will but make use of that reason God has given us I know there are who can by no means endure to have their Opinions sifted nor their Authority questioned but they are the false Prophets of the Text. Unsound Doctrines can no more endure the touch than false Wares the light Their Sacra Eleusinia Mysteries of Iniquity are venerable only by not being understood like the Turkish Alcoran they must not be lookt into because the very discovery of such fallacies is their confutation Wherein the prudence of Romish Inquisitors is to be commended like that of the unjust Steward though not their honesty Nor can I blame them for not allowing Men the use of so dangerous a weapon as their Reason But our Faith is not to be pinn'd on others sleeves be they never so great or learned nor are we to see with other men's Eyes be they never so quick-sighted Our blessed Lord having taught us to call no man Master on Earth but Himself we must wholly resign up our Understandings to Him to others no farther than our Reason tells us they submit to his And such a judgment of discretion cannot be deny'd the meanest Christian without plainly contradicting those Scriptures which exact it St. John bids us try the spirits and St. Paul prove all things Himself appeals to other judgment I speak as to wise men judge ye what I say And the practice of this Duty is commended in the Beraeans in that they searched the Scriptures whether those things were so as the Apostles preacht although they were assisted by an infallible Spirit And this is no more than what sober Reason will allow For as we are not to condemn all Opinions of Men because there may be Truth among them so neither to approve all because some must needs be false The danger being equal of swallowing all by a blind credulity or rejecting all by a rash precipitancy If we reject all we shall never be in the right and if we embrace all promiscuously to be sure shall ever be in the wrong Therefore unless we will expose our selves to an inevitable necessity of an eternal delusion we must not be debarr'd such a sober exercise of our Understandings as may enable us to distinguish between the Doctrines of God and those of Men it being impossible to know the false Prophets from the true but by stripping them thus of their sheeps-cloathing But who shall know them Our Lord here furnishes an Answer to this Question Ye shall know them Ye my Disciples Ye that doe my will shall know of the doctrine and judge of those that bring it There is a strong Emphasis in this Pronoun Ye If so many be misled by false Prophets 't is a clear Argument that they are none of Christ's Discipiles Nor is it strange that all others should be imposed on For while some are naturally ignorant and cannot others are wilfully negligent and care not to try what is offered them by any hand frighted from an Enquiry either by the imaginary difficulty or trouble of it either unable to judge what is true or desirous for their ease to imbrace any thing be it never so false Again while a third sort are of so squeazy a stomach that they cannot digest any thing but what suits with their carnal appetite nor relish any Doctrine but what makes for the interest of that Flesh they are enslaved to 'T is easie to see why they are so obnoxious to the attempts of those who lie in wait to deceive them and by working on their natural or affected ignorance or which is worse their vices blow them like glass into any shape or form at the pleasure of their breath Nothing is so natural to all men as to err and nothing more common than for most men to be deceived especially when themselves are so willing and God in his just judgment suffers them to be so
yet nothing is so loose as they in effect Trace these Worshippers of Bel by the print of their feet in the ashes and you shall find whither they go and what their pretended Abstinences end in And yet should they in the austerity of their Will-worship go beyond us I am sure Baal s Priests went beyond them such things make them not better than us or make Baal's Priests far better than them while they leave that which God commands them to doe that for which He will never thank them To this I might add as a great Motive to dissoluteness their Catholick implicit Faith while they require Men to believe at a venture as the Church does and so save them the labour of searching A Doctrine easie to flesh and bloud and excellently fitted to the designs as their perpetual Vow of Continency does promote the Lusts of it exposing some to an inevitable Temptation by denying them those remedies which the Gospel freely allows every Man 3. Can any thing more advance the pride of Nature than their Pharisaical Doctrines of Merit and Supererogation which teach Men to purchase their own Glory without being beholding to God's Mercy and by fulfilling his Law to out-brave his Justice Nay that they can doe more than they need and may if they please help their neighbours too What an excellent lesson is this to make Nature run mad of self-conceit while it is assured that it can carve out its own destiny by an exorbitant freedom of Will that Men can dispose themselves to Conversion work out their own Salvation without Christ's help or if not themselves with the assistance of others who can furnish them with a supply out of their super-abundant stock of Merits Thus while they run away with such fond conceits they become careless and negligent of doing any good themselves while they are made to believe that others can doe it for them as if the lashes of Saints supposing them such could heal us as Christ's stripes doe that God's Justice would suffer its self to be paid with any other coyn than that which bears his Son's image and superscription or that his bloud could not be able to cleanse us without being mixt with the water of our own or other men's tears What can be more effectual I say than this to puff up Men with spiritual pride or more derogatory or injurious to the Saviour of the World And yet this is the Doctrine of the false Prophets of Rome who stick not some of them blasphemously to affirm That we are more beholding to the Mother's milk than to the Son's bloud And as their Doctrine of Merit and Supererogation promotes spiritual pride so does that of the Pope's Infallibility and Supremacy as much foment their spiritual and carnal too while by the former they allow no more possibility of Error in St. Peter's than the Pharisees did in Moses's Chair and consequently exclude all hope of any Reformation of the Pope's abuses which all Men must swallow and digest as the dictates of God's Spirit to whom he entitles them and from which there lying no Appeal he may Lord it as he pleases over God's heritage let his pretended Predecessor say what he will to the contrary 1 Pet. 5. 3. and over all the Princes of the Earth too by vertue of his Dabo tibi claves in spight also of the same Apostle 1 Pet. 2. 13 14. Doctrines which serve to swell him up with Pride as that of Transubstantiation fills all his Emissaries with it too which giving them a power to make their God must needs make them look upon themselves as some great ones and the people admire and stand in awe of them who can create their Creator and which is worse sell him too as some of them doe at a lower price than Judas did his Saviour though others can sometimes raise the Market when they see occasion And surely there is nothing more certain than that they doe so as by vertue of this so of their other fore-mention'd Doctrines of Purgatory whereof the Pope keeps the Key as well as of Heaven and has kindled a fire there on purpose to make his Pot seeth of Masses for the Dead who are to be released thence by their own or friends Money and Indulgences to the Living that when they come thither they may also find a quick dispatch being in their description of it as hot though not so close a quarter as Hell its self wherein Men desiring to continue as short a time as possibly they can would be glad at any rate to provide themselves a Pass-port to an easier place To which Doctrines I might add their forbidding of Marriage to many degrees of Men a subtle way too of driving on their Trade of Merchandize For the more Prohibitions the more Dispensations and the more Dispensations the more Money No Peny no Pater-noster with them Thus doe their Doctrines empty themselves still into the Churches Treasury and the Sins of the whole World must be taxed to increase St. Peter's Patrimony though himself could tell us he had neither Silver nor Gold and rather than the Pope's Coffers shall stand empty he will set a price upon Damnation its self and the very Stews shall become Tributary to his Holiness's Purse that so that very Purse may maintain his Grandeur to the lessening of that of all other Princes That these are the aims of such-like Doctrines is plainly discernible by any that have not lost their Senses And surely Purgatory yields him so considerable a Rent that as Bishop Jewell well said the Pope would be content to lose Heaven and Hell too to save that And nothing can render his Indulgences tolerable but this one Consideration That they gave the first occasion to the Reformation of this and all other his Abuses The time would fail me to discover the aims of other Popish principles How some of them doe preach downright Falshood and Injustice such as are the Jusuitical Maximes of No Faith to be kept with Hereticks of Equivocations and mental Reservations whereby they can make any thing signifie any thing of Probabilities and rectifying of Intentions mentioned at large in the Provincial Letters and which the Jesuites have made such excellent use of for deciding Cases of Conscience To which I might add Their uncharitable and non-sensical Principle of their Particular Churches being the Universal Catholick one as the Pharisees and Donatists of old and our over-strict Precisians of late dooming all to Hell who are not of their cut and garb as if none could be saved that were out of their Ark Besides those innumerable burthensome and superstitious Ordinances they load men's Consciences with A yoke as they make it heavier than that of Moses whose whole loins are not so thick as their little finger But I forbear and shall conclude this part with a brief account of their Doctrine of Obedience to Magistrates which how destructive 't is to all civil Government will appear by the
their wrecks And to this purpose like another Aeolus he lets fly his boisterous Winds his Seminary Priests and Jesuits Alas He is the principal Author of our disturbances These but the Instruments who like so many Puppets dance by the motion of his hand 'T is no marvel if these his sworn Vassals his Janizaries in continual pay should advance the Interest and fight for the Cause of their great Lord and General wherein themselves are so much concern'd Nor do they boggle at any thing that may promote it be it never so impious while the good of the Catholick Cause as the Pharisaical Gold did their Altar shall sanctifie all their lewdest practices 'T is no marvel I say that such men should doe any thing who are members of such a Church whose tender mercies are cruelty whose piety butchery religion faction devotion sedition zeal fire and martyrs traytors Surely such Cannibals as daily devour their God will make no bones to swallow up whole States or which is worse to blow them up This was their attempt this day and this is still their design no doubt 'T is no Fable this but a History Habemus confitentes reos What need we any farther Witnesses than the Parties themselves All Garnet's tricks and equivocations at last fail'd him when being put to it he could not deny but that he had a head and hand in it confessing withall that his principal motive to this villany was an Excommunication thundred out against Queen Elizabeth by Pius Q. and Sixtus V. which sticking still on King James as not repealed but rather confirmed by their Successors obliged him in Conscience to attempt the Murther of his Sovereign in obedience to the Pope his greater Lord. This Bill was produc'd in the indictment of the said Garnet and gave occasion to the Oath of Supremacy So that the matter of fact being as clear as the confessions of the Contrivers and Instruments themselves could make it all the subtlety of Papists can never disprove or disguise it Here is no shift no starting-hole left them The Mine was contrived at Rome though 't was to be sprung here at Westminster The Pope himself laid the Train which his Ministers by his order were to give fire to And how near were they to doe it and we to be undone There wanted but a little light Match to have sent up a Church and State into the air Nor did our Enemies make any doubt but that they should have seen us flying there and which was their charity that our Fall thence should have been as low as Hell However lest the Plot should possibly fail as through God's infinite mercy it did of its intended effect they had a Declaration ready to indict the Protestants of that Treason For the Brat would have been too foul for the Pope to father though himself very well knew it was his own natural issue and all the world besides And indeed the very shape and complexion of this Monster shews it not to be of an English Extraction Nothing but the Pope and the Devil could lay such a Cockatrice's Egg nor any but a Jesuite hatch it Let them take it between them and let it remain an eternal blot upon them and their religion guilty of a design than which nothing yet ever lookt more like Hell the darkness and the flames of it being all in it I need not display the horror of it the very prospect thereof being ghastly beyond all expression Let your thoughts supply the defect of my rhetorick and tell you whether such fruits as these be the fruits of the Spirit of God or of his true Prophets Surely their Vine is the Vine of Sodom their Grapes are Grapes of Gall and their clusters bitter And yet how many are there that can relish no other but what an Italian soil produceth though they be as mortal as those of the forbiddentree Without doubt our English palats have been strangely corrupted of late days that we should be so bewitch'd and intoxicated with the cup of Rome's abominations as to suck out the very lees and dreggs thereof with such delight and pleasure I know the troubles of our late Wars have given the Romish Emissaries opportunity of beguiling many who discontented with their sufferings at home and pincht with necessity or offended with the many Sects which the licentiousness of the War had begot or couzened with the pretences of antiquity vanity glory and splendor of the Romish Church and perhaps allured by those pleasing doctrines and opinions whereby their Casuists gratifie Sinners have revolted from us and do still revolt Much talk there is of the increase of Popery and if true 't is not much to be wonder'd at for a Plague is infectious and a Gangreen spreading and evil as well as good communicative But surely Papists need not bragg much of their gain when they consider how and whom they get They are such as we can spare them men that had no religion till they found them one and whose noreligion was better than what they have gotten who living like Atheists that they may seem at least to be of some religion pretend to be Papists and being cast out by us were fit for them to receive These be their prey These their spoils I envy them not such Proselytes who add nothing to the repute of any side but number nor do we lose any thing but what would shame us our Church being but the purer for having such dreggs purg'd out Ancient Rome had at first wanted men to inhabit it if Romulus had not opened an Asylum and modern Rome would not be so much replenished if there were not a Sanctuary there for such Converts Let me bespeak such as St. Paul did his Galatians O ye foolish People who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth That having known God as ye have done ye should turn again to weak and beggarly Elements whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage Lick up your vomit and forsake the truth of God to follow lies and Jewish fables For what is Popery but one great one what are its new doctrines but old heresies patch'd and trick'd up and only so old as to be rotten Look into its practices too whether that which Tacitus says of Rome heathenish be not as true of Rome apostate That all shameless and heinous enormities ran into it as into a common sewer Christian Rome now if I may give it that name is no more like what once it was than Jesuits are like Apostles And yet these be the men ye doat on and if you can get any one of their Tribe into your houses you can say to your selves as Micah did Judg. 17. 13. Now I know the Lord will doe me good because I have a Priest Such a Priest indeed as his was who like a Serpent cherisht in your bosome will sting you to death Let me apply the old Proverb 'T is ill going in Procession where the
quarrels and divisions For this gives all men an equal right to persecute as many as differ from them in Religion For by the same reason that I have a good opinion of my persuasion and call it true because I think it so Another who is as strongly convinc'd of the truth of his may justly and upon equal pretence doe the like It matters not where the truth or error lyes the mischief is still the same For so long as men continue in such a persuasion be it right or wrong they will be sure to act vigorously according to it And it is certain that they who use bad means to compass a good end against others doe arme them with the same power resolution and justice to employ the like when ever occasion serves against themselves And thus you see both the Impiety and the Mischief of pious but misguided Intentions which though not allowable in ordinary practice yet in cases extraordinary some think may be justify'd by that common Maxime That All great Actions have aliquid Iniqui something bad in them which publick advantage afterwards makes amends for How far this may go in State-policy I know not but I am sure it will not pass for good Divinity if our Saviour's word here may be taken or St. Paul's Rule be good Rom. 3. 8. That we must not doe evil that good may come of it Not any the least Moral Evil for the greatest either Temporal or Spiritual Good whatsoever Which Rule some finding too strict and severe for them and those designs they carry on as utterly inconsistent therewith usually plead the Examples of some holy Men in Scripture who having served God by strange violences of fact have for his glory laid hold on Instruments not fit to be used by a Christian As for example Jacob's telling a down-right lye to get his Father's blessing David's making use of Hushai as a spy Elias and Jehu's causing a sacrifice to be proclaimed to Baal with intent to destroy that Idol and its Worshippers and the like Instances of humane frailty which God was pleased to over-look and pardon in those that did them but never intended them as Patterns for us to imitate Many things have been done by good men in their heat which had God's approbation after they were done but not his Law to countenance the doing them and therefore can be no certain Rule for us to go by From what has hitherto been said we may now perceive what ill Commentators they are of those words of our Saviour Compell them to come in who put this sense upon them by threats and torments force them into the Church Than which Doctrine nothing certainly can be more unreasonable but the way of excusing it by a good meaning a fair pretence of advancing God's glory by any though never so bad means as if God would be served by taking in the Devil into his service Surely as the wrath of Man worketh not the righteousness of God so neither can any good end of his if carried on by bad instruments advance his glory He may make great allowances to the miscarriages of sincere but he will never doe it to the errors of such wicked Intentions as are besides his Commission yea and against his express Will and Command Now as this was the Jews and Heathens way so I could heartily wish that many Christians did not follow it The former to wit the Jews had still recourse to their Excommunications and both Jews and Gentiles fell to killing Christs servants out of equal Zeal and pious Intention no doubt The one for their Law and the other for their blind Superstition But neither of these two ways suit with true Christianity As for Excommunication which some Men are so apt immediately to fly to upon every trivial occasion they doe not well siconder what a dreadfull thing it is A forestalling of the great-day of Judgment It is the delivering up of a man to Satan a declaring him to be as a Heathen-man and a Publican one that has nothing to doe with the people of God but is to be cast out of their Church and Company Now as this is the last Remedy to reclaim Sinners by so is it but rarely to be made use of and but in cases extraordinary We do not find that our Lord Himself ever practised it nor any of his Apostles except St. Paul and he but in one Instance He bids us indeed Reject an Heretick after the first and second admonition Tit. 3. 10. Not presently anathematize much less kill him I would they were even cut off that trouble you says he Gal. 5. 12. It was but an I would I could wish it done And when himself did it it was but to one single person and that for an enormous crime Incest nor was it done at last but with much solemnity too by calling on the name of Christ 1 Cor. 5. 4. so seldom even scarce at all were these spiritual arms employed even by those who were Boanerges's Sons of thunder and surely knew best how to manage them And when they did it for the destruction of the flesh that is for the mortifying and destroying the old man for that only is meant there by flesh they did it for the saving of men's souls That their spirits might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus v. 5. Excommunications are such edge-tools as will cut their hands who have not skill to manage them but seldom or never hurt or hit those at whom they are lanc'd at randome Is it not then strange that some men should think to approve their Christianity by ruining that of their Brethren or to secure themselves of Heaven by keeping others out of it Though with these men in the Text they should think it a service to God to kill men's bodies methinks they should not think it one to destroy their Souls How the Council of Trent can be excused in this particular I understand not For who-ever looks into the Canons of that Council will find That as there is scarce any one there without its Anathema so that most of them are either for such matters as cannot deserve so heavy a Censure or for such plain Scripture-truths as deserve none being some of them of Christ's own Institution Nor are these Church-weapons for the most part Bruta Fulmina They carry a fatal Train after them Deposition Absolving Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance to their natural and lawful Sovereigns who are thereupon abandoned to whosoever shall think it fit to kill them follow close upon them These Thunder-claps are not without their Thunder-bolts which will be sure to doe Execution one way or other either on men's Souls or on their Bodies if not on both So that when once People are devoted to Hell all the mischiefs of the Earth immediately pursue them The Instance of this Day 's intended work is an evident demonstration of this Truth For he who was a main Instrument in the