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A50367
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A true copy of a letter written by N. Machiavill in defence of himself and his religion translated from an original copy.
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Neville, Henry, 1620-1694.; Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527. Works. English. 1675.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing M141; ESTC R4918
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22,326
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35
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the appointment of the Apostle and by the Principles of Christianity to be obeyed and submitted to in things wherein the Fundamental Laws of the Government give them power though they were Iews or Gentiles If I should tell you by what Texts in Scripture the Popes claim the Powers before mentioned it would stir up your laughter and prove too light for so serious a matter yet because possibly you may never have heard so much of this Subject before I shall instance in a few They tell you therefore that the Jurisdiction they pretend over the Church and the Power of pardoning Sins comes from Christ to St. Peter and from him to them Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church I will give thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven what ye bind this is spoken to all the Apostles on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and what ye bind c. From these three Texts ridiculously apply'd comes this great Tree which hath with its Branches overspread the whole Earth and killed all the good and wholsome Plants growing upon it The first Text will never by any Man of Sense be understood to say more than that the Preaching Suffering and Ministry of Peter was like to be a great Foundation and Pillar of the Doctrine of Christ the two other Texts as also another spoken by our Saviour to all his Apostles Whose Sins ye remit they are remitted and whose Sins ye retain they are retained are by all the Primitive Fathers Interpreted in this manner Wheresoever you shall effectually Preach the Gospel you shall carry with you Grace and Remission of Sins to them which shall follow your Instructions but the People who shall not have these joyful tidings communicated by you to them shall remain in darkness and in their Sins but if any will contest that by some of these last Texts that Evangelical Excommunication which was afterward brought into the Church by the Apostles was here pre-signified by our great Master how unlike were those Censures to thos◠〈◊〉 thunder'd out as he calls it by the Pope These were 〈◊〉 Edification and not Destruction to afflict the Flesh for the Salvation of the Soul that Apostolical Ordinance was pronounced for some notorious Scandal or Apostacy from the Faith and first decreed by the Church that is the whole Congregation present and then denounced by the Pastor and reached only to debar such Person from partaking of the Communion or Fellowship of that Church 'till Repentance should re-admit him but was followed by no other prosecution or chastisement as is now Practised But suppose all these Texts had been as they would have them how does this make for the Successors of St. Peter or the rest Or how can this prove the Bishops of Rome to have right to such Succession But I make haste from this Subject and shall urge but one Text more which is The Spiritual Man judgeth all Men but is himself judged of none From whence is inferred by the Canonists that first the Pope is the Spiritual Man and then that he is to be Judge of all the World and last that he is never to be liable to any Judgment himself whereas it is obvious to the meanest Understanding that St. Paul in this Text means to distinguish between a Person inspired with the Spirit of God and one remaining in the state of Nature which latter he says cannot judge of those Heavenly Gifts and Graces as he explains himself when he says The natural Man cannot discern the things of the Spirit because they are foolishness unto him To take my leave of this matter wholly out of the way of my Studies I shall beg of you Messieur Zenobio and of Messieur Giulio and the rest of our Society to read over carefully the New Testament and then to see what ground there is for Purgatory by which all the Wealth and Greatness hath accrew'd to these Men what colour for the Idolatrous Worship of Saints and their Images and particularly for speaking in their Hymns and Prayers to a piece of Wood the Cross I mean Salve Lignum c. and then fac nos dignos beneficiorum Christi as you may read in that Office what colour or rather what excuse for that horrid unchristian and barbarous Engine called the Inquisition brought in by the Command and Authority of the Pope the Inventer of which Peter a Dominican Fryer having been slain amongst the Albigesi as he well deserved is now Canoniz'd for a Saint and stiled San Pietro Martire In the dreadful Prisons of this Inquisition many Faithful and Pious Christians to say nothing of honest Moral Moors or Mahometans are tormented and famisht or if they out-live their Sufferings burnt publickly to death and that only for differing in Religion from the Pope without having any Crime or the least Misdemeanor prov'd or alledged against them and this is inflicted upon these poor Creatures by those who profess to believe the Scripture which tells us that Faith is the gift of God without whose special illumination no Man can obtain it and therefore is not in Reason or Humanity to be punished for wanting it And Christ himself hath so clearly decided that point in bidding us let the Tares and the Wheat grow together 'till the Harvest that I shall never make any difficulty to call him Antichrist who shall use the least Persecution whatsoever against any differing in Matters of Faith from himself whether the person so diffenting be Heretick Iew Gentile or Mahometan Next I beseech you to observe in reading that Holy Book though Christian Fasts are doubtless of Divine Right what ground there is for enjoyning Fish to be eaten at least Flesh to be abstained from for one full third part of the year by which they put the Poor to great hardship who not having Purses to buy wholsome Fish are subjected to all the Miseries and Diseases incident to a bad and unhealthful Diet whilst the Rich and chiefly themselves and their Cardinals exceed Lucullus in their Luxury of Oysters Turbots tender Crabs and a Lake Fish not known here brought some hundreds of miles to feed their gluttony upon these penitential days of abstinence from Beef and Pork It may be it will lie in the way of those who observe this to inquire what St. Paul means when he says that in the latter days some shall depart from the Faith forbidding to Marry and commanding to abstain from Meats which God hath Created to be received with thanksgiving But all these things and many other abuses brought in by these perverters of Christianity will I hope e're long be inquired into by some of the Disciples of that bold Fryer who the very same year in which I prophesied that the Scourge of the Church was not far off began to thunder against their Indulgences and since hath question'd many Tenents long received and impos'd upon the World I shall conclude this Discourse after I have said a word of the
Iews into Superstition Formality and Hypocrisie to die for the Salvation of Mankind and in fine to give to us the Holy Spirit and to regenerate our Hearts support our Faith and lead us into all Truth Now if it shall appear that as the lusts of our first Parents did at that time disappoint the good intention of God in making a pure World and brought in by their disobedience the Corruptions that are now in it so that since likewise the Bishops of Rome by their insatiable Ambition and Avarice have designedly as much as in them lies frustrated the merciful purpose he had in the happy restoration he intended the World by his Son and in the renewing and reforming of Humane Nature and have wholly defac'd and spoil'd Christian Religion and made it a Worldly and a Heathenish thing and altogether uncapable as it is practised amongst them either of directing the ways of its Professors to Vertue and good Life or of saving their Souls hereafter If I say this do appear I know no reason why I for detecting thus much and for giving warning to the World to take heed of their ways should be accused of Impiety or Atheism or why his Holiness should be so enraged against the poor Inhabitants of the Vallies in Savoy and against the Albigesi for calling him Antichrist But to find that this is an undoubted Truth I mean that the Popes have corrupted Christian Religion we need but read the New Testament acknowledged by themselves to be of Infallible Truth and there we shall see that the Faith and Religion Preacht by Christ and settled afterwards by his Apostles and Cultivated by their Sacred Epistles is so different a thing from the Christianity that is now Profest and Taught at Rome that we should be convinc'd that if those Holy Men should be sent by God again into the World they would take more pains to confute this Gallimaufry than ever they did to preach down the Traditions of the Pharisees or the Fables and Idolatries of the Gentiles and would in probability suffer a new Martyrdom in that City under the Vicar of Christ for the same Doctrine which once animated the Heathen Tyrants against them Nay we have something more to say against these Sacrilegious Pretenders to God's Power for whereas all other false Worships have been set up by some Politick Legislators for the Support and Preservation of Government this false this spurious Religion brought in upon the ruines of Christianity by the Popes has deform'd the face of Government in Europe destroying all the good Principles and Morality left us by the Heathens themselves and introduced instead thereof Sordid Cowardly and Impolitick Notions whereby they have subjected Mankind and even great Princes and States to their own Empire and never suffer'd any Orders or Maximes to take place where they have power that might make a Nation Wise Honest Great or Wealthy This I have set down so plainly in those Passages of my Book which are complain'd of that I shall say nothing at all for the Proof of it in this place but referr you thither and come to speak a little more particularly of my first assertion That the Pope and his Clergy have depraved Christian Religion Upon this Subject I could infinitely wish now Letters begin to revive again that some Learned Pen would employ it self and that some Person verst in the Cronology of the Church as they call it would deduce out of the Ecclesiastical Writers the time and manner how these Abuses crept in and by what Arts and Steps this Babel that reaches at Heaven was built by these Sons of the Earth But this matter as unsuitable to the brevity of a Letter and indeed more to my small Parts and Learning I shall not pretend to being one who never hitherto studied or writ of Theology further than it did naturally concern the Politicks therefore I shall only deal by the New Testament as I have done formerly by Titus Livius that is make Observations or Reflections upon it and leave you Messieur Giulio and the rest of our Society to make the judgment not citing like Preachers the Chapter or Verse because the reading of Holy Scripture is little us'd and indeed hardly permitted amongst us To begin at the top I would have any reasonable Man tell me whence this unmeasurable Power long claim'd and now possest by the Bishop of Rome is derived first of being Christ's Vicar and by that as I may so say pretending to a Monopoly of the Holy Spirit which was promised and given to the whole Church that is to the Elect or Saints as is plain by a Clause in St. Peter's Sermon made the very same time that the miraculous Gifts of the Spirit of God were first given to the Apostles who says to the Iews and Gentiles Repent and be Baptised every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ for the Remission of Sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost for this Promise is to you and to your Children and to all that are afar off even as many as the Lord our God shall call Next to judge infallibly of Divine Truth and to forgive Sins as Christ did Then to be the Head of all Ecclesiastical Persons and Causes in the World to be so far above Kings and Princes as to Judge Depose and Deprive them and to have an absolute Jurisdiction over all the Affairs in Christendom in Ordine ad Spiritualia yet all this the Canonists allow him and he makes no scruple to assume whilst it is plain that in the whole New Testament there is no description made of such an Officer to be at any time in the Church except it be in the Prophecy of the Apocalypse or in one of St. Paul's Epistles where he says Who is it that shall sit in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God Christ tells us his Kingdom is not of this World and if any will be the greatest amongst his Disciples that he must be Servant to the rest which shews that his Followers were to be great in Sanctity and Humility and not in Worldly Power The Apostle Paul writing to the Christians of those times almost in every Epistle commands them to be obedient to the Higher Powers or Magistrates set over them and St. Peter himself from whom this extravagant Empire is pretended to be deriv'd in his first Epistle bids us submit our selves to every Ordinance of Man for the Lord's sake whether it be to the King or c. And this is enjoyn'd although it is plain that they who Govern'd the World in those days were both Heathens Tyrants and Usurpers and in this submission there is no Exception or Proviso for Ecclesiastical immunity The Practice as well as Precepts of these Holy Men shews plainly that they had no intention to leave Successors who should deprive Hereditary Princes from their right of Reigning for difference in Religion who without all doubt are by