Prophecys Concerning the Return of POPERY INTO ENGLAND SCOTLAND AND IRELAND BY Arch-bishop Vsher Mr. Herbert Dr. D. Pareus Mr. Burroughs Mr. Selden Mr. Baxter Dr. M. Luther Arch-bishop Grindal Bishop Jewel Bishop Gauden Mr. Hooker Dr. Sutcliffe LONDON Printed for A. Bancks MDCLXXXII Prophecies Concerning the Return of Popery into England Scotland and Ireland JAmes Vsher late Lord Arch-Bishop of Armagh Primate of Ireland being asked by a Gentleman of his acquaintance what his thoughts were of a very great Persecution which should fall upon the Church of God in these Narions of England Scotland and Ireland of which he had spoken with great confidence many years before when we were in the highest and fullest state of outward peace and Settlement The Gentleman asked him whether he did believe those sad times to be past or that they were yet to come to which he answered that they were yet to come and that he did as confidently expect it as ever he had done adding that this said Persecution would fall upon all the Protestants Churches of Europe The other replyed that he did hope it might have been past as to these Nations of our since he thought that though we who are the People thereof have been punished much less than our sins have deserved and that our late Wars had made far less Devastations than War commonly brings upon those Countries where it pleaseth God in Judgment to suffer it yet we must needs accknowledge that many great Houses had been Burnt Ruined and left without Inhabitants many great Families Impoverished and undone and many thousand Lives also had been lost in that bloody War and that Ireland and Scotland as well as England had drunk very deep of the Cup of God's Anger even to the overthrow of the Government and the utter desolation almost of a very great part of those Countries But this holy man turning to him and fixing his eye upon Him with that Serious and Irefull Look which he usually had when he spake God's Words and not his own and when the power of God seemed to be upon and to constrain him to speak which the Gentleman could easily discern much to differ from the Countenance wherewith he usually spake to him He said thus Fool not your self with such hopes for I tell you all you have yet seen hath been but the beginning of sorrows to what is yet to come upon the Protestant Churches of Christ who will er'e long fall under a sharper Persecution than ever it hath been upon them and therefore said he Look you be not found in the outward Court but a worshiper in the Temple before the Altar for Christ will measure all those that profess his name and call themselves his People and the outward worshipers he will leave out to be trodden down by the Gentiles The outward Court says he is the formal Christian whose Religion lies in performing the outside without shewing any inward life and duties of Christianitie Power of faith and love uniting them to Christ and these God will leave to be trodden own and Swept away by the Gentiles but the worshipers within the Temple and before the Altar are those who do indeed worship God in Spirit and in Truth whose souls are made his Temples and he is honoured and adored in the most Inward thoughts of their Hearts and they Sacrifice their lusts and vile affections yea and their own wills to him and these God will hide in the hollow of his hand and under the shadow of his Wings and this shall be one great difference between this last and all the other proceeding Persecutions for in the former the most Eminent and Spirituall Ministers and Christians did generally suffer most and were most violently fallen upon but in this last Persecution these shall be preserved by God as a seed to partake of that glory which shall Immediately follow and come upon the Church as soon as ever this storm shall be over For as it shall be the Sharpest so it shall be the shortest Persecution of them all and shall onely take away the grosse Hypocrites and formal Professors but the true Spiritual Believers shall be Preserved till the Calamity be overpast The Gentleman then asked him by what means or Instruments this great Trial should be brought on He answered by the Papists the other replyed that it seemed to him very Improbable they should be able to do it since they were now little Countenanced and but few in these Nations and that the Hearts of People were more Set against them than ever since the Reformation He answered again That it would be by the hand of Papists and in the way of sudden Massacre and that he the then Pope would be the chief Instrument of it He then added that the Papists were in his own opinion the Gentiles spoken of in the 11th of the Revelation to whom the outward Court shall be left that they might Tread it under Foot They having received the Gentiles worship in their Adoring Images and Saints departed and in taking to themselves many Mediators and this said he the Papists are now designing among themselves and therefore be sure you be ready Mr. George Herbert REligion stands on tip-toe in our Land Ready to pass to the American Strand When height of Malice and Prodigious Lusts Impudence sinning Witchcrafts and distrusts The marks of future bane shall fill our Cup Unto the Brim and make our Measure up When 〈◊〉 shall swallow Tiber and the Thames By letting in them both pollutes her Streams When Italy of us shall have her will And all her Calender of sins fullfill Whereby one may foretell what sins next Year Shall both in France and England Domineer Then shall Religion to America fle They have their times of Gospel ev'n as Wee Mr. David Pareus Professor of Divinity in Heidelberg THere shall arise a King out of the Nation of the most Illustrious Lilie having a long fore-head high Brows great Eyes and an Eagles nose He shall gather a great Army and destroy all the Tyrants of his Kingdom and slay all that fly and hide themselves in Mountains and Caves from his face For righteousness shall be Joyned unto him as the Bridegroom to the Bride with them he shall wage War even unto to the fourtieth Year bringing into Subjection the Islanders Spaniards and Italians Rome and Florence he shall destroy and burn with fire so as Salt may be sowed on that Land The greatest Clergyeman who have invaded Peters Seat he shall put to Death and in the same Year obtain a double Crown at last going over Sea with a great Army he shall enter Greece and be named King of the Greeks the Turks and Barbarians he shall subdue making an Edict that every one shall die the Death that worshipeth not the Crucified one and none shall be found able to resist him because an holy arme from the Lord shall always be with him And he shall possesse the Dominion of the Earth these
or not much prejudiced against the Popish Errours or are indifferent for any Religion which is most easie or pleasing These at length will wrap to the Roman party as the most specious of any so that unless there be a speedy restauration of the honour of the Church of England I see not how it is possible to prevent that fatal relapse either to Romish superstition and slavery or else to a dreadful persecution which will in time necessarily follow those dissipations and destructions of this Reformed Church its Minstry Government and Religion which some men have already too much and still do beyond measure so industriously promote to the excessive joy and gratifying of the Popish party and designs which are not onely invasive upon the honour and freedome of this Nation but highly scandalous to our Reformed Profession and dangerous to our consciences especially as we yet stand convinced of the Errors Superstitions and Sacriledges of the Romish Religion since it lapsed from the Primitive Institutions of Christ the patterns of the Apostles the ancient Communion of Christian Churches and the fraternal Co-ordination of Bishops who were alwayes united in orderly happy and harmonious Aristocracies rather than subordinate to any one Monarchical Supremacy as to Ecclesiastical Power and Jurisdiction however they had such regulation and primacy of order by Patriarchs and Metropolitans among Bishops and the representers of several Churches as become wise men that were numerous when they met in great Councils or Church Assemblies Nor do these wilely Romanists exercise their malice against this Reformed Church onely with their own strength and dexterity but they have other oblique Policies and sinister Practices by which they set on work the hot heads and pragmatick hands of all other Sects who pretend the greatest Antipathies to popery and yet most promote its interests by their Factions and fanatick Practises by their heedlesse and hedlesse their boundlesse and endlesse Agitations which blast all true Reformation and bring nothing but Division and Confusion For among these there are a sort of people who affect Supremacy in Church and state too a spiritual and temporal Dominion no lesse than doth the Pope of Rome there among them many petty Popes who would fain be the great and onely Dictators of Religion whose opinionative pride and projects are as yet of a lesse volume and blinder print but they every day mediate and agitate new Editions of their power and larger additions to their parties and designs being as infallible in their own conceits as imperious in their spirits and magisterial in their censures as the proudest Popes of Rome not doubting to condemn and excommunicate any private Christians and Ministers yea whole Christian Churches yea and the best Reformed in the world such as England was if they be not just of their form and fashion or if they will not patiently submit to their multiform and deformed Reformations by which they daily with-draw true Reformation to such a small thread that losing its strength and integrity it must needs snap in pieces and become uselesse the strange fires of blind popular preposterous and sacrilegious Zeal so over-boyling true Religion and sober Reformation till they are utterly confounded and quenched with such fordid and shamefull deformities as must needs follow their Divisions Distractions and Despiciencies as to all Church-order Christian unity and Ministerial authority Thus many heady and giddy Professors have been so eager to come out of Babylon that they are almost run out of their wits and far beyond the bounds of good consciences so jealous of Superstition that they are Panders for Confusion so scared with the name of Rome that they are afraid of all right Reason and sober Religion so fearful of being over-righteous by following vain traditions of men that they fear not to be over-wicked by over-throwing the good foundations of Order Honour Peace and Charity which Christ and his Apostles have laid in his Church fierce enemites indeed against the Idolatry of Antichrist but fast friends to Belial and Mammon to Schisme and Sacriledge which having no fellowship with God and Christ must needs belong to the party of Antichrist which contains a circle of Errours while Christ is the centre of Truth And we know that parts diametrically opposite to each other may yet make up the same circumferences and be at equal distance from the centre so may Practises and Opinions which seem most crosse against each other yet at Herod and Pilate alike conspire against Christ and true Religion like vicious extremes which are contrary to each other and yet uncorrespondent with that virtue from which they are divided But the end or effect following their actions though possibly not some of their intentions will be this to prepare by these various windings confused circulations and distorted wrestings of the Reformed Religion the way for Roman factors Papal interests and Jesuitick designes whose learned abilities orderly industry and indefatigable activity is such that by that time the old stock of Reverend orderly and authoritative Bishops and Presbyters the truest and most unquestionable Ministers of the Church of Christ are worn out in England and the reformed Religion is reduced with its titular and extenuate Ministers to a meer medly or popular Chaos of confusions the most of sober people being either sick or shamed or weary of their home bred disorders and unremedied diseases in Religion By this time I say the Romish agitators will not onely devour all these petty parties and feeble factions of Reformers with as much ease as the Stork did the Frogs but they will in time utterly destroy the remains of the defamed Doctrine and deformed Religion which your fore fathers owned and to the death professed as most true and well reformed with great Honour Holiness and Happiness which yet the ignorance and insolence the Illiterateness and Rusticity the Barrenesse and Barbarity of novel Sects have already rendred poor and despicable much to be pitied and deplored both at home and abroad I must ever so far own my reason as to professe that I look upon the Defamers Dividers and Destroyers of the Church of England whatever they are or seem to be no other than the perdues or forelorn hope of Popery which by lighter skirmishes open advantages to the Popes main Battaglio the Vancourriers or Harbingers sent and excited in great part from the Pragmatick Policies of Rome whose grand interest since the Reformation hath been not more to advance the House of Austria and preserve the Papacy than to regain the Church of England to the Romish slavery Certainly these petty parties who scarce know what they drive at and are full of varieties in their Fancies Forms and Factions these cannot produce so constant a current and so strong a tide as is always urging against the Church of England and the honour of the Reformed Religion but they are driven on by a subtle and secret yet potent impulse as waves of the sea not
life Some other for lack of knowledge follow after willful and blind masters and become Arrians or Pelagians and thus they blaspheme the Son of God Some others give themselves over to their own affections and as he saith rejoyce and triumph in their filthiness without fear of God without conscience of sin and so tread down the blood of the Testament under feet and this do they for lack of teaching because they have not learned men and preachers to shew them what they should do O saith our Saviour Christ the good shepherd and bishop of our souls my harvest is beaten down and lost and there is none that will go abroad and save it My people run headlong to their own destruction not of Malice but of very simplicity only because they are not taught because they know not my father nor me Also it is not my fathers will that any of them should be lost But for the hope of posterity I report me to all you which are fathers and have children for whom you are careful Although your selves have a zeal and care for the house of God yet will you breed them up keep them at School until four and twenty years old to your charges that in the end they may live in glorious poverty that they may live poorly and naked like the Prophets and Apostles Our posterity shall rue that ever such fathers went before them And Chronicles shall report this contempt of learning among the punishments and murrains and other plagues of God They shall leave it written in what time and under whose raign this was done Or if we grow so barbarous that we consider not this or be not able to draw it into Chronicle yet fortain Nations will not spare to write this and publish it to our everlasting reproach and shame In the mean time what may be ghessed of their meaning which thus ravin and spoil the house of God which decay the provision thereof and so basely esteem the Ministers of the Gospel they cannot say to God The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up Howsoever in other things they do well howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means forraign power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done unto us as we be for suffered the truth of God shall be taken away the holy Scriptures burnt and consumed in fire A marvellous darkness and calamity must needs ensue For if the tempest be so dark in the sea that the load-star lose her light and the needle tail to give token of the North Pole no marvel though the ship lose her course and be swallowed in the sands The Gospel of Christ is the fountain of light and of knowledge It cannot be maintained by ignorance and darkness These be the props of their kingdom which take away the Scriptures which hold the people in blindness which flie the light which have their common prayers minister the Sacraments marry bury their dead in a strange tongue that the people may understand nothing which make a famme of hearing the word of God which stop up the springs of the water of life which take away the keys of the kingdom of Heaven and neither enter in themselves nor suffer them that would enter which say ignorance is the mother of devotion and the Church is then in best order and the people most devout when they are hood-winckt and blinded and see nothing These are not fit instruments wherewith we may overcome the adversaries This is not the sword of the spirit these are not the spiritual weapons which cast down holds and every high thing that is exalted against the kingdom of God When man that would keep out his enemy will pull down his holds what Captain that meaneth to give a forcible assault upon the enemy will discourage his fighting souldiers but our Souldiers are out of courage our Castles are falling therefore that which we tear will fall upon us Bishop Gauden THese and such like are the uncouth expressions used to usher it under the names of Liberty Curiosity sublimity nothing but Ignorance Idleness Atheisme Barbarity Irreligion and utter confusion in this Church or at best as I shall afterward more fully demonstrate they are but van-courriers or agitators for Romish superstitions and Papalusurpations the end of all this gibberish is Venient Romani Put all these fine fancies and affected phrases together with all those strange phantasms in Religion which of late have haunted this Church like so many unquiet vermin or unclean spirits truely they spell nothing but first popular extravagances which are the embasings and embrovlings of all true and reformed Religion next they portend Popish interests and policies prevailing against this Church and state whose future advantages are cunningly but notably wrapt up in these plebeian furies and fondnesses as grocery wares are in brown paper Be confident the spirit of Rome which is very vigilant and and active doth then move most potently upon the face of our English waters when there is to be seen nothing but a sea of confusion a meer Chaos of the Christian and Reformed Religion Which feared deluge and by wise men forseen devastation of the Reformed Religion once wisely established honourably maintained and mightily prospered in the Church of England is already much spread and prevalent among many people under the plea and colour of I know not what liberty to own any or no Minster any or no Religion any none or many Churches in England The visible decayes and debasings of the true and Reformed Religion in England as to piery equity unity and charity as to the authority of its Ministry and solemnity of its Ministrations are so palpable both in the outward peace and profession also in the inward warmth and perswasion that it is high time for all sober and wise men that love God Religion and their Country mightily to importune the mercies of God that breathing upon us with a spirit of meekness and wisdom truth and love humility and honesty he would at length asswage that deluge of contempt and confusion the troubled and bitter waters of wrath and contention which have overwhelmed the highest mountains of this Church over-topping by their salt waves and aspersions the gravest wisest most learned and religious both Preachers and Professors of the Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation Which licentious insolencies have made all sober Christians so sick weary and ashamed of them that they cannot but be infinitely grieved to see and fore-see the low ebbe to which the Reformed Religion in its purity and power must in time fall in England while the pristine dignity and authority of the Evangelical Ministry is so invaded baffled and depised while the authentick derivation and Catholick succession of that holy power is so
such opinions and customes which are but the rust and drosse the disease and deformity of Christian Religion contracted in the long ignorance darknesse and almost barbarity of times which God winked at but now they appear highly and justly scandalous yea intolerable to more judicious and lesse credulous Christians who are very sensible not onely of that offence which many Papal Injunctions and Observations give to themselves as Christians but also to the very Heathens to Jews and to Mahometans who cannot teconcile in any Reason or Religion the Idolatrous use of Images and Hoasts among Papists to which they must submit if they will be in communion with them or converted to be Christians nor yet those Tridentine Terrours and Anathemas of eternal damnation which are thundered by them against all those who will not against God's expresse Words own as Truth and submit to as necessary those opinions and practices among Papists which seem either impious or impertinent as to true Faith and a good Conscience Against all which burthens too heavy for any wise and generous Christians to bear when once duly informed of the weight and danger of them and duly reformed from them as the great Wisdom Piety and Order of the Church of England in its sacred Ministry and holy Ministratious was heretofore the greatest barre and bulwark in all the Christian world so the disadvantge of the Reformed Religion are now so palpable and the danger of the people of this Nation as so obvious in their returning to that Egypt and Babylon again which is not the Church of Rome but its disease and opression that I know not in ordinary providence any means can be used or is left to stop the daily prevalencies of Popery and the great Apostasie of England to the Romish superstition and subjection in after-times unlesse God stir up such Wisdome Zeal and Care in those that have honest hearts joyned with publick power and influence not so much to fleece and depress Popish Recusants by pecuniary exactions which is to set Religion to sale and to make merchandize of mens errours rather than fairly to perswade and win them by the proper and perswasive engines of true Religion but rather duly to restore and speedily assert the Honour Order Succession Unity Authority and Majesty of this Reformed Church and its Catholick Ministry from which when the Papists see our selves to be such profound Revolters with what face can we expect they should ever come into our Reformation which they now behold with joyful and disdainful eyes so mangled so deformed so massacred by our owns hands How can we with Justice Honor or Humanity inflict severe penalties upon Papists as refusing to conform to our Church and Religion when they protest with so much truth to our faces they cannot see any Church any Religion among us as uniform publick authentick constant What they say formerly had the goodliest figure and fairest presence of a Christian Church and the best Reformed of any is now deformed ruined demolished nothing but scattered rafters and pieces of that ship-wrackt vessel now appear floating up and down in a restless and foaming sea of faction opposition and confusion between Bishops Ministers and People some are Episcopal others Presbyterian a third sort Independant all are disparate or opposite in Discipline some are Heterodox in Doctrine the Anabaptists rise against all and the Quakers so are above all To which of all these with many other Sects shall an honest-hearted Papist apply himself to be safe and setled in Religion If to the poor and depressed remains of Bishops and the Episcopal Clergie who yet adhere to the Church England alas they are weak and exhausted contemned by many pitied some but asserted by few or none according to their true merit in former ages or their present Worth Courage Constancy and Patience in this If the Romanists go to the Presbyterian party which like small shoots spring out so thick in England upon the cutting down of Episcopacy to which they all formerly submitted these besides their Levity Parity and In constancy as to their former Stations Opinions and Oaths seem so unseasonably insolent and magisterially domineering before they had got a full and just dominion that all sober men think them rather popular plebeian and impertinent in their heats transport and passions than so modest wise and grave as becomes those who will undertake to wrest Government out of the hands of their superiours and betters every way and to impose a novelty of untried and undesired Discipline upon such a great and stout Nation as England is which disdaining the insolency of Popes and offended at the indiscretion of some Bishops will hardly ever bear the pertnesse of petty Presbyters who cannot want Vanity Impudence and Arrogancy when they fancy themselves in a supremacy of Power above people Parliaments and Princes for they affect no lesse as Christ's due and theirs too If the tossed Romanists run to the spruce and self-conceited Independents for shelter because these fine new Masters seem to have patents for Christian Liberty and urge a Magna Charta from Christ to be accountable to none in matters of Religion but their own little Congregation Church or Body in which as in an Ecclesiastick Corporation or free Borough of Religion they may hang and draw exercise high and low Justice upon mens souls as they list in their little Conventicles yet here the poor Papist finds so much of a rude and exotick novelty such a grosse shew of Schisme such variety such an inconsistency such a plebeian petulancy such pitiful and ridiculous affections and arrogating of Church-power in some of the plebs and such contempt of it in others that he cannot think it is other than some pieces of Josephs bloody coat or some torn limbs of his body Compared to what Splendour Order Strength Beauty Unity Decency and Majesty in Doctrine and Discipline in Faith and holy Duties was formerly to be observed even to the envy and admiration of sober Papists in the Church of England how much more in the Antient and Catholick Churches grand combinations from which these petty fractions and crumblings of Christians seem most abhorrent and dissonant This goodly Cedar then of the Church of England being thus broken and hewn down and nothing like it or comparable to it planted in its room but such Shrubs and Mushromes as grow of themselves out of the rankness of the earth vulgar humours and passions under whose shade any Egyptian Vermine Frogs or unclean Birds may hide themselves no wonder if the Papists triumph in their sufferings and constancies if they despise all our Presbyterian Independent Anabaptistick and fanatick Novelties if they rejoyce in that vengeance which they conclude God hath made upon our Schismes Errours Obstinacies and Persecutions against them by our mutual confusions Hence must daily and necessarily follow secret inclinations and accessions to the Roman party by all those who are not well grounded in the Reformed Religion