other Anabaptists though most necessarily cut off by the sword of the Magistrate for their blasphemous opinions and lawless Tenets tending to the utter subversion of all Civill government The Anabaptists in their Dialogues published in the English tongue in Queen Maries dayes though they craftily withdrew many of their Anarchicall Tenets agreeing almost verbatim with the workes since penned by James Arminius and the latter Anabaptists doe extoll that Servetus as a Prophet of the Lord and their numbers are at this day so increased as they constitute or make a considerable party in divers parts of Christendome But those cursed enemies of the truth that thinke by persecuting it to abolish it as they fight against God himselfe in so doing so have they heretofore and shall still in despight of all their devillish policy for the time to come increase and propagate the same This if all other Instances wanted would sufficiently appeare in that famous example of an English Schoolmaster a most zealous Papist in the dayes of King Edward the sixt who afterwards in the beginning of Queen Maries government frequenting the fires of some of the Martyrs was so convinced with hearing what they spake and seeing how chearfully they suffered as he himselfe relinquishing the former ignorance and idolatry he had so long embraced at last witnessed the truth with his own bloud Not he onely but many thousands also besides were doubtless inabled by the cleare shining of those fires to discerne the foulnesse of those mysteries of darkness under which they had been so long held captive And after her short Raigne infamoused by so much bloud-shed was expired it facilitated the way for her royall sister Elizabeth to restore the truth at an easie rate When the Executioner came behind John Hus to kindle the pile that encompassed him Come hither my friend said he and kindle it here before for had I feared what thou bringest I had not appeared at this Stake to day His death brought so incredible progresse to the true Church in Bohemia as did also that of Jerome of Prague his Contemporanie that their bloudy persecutors had just cause within a few yeares after their decease to acknowledge their own errour in having hastened their ends As fruitfull a seed-time to the Church in France proved the death of Annas Burgus a Senator of Paris in the yeare 1559. under Francis the second A man he was so vertuous and innocent in his life as some of the very enemies of the Truth laboured his delivery when he was in prison and so resolute and chearfull in his death as it incouraged thousands in that Kingdome in the constant profession of the Reformed Religion What better successe had all the bloudy executions of Ferdinand de Toledo that merciless Duke of Alva and of his new erected Bishops in the lower Germany but that the Gospel at the last got the victory over hell and all the powers of darkness Neither indeed could those cruell Inquisitors have expected other issue had they but truly considered what Religion had been and that Princes and States may command the bodies but not the soules and consciences of men Which having been once perswaded by Instruction and Information to embrace and beleeve any opinions though hereticall and therefore much more the Truth it selfe can never be driven from them but by the same meanes of a further and more cleare Instruction The godly have ever lookt upon chaines prisons racks and fires as the tryall and reward of their faith more fearing to doe evill then to suffer evill well knowing that they shall neither suffer more nor their cruell enemies be able to inflict more then God shall turne to his own endlesse glory and their everlasting good Did the Heathen Poet desire to be sent back to the Mines a life more tedious then that of the Gallyes rather then he would commend a few bad Verses contrary to his judgement Could Epicurus that impure Philosopher say of a wise man that if he were scorched in Phalaris Bull he would not be moved with it but onely cry out Dulce est ad me non attinet Or the young Stoick in Gellius to maintaine the Apathie of his Sect neither groane nor frowne in the midst of a burning feaver And shall we thinke that Gods Saints who have their reason heightened and irradiated by grace and their soules immoveably founded upon a lively and living faith will feare to lose their estates liberties and lives for the Truths sake No doubtless but as the Gold is tryed by the Furnace and cleared from the drosse so in time of persecution they shall be discerned from all hypocrites Atheists Libertines and Time-servers whatsoever SECT. X. BUt oh that Princes and Great ones would shake off those fleshflyes and Sycophants who tell them the contrary and know the Truth to be that nothing can more infamouze their raignes and memories to Posterity nothing bring more inevitable ruine to their Persons nothing finally prove so deadly a Consumption amongst their posterity as to inforce the Consciences of their Subjects by fines imprisonments subscriptions recantations depauperations and death Charles the fift having obtained the Imperiall Chaire by the money and meanes of Henry the eighth of England was the most potent Emperour that ever Germany had as long as he maintained the peace of Religion but having yeelded to the Popes instigations and prospered a while in his intended extirpation of the Truth he found at last by experience what his brave and valiant Generall Castaldus had foretold him That these violent proceedings would in the end prove fatall to himselfe For having first fled away at mid-night in a cold and rainy season from Onspruch for feare of the Protestant Army he was afterwards in stead of setling his sonne Philip in his own Chaire which he had fully intended faine to surrender up the Empire to Ferdinand his Brother who for divers moneths before had entred into a secret league with the Protestant Princes of Germany and so having lived a few yeares after in a despised and disconsolate solitude heat last ended his life very ingloriously His sonne Philip the second the most inveterate enemy of the Gospel that ever lived did not onely set up Shambles and Butcheries for Gods Saints in most of his own large Dominions by his Inquisitors but continually ayded the Rebells in France England and Ireland against their lawfull Soveraignes and plotted to invade all other Protestant Dominions in Christendome that so at last by one generall carnage of them all he and his holy Father the Pope might have shared the Christian world by a double Monarchy of the Church and Empire between them But did this bloudy Prince prosper in these his ambitious and cruell designes Certainly nothing lesse for what got he by his invading France by land England and Ireland by Sea and by his large Pensions conferred on the traytors and secret enemies of either State but that in the issue having wasted about
Great and Lewes the Good in France ordaine for such as were counted Sectaries in their times Neither did those three hundred and eighteen Fathers in the first Nicene Councell those six hundred and thirty in that of Chalcedon or those hundred and fifty in that of Constantinople use any other weapons against the same Arrians Nestorians and Macedonians then the Word of God nor stirred they up or permitted the Christian Magistrate in their dayes to punish them by death Paulus Aquiliensis and Cedrenus doe also both of them report that when the Emperour Justinus used clemency towards the very Arrian Heretiques Theodoricus the King of Italy being infected with the same poyson did notwithstanding led by that example suffer the Orthodox Christians to have the free exercise of their Religion in all his Dominions Wee shall need no further examples to prove this truth when it is confessed by one of the most learned and best Romanists of our age that there is no approved example in all the Monuments of Antiquity of any execution done upon the Sectaries of those times but that the Church of God did alwayes abhorre the shedding of bloud in matters that meerly concern Religion Jac. Aug. Thuanus Prooem. in Histor. p. 5. SECT. VI IT is likewise contrary to the practice of the best Princes and the wisest States of this latter age of the world to make matter of heresie it selfe a capitall crime Francis the first of that name King of France having decreed a persecution against the poore Protestants of Merindoll and Cabrieres and being informed by William Bellay Lord Langay Governour of the Province that they were harmless men very laborious in their callings just in their dealings loyall to their Prince charitable to the poore and very frequent in their prayers to God their innocency being likewise cleared in a great measure by Cardinall Sadolet himselfe he caused them to be freed from further persecution till being falsly informed by one Minerius a turbulent fellow that there were fifteen thousand of them up in armes in rebellion he rashly gave them over to the fury of their enemies yet not as Heŕetiques which he alwayes accounted them but as Traytors as he was then mis-informed of them In Germany Ferdinand the first taught by the error of Charles the fifth his elder Brother found no such meanes to make his Government happy and his Empire flourishing as to decree the liberty of Religion Which course the good Emperour Maximilian his Sonne following dyed as happy as he lived victorious The Venetian State indure no Inquisitors in matters of Religion nor if any of their Subjects be accused of Heresie doe they suffer it to be questioned before any of the Clergy alone who are thirsty after bloud but before them joyntly together with their Civill Judges The first Monarch in England that made matter of Religion a capitall crime by a publick Act or Statute was the usurper Henry the fourth who having by the perswasion and assistance of Thomas Arundell that traytor Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow-Prelates deposed and murdered his lawfull Soveraigne Richard the second to curry favour with those bloudy Canniballs was forced to yeeld to the murdering of Gods Saints since whose time the bloud of the Martyrs in England have proved the seed of the Church although by the short raigne of that Kingdomes unfortunate Mary their number comes far short of those in France and the seventeene Provinces in which two Dominions within the space of little more then five yeares the curious searcher may finde by diligent inquisition that Gods truth was sealed under Charles the ninth of France and Philip the second of Spaine with the bloud of near upon two hundred thousand Martyrs amongst whom were slaughtered divers great and eminent personages of both sexes a cruelty that very Mahumetans doe abhorre as it appeared by that which the Ambassadours sent from Abas-Meriza the Persian Sultan to the Emperour Rodolph in the yeare 1604. did alledge to justifie the mercifull Government of that Empire to wit that all Christians had free liberty of Conscience in all their Soveraignes Dominions and therefore they exhorted his Imperiall Majesty to joyn in a firme league with him against their common enemy the Turke SECT. VII AS it is against the practice of the Primitive Church the course held by the Christian Emperours and the observation of the wisest Princes and States of the latter age though otherwise Pontifician to make matter of heresie a capitall crime to inforce the Conscience and to put to death for the cause of Religion meerly so it is against the Rules of charitie and reason First It is against the Rules of charity if we had no other light to guide us but the most wise answer of Englands last matchlesse Edward being then but a childe when he was pressed to yeeld his assent to the burning of an Heretique What said he shall I send him to hell By which he truly intimated that whereas in all other offences the Malefactors are punished with death because it may be hoped they have repented the sinne but to destroy an Heretick before conviction is to be the Devils Catour and to send him in provision even to Hell it selfe For the very pertinacious holding of an Heresie is agreed on by all sides to be a damnable sinne and then the cutting them off in that sinne is to be the immediate Instrument of their perdition This doth that virulent Romanist or monster of men Nicholas Harpsfeild in his Wiclevian History openly boast of Cap. 16. p. 717. That those blessed Champions of Christ whom he calls Heretiques did in the fires that consumed their bodies taste the first-fruits of the eternall fire they endured afterwards On the other side if they suffer not but for feare of death hope of preferment or other base ends turne from one Religion to another especially from the truth to errour and Idolatry without instruction or reasonable conviction they onely dissemble outwardly as the Moores of Gran ido did under that bloudy Philip the second of Spaine who being enforced to be present at the Masse in the morning practised their own Mahumetanisme in the evening or els their conscience being shipwracked by their Apostasie before conviction with Francis Spira they are swallowed up of despaire or with Peter Espinae Archbishop of Lions of the Henetick faction in Henry the fourths time of France with lust and Epicurisme who practised that emasculating sinne with his own sister The Jews in England from Willian the firsts time till the eighteenth yeare of Edward the first were the onely Usurers of the Realme and brought in large contributions and tallages to the Kings under whom they lived and enjoyed here the freedome of their consciences At their deaths their whole Estates escheated to the King which their next heires commonly redeem'd for one full third part of three But to incourage them to turne Christians it was appointed in the Assize by which they were
govern'd under their own proper and peculiar Justices that if any Jew dyed whose heire became a Christian he should inherit all the estate of his Ancestors without any further sine or composition with the Prince The Master of the Rolls-house in London and other places in other Cities of the Kingdome were appointed for the entertainment of those Christian converts and were thence called Domus Conversorum All which may clearly be gathered out of those Records of the Exchequer commonly called The great Pipe Rolles and the Communiâ— Rolles By which allurements some of the Jewes out of malice to their fellowes or having committed some penall offence to escape the punishment practised amongst themselves or els for lucre sake the sin of avarice being connaturall to most of them were baptized and became Christians outwardly without any due instruction in the Christian faith before-hand and being convinced also that the Papists adoring or bowing to and towards Images Altars Reliques and the like trumpery was absolute Idolatry against the second Commandement they proved as commonly the Jewes and Christians at this day do when they turn Turks the wretchedest varlets in the whole Kingdome What were the poor Indians wont to say when to avoid the Spaniards extreame and inhumane cruelties they were drawn to their Masses but that since they became Christians they had learned to swear and drink It was an excellent and just sentence which one of the Grand Seignienrs pronounced against divers hundreds of Christians that falling down-before him made declaration that they had deserted their Sacra and given up their names to Mahomet he inquired of them why they did so and they confessing plainly that they did it to be freed from those many taxes contributions and oppressions which they before groaned under he rejected their enforced conversion for outward ends and commanded their taxes and levies to be continued This Heroick action of the Turkish Monarch was not much short of that policie of one of the ancient Christian Emperours who having his Army mixed of Christians and Pagans and desiring to discover who of the first were little better then those of the latter made like another Jehu a publike Declaration for the restoring of Paganisme upon which divers of the Christian Commanders shewing themselves forward to desert the truth and to follow the stream and time he presently reproved and cashier'd them alledging that all such were unworthy to serve any Prince that had proved unfaithfull to that divine Majesty by which Princes rule SECT. VIII AS it is against the Dictamen of Christian Charity to make matter of Religion a capitall crime or to enforce the conscience without a full and clear conviction from the profession of one Religion to another or to any new burthensome Ceremonies to be superadded in the publick worship of God although the Religion it self remain the same it was before in the generall so it is against the rules of Reason it self This was confessed by Henry 3. of France one of the most impotent Princes that ever swayed that Scepter and most inveterate enemy that ever the Protestants had having been instructed to hate betray and persecute them by Katherine de Medices his bloudy mother even from his very Cradle yet when James Clement a Jesuited Monk had sheathed a knife in his bowels and that hee saw himself neer the minute in which hee was to give an account of all his cruelties to the supreme Judge of Heaven and earth he made an effectuall speech to the chief Commanders of his Army being most of them Romanists To acknowledge and obey the King of Navar then a Protestant as their lawfull Soveraigne and the lineall heire of the French Crown and to know this undoubted truth for the future That Religion which is distilled into the souls of men by God himself cannot he enforced by man The same truth likewise and almost in these very words did the Lord Brederode and the other Protestants of the lower Germany alledge for their just excuse in their united Apologie published in the yeere 1566. and further added That if the Papists did conceive their Religion to be the truth they should in sieed of blood fines imprisonments and exilings follow the seasonable advice of wise Gamaliel and try a while whether the Protestants separation from them were of God or not for otherwise if by force and tyrannie they did compell them to professe and practice those actions in Gods worship which they accounted abominable and did also restrain them from performing those holy duties towards God wherein they were convinced the truth of his service consisted their consciences must needs be shipwracked and undone and so in stead of making them new Converts they should leave them Atheists and Libertines This very objection also in the yeere 1572 did Katherine de Medices of Florence then Queen mother of France though she little practised the truth of the Consequence make in the Treaty of marriage of Francis de Valois her youngest sonne with Queen Elizabeth of England The great rub pretended on both sides though the match was never really intended by either Queen was matter of Religion in which that glorious Virgin Monarch having given her Ambassador expresse instructions not to yeeld so far as that the Duke of Alenzon should be permitted the celebration of his Masse in private What Mr. Walsingham saith the Queen-mother upon his next audience Will your Mistresse have my Son turn Atheist and professe no Religion at all For with your Church he cannot joyn till he be further instructed and you will not suffer him to continue those Sacra by which hee hath hitherto served God what shall hee turn Heathen till you have converted him Though this unfortunate Lady did by this her wise answer discover the true madnesse of all persecutors yet did she not forbeare to bath her cruell hands for many yeers after in the blood of Gods Saints and caused many as St. Paul witnesseth of himself before his conversion to blaspheme by their ejuration of the known truth and their subscriptions to the Popish trumperies of which some that persisted in Papistry turned prodigious sinners and libertines and others with the King of Navar and Prince of Conde as soon as they got loose returned to the known truth The heroick answer of that brave Prince John Frederick Elector and Duke of Saxonie is worthy to be ingraven in leters of gold on pillars of brasse who being taken prisoner by the Emperor Charles the fifth in the yeer 1547. and threatened with present death except he would renounce and yeeld up his Electorate and Dutchie to his false and treacherous Cousin Maurice and become a Romanist yeelded readily to all the former conditions but absolutely refused the latter And when in the yeer following that wicked interim was yeelded unto by all the Princes of Germany some being driven by fear and others drawn on by flattery which was That Popery should be restored in all places till
thirty millions of money upon those fruitless designs and not gained a foot of ground in either of those Realmes he lost a great part of the Seventeen Provinces with whom having broken the Oath solemnly sworne to them upon his Inauguration they by assistance of England and France freed themselves from his unjust oppression and tyranny Neither did the divine Justice let him so escape but raised a fire in his own house so as the Jeast of Augustus touching Herod might well be verified in him That it had been better to have been his swine then his sonne For whereas he had issue by Mary his first wife the daughter of John the third of that name King of Portugall one onely sonne called Charles a Prince of admirable towardlinesse he during the life of Englands unhappy Mary his second wife treated a marriage for his said sonne with Elizabeth the eldest daughter of Henry the second of France During the treaty Mary his wife dying he marries the Princesse Elizabeth himselfe intended for his sonne they both often in private after never forgetting their old affection lament their unhappy losse each of other the sonne also distasts his Fathers cruelties and the butcheries of his Inquisitors This enraged his jealous Father who having in the yeare 1568. first imprisoned him within a few dayes after poysoned him in a dish of broath His Mother in Law followed him within a few moneths after sent out of the world by the same kind hand and meanes say the French Writers the violence of the poyson causing her to miscarry also by an abortion And then was Philip the Father put to seek out a fourth wife and having married Anne the daughter of Mary his own naturall sister he had issue by her Ferdinand and James both cut off by death in their Infancy and Philip who being the onely issue of this incestuous Match lived to inherit his Fathers Dominions though not the full measure of his cruelties having been perhaps forewarned by his sad and loathsome end to pursue a more milde and peaceable Government Rodolph the second of that name Emperour of Germany not following the steps of the wise Maximilian his Father but of the foresaid Philip his Brother in Law sought by all secret and hostile means to enervate and destroy Religion in the Empire What got he by it but to have the curse of the Scripture to fall upon him That the Elder Brother should serve the younger for Matthias the Arch-Duke of Austria raising an Army in the yeere 1608. and joyning his Forces with those of the oppressed Protestants in Bohemia hemmed up his brother Rodolph in Prague got the Kingdom of Hungary from him in possession the Empire in reversion and left him only the robes and complements of Majesty which notorious affront he did not long over-live nor ever had the means or power to revenge SECT. XI IF wee passe out of Spain and Germany from the House of Austria into France to consider the sad successes of the Princes of the Valesian line upon their hatred and persecution of Religion wee shall see so many instances of Gods just indignation against them as they may not only leave to all posterity a just ground of admiration but save us the labour also of searching any further back into the elder Histories of Gods judgements powred out on the persecuting Emperours in the Primitive times Henry the second of France was meanly married to Katherine de Medices the Niece of Pope Clement the seventh during the life of Francis the Dolphine his elder brother afterwards poysoned That prudent Prince Francis the first his Father deceasing hee succeeded him in his Throne and Purple and swayed the French Scepter divers yeers with much tranquillity and happinesse till loathing the coiture of his Queen unfit indeed for a Princes bed he grew highly enamoured on Pictavia of Valence a woman of exquisite beauty and good extraction with whom hee long after lived in continuall advowtrie and was by her enticed to the persecution and slaughter of the Protestants in the yeere 1553. that so by the confiscation of their lands and goods shee might enrich her self and her kindred This persecution set a period to all his former victories and was followed the next yeere with the losse of the City of Senis in Italy to the Spaniard the death of that gallant old Generall Leo Strozzi by a base hand and the overthrow of the French Army by James de Medices In the yeer 1556. the violence of persecution was again renewed against the Professors of the Truth and the very next yeer following as before God again gave up the French Army to the slaughter of the Spaniards and the Dutch at the fiege and battell of St. Quintins in which there were about 3000. slain upon the place and many of them signall men and the Town soone after taken in by assault Annas Duke of Memorancie himself the Constable of France Gasper de Colignie Earle of Caestilion Admirall of France the Marshall of St Andrew the Duke of Longevile and a number of other great Peers were taken prisoners In summe the losse and slaughter was so great and fatall to the French as it well-neer equalled that victory obtained by the Duke of Bourbon at the battell of Pavia in Italy against Francis the first his Father yet Henry the second still shuts his eyes against the cause of all these losses and having his heart already cauterized by lust he not only caused the godly to be committed to the flames but would needs view their torments himself as a pleasing spectacle and had conspired and combined with Philip the second of Spain his new Sonne in Law for the utter ruine and finall subversion of Geneva Nay but a few houres before his death in the yeer 1559. Lodowick Faber and Annas Burgus two Senators of Paris because they had spoken a little freely for the innocency and piety of the Protestants in the open Senate were imprisoned upon his expresse command in the Bastile in the same City by Gabriel Earle of Mongomery one of the Captains of his Guard and the persecution against all others of the same profession grew hot and furious when the King upon the 29th of June the same yeere running at Tilt with that very Earle of Mongomery and neer the very Baslile where the Senators remained prisoners was struck with a splinter of Mongomeries speare through his eye into his brain and never had the happinesse to speak any one word after though he survived the wound a few dayes or to acknowledge his former lust and cruelty Had the Papists but such an instance of Gods immediate providence in vindicating their cause we should soon heare of one true miracle amidst so many false and adulterate But if wee further looke to Gods hand that followed this Prince in his posterity it will yet seem the greater Miracle for of five sons hee had all except one died without lawfull issue to survive them
at any time excused by the inadvertent default of the Priest admits the losse opposition And I have often wondred why some of that active rabble could not as well and as secretly on the sudden have supposited true flesh instead of the Hostia as they have by an insensible legerdemaine sprinkled pure and lively bloud from a lancinated singer upon the Wafer Cake it selfe Certainly there is no truth in Scripture more plainly set down then that doctrine of the Church of England and of the more Orthodox reformed Churches in which they maintaine and teach that Christs body is ascended into heaven and there remaineth as visibly and circumscriptively as it did upon earth before it ascended that it is onely present given and taken in the Sacrament after an heavenly and spirituall manner and that to worship it or make it a sacrifice are blasphemous and dangerous deceits from all which it will undoubtedly and necessarily follow that Christs body is no more present at the Sacrament really and carnally after the words of Consecration then it was present with the Bread before it was brought into the Church or with that which is left after the administration of the Sacrament ended and is carried againe out of the Church where also it may as lawfully be adored as at any time during the holy administration it selfe each adoration being grosse Idolatry Were the ignorantest men and silliest women able in Queene Maries dayes to assert this truth even by dispute against those bloudy Bishops and Idolatrous Priests that would have obtruded Christs reall presence in the Sacrament and their blasphemous sacrifice of the Masse upon them and after to die for it and shall wee not thinke thousands will be now ready also in all humilitie and patience to lay downe their lives for the same Truth How dangerous in all ages this idolatrous adoration or bowing to Images Altars the Hostia Reliques and such other trumpery hath been to the very moderate Papists themselves appeares by a pretty relation in the History of learned De Thou That Francis the second in the yeare 1559. being perswaded by the Cardinall of Lorraine and some others of his faction that there was no way to discover and irretiate the Protestants like that of their Images did cause them to be erected and set up with Candles burning before them in severall streets and eminent places of Paris to which there assembled divers tankard-bearers scullions and other such like of the dregs and scumme of the people who to the shame of the Priests and all Church-Discipline prophanely chanted and sang before them And when any passed by were he Papist or Protestant if he did not presently deliver them money towards the maintenance of those Tapers and adore the Idoll they fell upon him and not contented to make him tast of their fists and handy-blowes or to throw him into the dirt and trample on him did after all those grosse abuses carry him to prison there to be further questioned many sober Papists having hast of businesse not seeing the Images or otherwise not regarding the disorderly carroling of such a company of Varlets were by them basely assaulted beaten and spoiled to the great distaste and open repining of the best and discreetest Citizens though otherwaies truly caec-obedient and zealous Romanists SECT. XXII YEt must we not think that Heresie or Heretiques ought so to be indulged as thereby to be confirmed and made more pertinacious in their heresies They ought to be instructed reproved and discountenanced and if they prove irrecoverably obstinate exiled Wee see God himself commanded the Jewes to put an Idolater and a blasphemer to death and though I do not conceive that to be an Evangelicall precept but onely a judiciall law proper and peculiar to that people and Church yet doubtlesse it may thence by the rule of Analogie be concluded that where Idolatry and Heresie are mixed together as amongst Papists and Montanists or Altar-adorers or where blasphemy and heresie meet in one as amongst the Arrians Pelagians or Anabaptists the followers of Sebastian Castellio and James Arminius there a more severe course may be warrantably practised to stop the dispersing of that poyson then for the suppressing of any other Heretiques who are not guilty of those two abominations but onely hold some lesser errours Incomparable Monsieur de Thou saith in the Preface before his History dedicated to Henry the Great of France that exile or banishment was the first and greatest punishment that ever the ancient Church inflicted upon Heretiques which on all sides is acknowledged to have been a true Church as wee see in the banishment of the Manichees under those two pious Emperors Theodosius Valentinian and in the exilement of divers kinds of Heretiques under Constantine and Marcianus But when men have joyned either open rebellion and treason or proditorious positions to their Religion as the Papists or have maintained Anarchicall Theses as a part of their doctrine condemning Monarchie Magistracie and all civill government as the Anabaptists In these cases although they did absolutely defend dogmaticall and fundamentall errors yet were their exilement or a greater punishment justly inflicted on them because the case is now altered from matter of conscience to matter of offence crime Had the Protestants been but once guilty of such an unmatched villanie as the Powder-plot was in any part of the world where they are tolerated they had doubtlesse been for ever rooted out from thence for though some desperate Romanists only were ingaged in the execution yet in the generall questionlesse all the Recusants of England knew that a great action was in hand against Church and State and that their Romish Synagogue was to be erected in Great Britain upon the ruines of them both And for the prosperity of it as Henry Garnet himself confessed they all prayed Nay when divers English Papists admonished by the guilt of their own conscience fled upon the discovery thereof into France and were kindly received there by the Governour of Callis and he comforting them in respect they had left their countrey estates and friends No saith one of them to him again Wee grieve not at all for those losses but that so brave and excellent an action meaning the Powder-treason had no better successe At which answer the said Governour was so extremely incensed as hee often after himself related to the same de Thou who delivers the Story that hee verily thought to have precipitated the varlet headlong into the sea And as for their Romish doctrines manifestly tending to treason conspiracy and rebellion they were so exactly collected together into one bo ly by learned Bishop Morton and published in the yeere 1605. a little after the discovery of that treason as wee shall need a great deal of charity to believe they can be good subjects in and under any Protestant Prince or State Neither do the Anabaptists come much short of the Papists in their dangerous tenets or