speedily executed Wherein the Lord made knowne unto them both how unpleasant and odious the prophanation of his Sabbath was in his sight and how seriously and carefully every one ought to observe and keepe the same Now albeit that this strict observation of the Sabbath was partly ceremoniall under the Law and that in Christ Iesus we have an accomplishment as of all other so also of this ceremony He being the true Sabbath and assured repose of our soules yet seeing we still stand in need of some time for the instruction and exercise of our Faith it is necessary that we should have at least one day in a weeke to occupy our selves in and about those holy and godly exercises which are required at our hands and what day fitter for that purpose than Sunday which was also ordained in the Apostles time for the same end and called by them Dies Dominicus that is the day of our Lord because upon that day he rose from the dead to wiâ— the morrow after the Iewes Sabbath being the first day of the weeke to which Sabbath it by common consent of the Church succeeded to the end that a difference might be put betwixt Christians and Iewes Therefore it ought now religiously to be observed as it is also commanded in the civill law with expresse prohibition not to abuse this day of holy rest in unholy sports and pastimes of evill example Neverthelesse in stead hereof we use the evill imployance abuse and disorder of it for the most part for beside the false worship and plentifull superstitions which reigne in so many places all manner of disorder and dissolutenesse is in request and beareth sway in these dayes this is the day for tipling houses and tavernes to be fullest fraught with ruffians and ribalds and for villanous and dishonest speech with lecherous and baudy songs to be most riâ—e this is the day when dicing dauncing whoring and such noysome and dishonest demeanors muster their bands and keep ranke together from whence foame out envies hatreds displeasures quarrels debates bloud sheddings and murthers as daily experience testifieth All which things are evident signes of Gods heavy displeasure upon the people where these abuses are permitted and no difference made of that day wherein God would be served but is contrarily mostdishonored by the overflow of wicked examples And that it is a thing odious and condemned of God these examples following will declare Gregory Turonensis reporteth That a husbandman who upon the Lords day went to plough his field as he cleansed his plow-share with an yron the yron stucke so fast into his hand that for two yeares hee could not be delivered from it but carried it about continually to his exceeding great paine and shame Another prophane fellow without any regard of God or his service made no conscience to convey his corne out of the field on the Lords day in Sermon time but hee was well rewarded for his godlesse covetousnesse for the same corne which with so much care he gathered together was consumed with fire from heaven with the barne and all the graine that was in it A certaine Nobleman used every Lords day to goe a hunting in the Sermon while which impiety the Lord punished with this judgement he caused his wife to bring forth a childe with a head like a dog that seeing he preferred his dogs before the service of God hee might have one of his owne getting to make much of At Kimstaâ— a towne in France there lived in the yere of our Lord 1559 a certain covetous woman who was so eager upon the world and greedy of gaine that she would neither frequent the Church to heare the word of God her selfe nor suffer any of her family to doe it but continually abode labouring and toyling about drying and pilling flax and doing other domesticall businesses neither would she be reclaimed by her neighbours who admonished and dehorted her from such untimely works One Sabbath day as they were thus busily occupied fire seemed to issue among the flax without doing any hurt the next Sabbath day it tooke fire indeed but was quickly extinct for all this she continued obstinate in her prophanenesse even the third Sabbath when the flax againe taking fire could not be quenched till it had burnt her and two of her children to death for though they were recovered out of the fire alive yet the next day they all three died And that which was most to be wondred at a young infant in the cradle was taken out of the midst of the flame without any hurt Thus God useth to exercise his judgements upon the contemners of his commandements The Centuriators of Magdeburge intreating of the manners of Christians made report out of another history that a certaine husbandman in Parochia Gemilacensi grinding corne upon the Lords day the meale began to burne Anno Dom. 1126 which though it might seeme to be a thing meere casuall yet they set it downe as a judgement of God upon him for breaking the Sabbath As also of that which they speake in the same place of one of the Kings of Denmarke who when as hee contrary to the admonition of the Priests who desired him to deferre it would needs upon the day of Pentecost make warre with his enemy died in the battell But that may be better knowne to us all which is written in the second booke of Macchabees of Nicanor the Iewes enemy who would needs set upon them on the Sabbath from which when other the Iewes that were compelled to be with him could no way disswade him he was slaine in the battell and most miserably but deservedly handled even the parts of his body shamefully dismembred as in that History you may read more at large Therefore in the Councell at Paris every one labouring to perswade unto a more religious keeping of the Sabbath day when they had justly complained that as many other things so also the observation of the Sabbath was greatly decayed through the abuse of Christian liberty in that men too much followed the delights of the world and their owne worldly pleasures both wicked and dangerous They further adde Multi nánque nostrum visu multi etiam quorundam relatu dedicimus c. For many of us have been eye-witnesses many have intelligence of it by the relation of others that some men upon this day being about their husbandry have been strucken with thunder some have been maimed and made lame some have had their bodies even bones and all burnt in a moment with visible fire and have consumed to ashes and many other judgements of God have been and are daily Whereby it is declared that God is offended with the dishonour of so high a day And our time hath not wanted examples in this kind whosoever hath observed them when sometimes in the faires upon this day the Wares have swumme in the streetes sometimes the scaffolds at Playes have falne downe
was this onely denounced but executed also as we may reade 1 Kin. 22. 38. 2 Kin. 9. 36 37 c. 2 Kin. 10. 7 c. Amaziah the Priest of Bethel under Ieroboam the wicked King of Israel perceiving how the Prophet Amos prophesied against the Idolatry of that place and of the King he falsly accused him to Ieroboam to have conspired against him also he exhorted him to flie from Bethel because it was the Kings Chappell and flie into Judah and prophesie there but what said the Lord unto him by the Prophet Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword and thy land shall be divided by line and thou shalt die in a polluted land Loe there was the punishment of his false accusation How notable was the judgement that the Lord manifested upon Hamon the Syrian for his false accusing of the Jewes to be disturbers of the Common-wealth and breakers of the lawes of King Ahasuerosh Did not the Lord turne his mischief upon his own head The same day that was appointed for their destruction the Lord turned it to the destruction of their enemies and the same gallowes which he prepared for Mordecai was he himselfe hanged upon The men that falsly accused Daniel to King Darius for breaking the Kings edict which was that none should make any request unto any for thirty dayes space save onely to the King himselfe fared no better for when as they found Daniel praying unto God they presently accused him unto the King urging him with the stability which ought to be in the Decrees of the Kings of Media and Persia that ought not to be altered in such sort that King Darius though against his will commanded Daniel to be throwne amongst the Lions to be devoured of them but when he saw how miraculously the Lord preserved him from the teeth of the Lions and thereby perceived his innocency he caused his envious accusers to be thrown into the Lions den with their wives and children who were devoured by the Lions ere they could fall to the ground Notorious is the example of the two Judges that accused Susanna both how she was delivered and they punished But let us come to prophane â—istories Apelles that famous Painter of Ephesus felt the sting and â—â—tternesse oâ— this venomous viâ—er for he was falsly accused by Antiphilus another Painter an envier of his art and excellent workemanship to have conspired with Theodota against King Ptolomie and to have been the cause of the defection of Pelusium from him which accusation he laid against him to the end that seeing he could not attain to that excellency of art which he had he might by this false pretence worke his disgrace and overthrow as indeed he had effected had not great persuasions been used and manifest proofes alledged of Apelles innocency and integrity wherefore Ptolomie having made triall of the cause and found out the false and wrongfull practise he most justly rewarded Apelles with an hundred talents and Antiphilus the accuser with perpetuall servitude upon which occasion Apelles in remembrance of that danger painted out Calumniation on this manner a Woman gayly attired and dressed with an angry and furious countenance holding in her left hand a torch and with her right a young man by the hair of the head before whom marched an evill favoured sluttish usher quicke-sighted and pale-faced called Envy at her right hand sat a fellow with long eares like King Midas to receive tales and behinde her two waiting maids Ignorance and Suspition And thus the witty Painter to delude his own evill hap expressed the lively Image and nature of that detracting sin This tricke used Maximinus the Tyran to deface the Doctrine and Religion of Christ in his time for when he saw that violence and torments prevailed not but that like the Palme the more it was trodden and oppressed the more it grew he used this subtilty and craft to undermine it he published divers bookes full of Blasphemy of a conference betwixt Christ and Pilate and caused them to be taught to children in stead of their first elements that they might no sooner speak than hate and blaspheme Christ Moreover he constrained certain wicked lewd women to avouch that they were Christians and that vile filthinesse was dayly committed by them in their assemblies which also he published far and near in writing howbeit for all this the Lords truth quailed not but swum as it were against the stream and encreased in despight of Envy and for these false accusers they were punished one after another with notable judgements for one that was a chiefe doer therein became his owne murderer and Maximinus himselfe was consumed with wormes and rottennesse as hath beene shewed in the former Booke It was a law among the Romans that if any man had enforced an accusation against another either wrongfully unlawfully or without probability both his legs should be broken in recompence of his malice which custome as it was laudable and necessary so was it put in execution at divers times as namely under the Emperour Commodus when a prophane wretch accused Apollonius a godly and profest Christian and afterward a constant martyr of Christ Jesus before the Judges of certaine grievous crimes which when he could by no colour or likelyhood of truth convince and prove they adjudged him to that ignominious punishment to have his legs broken because he had accused and defamed a man without cause Eustathius Bishop of Antioch a man famous for eloquence in speech and uprightnesse of life when as hee impugned the heresie of the Arrians was circumvented by them and deposed from his Bishopricke by this meanes they suborned a naughty strumpet to come in with a childe in her armes and in an open Synod of two hundred and fifty Bishops to accuse him of adultery and to sweare that hee had got that childe of her body which though he denied constantly and no just proofe could be brought against him yet the impudent strumpets oath tooke such place that by the Emperours censure hee was banished from his Bishopricke howbeit ere long his innocency was knowne for the said strumpet being deservedly touched with the finger of Gods justice in extreame sicknesse confessed the whole practise how she was suborned by certaine Bishops to slander this holy man and that yet she was not altogether a lyar for one Eustathius a handy-crafts man got the childe as shee had sworne and not Eustathius the Bishop The like slander the same hereticks devised against Athanasius in a Synod convocated by Constantine the Emperour at Tyrus for they suborned a certaine lewd woman to exclaime upon the holy man in the open assembly for ravishing of her that last night against her will which slander he shifted off by this devise he sent Timotheus the Presbyter of Alexandria into the Synod in his place who comming to
and an extreme infection putrifying his lower parts and beginning to feele in this life both in body and soule the rigour of eternall fire prepared for the devill and his angels Iohn Martin Trombant of Briqueras in Piemont vaunting himselfe every foot in the hinderance of the Gospell cut off a Ministers nose of Angrogne in his bravery but immediately after was himselfe assayled by a mad Woolse that gnawed off his nose as hee had done the Ministers and caused him like a mad man to end his life Which strange judgement was notoriously knowne to all the countrey thereabout and beside it was never heard that this Woolfe had ever harmed any man before Caspard of Renialme one of the Magistrates of the City of Anvers that adjudged to death certaine poore faithfull soules received in the same place ere hee removed a terrible sentence of Gods judgement against himselfe for he fell desperate immediately and was faine to be led into his house halfe beside himselfe where crying that he had condemned the innocent bloud he forthwith died CHAP. XIII Other examples of the same subject ABout the same time there happened a very strange judgement upon an ancient Lawyer of Bourges one Iohn Cranequin a man of ripe wit naturall and a great practitioner in his profession but very ignorant in the law of God and all good literature and so enviously bent against all those that knew more than himselfe and that abstained from the filthy pollutions of Popery that he served instead of a Promotor to inform Ory the Inquisitor for them but for his labour the arme of God stroke him with a marvellous strange phrensie that whatsoever his eyes beheld seemed in his judgement to be crawling serpents in such sort that after he had in vaine experienced all kinde of medicines yea and used the help of wicked sorcery conjuration yet at length his senses were quite benummed and deprived him and in that wretched and miserable estate he ended his life Iohn Morin a mighty enemy to the professors of Gods truth one that laboured continually at Paris in the apprehending and accusing the faithfull insomuch that he sent daily multitudes that appealed from him to the high Court of the Palace died himselfe in most grievous and horrible torment The Chancellour of Prat he that in the Parliaments of France put up the first bill against the faithfull and gave out the first commissions to put them to death dyed swearing and blaspheming the name of God his stomacke being most strangely gnawne in pieces and consumed with wormes The Chancellour Oliver being restored to his former estate having first against his conscience renounced his religion so also now the same conscience of his checking and reclaming he spared not to shed much innocent bloud by condemning them to death But such a fearefull judgement was denounced against him by the very mouths of the guiltlesse condemned soules that stroke him into such a feare and terrour that presently he fell sick surprised with so extreme a melancholy that sobbing forth sighes without intermission and murmurings against God he so afflicted his halfe-dead body like a man robbed and dispossest of reason that with his vehement fits hee would so shake the bed as if a young man in the prime of his yeares with all his strength had assayed to doe it And when a certaine Cardinall came to visit him in this extremity he could not abide his sight his pains increasing thereby but cried out as soone as he perceived him departed That it was the Cardinall that brought them all to damnation When he had been thus a long time tormented at last in extreme angish and feare he died Sir Thomas more L. Chancellour of England a sworne enemy to the Gospell and a profest persecutor by fire and sword of all the faithfull as if thereby he would grow famous and get renowne caused to be erected a sumptuous Sepulchre and thereby to eternize the memory of his prophane cruelty to be engraven the commendation of his worthy deeds amongst which the principall was that hee had persecuted with all his might the Lutherans that is the faithfull but it fell out contrary to his hope for being accused convicted and condemned of high Treason his head was taken from him and his body found no other sepulchre to lie in but the gibbet Cardinall Crâ—sâ—entius the Popes Embassadour to the Councel of Trent in the yeare of our Lord 1552 being very busie in writing to his Master the Pope and having laboured all one night about his letters behold as he raised himselfe in his chaire to stir up his wit and memory over-dulled with watching a huge blacke dog with great flaming eyes and long eares dangling to the ground appeared unto him which comming into his chamber and making right towards him even under the table where hee sate vanished out of his sight whereat he amazed and a while sencelesse recovering himselfe called for a candle and when he saw the dog could not be found he fell presently sicke with a strong conceit which never left him till his death ever crying that they would drive away the black dog which seemed to climbe up on his bed and in that humour he died Albertus Pightus a great enemy of the Truth also insomuch that Paulus Iovius calleth him the Lutherans scourge being at Boloigne at the coronation of the Emperor upon a scaffold to behold the pompe and glory of the solemnization the scaffold bursting with the weight of the multitude he tumbled headlong amongst the guard that stood below upon the points of their Halbards piercing his body cleane through the rest of his company escaping without any great hurt for though the number of them which fell with the scaffold was great yet very few found themselves hurt therby save onely this honourable Pighius that found his deaths wound and lost his hearts bloud as hath been shewed Poncher Archbishop of Tours pursuing the execution of the burning chamber was himselfe surprised with a fire from God which beginning at his heele could never be quenched till member after member being cut off he died miserably An Augustine Frier named Lambert Doctor and Prior in the City of Liege one of the troop of cruell inquisitors for Religion whilest he was preaching one day with an open mouth against the Faithfull was cut short of a sudden in the midst of his sermon being bereaved of sense and speech insomuch that he was faine to be carried out of the pulpit to his cloister in a chaire and a few dayes after was drowned in a ditch In the yeare of our Lord 1527 there was one George Hala a Saxon Minister of the Word and Sacraments and a stout professor of the reformed Religion who being for that cause sent for to appeare before the Archbishop of Mentz at Aschaffenburge was handled on this fashion they took away his owne horse and set him upon the Archbishops fooles horse and so sent
not respecting or beleeving there was either a God or a Devill or a hell or a Heaven and therefore he was damned there was no remedy And in this miserable case without any signe of repentance he dyed But let us come to our homebred English stories and consider the judgments of God upon the persecutors of Christs Gospell in our own countrey And first to begin with one Doctor Whittington under the raigne of King Henry the seventh who by vertue of his office being Chancellour to the Bishop had condemned most cruelly to death a certaine godly woman in a town called Chipping sadberry for the profession of the truth which the Papists then called Heresie This woman being adjudged to death by the wretched Chancellor and the time come when she should be brought to the place of her martyrdome a great concourse of people both out of towne and country was gathered to behold her end Amongst whom was also the foresaid Doctor there present to see the execution performed The godly woman and manly Martyr with great constancy gave over her life to the fire and refused no paines or torments to keep her conscience cleere and unreproveable against the day of the Lord. Now the Sacrifice being ended as the people began to returne homeward they were encountred by a mighty furious Bull which had escaped from a Butcher that was about to kill him for at the same time as they were slaying this silly Lamb at the townes end a Butcher was as busie within the towne in slaying of this Bull. But belike not so skilfull in his art of killing of beasts as the Papists be in murthering Christians the Bull broke loose as I said and ranne violently through the throng of the people without hurting either man or childe till he came to the place where the Chancellour was against whom as pricked forward with some supernaturall instinct hee ranne full butt thrusting him at the first blow through the paunch and after goaring him through and through and so killed him immediately trayling his guts with his hornes all the street over to the great admiration and wonder of all that saw it Behold here a plaine demonstration of Gods mighty power and judgement against a wretched persecutor of one of his poore flocke wherein albeit the carnall sence of man doth often impute to blinde chance that which properly pertaineth to the only power and providence of God yet none can be so dull and ignorant but must needs confesse a plaine miracle of Gods almighty power and a worke of his own finger Stephen Gardiner also was one of the grand butchers in this land what a miserable end came hee unto Even the same day that Bishop Ridley and Master Latimer were burned at Oxford he hearing newes thereof rejoyced greatly and being at dinner ate his meat merrily but ere he had eaten many bits the sudden stroke of Gods terrible hand fell upon him in such sort that immediately he was taken from the board and brought to his bed where he continued 15 dayes in intolerable anguish by reason he could not expell his urine so that his body being miserably inflamed within who had inflamed so many Godly Martyrs was brought to a wretched end with his tongue all blacke and swolne hanging out of his mouth most horribly a spectacle worthy to be beholden of all such bloudy burning persecutors Bonner Bishop of London another arch butcher though he lived long after this man and dyed also in his bed yet was it so provided of God that as he had been a persecutor of the light and a child of darknesse so his carkasse was tumbled into the earth in obscure darkenes at midnight contrary to the order of all other Christians and as he had been a most cruell murtherer so was he buried amongst theeves and murtherers a place by Gods judgement rightly appointed for him Morgan Bishop of S. Davids sitting upon the condemnation of the blessed Martyr Bishop Farrar whose roome he unjustly usurped was not long after stricken by Gods hand after such a strange sort that his meat would not go downe but rise and picke up againe sometime at his mouth sometime blowne out of his nose most horrible to behold and so continued unto his death Where note moreover that when Master Leyson being then Sheriffe at Bishop Farrars burning had fetcht away the cattell of the said Bishop from his servants house into his owne custody divers of them would never eate meat but lay bellowing and roaring and so dyed Adde unto this Bishop Morgan Iustice Morgan a Judge that sate upon the death of the Lady Iane this Iustice not long after the execution of the said Lady fell mad and being thus bereft of his wits dyed having ever in his mouth Lady Iane Lady Iane. Bishop Thornton Suffragan of Dover another grand persecutor comming upon a Saturday from the Chapter-house at Canterbury and there upon the Sunday following looking upon his men playing at bowles fell suddenly into a palsey and dyed shortly after And being exhorted to remember God in his extremity of sicknesse So I do saith he and my Lord Cardinall too c. After him succeeded another Suffragan ordained by the foresaid Cardinall and equall to his Predecessor in cruell persecuting of the Church who injoying his place but a short time fell downe a paire of staires in the Cardinals chamber at Greenwich and broke his necke and that presently let it be noted after he received the Cardinals blessing The like sudden death hapned to Doctor Dunning the bloudy and wretched Chancellour of Norwich who after he had most rigorously condemned and murthered a number of simple and faithfull servants of God was suddenly stricken with death even as he was sitting in his chaire The like also fell upon Berry Commissary of Norfolke another bloudy persecutor who foure dayes after Queene Maries death having made a great Feast whereat was present one of his concubines as he was comming home from the Church where he had ministred the Sacrament of Baptisme fell downe suddenly to the ground with a heavy groane and never stirred after thus ending his miserable life without any shew of repentance So Doctor Geffrey Chancellor of Salisbury another of the same stampe was suddenly stricken with the mighty hand of God in the midst of his buildings where he was constrained to yeeld up his life which had so little pitty of other mens lives before and it is to be noted that the day before he was thus stricken he had appointed to call before him ninety poore Christians to examine them by inquisition but the goodnesse of God and his tender providence prevented him Doctor Foxford Chancellor to Bishop Stockesley dyed also suddenly So did Iustice Lelond the persecutor of one Ieffery Hurst Alexander the Keeper of Newgate a cruell enemy to those that lay in that prison for Religion dyed very miserably being so swollen that he was more like a monster than a man and
so rotten within that no man could abide the smell of him His sonne called Iames after hee had spent all his fathers substance riotously fell downe suddenly in Newgate market and there wretchedly dyed Iohn Peter sonne in law to the said Alexander and no lesse cruell to the poore Christians rotted away and so dyed Cox an earnest Protestant in King Edwards dayes and in Queene Maries time a Papist and a Promoter going well and in health to bed as it seems was dead before the morning All these almost with many more which I could recite dyed suddenly being most cruell and horrible persecutors of the flocke of Christ. Many there were which though they escaped sudden death yet did not avoid a most miserable and wretched end In the number whereof I may place first Alexander the Keeper of Newgate together with his sonne in law Iohn Peter of whom mention was made before Also Master Woodroofe the Sheriffe of London who used to rejoyce at the death of the poore Saints of Christ and would not suffer Master Rogers going to his Martyrdome to speake with his children this man lay seven or eight yeares bed-rid having one halfe of his body all benummed and so continued till his dying day Also one Burton the Bayliffe of Crowland in Lincolneshire who having been a Protestant in outward shew in King Edwards dayes as soone as Queene Mary was quietly seated in the kingdome became very earnest in setting up the Masse againe and constrained the Curate by threats to leave the English Service and say Masse This blinde Bailiffe not long after as he was riding with one of his neighbours a Crow flying over his head let her excrements fall upon his face the poysoned stinke and savour whereof so annoyed his stomacke that he never lest vomiting untill he came home and there after certaine dayes with extreame paine of vomiting crying and cursing the Crow desperately he dyed without any token of repentance Also one Robert Baldwine who being stricken with lightning at the taking of William Seaman pined away and dyed Robert Blomfield also Bailiffe to Sir Iohn Ierningham after he had prosecuted one Master Browne pined away both in his goods and body by a consumption of both William Swallow the cruell tormentor of George Egles was shortly after plagued of God that all the haire of his head and nailes of his fingers and toes went off his eyes were well neere closed up that he could scant see his wife was also stricken with the falling sicknesse with the which malady she was never infected before Lastly to omit many others one Twiford is not to be forgotten who in King Henries dayes was a busie doer in setting up stakes for the burning of poore Martyrs and seeing the stakes consume so fast provided a big tree cutting off the top and set it up in Smithfield saying I will have a stake that shall hold But behold Gods hand before ever that tree was consumed the state of Religion turned and he fell into an horrible disease rotting alive above the ground before he dyed Besides these many there were that hanged themselves As for example one Clarke an open enemy to the Gospell in King Edwards dayes hanged himselfe in the Tower So did Pavier the Towne Clarke of London another bitter enemy to the Gospell So did the sonne of one Levar a husbandman that mocked and scorned at the holy Martyr Master Latimer being dead and that at the same houre as neere as could be gathered whilst his father was railing upon the dead Martyr So did Henry Smith a Lawyer who having been a Protestant became a Papist Others drowned themselves as namely Richard Long at Calice in King Henry the eights dayes Iohn Plankney a Fellow of New Colledge in Oxford in the yeare of our Lord 1566. And one Lanington a Fellow of the same Colledge in a Well at Padua or as some thinke at Rome Others were stricken with madnesse in which ranke place first Justice Morgan of whom wee made mention a little before Then a Sheriffes servant that railed upon Iames Abbes a godly Martyr as he was going to be burned saying That hee was an Heretique and a mad man but as soone as the fire was put to the Martyr such was the fearefull stroke of Gods justice upon him he was there presently in the sight of all the people stricken with a frenzy crying out aloud that Iames Abbes was saved but he was damned and so continued till his dying day So likewise one William a Student in the inner Temple in the midst of his railing against the Gospell of Christ and the Professors thereof fell starke mad Many other examples of the like kind I could here adde but he that desireth to know and read more thereof let him have recourse unto the latter end of the Acts and Monuments of the English Church where he shall find a whole Catalogue of such like examples The overthrow of many mighty ones in our Age serve for a looking glasse to represent the high exploits of the wonderfull judgements which the King of Kings hath sent upon those that have in any place or countrey whatsoever resisted and strove against the Truth whereof some after great victories which by their singular dexterity and worldly wisedome in the mannaging of their affaires have atchieved by a perverse and overthwart end contrary to their former prosperity have darkned and obscured the renowne and glory of all their brave deeds their good report dying with their bodyes and their credit impaired and buried with them in their graves Others in like manner having addressed all their forces and laid their battery and placed all their Pieces and Canons against the wals of Sion and thinking to blow it up and consume it to ashes have made many breaches into the sides thereof yea they have so bent all their strength against it and afflicted it with such outragious cruelty and unmercifull effusion of bloud that it is pitifull and lamentable to remember howbeit after all their policies and practises their courage hath been at length abated and themselves raked one after another out of this world with manifest markes of the just vengeance of God upon them For though it may seem for a time that God slepeth and regardeth not the wrongs and oppressions of his servants yet he never faileth to carry a watchfull eye upon them and in his fittest time to revenge himselfe upon their enemies CHAP. XIV A Hymne of the persecution of Gods Church and the deliverance of the same ALong the verdant fields all richly dy'd With Natures paintments and with Flora's pride Whose goodly bounds are lively Chryst all streames Begirt with bow'rs to keep backe Phoebus beames Even when the quenchlesse torch the Worlds great eye Advanc'â— his rayes orethwartly from the skie And by his power of heavenly influence Reviv'd the seeds of Springs decay'd essence Then many flockes unite in peace and love Not seeking ought but naturall behove Past quietly uncharg'a
they say that this wretch having given himselfe to the Devill provided store of holy bread as they call it which he alwaies carried about with him thinking thereby to keep himself from his clawes but it served him to small stead as his end declared About the yeare 1437 Charles the seventh being King of France Sir Glyes of Britaine Lord of Rais and high Constable of France was accused by the report of Enguerran de Monstrelet for having murthered many infants and women with childe to the number of eightscore or more with whose bloud he either writ or caused to be written books full of conjurations hoping by that abhominable means to attaine to high matters but it happened cleane crosse and contrary to his expectation and practise for being convinced of those horrible crimes it being Gods will that such grosse and palpable sinnes should not go unpunished he was adjudged to be hanged and burned to death which was also accordingly executed at Nantes by the authority of the Duke of Britaine Iohn Francis Picus of Mirand saith That he conferred divers times with many who being inticed with a vaine hope of knowing things to come were afterwards so grievously tormented by the Devill with whom they had made some bargain that they thought themselves thrise happy if they escaped with their lives He saith moreover That there was in his time a certaine Conjurer that promised a too curious and no great wise Prince to present unto him upon a stage the siege of Troy and Achilles and Hector fighting together as they did when they were alive but he could not performe his promise for another sport and spectacle more hideous and ougly to his person for he was taken away alive by a Devill in such sort that he was never afterward heard of In our owne memory the Earle of Aspremont and his brother Lord of Orne were made famous and in every mans mouth for their strange and prodigious seats wherein they were so unreasonably dissolute and vaine-glorious that sometime they made it their sport and pastime to breake downe all the windowes about the castle Aspremont where they kept which lyeth in Lorraine two miles from Saint Michael and threw them piecemeale into a deep Well to heare them cry plumpe but this vaine excesse presaged a ruine and destruction to come as well upon their house which at this present lyeth desolate and ruinous in many respects as upon themselves that finished their daies in misery one after another as we shall now understand of the one the Lord of Orne as for the Earle how hee died shall more at large be declared elsewhere Now it chanced that as the Lord of Orne was of most wicked and cruell conditions so hee had an evill favoured looke answerable to his inclination and name to be a Conjurer the report that went of his cruelty was this That upon a time he put the Baker one of his servants whose wiâ—e he used secretly to entertaine into a â—un which he caused to be rowled from the top of a hill into the bottome sometimes as high as a pike as the place gave occasion but by the great mercy of God notwithstanding all this this poore man saved his life Furthermore it was a common report that when any Gentlemen or Lords came to see him they were entertained as they thought very honourably being served with all sort of most dainty faire and exquisite dishes as if he had not spared to make them the best cheere that might be but at their departure they that thought themselves well refreshed found their stomacke empty and almost pined for want of food having neither eaten nor drunk any thing save in imagination only and it is to be thought that their horses found no better fare than their masters It happened one day that a certaine Lord being departed from his house one of his men having left something behind returned to the Castle and entring suddenly into the hall where they dined but a little before he espied a Munky beating the master of the house that had feasted them of late very sore And there be others that say that he hath been seen through the chink of a dore lying on a table upon his belly all at length and a Munkey scourging him very strangely to whom he should say Let me alone let me alone wilt thou alwaies torment me thus And thus he continued a long time but at length after he had made away all his substance he was brought to such extremity that being destitute of maintenance and forsaken of all men he was fain for want of a better refuge to betake himselfe to the Hospitall of Paris which was his last Mansion house wherein he died See here to how pittifull and miserable an end this man fell that having been esteemed amongst the Mighties of this world for making no more account of God and for following the illusions of Satan the common enemy of mannkdi became so poore and wretched as to dye in an Hospitall among Cripples and Beggars It is not long since there was in Lorraine a certaine man called Coulen that was over much given to this cursed Art amongst whose tricks this was one to be wondred at that he would suffer harquebuses or pistols to be shot at him and catch their bullets in his hand without receiving any hurt but upon a certain time one of his servants being angry with him hot him such a knock with a pistoll notwithstanding all his great cunning that he killed him therewith Moreover it is worthy to be observed That within these two hundred yeares hitherto more Monks and Priests have been found given over to these abhominations and devillishnesses than of all other degrees of people whatsoever as it is declared in the second volume of Enguerran de Monstralet more at large where he maketh mention of a Monke that used to practise his sorceries in the top of a tower of an Abbey lying neere to Longin upon Marne where the Devils presented themselves to be at his commandement and this was in the raigne of Charles the sixth In the same booke it is recorded That in the raigne of Charles the seventh one Master William Ediline Doctor in Divinity and Prior of Saint Germaine in Lay having been an Augustine Frier gave himselfe to the Devill for his pleasure even to have his will of a certain woman he was upon a time in a place where a Synagogue of people were gathered together where to the end that he might quickly be as he himselfe confessed he took a broom and rode upon it He confessed also that he had don homage to that enemy of God the Devill who appeared unto him in the shape of a sheep and made him kisse his hinder parts as he reported For which causes hee was placed upon a scaffold and openly made to weare a paper containing his owne faults and afterwards plotted to live prisoner all the rest of his life laden with yrons in
sinne did not experience by certaine examples teach us the contrary As first of all the King of Tyre whose heart was so exalted with the multitude of riches and the renowne and greatnesse of his house that he doubted not to esteeme himselfe a god and to desire majesty and power correspondent thereunto For which presumption God by the Prophet Ezechiel reproved him and threatned his destruction which afterward came upon him when by the power of a strange and terrible nation his goodly godhead was overcome and murthered feeling indeed that he was no god as hee supposed but a man subject to death and misery King Herod sirnamed Agrippa which put Iames the brother of Iohn to death and imprisoned Peter with purpose to make him taste of the same cup was puffed up with no lesse sacrilegious pride for being upon a time seated in his throne of judgement and arrayed in his royall robes shewing forth his greatnesse and magnificence in the presence of the Embassadors of Tyre and Sidon that desired to continue in peace with him as he spake unto them the people shouted and cryed That it was the voice of God and not of man which titles of honour he disclaimed not and therefore the Angell of the Lord smote him suddenly because he gave not the glory to God so that he was eaten with wormes and gave up the ghost Iosephus reporteth the same story more at large on this manner Vpon the second day of the solemnization of the playes which Herod caused to be celebrated for the Emperours health there being a great number of Gentlemen and Lords present that came from all quarters to his feast he came betime in the morning to the Theatre clad in a garment all woven with silver of a marvellous workmanship upon which as the Sun rising cast his beames there glittered out such an excellent brightnesse that thereby his pernitious flatterers tooke occasion to call him with a loud voice by the name of God for the which sacrilegious speech he not reproving nor forbidding them was presently taken with most grievous and horrible dolours and gripes in his bowels so that looking upon the people he uttered these words Behold here your goodly god whom you but now so highly honored ready to die with extreame paine And so he died indeed most miserably even when he was in the top of his honour and jollity and as it were in the midst of his earthly Paradise being beaten downe and swallowed up with confusion and ignominy not stricken with the edge of sword or speare for that had been far more honourable but gnawne in pieces with lice and vermine Simon Magus otherwise called Simon the Samaritane borne in a village called Gitton after he was cursed of Peter the Apostle for offering to buy the gifts of the Spirit of God with money went to Rome and there putting in practise his magicall arts and working miracles by the Devill was reputed a god and had an image erected in his honour with this inscription To Simon the holy god Besides all the Samaritanes and divers also of other nations accounted him no lesse as appeared by the reverence and honour which they did unto him insomuch as they called his companion or rather his whore Helena for that was her profession in Tyre a city of Phenicia the first mover that distilled out of Simons bosome Now he to foster this foolish and ridiculous opinion of theirs and to eternize his name boasted that he would at a certaine time fly up into heaven which as he attempted to doe by the help of the Devill Peter the Apostle commanded the unclean spirit to cast him down again so that he fell upon the earth and was bruised to death and proved himselfe thereby to be no more than a mortall wicked and detestable wretch Moreover elsewhere we read of Alexander the Great whose courage and magnanimity was so exceeding great that he enterprised to goe out of Greece and set upon all Asia onely with an army of two and thirty thousand footmen five hundred horse and an hundred and foure score ships and in this appointment passing the seas he conquered in short space the greatest part of the world for which cause he was represented to the Prophet Daniel in a vision by the figure of a Leopard with wings on his backe to notifie the great diligence and speedy expedition which he used in compassing so many sudden and great victories with pride he was so soone infected that he would brooke no equall nor companion in his Empire but as heaven had but one Sunne so he thought the earth ought to have but one Monarch which was himselfe which mind of his he made known by his answer to King Darius demanding peace and offering him the one halfe of his Kingdome to be quiet when he refused to accord thereunto saying He scorned to be a partner in the halfe and hoped to be full possessor of the whole After his first victory had of Darius and his entrance into Aegypt which he tooke without blowes as also he did Rhodes and Cilicia he practised and suborned the Priests that ministred at the Oracle of Hammon to make him be pronounced and entituled by the Oracle The sonne of Iupiter which kinde of jugling and deceit was common at that time Having obtained this honour forthwith he caused himselfe to be worshipped as a god according to the custome of the Kings of Persia neither wanted he flatterers about him that egged him forward and soothed him up in this proud humor albeit that many of the better sort endeavoured tooth and nayle to turne him from it It hapned as he warred in India he received so sore a wound that with paine thereof he was constrained to say Though he was the renowned sonne of Iupiter yet he ceased not to feele the infirmities of a weake and diseased body finally being returned to Babylon where many Embassadors of divers farre countries as of Carthage and other cities in Africa Spaine France Sicily Sardinia and certaine cities of Italy were arrived to congratulate his good successe for the great renowne which by his worthy deeds he had gotten as he lay there taking his rest many dayes and bathing himselfe in all kinde of pleasure one day after a great feast that lasted a whole day and a night in a banquet after supper being ready to returne home he was poysoned when before hee had drunke his whole draught he gave a deep sigh suddenly as if hee had been thrust through with a dart and was carried away in a swoone vexed with such horrible torment that had he not been restrained he would have killed himselfe And on this manner he that could not content himselfe with the condition of a man but would needs climbe above the clouds to goe in equipage with God drunke up his owne death leaving as suddenly all his worldly pompe as hee had suddenly gotten it which vanished like smoake none
that commeth beyond the mountaines from that scientificall Vniversity and Colledge of the right reverend Masters and from the excellent holinesse of some of their Popes whose manner of life is so dissolute lascivious dishonest and Sardanapal like that thereby their Atheisme is evidently and notoriously knowne and talked of by every one Hereof Pope Leo the tenth a Florentine by birth may serve for an example who as he was a very effeminate person given to all manner of delights and pleasure having no other care but of himselfe and his owne filthy carkasses ease so had he no more taste at all nor feeling of God and his holy Word than a dog he made the promises and threats contained in holy Scripture and all else that we beleeve matter to laugh at and things frivolous and of no weight mocking at the simplicity the faith and beleefe of Christians for one day when Cardinall Bembus who also shewed himselfe to be none of the best Christians in the world by his Venetian history where as ost as he speaketh of God be useth the plurall number after the manner of heathen writers alleadged a place out of the Gospell his damnable impudency was so great as to reply That this fable of Christ had brought to him and such as he no little profit Oh stinking and cursed throat to belch out such monstrous blasphemy doe not these speeches bewray a villanous and abhominable Atheist if ever any were Is not this to declare himselfe openly to be Antichrist For he is Antichrist which denieth Iesus to be Christ and which denieth the Father and the Sonne according as Saint Iohn saith Albeit in the meane while this cursed caitife that had as much religion as a dog made shew to be the protector and defender of the Catholicke Faith making warre with all his power against Christ Iesus in the person of his servant Luther Now after he had by his pardons and indulgences drawne out a world of money and heaped up great treasures by the maintenance of courtizans and whores and had enriched his bastards one day being at meat he received newes of the overthrow of the French in Lombardy whereat hee rejoyced out of measure and for that good tidings doubled his good cheare suddenly he was constrained to turne his copy from joy into sadnesse from pleasure into griefe and gnashing of teeth by a most bitter and unlooked for death which deprived him at once of all his pleasures to make him drink the cup of Gods fierce wrath and to throw him downe headlong into everlasting paines and torments which were provided for him Pope Leo saith Saint Martin of Belay in his second booke of memorable things hearing of the great losse which the Frenchmen sustained at Milan tooke so great joy thereat that a catarrhe and an ague ensuing killed him within three dayes after a happy man indeed to die with joy Pope Iulius the third was one of the same stampe nothing inferiour to the former in all manner of dissolute and infamous living and vile and cursed talke making knowne by his impiety that he had none other god but his belly and that he was none of Christs fold but one of Epicures crew he was such a glutton and so passionate in his lusts and so prophane a despiser of God and his Word that once at supper being inraged and blaspheming because they had not served in a cold Peacocke which he commanded to be kept whole at dinner though there were other hot on the table a Cardinall that was present desired him not to be so moved for so small a trifle What quoth he if it pleased God to be so angry for eating of an apple as to thrust Adam and Eve out of paradise should not I which am his Vicar be angry for a Peacocke which is far more worth than any apple See how this wicked wretch prophaned the holy Scripture and like an Epicure and Atheist mocked God but he died of the gout after he had been long plagued with it together with other diseases leaving none other good name behind him save the report of a most wicked and abhominable man Philip Strozze whom Paulus Iovius reporteth to have bin commonly bruited to be an Atheist was an Exile of Florence and afterwards prisoner there in the time of Cosimus Medius the Prince of that Commonwealth against whom this Philip had enterprized to make warre and being in prison he killed himselfe with the sword of a Spaniard his keeper which by oversight he had left behinde setting the point against his throat and falling downe upon it so may all Atheists perish and come to naught Francis Rabelais having suckt up also this poison used like a prophane villain to make all Religion a matter to laugh and mocke at but God deprived him of his sences that as he had led a brutish life so he might die a brutish death for he died mocking all those that talked of God or made mention of mercy in his eares How miserable was the end of Periers the author of that detestable book intituled Symbolum mundi wherein he openly mocked at God and his Religion even finally he fell into despaire and notwithstanding all that guarded him killed himselfe Iodelle also a French tragicall Poet being an Epicure and Atheist made a very tragicall and most pittifull end for he died in great misery and distresse even pined to death after he had rioted out all his substance and consumed his patrimony Ligneroles the Courtier to make himselfe seeme a man of service made open profession of Atheisme but his end and destruction came from thence whence he looked for credit and advancement To bring the matter to an end I will here set downe a notable and strange thing that chanced in the raigne of Lewis the ninth as Enguerran de Monstrelet in his second volume of Histories recordeth it upon the fifteenth day of Iune in the yeare of our Lord God 1464 there happened a strange thing in the Palace at Paris So it was that there was a matter in law to be tried betwixt the Bishop of Angiers and a rich citicen whom the Bishop charged to have spoken before many witnesses that he beleeved not that there was either God or Devill Heaven or Hell Now whilst the Bishops Lawyer laid to his charge these things the place began to tremble very much wherein they were and a stone fell downe from the roof amongst them all without hurting any yet every man was sore afraid and departed out of the house untill the morrow then the matter was begun againe to be pleaded which was no sooner in hand but the chamber began afresh to shake and one of the summers came forth of his mortisehole falling downwards two foot and there stayed so that all that were within the hall looking to have been slaine outright ran out so violently that some left behinde them their caps others their hoods others their slippers summarily glad was he
that could get out first neither durst they plead any more causes in that place untill it were mended Thus much reporteth Enguerran without mention of any decision of that matter Now forasmuch as nothing happeneth by chance it is most likely that God by that accident would give us to understand both how monstrous and detestable all such speeches are as also how men ought to feare and abhorre them seeing that the dumbe and sencelesse creatures and wood beams planks and stones and the earth it self by nature stedfast and fixed are so far from enduring them that they are moved withall There was a certaine blasphemous wretch that on a time being with his companions in a common lnne carowsing and making merry asked them if they thought a man was possessed with a soule or no Whereunto when some replyed That the soules of men were immortall and that some of them after release from the body lived in heaven others in Hell for so the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles instructed them hee answered and swore that he thought it nothing so but rather that there was no soule in man to survive the body but that heaven and hell were meere fables and inventions of Priests to get gaine by and for himselfe he was ready to sell his soule to any that would buy it then one of his companions tooke up a cup of wine and said Sell me thy soule for this cup of wine Which he receiving bad him take his soule and dranke up the wine Now Satan himselfe was there in a mans shape as commonly he is never far from such meetings and bought it againe of the other at the same price and by and by bad him give him his soule the whole company affirming it was meet he should have it since he had bought it not perceiving the Devill but presently he laying hold of this souleseller carried him into the aire before them all toward his own habitation to the great astonishment and amasement of the beholders and from that day to this he was never heard of but tryed to his pain that men had soules and that hell was no fable according to his godlesse and prophane opinion Pherecides by birth a Syrian a tragicall Poet and a Philosopher by profession boasted impudently against his schollers of his prosperity learning and wisedome saying that although he offered no sacrifices unto the gods yet he led a more quiet and prosperous life than those that were addicted to Religion and therefore he passed not for any such vanity But ere long his impiety was justly revenged for the Lord struck him with such a strange disease that out of his body issued such a slimy and filthy sweat and engendred such a number of lice and wormes that his bowels being consumed by them he died most miserably At Hambourgh not long since there lived an impious wretch that despised the preaching of the Gospell and the Ministers thereof accounting it as a vaine thing not worthy the beleeving of any man neither did he thus himself only but also seduced many others bringing them all to Atheisme and ungodlinesse Wherefore the Lord justly recompenced him for his impiety for he that before had no sence nor feeling of God in his conscience being touched with the finger of the Almighty grew to the contrary even to too much feeling and knowledge of God that he fell into extreme despaire affirming now his sinnes to be past forgivenesse because he had withdrawne others from the truth as well as himselfe whereas before he thought himselfe guilty of no sinne and that God was so just that he would not forgive him whereas before he thought there was no God so mighty is the operation of the Lord when he pleaseth to touch the conscience of man finally continuing in this desperate case he threw himselfe from the roofe of a house into a well and not finding water enough to drowne him he thrust his head into the bottome thereof till he had made an end of his life In the yeare of our Lord 1502 there lived one Hermannus Biswicke a grand Atheist and a notable instrument of Satan who affirmed that the world never had beginning as foolish Moses dreamed and that there was neither Angels nor devils nor hell nor future life but that the soules of men perished with their bodies besides that Christ Iesus was nothing else but a seducer of the people and that the faith of Christians and whatsoever else is contained in holy writs was meere vanity These articles full of impiety and blasphemy he constantly avouched to the death and for the same cause was together with his books burnt in Holland A certaine rich man at Holberstadium abounding with all manner of earthly commodities gave himselfe so much to his pleasure that he became besotted therewith in such sort that he made no reckoning of Religion nor any good thing but dared to say that if he might lead such a life continually upon earth he would not envy heaven nor desire any exchange Notwithstanding ere long contrary to his expectation the Lord cut him off by death and so his desired pleasure came to an end but after his death there appeared such diabolicall apparitions in his house that no man daring to inhabite it it became desolate for every day there appeared the Image of this Epicure sitting at a board with a number of his ghests drinking carousing and making good cheare and his table furnished with delicates and attended on by many that ministred necessaries unto them beside with minstrels trumpetters and such like In summe whatsoever he delighted in in his life time was there to be seene every day The Lord permitting Satan to bleare mens eyes with such strange shewes to the end that others might be terrified from such Epicurisme and impiety Not inferior to any of the former in Atheisme and impiety and equall to all in manner of punishment was one of our owne nation of fresh and late memory called Marlin by profession a scholler brought up from his youth in the Vniversity of Cambridge but by practise a Play-maker and a Poet of scurrility who by giving too large a swing to his owne wit and suffering his lust to have the full reines fell not without just desert to that great outrage and extremity that he denied God and his sonne Christ and not onely in word blasphemed the Trinity but also as it is credibly reported wrote books against it affirming our Saviour to be but a deceiver and Moses to be but a seducer of the people and the holy Bible to be but vaine and idle stories and all Religion but a device of policy But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nostrils of this barking dogge so it fell out that as he purposed to stab one whom he ought a grudge unto with his dagger the other party perceiving so avoyded the stroke that withall catching hold of his wrest he stabbed his owne
him to prison but the two unknowne witnesses who were indeed two fiends of hell began to say you shall not need for we are sent to punish his wickednesse and so saying they hoisted him up into the ayre where he vanished with them and was never after found In the yeare of our Lord 1055 Goodwine Earle of Kent sitting at the table with King Edward of England it happened that one of the cupbearers stumbled and yet fell not whereat Goodwine laughing said That if one brother had not holpen another meaning his legs all the wine had been spilt with which words the King calling to mind his brothers death which was slaine by Goodwine answered So should my brother Alphred have holpen me had not Goodwine been then Goodwine fearing the Kings new kindled displeasure excused himselfe with many words and at last eating a morsell of bread wished it might choke him if he were not guiltlesse of Alphreds bloud But he swore falsly as the judgement of God declared for he was forthwith choaked in the presence of the King ere he removed one foot from that place though there be some say he recovered life againe Long time after this in the raigne of Queene Elizabeth there was in the city of London one Anne Averies widow who forswore her selfe for a little money that she should have paid for six pounds of tow at a shop in Woodstreet for which cause being suddenly surprised with the justice of God shee fell downe speechlesse forthwith and cast up at her mouth in great abundance and with horrible stinke that matter which by natures course should have been voided downewards and so died to the terrour of all perjured and forsworne wretches There are in histories many more examples to be found of this hurtfull and pernitious sin exercised by one nation towards another and one man towards another in most prophane and villanous sort neither shaming to be accounted forsworne nor consequently fearing to displease God and his majesty But forasmuch as when we come to speak of murtherers in the next book we shall have occasion to speake of them more or of such like I will referre the handling thereof unto that place onely this let every man learne by that which hath been spoken to be sound and fraudlesse and to keep his faith and promise towards all men if for no other cause yet for feare of God who leaveth not this sin unpunished nor holdeth them guiltlesse that thus taketh his name in vaine CHAP. XXIX Of Blasphemers AS touching Blasphemy it was a most grievous and enormous sin and contrary to this third Commanmandement when a man is so wretched and miseble as to pronounce presumptuous speeches against God whereby his name is slandered and evill spoken of which sinne cannot chuse but be sharply and severely punished for if so be that God holdeth not him guiltles that doth but take his name in vain must he not needs abhor him that blasphemeth his Name See how meritoriously that wicked and perverse wretch that blasphemed and murdered as it were the name of God among the people of Israel in the desart was punished he was taken put in prison and condemned and speedily stoned to death by the whole multitude and upon that occasion as evill manners evermore begat good lawes the Lord instituted a perpetuall law and decree that every one that should blaspheme and curse God of what estate or degree soever should be stoned to death in token of detestation which sentence if it might now adaies stand in force there would not raign so many miserable blasphemers and deniers of God as the world is now filled and infected with It was also ordained by a new law of Iustinian That blasphemies should be severely punished by the judges and magistrates of Commonweales but such is the corruption and misery of this age that those men that ought to correct others for such speeches are oftentimes worst themselves and there are that thinke that they cannot be sufficiently feared and awed of men except by horrible bannings and swearings they despight and maugre God nay it is further come to that passe that in some places to swearc and ban be the markes and ensignes of a Catholike and they are best welcome that can blaspheme most How much then is that good King Saint Lewis of France to be commended who especially discharged all his subjects from swearing and blaspheming within his realm insomuch that when he heard a nobleman blaspheme God most cruelly he caused him to be laid hold on and his lips to bee slit with an hot yron saying hee must be content to endure that punishment seeing he purposed to banish oathes out of his kingdome Now wee call blasphemy according to the Scripture phrase every word that derogateth either from the bounty mercy justice eternity and soveraigne power of God Of this sort was that blasphemous speech of one of King Iorams Princes who at the time of the great famine in Samaria when it was besieged by the Syrians hearing Elizeus the Prophet say that the next morrow there should be plenty of victuals and good cheap rejected this promise of God made by his Prophet saying that it was impossible as if God were either a lyar or not able to performe what he would for this cause this unbeleeving blasphemer received the same day a deserved punishment for his blasphemy for he was troden to death in the gate of the city under the feet of the multitude that went out into the Syrians campe forsaken and left desolate by them through a feare which the Lord sent among them Senaccherib King of Assyria after he had obtained many victories and â—â—odued much people under him and also layd siege to Ierusalem became â—â—proud and arrogant as by his servants mouth to revile and blaspheme the living God speaking no otherwise of him than of some strange idoll and one that had no power to help and deliver those that trusted in him for which blasphemies he soone after felt a just vengeance of God upon himselfe and his people for although in mans eyes he seemed to be without the reach of danger seeing he was not assayled but did assayle and was guarded with so mighty an army that assured him to make him lord of Ierusalem in short space yet the Lord overthrew his power and destroyed of his men in one night by the hand of his Angell 185 thousand men so that he was faine to raise his siege and returne into his owne kingdome where finally he was slaine by his owne sons as he was worshipping on his knees in the temple of his god In the time of the Machabees those men that were in the strong hold called Gazara fighting against the Iewes trusting to the strength of the place wherein they were uttered forth most infamous speeches against God but ere long their blasphemous mouths were encountred by a condigne punishment for the first day of
the siege Machabeus put fire to the towne and consumed the place with the blasphemers in it to ashes Holofernes when Achior advanced the glory of the God of Israel replyed on this fashion Since thou hast prophesied unto us that Israel shall be defended by their God thou shalt prove that there is no God but Nabuchadnezzar when the sword of mine army shall passe through thy sides and thou shalt fall among their slaine but for this blasphemy the Lord cut him short and prevented his cruell purpose by sudden death und that by the hand of a woman to his further shame Nay this sinne is so odious in the sight of God that he punisheth even them that give occasion thereof unto others yea though they be his dearest children as it appeareth by the words of the Prophet Nathan unto King David Because of this deed saith he of murthering Vriah and defiling Bathshabe thou hast made the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme the childe that is borne unto thee shall surely die In the Empire of Iulian the Apostata there were divers great men that for the Emperours sake sake forsooke Christ and his religion amongst whom was one Iulian uncle to the Emperour and Governour of the East another Foelix the Emperours Treasurer the first of which two after hee had spoyled all Christian Churches and Temples pissed against the table whereon the holy Sacraments were used to be administred in contempt and strucke Euzoius on the care for reproving him for it the other beholding the holy vessels that belonged to the Church said See what pretious vessels Maries sonne is served withall After which blasphemy the Lord plagued them most strangely for Iulian fell into so strange a disease that his intrailes being rotten he voided his excrements at his mouth because when they passed naturally he abused them to the dishonour of God Foelix vomited bloud so excessively night and day at his blasphemous mouth that he died forthwith About the same time there lived a famous sophister and Epicure called Libanius who being at Antioch demanded blasphemously of a learned and godly schoolemaster What the Carpenters sonne did and how he occupied himselfe Marry quoth the schoolemaster full of the spirit of God the Creator of this world whom thou disdainfully callest the carpenters sonne is making a coffin for thee to carry thee to thy grave whereat the sophister jeasting departed and within few daies dying was buried in a coffin according to the prophesie of that holy man The Emperour Heraclius sending Embassadors to Cosroë the King of Persia to intreat of peace returned with this answer That he would never cease to trouble them with warre till he had constrained them to forsake their crucified Christ and to worship the Sunne But ere long he bore the punishment of his blasphemy for what with a domesticall calamity and a forrein overthrow by the hand of Heraclius he came to a most wofull destruction Michael that blasphemous Rabbine that was accounted of the Iewes as their Prince and Messias as he was on a time banquetting with his companions amongst other things this was chiefest sauce for their meat to blasphme Christ and his mother Mary insomuch as he boasted of a victory already gotten over the Christians God But marke the issue as he descended down the stayres his foot slipping he tumbled headlong and broke his neck wherein his late victory proved a discomfiture and overthrow to his eternall shame and confusion Three souldiers amongst the Tyrigetes a people of Sarmatia passing through a Wood there arose a tempest of thunder and lightening which though commonly it maketh the greatest Atheists to tremble yet one of them to shew his contempt of God and his judgements burst forth into blasphemy and despightings of God But the Lord soone tamed his rebellious tongue for he caused the winde to blow up by the root a huge tree that fell upon him and crushed him to pieces the other escaping to testifie to the World of his destruction At a village called Benavides in Spain two young men being together in a field there arose of a sudden a terrible tempest with such violence of weather and winde and withall so impetuous a whirlwinde that it amased those that beheld it The two young men seeing the fury thereof comming amaine towards them to avoid the danger ran away as fast as they possibly might but make what haste they could it overtooke them who fearing lest the same should swing them up into the ayre fell flatlong down upon the earth where the whirlwinde whisking about them a pretty while and then passing forth the one of them arose so altered and in such an agony that he was scarcely able to stand on his feet the other lying still and not stirring some others afarre off that stood under a hedge went to see how hee did and found him to be starke dead not without markes upon him of wonderfull admiration for all his bones were so crushed that the pipes and joynts of his legges and armes were as easie to be turned the one way as the other as though his whole body had been made of mosse and besides his tongue was pulled out by the roots which could not by any meanes be found though they sought for it most diligently And this was the miserable end of this wretched man who was noted to be a great outragious swearer blasphemer of Gods holy name the Lord therfore chose him out to make him an example to the world of his justice No lesse notable is the example of a young girle named Denis Benesield of twelve yeares of age who going to schoole amongst other girles when they fell to reason among themselves after their childish discretion about God one among the rest said that he was a good old father What hee said the foresaid Denis he is an old doting foole which being told to her mistresse she purposed to correct her the next day for it but it chanced that the next day her mother sent her to London to the market the wench greatly intreating her mother that she might not goe so that she escaped her mistresses correction But the Lord in vengeance met with her for as she returned homeward suddenly she was stricken dead all the one side of her being black and buried at Hackney the same night A terrible example no doubt both to old and young what it is for children to blaspheme the Lord and God and what it is for parents to suffer their young ones to grow up in blindnesse without nurtering them in the feare of God and reverence of his Majesty and therefore worthy to be remembred of all In the yeare 510 an Arrian Bishop called Olympius being at Carthage in the bathes reproached and blasphemed the holy and sacred Trinity and that openly but lighting fell downe from heaven upon him three times and he was burnt and consumed therewith There was also in the time
but himselfe no man could ever after set eye on The magistrate advertised hereof came to the place where he was taken to be better informed of the truth taking the witnesse of the two women touching that which they had seene Here may wee see the strange and terrible events of Gods just vengeance upon such vile caitifes which doubtlesse are made manifest to strike a feare and terrour into the heart of every swearer and denier of God the world being but too full at this day of such wretches that are so inspired with Satan that they cannot speake but they must name him even him that is both an enemy to God and man and like a roaring lion runneth and roveth too and fro to devoure them not seeking any thing but mans destruction And yet when any paine assaileth them or any trouble disquieteth their minds or any danger threateneth to oppresse their bodies desperately they call upon him for aid when indeed it were more needfull to commend themselves to God and to pray for his grace and assistance having both a commandement so to doe and a promise adjoyned that he will help us in our necessities if we come unto him by true and hearty prayer It is not therefore without just cause that God hath propounded and laid open in this corrupt age a Theatre of his Iudgements that every man might be warned thereby CHAP. XXXI More examples of Gods Iudgements upon Cursers BVt before we goe to the next commandement wee will adjoyne a few more examples of this devillish cursing Martin Luther hath left registred unto us a notable example showne upon a popish priest that was once a professor of the sincere religion and fell away voluntarily unto Papisme whereof Adam Budissina was the reporter This man thundred out most bitter curses against Luther in the pulpit at a town called Ruthnerwald and amongst the rest wished that if Luthers doctrine were true a thunderbolt might strike him to death Now three dayes after there arose a mighty tempest with thunder and lightening whereat the cursed Priest bearing in himselfe a guilty conscience for that hee had untruly and malitiously spoken ranne hastily into the Church and there fell to his prayers before the Altar most devoutly but the vengeance of God found him out and his hypocrisie so that he was stroken dead with the lightening and albeit they recovered life in him againe yet as they led him homewards through the Church-yard another flâ—sh so set upon him that he was burnt from the crowne of the head to the sole of the foot as blacke as a shoo so that he died with a manifest marke of Gods vengeance upon him Theodorus Beza reporteth unto us two notable histories of his owne knowledge of the severity of Gods judgment upon a curser and a perjurer the tenor whereof is this I knew said he in France a man of good parts well instructed in Religion and a master of a Familie who in his anger cursing and bidding the Divell take one of his children had presently his wish for the childe was possessed immediatly with a Spirit from which though by the servent and continuall prayers of the Church he was at length released yet ere he had fully recovered his health he died The like we read to have happened to a woman whom her husband in anger devoted with bitter curses to the Divell for Sathan assaulted her persently and robbed her of her wits so that she could never be recovered Another example saith he happened not far hence even in this country upon a perjurer that forswore him selfe to the end to deceive and prejudice another thereby but he had no sooner made an end of his false oath but a grievous Apoplexy assailed him so that without speaking of any one word he dyed within few dayes In the yere of our Lord 1557 the day before good fryday at Forchenum a city in the Bishopricke of Bamburg there was a certaine crooked Priest both in body and minde through age and evill conditions that could not go but upon crutches yet would needs be lifted into the pulpit to make a Sermon his text was out of the 11 chap. of the first Epistle to the Corinthians touching the Lords Supper whereout taking occasion to defend the Papisticall errours and the Masse hee used these or such like blasphemous speeches O Paul Paul if thy doctrine touching the receiving of the Sacrament in both kinds be true and if it be a wicked thing to receive it otherwise then would the divell might take me and turning to the people if the Popes doctrine concerning this point be not true then am I the divels bondslaue neither do I feare to pawne my soule upon it These and many other blasphemous words he used till the Divell came indeed transformed into the shape of a tall man blacke and terrible sending before him such a fearefull noyse and such a wind that the people supposed that the Church would have fallen on their heads but he not able to hurt the rest tooke away the old Priest being his devoted bondslave and carried him so far that he was never heard of The bishop of Rugenstines brother hardly escaped his hands for he came back to fetch him but he defending himself with his sword wounded his owne body and very narrowly escaped with his life Beside after this there were many visions seene about the citie as armies of men ready to enter and surprise them so that well was he that could hide himselfe in a corner At another time after the like noyse was heard in the Church whilst they were baptising an infant and all this for the abhominable cursing and blasphemy of the prophane Priest In the yeare of our Lorld 1556 at S. Gallus in Helvetia a certaine man that earned his living by making cleane rough and soule linnen against the Sun entering a taverne tasted so much the grape that he vomited out terrible curses against himselfe and others amongst the rest he wished if ever he went into the fields to his old occupation that the divell might come and breake his necke but when sleepe had conquered drinke and sobriety restored his sences he went again to his trade remembring indeed his late words but regarding them not howbeit the Divell to shew his double diligence attended on him at his appointed houre in the likenesse of a big swarthy man and asked him if he remembred his promise and vow which he had made the day before and if it were not lawfull for him to breake his necke and withall stroke the poore man trembling with feare over the shoulders that his feet and his hands presently dried up so that he lay there not able to stir till by help of men he was carried home the Lord not giving the Devill so much power over him as he wished himselfe but yet permitting him to plague him on this sort for his amendment and our example Henry Earle of Schwartburg through a
and til the land Now what was the cause of this lamentable destruction of this holy City of the Temple and Sanctuary of the Lord and of his owne people it is set downe by the holy-Ghost in expresse word 2 Chro. 36. 15 16. That When the Lord sent unto them by his Messengers rising early and sending because he had compassion on them and on his habitation they mocked the Messengers of God despised his words and misused his Prophets and therefore the wrath of the Lord arose against his people and there was no remedy Behold here the grievous judgement of the Lord upon such as contemned his Word and despised his Prophets Thus was the first city and temple destroyed and did the second fare any better no verily but far worse for as their sinne was greater in that the former Iews contemned only the Word spoken by the Prophets which were but servants these despised the Word spoken by the Sonne himself which is the Lord of life so their punishment was also the greater for as the Apostle saith If they which despised Moses Law died without mercy how much sorer punishment are they worthy of which tread under foot the Sonne of God and count the bloud of the Testament as an unholy thing and neglect so great salvation which first began to be preached by the Lord himselfe and afterward was confirmed by them which heard him Therefore the destruction of the second city and temple by Titus and Vespasian Emperours of Rome was far more lamentable than that of the former yea so terrible and fearefull was the judgement of God upon that nation at this time that never the like calamitie and misery was heard or read of there at the siege of Ierusalem the famin was so great within the walls and the sword so terrible without that within they were constrained to eat not only leather and old shoo 's but horse-dung yea their owne excrements and some to devour their owne children and as many as issued out were crucified by the Romans as they had crucified the Saviour of the world till they had no more wood to naile them on So that it was most true which our Saviour foreprophesied That such should be the tribulation of that time as was not from the beginning of the world nor should be againe to the end At this destruction perished eleven hundred thousand Iewes as Historians report besides them which Vespasian slew in subduing the country of Galilee over and besides them also which were sould and sent into Aegypt and other provinces to vile slavery to the number of seventeene thousand two thousand were brought with Titus in triumph of which part he gave to be devoured of wilde beasts and part otherwise most cruelly were slaine By whose case all nations may take example what it is to reject the visitation of Gods verity being sent unto them and much more to persecute them which be sent of God for their salvation And here is diligently to be observed the great equity of this judgment they refused Christ to be their King and chose rather to be subject unto Caesar now they are by the said their owne Caesar destroyed when as Christs subjects the same time escaped the danger The like example of Gods wrathfull punishment is to be noted no lesse in the Romans also themselves for despising Christ and his Gospel for when Tiberius Nero the Emperor having received by letters from Pontius Pilat a true report of the doings of Christ Iesus of his miracles resurrection and ascention into heaven and how he was received as God of many good men was himselfe mooved with beleefe of the same and did confer thereof with the whole Senat of Rome to have Christ adored as God But they not agreeing thereunto refused him because that contrary to the law of the Romans he was consecrated said they for a God before the Senat of Rome had decreed and approved him Thus the vaine Senat which were contented with the Emperor to raign over them were not contented with the meeke King of glory the Sonne of God to be their King yea they contemned also the preaching of the two blessed Apostles Peter and Paul who were also most cruelly put to death in the later end of Domitius Nero his raigne and the yeare of Christ 69 for the testimony and saith of Christ. And therefore after much like sort to the Iews were they scourged and entrapped by the same way which they did prefer for as they preferred the Emperour and rejected Christ so did God stirre up their owne Emperours against them in such sort that both the Senators themselves were all devoured and the whole city most horribly afflicted the space almost of three hundred yeares together Neither were they only thus scourged by their Emperors but also by civill wars whereof three were sought in two yeares at Rome after Nero's death as likewise by other casualties for in Suetonius is testified five thousand were hurt and slaine by fall of a Theatre How heavy and searefull the judgement of God hath beene towards those seven famous Churches of Asia to the which the holy Ghost writeth his seven Epistles Revel 2 and 3. histories sufficiently testifie and experience sheweth for whereas in the Apostles time and long after in the dayes of persecution no Churches in the world more flourished after when they began to make light account of the word of God and to fall away from the truth to errors from godlinesse to impieties the Lord also made light account of them and removed his Candlesticke that is the ministery of his Gospell from amongst them and made them a prey unto their enemies and so they which before were subjects to Christ are now slaves to Mahomet and there where the true God was worshipped is now a filthy Idol adored and instead of the Gospel of Christ is the Turks Alcoran in stead of the seven stars and seven candlesticks are seven thousand priests of Mahomet and worshippers of him and thus for the contempt of the Gospel of Christ is the Chrurch of Christians made a cage of Divels Venerable Bede in his Ecclesticall history of England reporteth That about the yeare of our Lord 420 after that the Brittons had been long afflicted by the Irish Picts and Scots and that the Lord had given them rest from all their enemies and had blessed them with such great plenty of corn and fruits of the earth as had not been before heard of they fell into all manner of sins and vices and in stead of shewing themselves thankfull to the Lord for his great mercies provoked his indignation more fiercely against them for as he saith together with plenty grew ryot and this was accompanied with a train of many other foule enormities especially the hatred of the truth contempt of the Word and that not only in the Laity and ignorant people but even also in the Clergy and Sheepheards of the
people for which cause the Lord first sent among them such a contagious plague that the living were scarce sufficient to bury the dead and when by this punishment they were not reclaimed then by their owne counsels and procurement the Lord brought upon them a fierce and mighty nation even the Saxons of Germany who albeit they came at first as helpers and succorers of them against their enemies yet ere long proved their sorest foes themselves and after much bloudshed drave them almost quite out of their Kingdome confining them into a haven nooke and corner of the same where they remaine till this day and all this came upon them saith that reverend Authour for their ingratitude for Gods mercies and contempt of the Word of God Againe we reade a little before this how that God stirred up Gildas a godly learned man to preach to the old Brittons and to exhort them to repentance and amendment of life and to forewarne them of plagues to come if they repented not but what availed it Gildas was laughed to scorne and taken for a false Prophet the Brittons with whorish faces and unrepentant hearts went forward in their sins and what followed God to punish their contempt of his Word and Ministers sent in their enemies on every side and destroying them gave their land to other nations Againe not many yeares past Almighty God seeing idolatry superstition hypocrisie and wicked living used in this land raised up that godly learned man Iohn Wickliffe to preach unto our fathers repentance and to exhort them to forsake their idolatry and superstition but his exhortations were not regarded he with his sermons was despised his bookes and himselfe after his death were burnt What ensued A most grievous and heavy vengeance they slew their lawfull King and set up three other on a row under whom all the noble bloud was slaine up and halfe the Commons destroyed what by warre in France and civile discord among themselves the cities and towns were decayed and the land brought half to a wildernesse O extrem plagues of Gods just vengeance But these examples be generall over whole nations now let us descend to particular judgments upon private persons for contemning scorning or despising the Word of God the holy Sacraments and the Ministers of the same Hemingius a learned Divine in his exposition upon the first chapter of S. Iohns Gospell reporteth That about the yere 1550 there was a certain lewd companion in Denmark who had long made profession to mocke at all Religion and at devout persons This fellow entering into a Church where there was a sermon made by the Minister of the place began contrary to all those that were present to behave himselfe most prophanely and to shew by lewd countenances and gestures his dislike and contempt of that holy exercise to whom the preacher being instant upon his businesse in hand spake not a word but only sighing praied unto God that this mocker might be suppressed who seeing that the Preacher would noâ— contest against him but contemned his unworthy behaviour goeth out of the Church but yet not out of the reach of Gods vengeance for presently as he passed out a tyle fell from the house upon his head and slew him upon the place a just judgement upon so prophane a wretch From whence all scorners and deriders of godly sermons and the preachers of the same may take example for their amendment if they have any grace in them Christopher Turke a Counsellor of Estate to a great Nobleman in Germany going one day to horse and mocking at a certaine godly Nobleman who was then prisoner in his enemies hands uttered these or such like speeches See what is become of these gallants that sung so much one with anotheâ— When any one doth wrong us God is our succor and defence but he had scarce ended his words when as a sudden griefe tooke him so that he was forced to alight from his horse and to be carried to bed where in stead of singing he dyed in dispaire drawing forth his tongue as blacke as a cole and hanging out of his mouth This happened the ninth of Iune 1547. The contempt of the Sacrament of baptisme was most notably punished in a certaine Curate of Misnia in Thuring whose custome was whensoever hee had baptised any women children in contempt of the foeminine sex and without any regard to the holy Sacrament to say That they should not carry them backe to the house but cast them into the River This prophane Curate looking one day over the bridge of Elbe which is a large and a deepe River how the boats did passe no man touching him nor his braine any way altered but by a secret judgement of God fell over the bridge into the water and was presently drowned that he which so impiously wished drowning to other and that at the Sacrament of Baptisme was drowned himselfe This happened in the yeare 1505. The contemptuous and irreverent handling of the Word of God in the pulpit together with open hatred of the Gospel was most famously revenged in one Nightingale the Parson of Gondal besides Canterbury in the raigne of Queen Mary Anno 1555. This wretched Parson upon Shrove Sunday which was the third day of the moneth of March making a Sermon to his parishioners entred beside his text into an impertinent discourse of the Articles lately set forth by the Popes authority in commendation thereof and to the disgrace of the Gospell saying more over thus unto the people My masters and neighbours rejoice and be merry for the prodigall sonne is come home for I know that the most part of you are as I am I know your hearts well enough and I shall tell you what happened to me this weeke past I was before my Lord Cardinall and he hath made me as cleane from sinne as I was at the Font-stone and he hath also appointed me to notifie unto you the Bull of the Popes pardon and so reading the same unto them he thanked God that ever he lived to see that day adding moreover that he beleeved that by the vertue of that Bull he was as cleane from sinne as that night that he was borne which words he had no sooner uttered but the Lord to shew that he lyed stroke him with sudden death and so he fel down out of the pulpit never stirring hand nor foot not speaking word but there lay an amazement and astonishment to all the people Denterius an Arrian Bishop being at Bizantium as he was about to baptise one Barbas after his blasphemous manner saying I baptise thee in the name of the Father through the Sonne in the holy Ghost which forme of words is contrary to the prescript rule of Christ that bad his disciples to baptise all nations In the Name of the Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost the water suddenly vanished so that he could not then be baptised wherefore Barbas all amased
fled to a Church of purer Religion and there was entertained into the Church by baptisme Socrates in his Ecclesiasticall History reporteth the like accident to have happened to a Iew who had beene oftentimes baptised and came to Paulus a Novatian Bishop to receive the Sacrament againe but the water as before vanished and his villany being detected he was banished the Church Vrbanus Formensis and Foelix Iducensis two Donatists by profession rushing into Thipasa a city of Mauritania commanded the Eucharist to be throwne among the dogs but the dogs growing mad thereby set upon their owne Masters and rent them with their teeth as being guilty of despising the body of Christ. Certainly a notable judgement to condemne the wicked behaviour of those miscreants who were so prophane as not only to refuse the Sacrament themselves but also to cast it to their dogs as if it were the vilest and contemptiblest thing in the world Theopompus a Phylosopher being about to insert certaine things out of the writings of Moses into his prophane works and so to abuse the sacred Word of God was stricken with a frenzy and being warned of the cause thereof in a dreame by prayers made unto God recovered his sences againe This story is recorded by Iosephus As also another of Theodectes a Poet that mingled his Tragedies with the holy Scripture and was therfore stricken with blindnesse untill he had recanted his impiety In a towne of Germany called Itzsith there dwelt a certaine husbandman that was a monstrous despiser and prophaner of the Word of God and his Sacraments he upon a time amidst his cups railed with most bitter termes upon a Minister of Gods Word after which going presently into the fields to overlooke his sheepe he never returned alive but was found there dead with his body all scortched and burnt as blacke as a cole the Lord having given him over into the hands of the Divell to be thus used for his vile prophanenesse and abusing his holy things This D. Iustus Ionus in Luthers Conferences reporteth to be most true In the yeare of our Lord 1553 a certain Coblers servant being brought up among the professors of the reformed Religion and having received the Sacrament in both kinds after living under Popery received it after their fashion in one kinde but when he returned to his old Master and was admonished by him to go againe to the Communion as he was wont then his sleepy conscience awaked and he fell into most horrible dispaire crying that he was the Divels bondslave and therewithall threw himselfe headlong out of the window so that with the fall his bowels gushed out of his mouth and he died most miserably When the great persecution of the Christians was in Persia under king Sapor in the yeare of our Lord 347 there was one Miles an holy Bishop and constant Martyr who preaching exhorting and suffering all manner of torments for the truth of the Gospel could not convert one soule of the whole city whereof he was Bishop to the faith wherefore in hatred and detestation of it he forewent it cleane but after his departure the Lord made them worthily â—ue their contempt of his Word for he sent the spirit of division betwixt King Sapor and them so that he came with an army of men and three hundred Elephants against it and quickly subverted it that the very apparance and memoriall of a city was quile defaced and rooted out For certainly this is a sure position where Gods word is generally despised and not regarded nor profited by there some notable destruction approcheth In a certaine place there was acted a tragedy of the death and passion of Christ in shew but in deed of themselves for he that played Christs part hanging upon the Crosse was wounded to death by him that should have thrust his sword into a bladder full of bloud tyed to his side who with his fall slew another that played one of the womens part that lamented under the Crosse his brother that was first slaine seeing this slew the murtherer and was himselfe by order of justice hanged therefore so that this tragedy was concluded with foure true not counterfeit deaths and that by the divine providence of God who can endure nothing lesse than such prophane and rediculous handling of so serious and heavenly matters In the Vniversity of Oxford the history of Christ was also played and cruelly punished and that not many yeares since for he that bore the person of Christ the Lord struck him with such a giddinesse of spirit and brain that he became mad forthwith crying when he was in his best humour That God had laid this judgment upon him for playing Christ. Three other Actors in the same play were hanged for robbing as by credible report is affirmed Most lamentable was the judgement of God upon Iohn Apowel sometimes a Serving-man for mocking and jeasting at the Word of God This Iohn Apowel hearing one William Malden reading certaine English prayers mocked him after every word with contrary gaudes and flouting termes insomuch that at last hee was terribly afraid so that his haire stood upright on his head and the next day was found besides his wits crying night and day without ceasing The Divell the Divell O the Divell of Hell now the Devill of hell there he goeth for it seemed to him as the other read Lord have mercy upon us at the end of the prayer that the Devill appeared unto him and by the permission of God depilved him of his understanding This is a terrible example for all those that be mockers at the Word of God to warne them if they doe not repent lest the vengeance of God fall upon them in like manner Thus we see how severely the Lord punisheth all despisers and prophaâ—â—rs of his holy things and thereby ought to learne to carry a most dutifull regard and reverence to them as also to note them for none of Gods flocke whosoever they be that deride or contemne any part of Religion or the Ministers of the same CHAP. XXXV Of those that prophane the Sabbath day IN the fourth and last Commandement of the first Table it is said Remember to keepe holy the Sabbath day By which words it is ordained and enjoyned us to separate one day of seven from all bodily and servile labour not to idlenesse and loosenesse but to the worship of God which is spirituall and wholesome Which holy ordinance when one of the children of Israel in contempt broke as they were in the wildernes by gathering sticks upon the Sabbath he was brought before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation by them put in prison untill such time as they knew the Lords determination concerning him knowing well That he was guilty of a most grievous crime And at length by the Lords owne sentence to his servant Moses condemned to be stoned to death without the host as was
to the hurting and endangering of many sometime one thing sometime another hath fallen out to the great damage and hurt of many that have no conscience of this day yea often to the endangering of their lives and that which is most strange within these late yeares a whole town hath been twice burnt for the breach of the Sabbath by the inhabitants as all men judged The just report thereof I passe over here to set downe untill such time as I shall be better instructed Famous and memorable also is that example which happened at London in the yeare 1583 at Paris garden where upon the Sabbath day were gathered together as accustomably they used great multitudes of prophane people to behold the sport of Beare baiting without respect of the Lords day or any exercise of religion required therein which prophane impiety the Lord that he might chasten in some sort and shew his dislike thereof he caused the scaffolds suddenly to breake and the beholders to tumble headlong downe so that to the number of eight persons men and women were slaine therewith besides many others which were sore hurt and bruised to the shortening of their dayes The like example happened at a towne in Bedford shire called Risley in the yeare 1607 Where the floore of a chamber wherein a number were gathered together to see a play on the Sabbath day fell downe by meanes whereof many were sore hurt and some killed Surely a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves with the cruelty of beasts and vain sports than with the works of mercy and Religion the fruits of a true faith which ought to be the Sabbath dayes exercise And thus much for the examples of the first Table whereof if some seeme to exceed credit by reason of the strangenesse of them yet let us know that nothing is impossible to God and that hee doth often worke miracles to controll the obstinate impiety and rebellion of mortall men against his commandement Besides there is not one example here mentioned but it hath a credible or probable Author for the avoucher of it Let us now out of all this that hath been spoken gather up this wholsome lesson to love God with all our heart and affection to the end we may worship him invocate his holy name and repose all the confidence of our salvation upon him alone through Christ Iesus seeking by pleasing and obeying his will to set forth his glory and render him due thanks for all his benefits FINIS THE SECOND BOOKE CHAP. I. Of rebellious and stubborne children towards their Parents WEe have seene in the former Booke what punishments they have incurred that either malitiously or otherwise have transgressed and broken the commandements of the first Table Now it followeth to discover the chastisements which God hath sent upon the transgressors of the second Table And first concerning the first commandement therof which is Honour thy father and mother that thy dayes may be prolonged in the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee C ham one of old Noah's sonnes was guilty of the breach of this Commandement who in stead of performing that reverence to his father which he ought and that presently after the deluge which being yet fresh in memory might have taught him to walke in the feare of God came so short of his duty that when he saw his nakednesse hee did not hide it but mocked and jeasted at it for which cause hee was cursed both of his father and of God in the person of his youngest sonne Chanaan and made a servant to the servants of his brethren which curse was fulfilled in his posterity the Canaanites who being forsaken of God were rooted up and spued out of their land because of their sinnes and abhominations Marvellous strange was the malice of Absolon to rebell so furiously against his father David as to wage warre against him which he did with all his strongest endeavours without sparing any thing that might further his proceedings insomuch that he grew to that outrage and madnesse through the wicked and pernitious counsell of Achitophel that hee shamed not villanously to commit incest with his fathers concubines and pollute his bloud even before the eyes of the multitude by which means being become altogether odious and abhominable hee shortly after lost the battell wherein though himselfe received no hurt nor wound yet was he not therefore quit but being pursued by Gods just judgement fell unwittingly into the snare which he had deserved for as he rode along the forrest to save himselfe from his fathers army his moyle carrying him under a thicke oake left him hanging by the haire upon a bough betwixt heaven and earth untill being found by Ioab he was wounded to death with many blowes Whereby every man may plainly see that God wanteth no means to punish sinners when it pleaseth him but maketh the dumbe and sencelesse creatures the instruments of his vengeance for hee that had escaped the brunt and danger of the battell and yet not having therefore escaped the hand of God was by a bruit beast brought under a sencelesse tree which God had appointed to catch hold of him as an executioner of his just judgement which if wee consider is as strange and wonderfull an accident as may possible happen and such an one as God himselfe provided to punish this wicked proud and rebellious wretch withall for seeing his outrage and villany was so great as to rebell against his father and so good and kinde a father towards him as he was it was most just that he should endure so vile a punishment Beside herein doubtlesse God would lay open to the eyes of all the world a fearefull spectacle of his judgements against wicked and disobedient children thereby to terrifie the most impudent and malitious wretches that live from this horrible sinne And for the same cause it was his pleasure that that wicked and false Achitophel should fall into extreme ignominy and confusion for forsaking David and setting forward with counsell and presence yong Absolon against his father for which cause with despaire he hung himselfe Now by this example it is easie to perceive how unpleasant this sin is in Gods sight and how much he would have every man to hate and detest it seeing that Nature her selfe teacheth and instructeth us so farre as to yeeld duty and obedience unto those that begat nourished and brought us up Notwithstanding all this yet is the world full of ill advised and ill nurtured youth that are little lesse disobedient unto their parents than Absolon was as Adramalech and Saraser that slew their father Sennacherib as he was worshipping in the Temple of Nisroth his god but whereas they looked for the soveraignty they lost the benefit of subjection and were banished into Armenia their brother Esarhaddon raigning in their stead Gregory of Tours maketh mention of one Crannius the son of Clotarius King of France
the Duke that they had stolne into the Emperours tents by night and viewed his power which they found to exceed his by three parts and therefore counselled him not to try the hazard of the battell but to save his souldiers lives by flight which if they tarried they were sure to loose Wherewithall the Duke mistrusting no fraud sore affrighted tooke the next occasion of flight and returned home with dishonour Now when these three traitors came to the Emperour for their compacted rewards he caused them to bee payed in counterfeit money not equivaling the summe of their bargaine by the twentieth part which although at first they discerned not yet afterwards finding how they were cousened they returned to require their due and complaine of their wrong But the Emperor looking sternely upon them answered That counterfeit money was good enough for their counterfeit service and that if they tarried long they should have a due reward of their treason Ladislaus Lerezin Governour of Alba Iulia in Hungary under Maximilian the Emperour in the yeare 1566 the City being besieged and in some danger of losing albeit hee was advertised That within two dayes he should receive some reliefe yet yeelded the City traiterously into the hands of the Turkes upon composition The cruell Turks forgetting their faith and all humanity massacred all the souldiers within the City and sent Ladislaus the traitour bound hand and foot to Selym the great Turke where he was accused for his cruell slaying of some Turkish prisoners and delivered to his accusers to be used at their pleasure who a just reward of his former treason put him into a great Pipe stickt full of long nailes and then rolled him downe from a high mountaine so as the nailes ran through him and ended his life in horrible torment Besides his sonne that was also partaker of this treason died miserably without meanes and abandoned of all men in great poverty and extremity When as the City of Rhodes was besieged by the Turke there was in it a certaine traiterous Nobleman who upon promise to have one of Solymans daughters given him in marriage did many services to the Turke in secret to the prejudice of the City The Island and towne being woon he presented himselfe to Solyman expecting the performance of his promise but hee in recompence of his treason caused him to be flayed alive saying That it was not lawfull for a Christian to marry a Turkish wife except he put off his old skinne being thus flayed they layed him upon a bed all covered with salt and so poudered him that in short space he died in unspeakable tormenes CHAP. III. More examples of the same subject WHen Manuel the Emperour of Constantinople lay about Antioch with an army prepared against the Turke one of his chiefest officers namely his Chancellour put in practise this notable piece of treason against him he waged three desperate young men with an infinite summe of money to kill him on a day appointed and then with a band of souldiers determined to possesse himselfe of the Crowne and of the City and to slay all that any way crossed his purpose But the treason being discoured secretly to the Empresse she acquainted her Lord with it who tooke the three traitours and put them all to cruell deaths and as for the Chancellour he first bored out his eyes and plucking his tongue through his throat tormented him to death with a rigorous and most miserable punishment When the Turke besieged Alba Graeca certaine souldiers conspired to betray the City into his hands for he had promised them large rewards so to doe howbe it it succeeded not with them for they were detected and apprehended by Paulus Kynifius Governour of Hungary who constrained them to eat one anothers flesh seething every dayone to feed the other withall but he that was last was faine to devour his owne body Scribonianus a captaine of the Romans in Dalmatia rebelled against the Emperor Claudius and named himselfe emperor in the army but his rebellion was miraculously punished for though the whole army favored him very much yet they could not by any meanes spread their banners or remove their standers out of their places as long as he was called by the name of Emperor with which miracle being moved they turned their loves into hatred and their liking into loathing so that whom lately they saluted as Emperor him now they murthered as a traitor To rehearse all the English traitors that have conspired against their Kings from the Conquest unto this day it is a thing unnecessary and almost impossible Howbeit that their destructions may appeare more evidently and the curse of God upon traitors be made more manifest I will briefely reckon up a catalogue of the chiefest of them In the yere 1295 Lewline Prince of Wales rebelled against King Edward the first and after much adoe was taken by Sir Roger Mortimer and his head set upon the Tower of London In like sort was David Lewline's brother served Râ—â—s and Madok escaped no better measure in stirring the Welchmen up to rebellion No more did the Scots who having of their owne accord committed the government of their kingdome to king Edward after the death of Alexander who broke his neck by a fall from an horse and lest no issue male and sworne fealty unto him yet dispensed with their oath by the Popes commission and Frenchmens incitement and rebelled divers times against King Edward for he overcame them sundry times and made slaughter of their men slaying at one time 32000 and taking divers of their Nobles prisoners In like manner they rebelled against King Edward the third who made three voyages into that land in the space of foure yeares and at every time overcame and discomfited them insomuch that well neere all the nobility of Scotland with infinite number of the common people were slaine Thus they rebelled in Henry the sixths time and also Henry the eights and divers other kings reignes ever when our English forces were busied about forraine wars invading the land on the other side most traiterously In the reigne of King Henry the fourth there rebelled at one time against him Sir Iohn Holland D. of Excester with the Dukes of Aumarle Surrey Salisbury and Gloucester and at another time Sir Thomas Percy Earle of Worcester and Henry Percy son to the Earle of Northumberland at another Sir Richard Scroope Archbishop of Yorke and divers others of the house of the Lord Moubray at another time Sir Henry Percy the father Earle of Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph and lastly Ryce ap Dee and Owen Glendour two Welchmen all which were either slaine as Sir Henry Percy the younger or beheaded as the rest of these noble Rebels or starved to death as Owen Glendour was in the mountaines of Wales after he had devoured his owne flesh In the reigne of Henry the fifth Sir Richard Earle of Cambridge Sir Richard Scroope
were there overthrown killed and hanged by troups In the yeare of our Lord 1525 there were certain husbandmen of Souabe that began to stand in resistance against the Earle of Lupsfen by reason of certaine burthens which they complained themselves to be overlaid with by him their neighbors seeing this enterprised the like against their Lords And so upon this small beginning by a certaine contagion there grew up a most dangerous and fearefull commotion that spread it selfe almost over all Almaine the sedition thus increasing in all quarters and the swaines being now full forty thousand strong making their owne liberty and the Gospels a cloake to cover their treason and rebellion and a pretence of their undertaking armes to the wonderfull griefe of all that feared God did not onely fight with the Romane Catholickes but with all other without respect as well in Souabe as in Franconia they destroyed the greater part of the Nobility sacked and burnt many castles and fortresses to the number of two hundred and put to death the Earle of Helfest in making him passe through their pikes But at length their strength was broken they discomfited and torn in pieces with a most horrible massacre of more than eighteen thousand of them During this sedition there were slaine on each side fifty thousand men The captaine of the Souabian swaines called Geismer having betaken himselfe to flight got over the mountaines of Padua where by treason he was made away In the yeare of our Lord 1517 in the Marquesdome of the Vandales the like insurrection and rebellion was of the commonalty especially the baser sort against the Nobility Spirituall and Temporall by whom they were oppressed with intolerable exactions their army was numbred of ninety thousand men all clowns and husbandmen that conspired together to redresse and reforme their owne grievances without any respect of civill Magistrate or feare of Almighty God This rascality of swaines raged and tyranized every where burning and beating down the castles and houses of Noblemen and making their ruines even with the ground Nay they handled the Noblemen themselves as many as they could attaine unto not contumeliously only but rigorously and cruelly for they tormented them to death and carried their heads upon speares in token of victory Thus they swayed a while uncontrolled for the Emperour Maximilian winked at their riots as being acquainted with what in juries they had been overcharged but when he perceived that the rude multitude did not limit their fury within reason but let it runne too lavish to the damnifying as well the innocent as the guilty he made out a small troup of mercinary souldiers together with a band of horsemen to suppresse them who comming to a city were presently so environed with such a multitude of these swaines that like locusts overspread the earth that they thought it impossible to escape with their lives wherefore feare and extremity made them to rush out to battell with them But see how the Lord prospereth a good cause for all their weak number in comparison of their enemies yet such a feare possessed their enemies hearts that they fled like troups of sheep and were slaine like dogges before them insomuch that they that escaped the sword were either hanged by flocks on trees or rosted on spits by fires or otherwise tormented to death And this end befell that wicked rebellious rout which wrought such mischiefe in that country with their monstrous villanies that the traces and steppes thereof remaine at this day to bee seene In the yeare of our Lord 1381 Richard the second being King the Commons of England and especially of Kent and Essex by meanes of a taxe that was set upon them suddenly rebelled and assembled together on Blackheath to the number of 60000 or more which rebellious rout had none but base and ignoble fellowes for their captaines as Wat Tiler Iacke Straw Tom Miller but yet they caused much trouble and disquietnesse in the Realme and chiefly about the city of London where they committed much villany in destroying many goodly places as the Savoy and others and being in Smithfield used themselves very proudly and unreverently towards the King but by the manhood and wisedome of William Walworth Major of London who arrested their chiefe captain in the midst of them that rude company was discomfited and the ringleaders of them worthily punished In like manner in the raigne of Henry the seventh a great commotion was stirred up in England by the Commons of the North by reason of a certaine taxe which was levied of the tenth peny of all mens lands and goods within the land in the which the Earle of Northumberland was slain but their rash attempt was soon broken and Chamberlain their captain with divers other hanged at Yorke for the same Howbeit their example feared not the Cornishmen from rebelling upon the like occasion of a tax under the conduct of the Lord Audley untill by woefull experience they felt the same scourge for the King met them upon Blackheath and discomfiting their troups took their captaines and ring leaders and put them to most worthy and sharp death Thus we may see the unhappy issue of all such seditious revoltings and thereby gather how unpleasant they are in the sight of God Let all the people therefore learne by these experiences to submit themselves in the feare of God to the higher powers whether they be Lords Kings Princes or any other that are set over them CHAP. VI. Of Murtherers AS touching Murther which is by the second commandement of the second Table forbidden in these words Thou shalt not kill the Lord denounceth this judgment upon it That he which striketh a man that hee dieth shall die the death And this is correspondent to that Edict which he gave to Noah presently after the universall floud to suppresse that generall cruelty which had taken root from the beginning in Cain and his posterity being carefull for mans life saying That he will require the bloud of man at the hands of either man or beast that killeth him adding moreover That whosoever sheddeth mans bloud by man also his bloud shall be shed seeing that God created him after his owne Image which he would not have to be basely accounted of but deare and precious unto us If then the bruit and unreasonable creatures are not exempted from the sentence of death pronounced in the law if they chance to kill a man how much more punishable then is man endued with will and reason when malitiously and advisedly he taketh away the life of his neighbour But the hainousnesse and greatnesse of this sinne is most lively expressed by that ordinance of God set downe in the 21 of Deutronomy where it is enjoyned That if a man be found slain in the field and it be not knowne who it was that slew him then the Elders and Iudges of the next towne assembling together should offer up an expiatory sacrifice
despightfull manner for the Daulphin escaping their hands by night and safegard in his castle after that he heard of the seisure of the citie found meanes to assemble certuine forces and marched to Montereaufautyon with 20000 men of purpose to be revenged on the Duke for all his brave and riotous demeanors hither under colour of parling and devising new means to pacifie these old civill troubles he enticed the Duke and being come at his very first arrivall as he was bowing his knee in reverence to him he caused him to be slaine And on this manner was the Duke of Orleance death quitted and the evill and cruelty shewed towards him returned upon the murderers owne necke for as he slew him trecherously and cowardly so was he also trecherously and cowardly slaine and justly requited with the same measure that he before had measured to another notwithstanding herein the Daulphin was not free from a grievous crime of disloyaltie and truth-breach in working his death without shame of either faith-breach or perjury and that in his owne presence whom hee had so often with protestation of assurance and safetie requested to come to him Neither did he escape unpunished for it for after his fathers decease he was in danger of losing the Crowne and all for this cause for Philip Duke of Burgundie taking his fathers revenge into his hands by his cunning devices wrought meanes to displace him from the succession of the kingdome by according a marriage betwixt the King of England and his sister to whom he in favor agreed to give his kingdome in reversion after his owne decease Now assoone as the King of England was seised upon the governement of France the Daulphin was presently summoned to the marble Table to give answere for the death of the old Duke whither when he made none appearance they presently banished him the realme and pronounced him to be unworthy to be succeeder to the noble Crowne which truely was a very grievous chastisement and such an one as brought with it a heape of many mischiefes and discomfitures which happened in the warre betwixt England and him for the recovery of his kingdome Peter sonne to Alphonsus King of Castile was a most bloudy and cruell Tyran for first he put to death his owne wife the daughter of Peter Duke of Burbon and sister to the Queene of France next hee slew the mother of his bastard brother Henrie together with many Lords and Barons of the realme for which he was hated not onely of all his subjects but also of his neighbor and adjoyning countries which hatred moved the foresaid Henrie to aspire unto the Crowne which what with the Popes avouch who legitimated him and the helpe of certaine French forces and the support of the Nobility of Castile he soone atchieved Peter thus abandoned put his safest gard in his heeles and fled to Bordeaux towards the Prince of Wales of whom he received such good entertainment that with his aid he sonne re-entred his lost dominions and by maine battell chased his bastard brother out of the confines thereof but being re-installed whilest his cruelties ceased not to multiply on every side behold Henrie with a new supply out of France began to assayle him afresh and put him once again to his shifts but all that he could doe could not shift him out of Henries hands who pursued him so hotly that with his owne hands hee soone rid him out of all troubles and afterwards peaceably enjoyed the kingdome of Castille But above all the horrible murders and massacres that ever were heard or read of in this last age of the World that bloudy massacre in France under the reigne of Charles the ninth is most famous or rather infamous wherein the noble Admirall with many of the nobility and gentrie which were Protestants were most traiterously and cruelly murdered in their chambers and beds in Paris the foure and twentieth of August in the night in this massacre were butchered in Paris that very night ten thousand Protestants and in all France for other cities followed the example of Paris thirty or as some say forty thousand I will not stand to relate the particular circumstances and manner thereof it being at large described by divers writers both in French and English only to our purpose let us consider the judgements and vengeance of Almightie God upon the chiefe practisers and plotters thereof which were these Charles the ninth then King by whose commission and commandement this massacre was undertaken his brother and successour the Duke of Aniou the Queene mother his bastard brother and the Duke of Guise yea the whole towne of Paris and generally all France was guilty thereof Now observe Gods just revenge Charles himselfe had the thred of his life cut off by the immediat hand of God by a long and lingring sickenesse and that before he was come to the full age of 24 yeres in his sicknesse bloud issued in great abundance out of many places of his body insomuch that sometimes he fell and wallowed in his owne bloud that as he had delight to shed the bloud of so many innocents so he might now at the latter end of his dayes be glutted with bloud And surely by this meanes the Lord did put him in minde of his former bloudy murders to draw him to repentance if it were possible The Duke of Anjou who succeeded this Charles in the Crowne of France and was called Henrie the third was murdered by a young Iacobine Monke called Frier Iaques Clement at the instigation of the duke de Maine and others of the league and that wherein appeareth manifestly the hand of God in the selfe same chamber at S. Cloves wherein the Councell for the great massacre had beene taken and plotted as it is constantly affirmed The Duke of Guise in the yeare 1588 the 23 of December was murdered by the kings owne appointment being sent for into the kings chamber out of the councell chamber where attended him 45 with rapiers and poniards ready prepared to receive him The Queene mother soone after the slaughter of the Duke of Guise tooke the matter so to heart that shee went to bed and dyed the first of Ianuarie after Touching all the rest that were chiefe actors in the tragidie few or none escaped the apparant vengeance of God and as for Paris and the whole realme of France they also felt the severe scourge of Gods justice partly by civile wars and bloudshed and partly by famine and other plagues so that the Lord hath plainly made knowne to the world how precious in the sight of his most Holy Majestie is the death of innocents and how impossible it is for cruell murderers to escape unpunished CHAP. X. Of divers other Murderers and their severall punishments MAximinus from a shepheard in Thracia grew to be an Emperor in Rome by these degrees his exceeding stength and swiftnesse in running commended him so to Severus then Emperour that he made
got a band of souldiers to defend himselfe yet hee was surprised by the Earles sonnes who tormenting him as became a traitor to bee tormented at last rent his body into foure quarters and so his murder and treason was condignely punished Above all the execution of Gods vengeance is most notably manifested in the punishment and detection of one Parthenius an homicide treasurer to Theodobert king of France who having traiterously slaine an especiall friend of his called Ausanius with his wife â—apianilla when no man suspected or accused him thereof he detected and accused himselfe after this strange manner As hee slept in his bed suddenly hee roared out most pittifully crying for helpe or else hee perished and being demanded what he ailed he halfe asleepe answered That his friend Ausanius and his wife whome hee had slaine long agoe summoned him to judgement before God upon which confession hee was apprehended and after due examination stoned to death Thus though all witnesses faile yet a murderers own conscience will betray him Pepin and Martellus his sonne kings of France enjoying prosperity and ease fell into divers monstrous sinnes as to forsake their wives and follow whores which filthynesse when the Bishop of Tungâ—ia reproved Dodo the harlors brother murdered him for his labor but hee was presently taken with the vengeance of God even a lousie and most filthie disease with the griefe and stinke whereof being moved hee threw himselfe into the river of Mosa and there was drowned How manifest and evident was the vengeance of God upon the murderers of Theodorick Bishop of Treverse â— Conrade the author of it dyed suddenly the souldier that helped to throw him downe from the rocke was choaked as he was at supper two other servants that layd to their hands to this murder slew themselves most desperatly About the yeare of our Lord 700. Geâ—lian the wife of Gosbere prince of Wurtiburg being reproved by Kilianus for incest for shee married her husbands brother wrought such meanes that both hee and his brethren were deprived of their lives but the Lord gave her up to Satan in vengeance so that shee was presently possessed with him and so continued till her dying day A certaine woman of Millaine in Italie hung a young boy and after devoured him instead of meat when as she wanted none other victuals and when she was examined about the crime she confessed that a spirit perswaded her to doe it telling her that after it she should attaine unto whatsoever she desired for which murder shee was to râ—â—â—nted to death by a lingring and grievous punishment This Arlunus reporteth to have happened in his time And surely how soever openly the Divell sheweth not himselfe yet he is the mover and perswader of all murders and commonly the doctor For hee delighteth in mens blouds and their destruction as in nothing more A gentleman of Chaleur in Fossignie being in the Duke of Savoyes army in September the yeare of our Lord 1589 and grieving to behold the cruelties which were exercised upon the poore inhabitants of that countrey resolved to depart from the said army now because there was no safer nor neerer waie for him than to crosse the lake to Bonne he entreated one of his acquaintance named Iohn Villaine to procure him meanes of safe passage over the lake who for that purpose procured two watermen to transport him with his horse apparell and other things being upon the lake the watermen whereof the chiefest was called Martin Bourrie fell upon him and cut his throat Iohn Villaine understanding hereof complained to the magistrates but they being forestalled with a present from the murderer of the gentlemans horse which was of great value made no inquisition into the matter but said that hee was an enemy which was dispatched and so the murderers were justified but God would not leave it so unpunished for about the fifteenth of Iuly 1591 this Bourrie going with divers others to shoot for a wager as hee was charging the harquebuse which hee had robbed the gentleman of when hee murdered him it suddenly discharged of it selfe and shot the murderer through the heart so that hee fell downe starke dead and never stirred nor spake word In the first troubles of France a gentleman of the troups which besieged Moulins in Bourbonnois was taken with sickenesse in such sort that hee could not follow his company when they dislodged and lying at a Bakers house which professed much friendship and kindnesse to him hee put such confidence in him that hee shewed him all the money that he had but so farre was this wretch from either conscience or common honestie that assoone as it was night hee most wickedly murdered him Now marke how God revenged it it happened not long after that the murderer being in sentinell one of his owne fellowes unawares shot him through the arme with a harquebuse whereof he languished the space of three moneths and then died starke mad The town of Bourges being yeelded by Monsieur D'yvoy during the first troubles in France the inhabitants were inhibited from talking together either within or without the towne or from being above two together at a time under colour of which decree many were most cruelly murdered And a principall actor herein was one Garget captaine of the Bourbonne quarter who made a common practise of killing innocent men under that pretence But shortly after the Lord that heareth the crie of innocent bloud met with him for hee was stricken with a burning fever and ranne up and downe blaspheming the Name of God calling upon the Divell and crying out if any would goe along with him to hell hee would pay his charges and so died in desperate and franticke manner Peter Martin one of the Queries of the King of France his stable and Post-master at a place called Lynge in the way towards Poyctou upon a sleight accusation without all just forme of lawfull processe was condemned by a Lord to bee drowned The Lord commanded one of his Faulkners to execute this sentence upon him upon paine to bee drowned himselfe whereupon he performed his masters command But God deferred not the revenge thereof long for within three daies after this Faulkner and a Lackey falling out about the dead mans apparell went into the field and slew one another Thus he that was but the instrument of that murder was justly punished how much more is it likely that the author escaped not scot free except the Lord gave him a heart truely to repent It hath beene observed in the history of France since the yeare of our Lord 1560 that of a thousand murders which remained unpunished in regard of men not tenne of them escaped the hands of God but came to most wretched ends In the yeare of our Lord 1546 Iohn Diazius a Spaniard by birth living a student and Professor in Paris came first to Geneva and then to Strasbrough and there by the
besieging him in his owne City took him at last prisoner and hanged him with his two sons Francis and William Diocles son of Pisistratus Tyran of Athens for ravishing a maid was slain by her brother whose death when Hippias his brother undertook to revenge and caused the maidens brother to be racked that he might discover the other conspiratours he named all the Tyrans friends which by commandment being put to death the Tyran asked whether there were any more None but onely thy selfe quoth he whom I would wish next to be hanged whereby it was perceived how abundantly he had revenged his sisters chastity by whose notable stomacke all the Athenians being put in remembrance of their liberty expelled their Tyran Hippias out of their City Mundus a young Gentleman of Rome ravished the chaste Matron Paulina in this fashion when he perceived her resolution not to yeeld unto his lust he perswaded the Priests of Isis to say that they were warned by an Oracle how that Anubius the god of Egypt desired the company of the said Paulina to whom the chaste Matron gave light credence both because she thought the Priests would not lie and also because it was accounted a great renowne to have to do with a god and thus by this meanes was Paulina abused by Mundus in the Temple of Isis under the name of Anubius Which thing being after disclosed by Mundus himselfe he was thus justly revenged the Priests were put to death the Temple beaten downe to the ground the Image of Isis throwne into Tiber and the young man banished A principall occasion of the Danes first arrivall here in England which after conquered the whole Land and exercised among the Inhabitants most horrible cruelties and outrages was a Rape committed by one Osbright a deputy King under the King of the West-Saxons in the North part This Osbright upon a time journeying by the way turned into the house of one of his Nobles called Bruer who having a wife of great beauty he being from home the King after dinner allured with her excellent beauty took her to a secret Chamber where he forcibly contrary to her will ravished her whereupon she being greatly dismayed and vexed made her mone to her husband at his returne of this violence and injury received The Nobleman forthwith studying revenge first went to the King and resigned to his hands all such services and possessions which he held of him and then took shipping and sailed into Denmarke where he had great friends and had his bringing up there making his mone to Codrinus the King desired his aid in revenging of the great villany of Osbright against him and his wife Codrinus glad to entertain any occasion of quarrell against this Land presently levied an Army and preparing all things for the same sendeth forth Inguar and Hubba two brethren with a mighty Army of Danes into England who first arriving at Holdernesse burnt up the Countrey and killed without mercy both men women and children then marching towards Yorke encountered with wicked Osbright himselfe where he with the most part of his Army was slain and discomfited a just reward for his villanous act as also one chief cause of the Conquest of the whole Land by the Danes In the year of our Lord 955. Edwine succeeding his uncle Eldred was King of England this man was so impudent that in the very day of his Coronation he suddenly withdrew himselfe from his Lords and in sight of certain persons ravished his owne kinswoman the wife of a Nobleman of his Realme and afterward slew her husband that he might have unlawfull use of her beauty for which act he became so odious to his Subjects and Nobles that they joyntly rose against him and deprived him of his Crowne when he had reigned four yeares CHAP. XXII Other examples of Gods Judgements upon Adulterers AMongst all other things this is especially to be noted how God for a greater punishment of the disordinate lust of men strucke them with a new yet filthy and stinking kinde of Disease called the French Pox though indeed the Spaniards were the first that were infected therewith by the heat which they caught among the women of the new-found lands and sowed the seeds thereof first in Spain and from thence sprinkled Italy therewith wherethe French men caught it when Charles the Eighth their King went against Naples From whence the contagion spread it selfe throughout divers places of Europe Barbary was so over-growne with it that in all their Cities the tenth part escaped not untouched nay almost not a Family but was infected From thence it ran to Aegypt Syria and the graund Cair and it may near hand truly be said that there was not a corner of the habitable world where this not onely new and strange for it was never heard of in antient ages but terrible and hideous scourge of Gods wrath stretched not it selfe They that were spotted with it and had it rooted in their bodies led a languishing life full of aches and torments and carried in their visages filthy markes of unclean behaviour as ulcers boyles and such like that greatly disfigured them And herein we see the words of Saint Paul verified That an Adulterer sinneth against his owne body Now for so much as the world is so brutishly carried into this sin as to none more the Lord therefore hath declared his anger against it in divers sorts so that divers times he hath punished it in the very act or not long after by a strange death Of which Alcibiades one of the great Captaines of Athens may stand for an example who being polluted with many great and odious vices and much given to his pleasures and subject to all uncleannesse ended his life in the midst thereof for as he was in company of a Phrygian strumpet having flowne thither to the King of Phrygia for shelter was notwithstanding set upon by certain Guards which the King induced by his enemies sent to stay him but they though in number many through the conceived opinion of his notable valour durst not apprehend him at hand but set fire to the house standing themselves in armes round about it to receive him if need were he seeing the fire leaped through the midst of it and so long defended himselfe amongst them all till strength failed in himselfe and blowes encreasing upon him constrained him to give up his life amongst them Pliny telleth of Cornelius Gallus and Q. Elerius two Roman Knights that died in the very action of filthinesse In the Irish History we finde recorded a notable judgement of God upon a notorious and cruell lecher one Turgesnis a Norwegian who having twice invaded Ireland reigned there as King for the space of thirty yeares This Tyran not onely cried havocke and spoil upon the whole Countrey abusing his victory very insolently but also spared not to abuse virgins and women at his pleasure to the satisfying
Countries to know the judgement of all the learned Divines concerning the matter in controversie who especially those that dwelt not far off seemed to allow and approve the divorce Thereupon he resolved rejecting his olde wife to take him to a new and to marrie as he did Anne of Bulloine one of the Queenes maides of honour a woman of most rare and excellent beauty Now as touching his first marriage with his brothers wife how unfortunate it was in it owne nature and how unjustly dispensed withall by the Pope we shall anon see by those heavy sorrowfull and troublesome events and issues which immediatly followed in the neck thereof And first and formest of the evill fare of the Cardinall of Yorke with whom the King being highly displeased for that at his instance and request the Pope had opposed himselfe to this marriage requited him and not undeservedly on this manner first he deposed him from the office of the Chancellorship secondly deprived him of two of his three bishoprickes which he held and lastly sent him packing to his owne bouse as one whom he never purposed more to see yet afterward being advertised of certaine insolent and threatning speeches which he used against him he sent againe for him but he not daring to refuse to come at his call dyed in the way with meere griefe and despight The Pope gave his definitive sentence against this act and favoured the cause of the divorced Ladie but what gained he by it save only that the King offended with him rejected him and all his trumpery retained his yearely tribute levied out of this Realm and converted it to another use and this was the recompence of his goodly dispensation with an incestuous marriage wherein although to speake truly and properly he lost nothing of his owne yet it was a deep check and no shallow losse to him and his successors to be deprived of so goodly a revenue and so great authority in this Realme as he then was CHAP. XXVII Of Adulterie SEeing that marriage is so holy an institution and ordinance of God as it hath been shewed to be it followeth by good right that the corruption thereof namely Adultery whereby the bond of marriage is dissolved should be forbidden for the woman that is polluted therewith despiseth her owne husband yea and for the most part hateth him and foisteth in strange seed even his enemies brats in stead of his owne not only to be fathered but also to be brought up and maintained by him and in time to be made inheritors of his possessions which thing being once knowne must needes stir up coales to set anger on fire and set abroach much mischiefe and albeit that the poore infants are innocent and guiltlesse of the crime yet doth the punishment and ignominie thereof redound to them because they cannot be reputed as legitimate but are even marked with the black coale of bastardy whilest they live so grievous is the guilt of this sin and uneasie to be removed For this cause the very Heathen not only reproved adultery evermore but also by authority of law prohibited it and allotted to death the offenders therein Abimelech King of the Philistims a man without circumcision and therefore without the covenant knowing by the light of nature for hee knew not the law of God how sacred and inviolable the knot of marriage ought to be expresly forbad all his people from doing any injury to Isaac in regard of his wife and from touching her dishonestly upon paine of death Out of the same fountaine sprang the words of queene Hecuba in Euripides speaking to Menelaus touching Helen when she admonished him to enact this law That every woman which should betray her husbands credit and her owne chastity to another man should die the death In olde time the Aegyptians used to punish adultery on this sort the man with a thousand jerkes with a reed and the woman with cutting off her nose but he that forced a free woman to his lust had his privy members cut off By the law of Iulia adulterers were without difference adjuged to death insomuch that Iulius Antonius a man of great parentage and reputation among the Romanes whose son was nephew to Augustus sister as Cornelius Tacitus reporteth was for this crime executed to death Aurelianus the Emperour did so hate and detest this vice that to the end to scare and terrifie his souldiers from the like offence he punished a souldier which had committed adultery with his hostesse in most severe manner even by causing him to be tyed by both his feet to two trees bent downe to the earth with force which being let goe returning to their course rent him cruelly in pieces the one halfe of his body hanging on the one tree and the other on the other Yea and at this day amongst the very Turkes and Tartarians this sin is sharply punished So that we ought not wonder that the Lord should ordaine death for the Adulterer If a man saith the law lie with another mans wife if I say he commit adultery with his neighbours wife the Adulterer and the Adulteresse shall die the death And in another place If a man be found lying with a woman married to a man they shall die both twaine to wit the man that lay with the wife and the wife that thou maiest put away evill from Israel Yea and before Moses time also it was a custome to burne the Adulterers with fire as it appeareth by the sentence of Iuda one of the twelve Patriarchs upon Thamar his daughter in law because he supposed her to have played the whore Beside all this to the end this sin might not be shuffled up and kept close there was a meanes given whereby if a man did but suspect his wife for this sin though she could by no witnesse or proofe be convinced her wickednesse notwithstanding most strangely and extraordinarily might be discovered And it was this The woman publikely at her husbands suit called in question before the Priest who was to give judgement of her after divers ceremonies and circumstances performed and bitter curses pronounced by him her belly would burst and her thigh would rot if she were guilty and she should be a curse amongst the people for her sin but if she was free no evill would come unto her Thus it pleased God to make knowne that the filthinesse of those that are polluted with this sin should not be hid This may more clearely appeare by the example of the Levites wife of whom it is spoken in the 19 20 and 21. Chapters of Iudges who having forsaken her husband to play the whore certaine moneths after he had againe received her to be his wife she was given over against her will to the villanous and monstrous lusts of the most wicked and perverse Gibeonites that so abused her for the space of a whole night together that in the morning she was found dead upon
worth for he survived not three daies after the vile excesse besides the rest that strove with him in this goodly conflict of carousing one and forty of them dyed to beare him company The same Alexander was himselfe subject to wine and so distempered divers times therewith that he often slew his friends at the table in his drunkennesse whom in sobriety he loved dearest Plutarch telleth us of Armitus and Ciranippus two Syracusians that being drunk with wine committed incest with their owne daughters Cleomenes King of Lacedemonia being disposed to carouse after the manner of the Scythians dranke so much that he became and continued ever after sencelesse Anacreon the Poet a grand consumer of wine and a notable drunkard was choaked with the huske of a grape The monstrous and riotous excesses of divers Romane Emperours as Tiberius by name who was a companion of all drunkards is strange to be heard and almost incredible to be beleeved he loved wine so well that in stead of Tiberius they called him Biberius and in stead of Claudius Caldus and in stead of Nero Mero noting by those nicknames how great a drunkard he was The Earle of Aspremont after he had by infinite excesse exhausted all his substance being upon a day at S. Michael dranke so excessively that he dyed therewith Cyrillus a Citizen of Hippon had an ungracious son who leading a riotous and luxurious life in the middest of his drunkennesse killed his owne mother great with childe and his father that sought to restraine his sury and would have ravished his sister had she not escaped from him with many wounds Bonosus the Emperour is reported to have been such a notorious drunkard that he was said to be borne not to live but to drinke if any Embassadours came unto him he would make them drunke to the end to reveale their secrets he ended his life with misery even by hanging with this Epitaph That a tun not a man was hanged in that place Philostrates being in the bathes at Sinuessa devoured so much wine that he fell downe the staires and almost broke his neck with the fall Zeno the Emperour of the East was so notoriously given to excesse of meates and drinkes that his sences being benummed he would often lie as one that was dead wherefore being become odious to all men by his beastly qualities his wife Ariadne fell also in detestation of him and one day as he lay sencelesse she transported him into a tombe and throwing a great stone upon it pined him to death not suffering any to remove the stone or to yeeld him any succour and this was a just reward of his drunkennesse Pope Paulus the second beside the exceeding pompe of apparell which he used he was also very carefull for his throat for as Platina writeth of him he delighted in all kinde of exquisite dishes and delicate wine and that in superfluity by which immoderate and continuall surfeiting he fell into a grievous Apoplexy which quickly made an end of his life It is reported of him that he eat the day before he dyed two great Melons and that in a very good appetite when as the next night the Lord struck him with his heavy judgement Alexander the son of Basilius and brother of Leo the Emperour did so wallow and drowne himselfe in the gulfe of pleasure and intemperance that one day after he had stuffed himselfe too full of meat as he got upon his horse he burst a veine within his body whereat upwards and downewards issued such abundance of blood that his life and soule issued forth withall The moderne examples of Gods fearefull judgements upon drunkards not only in other countries but even in this Nation of ours are many and terrible all which if I should stand to report it would be matter for a whole booke Our reverend Judges in their severall circuits doe finde by experience that few murthers and manslaughters are committed which are not from this root of drunkennesse for when mens braines are heat with wine and strong drinke then their tongues are let loose to opprobrious speeches and thence proceed both sudden quarrels and deliberate challenges wherewith thousands are brought to their untimely ends Besides the Lord punisheth the Drunkard many waies first in his soule with impenitency and hardnesse of heart which commonly followeth this vice for as Saint Augustine saith As by too much raine the earth is resolved into durt and made unfit for tillage so by excessive drinking our bodies are altogether unfitted for â—he spirituall tillage and so can bring forth no good fruits of holinesse and righteousnesse but rather like biggest and marishes are fit to bâ—â—ed nothing but serpents frogâ— and vershine that is all manner of abominable sins and leathsome wickednesse Secondly in his body with deformednesse of feature filthy diseases and unseasonable death for excessive drinking breedeth crudities Rheumes Imposthumes Gouts Consumptions Apoplexies and such like whereof men perish before they are come to the halfe of their naturall yeares and this is one principall cause why men are now so short lived in respect of that they have â—â—en heretofore Thirdly in his estate for commonly poverty yea penury followeth this vice at the heeles as Solomon teacheth Pâ—ov 21. 27. And lastly with sudden death and destruction even in the middest of their drunken fits as wofull experience doth make manifest every day and almost in every corner of this land Within these few yeares of mine owne knowledge three not far from Huntington being overcome with drinke perished by drowning when being not able to rule their horses they were carried by them into the maine streame from whence they never came out alive againe but left behinde them visible markes of Gods justice for the terrour and example of others and yet what sin is more commonly used and lesse feared than this Concerning Dancing the usuall dependants of feasts and good cheare there is none of sound judgement that know not that they are baits and allurements to uncleanenesse and as it were instruments of bawdrie by reason whereof they were alwaies condemned among men of honour and reputation whether Romanes or Greekes and left for vile and base minded men to use And this may appeare by the reproach that Demosthenes the Orator gave to Philip of Macedony and his Courtiers in an Oration to the Athenians wherein he termed them common dancers and such as shamed not as soone as they had glutted their bellies with meate and their heads with wine to fall scurrilously a dancing As for the honourable Dames of Rome truly we shall never reade that any of them accustomed themselves to dance according to the report of Salust touching Sempronia whom he judged to be too fine a dancer and singer to be honourable withall as if these two could no more agree then fire and water Cicero in his apologie of Muraena rehearseth an objection of Cato against his client wherein
him But if he would have given all the world it could not ransome him from death wherefore when he saw there was no remedie but hee must needs die hee commended his soule to the Divell to be carried into everlasting torments which words when hee had uttered hee gave up the ghost Another Usurer being ready to die made this his last Will and Testament My soule quoth he I bequeath to the divell who is owner of it my wife likewise to the divell who induced me to this ungodly trade of life and my deacon to the divell for soothing me up and not reproving me for my faults and in this desperate persuasion he died incontinently Usury consisteth not only in lending and borowing but buying and selling also and all unjust and crafty bargaining yea and it is a kinde of usurie to detain through too much covetousnesse those commodities from the people which concerne the publike good and to hoord them up for their private gain til some scarcitie orwant arise and this also hath evermore beene most sharpely punished as by these examples may appeare About the yeare 1543. at what time a great famine and dearth of bread afflicted the world there was in Saxonie a countrey peasant that having carried his corne to the market and sold it cheaper than he looked for as he returned homewards he fell into most heavy dumpes and dolours of minde with griefe that the price of graine was abated and when his servants sang merrily for joy of that blessed cheapnesse he rebuked them most sharpely and cruelly yea and was so much the more tormented and troubled in minde by how much he more he saw any poore soule thankfull unto God for it but marke how God gave him over to a reprobate and desperate sence Whilest his servants rode before hee hung himselfe at the cart taile being past recoverie of life ere any man looked backe or perceived him A notable example for our English cormorants who joyne barne to barne and heape to heape and will not sell nor give a handful of their superfluitie to the poore when it beareth a low price but preserve it till scarcity and want come and then they sell it at their owne rate let them feare by this lest the Lord deale so or worse with them Another covetous wretch when he could not sel his cornesodear as hee desired said the mise should eat it rather than he would lessen one jot of the price thereof Which words were no sooner spoken but vengeance tooke them for all the mise in the countrey flocked to his barnes and fieldes so that they left him neither standing nor lying corne but devoured all This story was written to Martin Luther upon occasion whereof he inveying mightily against this cruell usurie of husbandmen told of three misers that in one yeare hung themselves because graine bore a lower price than they looked for adding moreover that all such cruell and muddy extortioners deserved no better a doome for their unimercifull oppression Another rich farmer whose barnes were full of graine and his stacks untouched was so covetous withall that in hope of some dearth and deerenesse of corne he would not diminish one heape but hoorded up dayly more and more and wished for a scarcity upon the earth to the end hee might enrich his coffers by other mens necessities This cruell churle rejoyced so much in his aboundance that everie day he would go into his barnes and feed his eyes with his superfluitie Now it fell out as the Lord would that having supped and drunke very largely upon a night as hee went according to his custome to view his riches with a candle in his hand behold the wine or rather the justice of God overcame his sences so that he fell downe suddenly into the mow and by his fall set on fire the corne being dry and easie to be incensed in such sort that in a moment all that which he had scraped together and preserved so charily and delighted in so unreasonably was consumed and brought to ashes and scarce he himselfe escaped with his life Another in Misnia in the yeare 1559 having great store of corne hoordedup refused to succor the necessitie of his poore halfe famished neighbours for which cause the Lord punished him with a strange and unusuall judgement for the corne which he so much cherished assumed life and became feathered fowles flying out of his barnes in such abundance that the world was astonished thereat and his barnes left emptie of all provision in most wonderfull and miraculous manner No lesse strange was that which happened in a towne of France called Stenchansen to the Governour of the towne who being requested by one of his poore subjects to sell him some corne for his money when there was none to be gotten elsewhere answered hee could spare none by reason he had scarce enough for his owne hogs which hoggish disposition the Lord requited in it owne kinde for his wife at the next litter brought forth seven pigs at one birth to increase the number of his hogs that as he had preferred filthie and ougly creatures before his poore brethren in whom the image of God in some sort shined forth so he might have of his owne getting more of that kinde to make much of since hee loved them so well Equall to all the former both in cruelty touching the person and miracle touching the judgement was that which is reported by the same authour to have happened to a rich couetous woman in Marchia who in an extreame dearth of victuals denyed not onely to relieve a poore man whose children were ready to starve with famine but also to sell him but one bushell of corne when he wanted but a penny of her price for the poore wretch making great shift to borrow that penny returned to her againe and desired her he might have the corn but as he payed her the mony the penny fell upon the ground by the providence of God which as she stretched out obeisance and vaile bonnet to the hat and in every respect shew themselves as dutifull unto it as to his owne person imagining that his greatest enemies could not endure nor finde in their hearts to do it and therefore upon this occasion he might apprehend them and discover all their close practises and conspiracies which they might brew against him now there was one a stout hearted man that passing everie day up and downe that wayes could in no wise be brought to reverence the dignitie of the worthy hat so unreasonable a thing it seemed in his eyes whereupon being taken the tyran commanded him for punishment of his open contempt to shoot at an apple laid upon the crowne of the head of his dearest childe and if he mist the apple to be put to death the poore man after many excuses and allegations and entreaties that he might not hazard his childes life in that sort was notwithstanding
Pope by the helpe of Magicke which he practised to look diligently to himselfe the tenth day of September in which notwithstanding he was slain for as he returned into his Castle the Conspiratours to the number of thirty six marched before him as it were to do him honour but indeed to do him villany for as soon as he was entred the Castle they drew up the draw-bridge for fear of his retinue that were without and comming to him with their naked swords cast in his teeth his tyranny and so slew him in his litter together with a Priest the master of his horse and five Almaignes that were of his Guard his dead body they hung by a chain over the wals and shaking it to and fro to the view of the people threw it downe headlong at last into the ditch where the multitude to shew their hates wounded it with daggers and trampled it under their feet and so whom they durst not touch in his life being dead they thus abused and this befell upon the tenth day of September in the year of our Lord 1547. Some of the Bishops of Rome for their rare and notable vertues and the glory of their brave deeds may be honoured with this dignity to be placed in this worthy ranke for their good conditions and behaviours were such that no tyran butcher thief robber ruffian nor any other ever excelled them in cruelty robbery adultery and such like wickednesse or deserved more the credit and reputation of this place than they And hereof we have a manifest example in Iohn the thirteenth who pulling out the eyes of some of his Cardinals cutting out the tongues of others hewing off the hands noses and privy members of others shewed himselfe a paterne of such cruelty as the world never saw the like he was accused before the Emperour Otho in a Synod first for incest with two of his own sisters secondly for calling the devill to helpe him at dice thirdly for promoting young infants to Bishoprickes bribed thereto by certain pieces of Gold fourthly for the ravishing of maids and wives and lying with his fathers concubine yea and lastly for lyingwth his own mother and many other such monstrous villanies for which cause he was deposed from the Papacy though re-installed again by the suit and cunning practise of his Whores by whom as he recovered his triple Crown so he lost shortly after his vicious life by the meanes of a married whore that betrayed him Pope Hildebrand sirnamed Gregory the seventh was adorned with all these good qualities namely to be bloudy minded a poysoner a murtherer a conjurer also a consulter with spirits and in a word nothing but a lumpe and masse of wickednesse he was the stirrer up of many battels against the Emperour Henry the fourth and a provoken of his own son to depose and poyson his father as he did but this wicked I would say holy Pope was at last banished his Cathedral City to Salernum where he ended his dayes in misery Pope Clement the sixth of name contrary to his nature for his inclemency cruelty and pride towards the Emperour Lewis of Bavaria was intolerable he procured many horrible warres against the Empire and caused the destruction of twenty thousand Frenchmen by the King of England yea and poysoned the good Emperour also so well he wished to him Howbeit ere long himselfe was stifled to death and that suddenly not by any practise of man as it was thought but by the especiall hand of God in recompence of all his notable acts Iohn the four and twentieth was deposed by the Councell of Constance for these crimes following heresie Simony manslaughter poysonings cousenings adultery and sodomitry and was cast into prison where remaining three yeares he falsely made shew of amendment of his wicked life and therefore was graced with a Cardinals hat but it was not that which he expected for which cause with despight and grief he died It would be too long to run over the discourse of every particular Pope of like conditions and therefore we will content our selves in brief with the legend of Pope Alexander the sixth reported by by two authours of credit and renown and unsuspected to wit Guicciardine a Florentine Gentleman and Bembus a Venetian Cardinal This man saith Guicciardine attained to the Papacy not by worthinesse of vertues but by heavinesse of bribes and multitude of fair promises made to the Cardinals for his election promising large recompence to them that stood on his side whereupon many that knew his course of life were filled with astonishment amongst whom was the King of Naples who hearing of this election complained to his Queen with teares that there was such a Pope created that would be a plague to Italy and all Christendom beside the great vices which swayed in him of which the same Authour speaking maketh this Catalogue and pedegree in his own Language which followeth Costum dit il escensimi non sincerita non verita non fede non religione avaritia insatiabile ambitione immoderata crudelta pinque barbara â—o ardentissima cupidiâ—â— di escalt are in qualunque mode i figli voli i qualierano molti that is to say He was endued with most filthy conditions and that neither sincerity truth faith nor religion was in him but in stead of them covetousnesse unquenchable ambition unmeasurable more than barbarous cruelty and a burning desire of promoting his own children for he had many by what meanes soever He perswaded King Charles the eighth of France to undertake war against Naples and after he had brought him to it presently he forsook him and entred a new league with the Venetians and the other Princes of Italy to drive him home again This was he saith Cardinal Bembus that set Benefices and Promotions to sale that he which would give most might have most and that poysoned Iohn Michel the Cardinal of Venice at Rome for his gold and treasure which he abounded with whose insatiable covetousnesse provoked him to the committall of all mischief to the end he might maintain the forces of his son who went about to bring the whole lands dominions of all Italy into his possessionâ— in adulteries he was most filthy and abominable in tyranny most cruell and in Magick most cunning and therefore most execrable supping one night with Cardinal Adrian his very familiar friend in his garden having fore-appointed his destruction that night by poyson through the negligence and oversight of his butler to whom he had given the exploit in charge that was deceived by mistaking the bottles he dranke himselfe the medicine which he had prepared for his good friend the Cardinal and so he died saith Bembus not without an evident marke of Gods heavy wrath in that he which had slain so many Princes and rich men to enjoy their treasures and went now about to murder his host which entertained him with friendship good chear into his
the woman asked her before them all whether she durst say that he had ravished her to whom she replyed yea I sweare and vow that thou hast done it for shee supposed it to have beene Athanasius whom shee never saw whereat the whole Synod perceived the cavill of the lying Arrians and quitted the innocency of that good man Howbeit these malicious hereticks seeing this practise not to succeed invented another worse then the former for they accused him to have slaine one Arsenius whom they themselves kept secret and that hee carried one of his hands about him wherewith he wrought miracles by enchantment but Arsenius touched by the spirit of God stole away from them and came to Athanasius to the end he should receive no damage by his absence whom he brought in to the Judges and shewed them both his hands confounded his accusers with shame of their malice insomuch as they ranne away for feare and satisfied the Judges both of his integrity and their envious calumniation the chiefe Broker of all this mischiefe was Stephanus Bishop of Antioch but he was degraded from his Bishopricke and Leontius elected in his roome In our English Chronicles we have recorded a notable history to the like effect of King Canutus the Dane who after much trouble being established in the Kingdome of England caused a Parliament to bee held at London where amongst other things there debated it was propounded to the Bishops Barons and Lords of that Assembly Whether in the composition made betwixt Edmond and Canutus any speciall remembrance was made for the children or brethren of Edmond touching any partition of any part of the land which the English Lords flattering the king though falsly and against the truth yea and against their owne consciences denied to be and not onely so but for the Kings pleasure confirmed their false words with a more false oath that to the uttermost of their powers they would put off the bloud of Edmond from all right and interest by reason of which oath and promise they thought to have purchased with the King great favour but by the just retribution of God it chanced farre otherwise for many of them or the most part especially such as Canutus perceived to have sworne fealtie before time to Edmond and his heires he mistrusted and disdained ever after insomuch that some he exiled many he beheaded and divers by Gods just judgement died suddenly In the Scottish Chronicles we read how Hamilton the Scot was brought unto his death by the false accusation of a false Frier called Campbel who being in the fire ready to be executed cited and summoned the said Frier to appeare before the high God as generall Judge of all men to answer to the innocency of his death and whether his accusation were just or not betwixt that and a certaine day of the next moneth which he there named Now see the heart and hand of God against a false witnesse ere that day came the Frier died without any remorse of conscience and no doubt he gave a sharpe account to Almighty God of his malicious and unjust accusation In the yeare of our Lord 1105 Henry Archbishop of Mentz being complained of to the Pope sent a learned man a speciall friend of his to excuse him named Arnold one for whom he had much done and promoted to great livings and promotions but this honest man in stead of an excuser became an accuser for hee bribed the two chiefest Cardinals with gold and obtained of the Pope those two to be sent Inquisitors about the Archbishops case The which comming into Germany summoned the said Henry and without either law or justice deposed him from his Archbishoprick and substituted in his place Arnold upon hope of his Ecclesiasticall gold Whereupon that vertuous and honourable Henry is reported to have spoken thus unto those perverse Judges If I should appeale to the Apostolike Sea for this your unjust processe had against me perhaps I should but lose my labour and gaine nothing but toyle of body losse of goods affliction of minde and care of heart Wherefore I doe appeale to the Lord Jesus Christ as to the most highest and just Judge and cite you before his judgement seat there to answer for this wrong done unto me for neither justly nor godly but corruptly and unjustly have you judged my cause Whereunto they scoffingly said Goe you first and we will follow Not long after the said Henry dyed whereof the two Cardinals having intelligence said one to the other jestingly Behold he is gone before and wee must follow according to our promise And verily they spoke truer than they were aware for within a while after they both dyed in one day the one sitting upon a jakes to ease himselfe voyded out all his entrailes into the draught and miserably ended his life the other gnawing off the fingers of his hands and spitting them out of his mouth all deformed in devouring of himselfe died And in like wise not long after the said Arnold was slaine in a sedition and his body for certaine dayes lying stinking above the ground unburied was open to the spoyle of every raskall and harlot And this was the horrible end of this false accuser and those corrupted Judges Thus were two Cardinals punished for this sinne and that we may see that the holy father the Pope is no better than his Cardinals and that God spareth not him no more than he did them let us heare how the Lord punished one of that ranke for this crime It is not unknowne that Pope Innocent the fourth condemned the Emperour Fredericke at the Councell at Lyons his cause being unheard and before hee could come to answer for himselfe For when the Emperour being summoned to appeare at the Councell made all haste hee could thitherward and desired to have the day of hearing his cause prorogued till that he might conveniently travell thither the Pope refused and contrary to Gods law to Christian Doctrine to the prescript of the law of nature and reason and to all humanity without probation of any crime or pleading any cause or hearing what might be answered taking upon him to be both Adversary and Judge condemned the Emperour being absent What more wicked sentence was ever pronounced What more cruell fact considering the person might be committed But marke what vengeance God tooke upon this wicked Judge The writers of the Annals record that when Fredericke the Emperour and Conrade his sonne were both dead the Pope gaping for the inheritance of Naples and Sicilie and thinking by force to have subdued the same came to Naples with a great hoast of men where was heard in his court manifestly pronounced this voyce Veni miser ad judicium Dei Thou wretch come to receive thy judgement of God And the next day the Pope was found in his bed dead all black and blew as though he had beene beaten with bats And this was the judgement of God which he came
and sweare the more and goe he would But he was encountred by the way with an army of infernall souldiers which beset the nobleman on all sides and threw him from his horse Now there was in his company a vertuous and valiant gentleman who set him againe upon his horse and held him on one side whom when the spirits durst not attempt by reason of his innocency they vanished out of sight and they conveyed the nobleman into a monasterie that was hard by where he lay three dayes and died such is the end of horrible and fearefull blasphemers A Vintner that accustomed himselfe to blaspheming swearing and drunkennesse and delighting to entertaine such that were like himselfe to swallow downe his wine upon the Lords day standing at the dore with a pot in his hand to call in more guests there came suddenly a violent whirlew inde and carried him up into the aire in the sight of all men and he was never seene more CHAP. VI. Of Conjucers Magitians and Witches IOhn Faustus a filthie beast and a sinke of many devils led about with him an evill spirit in the likenesse of a dog being at Wittenberg when as by the Edict of the Prince he should have beene taken he escaped by his magicall delusions and after at Noremberg being by an extraordinary sweat that came upon him as he was at dinner certified that hee was beset payed his host suddenly his shot and went away and being scarce escaped out of the walls of the Citie the Sergeants and other officers came to apprehend him But Gods vengeance following him as he came into a Village of the Dukedome of Wittenberg he sat there in his Inne very sad the host required of him what was the cause of his sadnesse he answered that he would not have him terrified if he heard a great noise and shaking of the house that night which happened according to his presage for in the morning hee was found dead with his necke wrung behinde him the Devill whom he served having carried his soule into hell This story is set downe by many in other termes but Philip Lonicerus expresseth it in this manner in his Theatre of Histories Anno 1553. two Witches were taken which went about by tempest haile and frost to destroy all the corne in the countrey these women stole away a little infant of one of their neighbours and cutting it in pieces put it into a Cauldron to be boyled but by Gods providence the mother of the childe came in the meane while and found the members of her childe thus cut in pieces and boyled Whereupon the two Witches were taken and being examined answered That if the boyling had beene finished such a tempest of â—aine and haile would have followed that all the fruits of the earth in that countrey should have been destroyed but God prevented them by his just judgement in causing them to be put to death Anno 1558. in a Village neare to Ihaena in Germany a certaine Magitian being instructed by the Devill in the composition of divers hearbs restored many unto their healths He had daily commerce with that evill spirit and used his counsell in the curing of diseases but it happened that there fell a quarrell betwixt him and a neighbour of his a carpenter who so exasperated him with his taunting words that in few dayes after he caused the Carpenter by his magicall art to fall into a grievous disease The poore Carpenter sent for this Magitian and entreated him to helpe him in his need The Magitian feigning an appeased minde but desiring to revenge the injuries done unto him gave unto him a potion confected of such venomous hearbs and roots that being taken the poore man presently died Whereupon the Carpenters wife accused the Magitian of murther the cause is brought to the Senate of Ihaena who examining the matter caused him by torments to confesse the murther and many other wickednesses for which he was fastened to a stake and burnt to death CHAP. VII Of the prophanation of the Sabbath A Certaine nobleman prophaning the Sabbath usually in hunting had a childe by his wife with a head like a dog and with eares and chaps crying like a hound Stratford upon Sluon was twice on the same day twelve-month being the Lords day almost consumed with fire chiefly for prophaning the Lords day and contemning his Word in the mouth of his faithfull Minister Feverton in Devonshire whose remembrance makes my heart bleed was oftentimes admonished by her godly Preachers that God would bring some heavie judgement on the Towne for their horrible prophanation of the Lords day occasioned chiefly by their Market on the day following Not long after his death on the third of Aprill Anno Dom. 1598. God in lesse than halfe an houre consumed with a sudden and fearfull fire the whole Towne except onely the Church the Court-house and the Almes-houses or a few poore peoples dwellings where a man might have seene foure hundred dwelling houses all at once on fire and above fiftie persons consumed with the flame And now againe since the former Edition of this booke on the fifth of August last 1612 fourteene yeares since the former fire the whole Towne was againe fired and consumed except some thirty houses of poore people with the School-house and Almes-houses they are blinde which see not in this the finger of God God grant them grace when it is next built to change their market-Market-day and to remove all occasions of prophaning the Lords day Let other Townes remember the Tower of Siloe Luke 13. 4. and take warning by their neighbours chastisements Feare Gods threatnings Ieremie 17. 27. and beleeve Gods Prophets if they will prospet 1 Chron. 20. 20. CHAP. VIII Of Drunkennesse AN Ale-wise in Kesgrave neare to Ipswich who would needs force three Serving-men that had been drinking in her house and were taking their leaves to stay and drinke the three ou ts first that is Wit out of the head Money out of the purse Ale out of the barrell as shee was comming towards them with the pot in her hand was suddenly taken speechlesse and sickher tongue swolne in her head she never recovered speech but the third day after died This Sir Anthony Felton the next Gentleman and Justice with divers others eye-witnesses of her in sicknesse related to me whereupon I went to the house with two or three witnesses and enquired the truth of it Two servants of a Brewer in Ipswich drinking for a rumpe of a Turkey strugling in their drinke for it fell into a scalding Caldron backwards whereof the one died presently the other lingringly and painfully since my comming to Ipswich A man comming home drunk would needs goe and swimme in the mill pond his wife and servants knowing he could not swimme dissuaded him once by intreaty got him out of the water but in he would needs goe again and there was drowned I was at the house to enquire of this and found it to be
his three and thirtieth Sermon Ad fratres in eremo relateth this strange example of one Cyril a Cittizen of Hippo a man well esteemed and beloved in the Citie He having one onely sonne did so cocker him forbearing either to checke him or correct him but loving him as that holy Father saith not onely above all things but even above God himselfe that by his too much liberty and indulgence his sonne grew wonderfull debaushed and gave himselfe to filthy drunkennesse Upon a time being vilely overtaken with drinke he came home and tumbled over his mother being great with childe would have ravished his sister slew his father and wounded to death two of his other sisters O fearefull effect of drunkennesse thus God punished the father for his too much love and indulgence of his sonne and the sonne for his vile impiety Not unlike to this I finde in Philip Lonicerus Page 486. A certain man saith he that gave himselfe to the studie of Godlinesse was daily assaulted with the temptation of the Divell who perswaded him if hee would bee quiet to choose one of these three sinnes either to make himselfe drunke or to commit adulterie with his neighbours wife or to kill his neighbour himselfe The poore man thinking drunkennesse the least sinne chose that but being enraged with wine he was easily drawn to the committall of the other sinnes for being with wine enflamed with lust he feared not to vitiate his neighbours wife nor yet to kill her husband comming in the meane while seeking to be revenged of him so giving himselfe to drunkennesse hee wraps himselfe in all other wickednesse On the eighteenth of August 1629 one Thomas Wilson labourer a knowne and common blasphemer of Gods name by oathes and curses and given much to drinking to excesse upon a slight occasion moved to displeasure against his wife and not daring to doe much violence unto her turned it upon himselfe and with his knife stabbed himselfe many of his friends and neighbours being present and so he died On the 10 day of May 1629 one Iohn Bone of Ely coachman unto one Master â—aluâ—â—â— of Beenham a fellow very vitious and exceeding in those two evils of prophane swearing and drunkennesse on the Sabbath day in the Sermon-time dranke himselfe drunke so that when he was to sit in the coach-box to drive the coach he fell out thereof under the horses feet where he was trodden to death or so hurt at least that he died shortly On the six and twentieth of November 1621 one Richard Borne servant to Iaspâ—r Bâ—rch Gardiner of Ely accustomed to travell upon the Lords day and making no reckoning of the Sabbath seldome or never comming to Church on that day but went onwards to Saint Iâ—es market and so spent the day and being drunke was at length overtaken by the just judgement of God and going up the streame in his boate which he had loaden with marketable wares he fell into the river and was so drowned On the third day of August 1618 one Thomas Alred of Godmanchester in the Countie of Huntington Butcher an accustomed Drunkard being entreated by a neighbour to unpitch a load of hay and being at that very time in drinke letting his pitch-forke slip out of his hand and stooping to take it up againe slipped from the cart with his head down-wards his fork standing 〈◊〉 with the tines he fell directly upon them which it once ran into his breast and stroke his heart so that he died suddenly On the sixteenth day of July 1628 one Iohn Vintner of 〈…〉 Gardiner a knowne drunkard and one that would prophanely especially in his 〈◊〉 scoffe at religion and abuse good men fell from the top of a 〈…〉 the ground and brake his necke and so died These â—ive lust examples were reported unto me and written with his owne hand by a worthy Minister Master Goorge Nelson Preacher of the Word of God in Godmanchester CHAP. IX Of rebellious and disobedient Children to their Parents AGathias in his Booke of the Persian manners reporteth this storie That certaine Philosophers going into Aegypt and finding there a promiscuous commixture of fathers and mothers with their daughters and sonnes and a miserable neglect of children towards their parents returned speedily into Greece and in a certaine Citie there finding the dead body of a man wanting buriall they in compassion committed the same into the earth the next day comming the same way againe they found the same body digged out of the earth which whilest they went about to bury the second time a fearefull spectrum appeared unto them and forbad them to doe it saying That he was a man unworthy to be buried because he had committed incest with his mother and despised and contemned his father This narration sheweth that the very earth doth execrate and abhorre such unnaturall lust and disobedience Laâ—terbius in his Booke of the discipline of children reports a storie of a certaine young man who had a father very old that had bestowed upon him all his substance This old man being by the fault of age unmannerly at the table of his sonne his sonne caused a woodden trough to be made for his father to eate his meate in like a hogge which when his sonnes young childe perceived he asked his father for what use it should serve his father answered That it was for his Grandfather to eate his meate in and what saith the childe must I provide the like for you when you are old Whereat his father being astonished threw away the trough and ever after entertained his old father with greater reverence and obedient respect CHAP. X. Of Murtherers ROmulus having marked out with a plough the compasse of the walls of the Citie of Rome which he was a building and had forbidden that no man should leape over the same his brother Rhâ—mus in scorne leaped over the wall which Romulus taking in evill part slew his brother and reigned alone but at length being hated of the people for his insolencie he himselfe was slaine by the fathers of the Senate at Caprea Constantine the Great after he had overcome Licinius his partner in the Empire and obtained the sole Monarchie grew both insolent and cruell for he first put to death his owne sisters next his owne sonne Crispâ—â— which he had by Minervea then he slew his owne wife Fausta in the bathes and lastly a number more of his friends For which cruelty though hee was a man endued with excellent vertues yet God strucke him with a filthy Leprosie which continued upon him untill such time that he was converted to the faith of Christ and baptised by Pope Silvester after which he proved a most famous protector of the Church of Christ. Perillus that devised the brasen Bull for the Tyrant Phalaris wherein men being inclosed and scorched with the heat that was under the Bull did imâ—tate the lowing of an Oxe to the end that there should be no compassion shewed unto them by
his companions to a feast together with his Concubine the Divell entered in amongst the guests snatching away the young woman and saying Thou art mine neither could the Priest or any of the companie deliver her out of his hands And thou also sayeth the Divell to the Priest and I meane to fetch thee shortly Martin Luther reporteth this storie out of the mouth of Doctor Gregorius Pontanus how two Noblemen falling out in the Court of the Emperour Maximilian vowed each others death Now the Divell taking occasion out of this malicious vow slew the one of the Noblemen in the night with a sword taken out of the others sheath into the which hee put the same againe all bloudie whereupon this Nobleman was arraigned of this murther and had bin condemned but that it was prooved that he stirred not out of his chamber all that night and therefore they concluded that it was the malicious fact of Sathan And yet the Nobleman because hee intended this murther though hee acted it not was condemned by the Emperour to perpetuall banishment And thus much concerning persons infested by the Divell Now a word or two for places Saint Augustine in his two and twentieth Booke De Civitate Dei chapter the eighth reporteth of a certaine Gentleman that lived not far from him in Affrica who had his house so infested with evill Spirits that both his servants and his Cattell died frequently This man getting unto him the company of the Priests offering up the sacrifice of the body and bloud of Christ in his house with servent prayers unto God against these evill Spirits was thereby freed from any further molestation by them as this holy Father writeth Saint Gregorie telleth us of the Spirit of one Paschasius that haunted the Bathes and was seene by Sermanus the Bishop of Capua by whose meanes and prayers the place was freed from that Ghost or rather the Ghost was freed from that place Greg. lib. 4. Dialog Cap 39. Gregorie Nissen writes also of a certaine Bath which was grievously infested by evill Spirits wherein they tooke away the lives of many men The like whereof is reported by Georgius Presbyter of another house thus molested where the evill Spirits would throw stones upon the table while they were at dinner and filled the house with myce and Serpents so that no man durst dwell therein The like storie reporteth mataphrastes in the life of Saint Pautheneus and Lycas in the life of the Emperor Anastasius Pliny in his seventh Booke the twentie seventh Epistle telleth us that in an house in Athens there appeared continually a tall and leane shape of a man drawing chaines after him which when it was seene to sinke downe and vanish into a certaine place of the ground they digged and found the dead body of a man which being removed the house was freed from the molestation What should I speake of the house of Eubatis in Corinth written by Lucian or of Pausanias the King of the Spartans whose house was haunted by an evil spirit presently after he had slain his wife Cleonice as Plutarch writeth Or of the evil spirits that haunted the grave of that cruel Tyrant Caesar Caligula Suet. Or of Nero that slew his mother Agrippina who was continually after pursued with a spirit in his mothers shape or of Otto that slew his predecessor Galba after which he never ceased to be molestred with fearful and terrible visions Or a number more which I might insert but these shal suffice as a taste of a number more that Tyraeus the Iesuite hath set down in his Book De infestis Locis I adde onely two or three and so an end Alexander of Alexandro dwelling in Rome in an house so infamous for strange sights that no man durst dwell therein reporteth that beside the night tumults and horrible and fearefull noyses there appeared unto him the shape of a map of a filthie looke threatening countenance and blacke and fearfull in bodie from which the house could by no meanes be set free Cardanus Lib. 26. c. 93. De rerum varietate reporteth the like to haye happened to an house of a certaine Nobleman in Parma In which house alwaies before the death of some of the family an old woman of an hundred yeares old appeared sitting in the chimney corner In an Island neere unto the Articke Pole there is an hill out of the which like mount Aetna there bursteth out continually fire and smoake There everie night appeareth a companie of evill Spirits representing perfectly the shape of some friends which they know whom when they go to speake unto they presently vanish out of their sight Olaus magnus But enough enough of this unsaverie subject onely let us learne hereby to beware of this ambitious enemie of mankinde who as Saint Peter sayeth Goeth about somtime like a Lion to devour us Other times like a subtill Serpent to molest us but all with a desire of our destruction I may be thought too prolix in this Argument of Gods Iudgements but considering the fiercenesse of Gods wrath against notorious sinners and the hardnesse of mens hearts to be drawne to repentance nothing I thinke can be judged too much But yet to sweeten these soure pills let me cover them a little with the sugar of Gods mercifull protection of his children by his holy Angels CHAP. XV. The conclusion concerning the protection of holy angels over such as feare God NOtwithstanding all these Judgements upon the wicked yet God is good unto Israel even to those that are of an upright heart Psalme seventie three Verse the first for as he executeth his Judgements upon the one so hee defendeth the other by his mightie providence especially by the protection of Angels Of which I purpose to give you many examples in this place and first out of the holy Scriptures Two Angels came to Lâ—t in Sodome strooke the inhabitants with blindnesse and led Lot by the hand out of Sodom readie to be destroyed by fire and brimstone Genesis the nineteenth When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac an Angell held his hand and forbad him to kill his sonne promising him from God a blessing for his obedience Genesis 22. Iacob in his returne homeward was comforted and strengthened against his brother Esau by the blessed Angels Genesis the two and thirtieth An Angell of the Lord when the children of Israel came out of Aegypt stood betwixt the campe of the Aegyptians and the Israelites in a pillar of clouds by day to protect the Israelites against the Aegyptians Exodus 14. Balaam when being sent for by Balaac King of Moab to curse the Israelites an Angell with a sword drawne in his hand withstood him in the way and commanded him to speake nothing but what the Lord should put into his mouth Numbers 22. An Angel of the Lord apeared unto Gedeon comforted him and appointed him captain over the people to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Madianites Iudges
cruell tempest raged in Thuringea beating downe houses pulling up trees by the roots and drowned by the violence of the water above forty persons men and women In this fearefull inundation of waters a notable and miraculous example of Gods protection by Angels shewed it selfe for there was a woman newly brought to bed of a childe drowned but the infant lying in a cradle was carried with the violence of the water a great way off and at last the cradle stopping at the bough of an apple-tree was fastened till the waters decreased and after divers dayes was found alive The like example of a childe miraculously preserved in the waters is described by Husanâ—â— in most elegant verses the copie whereof you may reade in the Historicall Theatre of Lonicerus pag. 196. Another childe at Friburge in Misnia falling into the river was carried violently a great space untill it came unto a Mill where it stopped and was miraculously taken up alive by Gods protection and his holy Angels The like we reade of concerning another childe miraculously preserved at Rotinberge in the yeare 1565 as Lonicerus reporteth I will adde one more of my owne knowledge concerning an Infâ—â—t 〈…〉 Towne in Cambridge-shire there was a craâ—ie Steeple ready to 〈◊〉 under which a poore man with one childe had built a little cottage and lived therein it chanced that the Steeple fell upon that little cottage the woman being in the towne and the childe in the house all men supposed the childe had beene crushed to piâ—â—es but it pleased God by the protection of his holy Angels that certaine pieces of the Bell-free fell crosse over the little cottage and kept off the stoâ—â—es from hurting of the childe which crying was heard and they removing the stones and rubbidge found the childe alive The like happened at Huntington where Saint Marâ—â—s Church having a decayed Steeple the Parishioners for 〈◊〉 to repaire it who about noone comming downe to â—hâ—ir 〈◊〉 left certaine children which were taught by the Minister playing in the body of the Church who had no sooner runne into the Chancell to their victuals but the Steeple tumbled downe into the Church beating downe a great part of the Church withall behold the wonderfull protection of God if the Steeple had fallen upon the Lords day many hundreds had beene slaine and if at any other time of the day the Masons and the children had all perished but blessed be the name of the Lord for this safe deliverance Another example was related unto me by men of good credit upon their owne knowledge how a certaine man riding between two woods in a great tempest of thundering and lightening rode under an Oake to shelter himselfe but his horse would by no meanes stay under that Oake winching and kicking and running away whether his Master would or no which his master perceiving went unto another Oake hard by where the horse stayed very quietly but they had not long staid there but the first Oake with a grievous clap of thunder and lightening was torne all to fitters and the man and horse in the other place escaped safely Oh the wonderfull protection of God and that by the ministery of his holy Angels In the yeare 1565 so great a tempest of raine and waters arose at Islebia that it bare downe houses before it it fell most violently upon the house of one Barthold Bogt so that it broke downe the fore-part of his house where lay a childe in a cradle which the father with hazard of his life brought forth and carried into his adjoyning neighbours house two other of his children endeavouring also to save hee tooke in his armes to carry forth of the house but the rage of the water hindered him so that they rested upon a beame from whence the one of his children was violently taken out of his armes and he and the other being shaken from the post were carried into the Orchard where finding footing stood up to the neck in water with the childe in his armes and looking about for his other childe he found it sitting upon a piece of timber and comming towards him which hee also tooke into his armes and got up into a high pile of wood where he rested all night none being able to afford him any helpe The next morning when the waters were decreased he came downe to looke for two other of his children which he had left in an upper part of the house whom hee found fast asleepe now he had no sooner taken them from thence but that part of the house fell downe also where we may see a visible signe of Gods protection by his holy Angels who not onely preserved all the family but also kept that part of the house from falling wherein the children lay sleeping untill they were brought forth Many more examples of this kinde might be added but these shall suffice to shew Gods great providence towards his children who as he punisheth the wicked with most severe Judgements so he protecteth those that feare him with extraordinary providence by his holy Angels to shew the truth of that which the Apostle speaketh that They are ministring Spirits sent forth to waite upon them who shall be heires of salvation Hebrewes 1. Verse 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal. 14. Isay. 14. Rom. 2. 12. Psal. 2. 11. Psal. 29. 1. Deut. 17. 15. Dial. 4. de Legib. 2. Sam. 5. Herod liâ— 3. Plutarch Dan. â— 8. Diâ—d lib. 2 c 2. Th ucyd lib. 1. Lib. 3. Annal. In Panegyr Lib. 4. tiâ— 17. Lib. 1. cod Nicol. Gil. vol. â— Chronic. Franc. Exod. 17. Num 2. 1. Num. 31. Iudg. 3. Iudg. 7. Iudg 16. 1 Sam 15. 1 Sam. 17. 1. King 20. 2 King 6. 2. King 7. 2. King 8. 2. Chron. 20. Est 17 9. Dan. 5. â— Macch. 2 6. Epimaâ—es â— Macch. 6. 1. Macch. 11. 1. Macch. 13. 2. Macch. 5. Mat. 2. This example belongeth also in regard of cruelty to the sixth commandement Lib. 2. Cap. 11. 17. Booke of the Iewish antiquity cap. 8. Luke 9. 7. This example in regard of divorce be longeth to the seventh Commandement Lib 2. cap. 29. Ioseph of the Iewish Antiquity l. 8. c. 6. Euseb. Euseb. Euseb. Eutrop. lib. 7. Tertul Niceph. 8 Commandement Calumniation Lib. 2. cap. 44. Tacit. Ann. l. 5. Suet. Refer this also to the â—4 ch of this booke Suet. Eutrop. Dion Mandat 7. l. â— c. 12. Spart Euseb. Spart Tert. â—d Scap. Oros. l. 7. c. 14. Euseb. l. 7. c. 1. Ecclesiast Hist. Pomponim Euseb. l. 7. c. 21. In the Sermon of the congregatioÌ„ of saints Euseb. Hist. Eccles l. 7. c 30. Henric. de Erford Euseb. l. 7. c. 13 Vopis Eutrop. Niceph. Ruffin Mandat 7. lib. 2. cap. 12. Euseb. Hist. Eccles 7 8. c. 16 Niceph. l. 7. c. 6. Niceph. 7. 12. Against the Gentiles Lanquet Chro. Hieron in Caâ— Theod. l. 4. c. 26. Tripartit Hist. lib. 8. cap. 4. Nicl 11. c. 25. Tâ—eod