contemptible In this our Prelates have not been sparing Quot plaustra convitiâ—rum have they powred out upon some Doctrines of our Religion specially the points of Grace The Pulpits of Italy and Rome never spit more Gall and Venome against the Protestant Doctrines of Election Free-grace Justification by faith perseverance touching Antichrist and the Exp sitions of the Protestants on Daniel and the Revelation and in a word against all those Doctrines wherein we do in a special manner differ from and are at an irreconcileable enmity with the Church of Rome N ver did the Popish B shops and Doctors as Eecius Cocleus Stapleton Harding Bellarmine the rayling Rhemists sweat more to exaggerate the seeming absurdities which carnal prejudiced men would draw from our Doctrine than many of the English Prelatical Clergy have done And as for the persons of the most famous reformed Divines as Calvin Beza Pareus Whitaker Reynolds Perkins It is well enough known how they have been and are to this day sleighted and aspersed by this sort of men VI. Rule The Jesuits sixth Rule is To foment the quarrels that are among the Protestants and strengthen that party that is neerest a compliance with Rome And the wretched Jesuit hath the unhappiness to prescribe one thing as the proper means of Englands Cure For who saith hee * Quis enim non facile puriâ—anos in Angli a â—edigat in ordiâ—em si Episcopoâ—um approbatioâ—em ab iis exâ—orqueat Contz ubi supra paragraph 9. might not easily reduce the Puritans of England into Order you know what the Jesuits reducing into Order is if hee could extort from them an Approbation of the Bishops And had not the Prelates attempted and almost effected this They had made us their Slaves before and were they not about to make us swear we would be so for ever Certainly though nothing but Episcopacy floated in the surface of that Oath yet Popery was in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the c of it or reducing the Puritans of England into Order sensu Pentificio And do they not to this day frequently speak for yea strenuously indeavour after and contend for a general Conformity of all sorts and sexes to the Prelatical Government Service-book and Ceremonies yea higher than was formerly attempted none must buy or sell unless hee receive the mark of the Beast not onely England and Ireland but Scotland and the forein Isles must bow or break before this Idol Our Prelates therefore have well observed this Rule of the Jesuit VII Rule His seventh Rule is this That all private Conventicles and publick Meetings must bee forbidden As for private Conventicles you all know that to meet together to pray or to confer which with them is a Conventicle is peccatum irremissibile a man may at a better rate almost answer any thing than such a Meeting The terrible Canons of our Prelates are mounted higher and more deeply charged against this commendable practice of Christians than against Drunkenness Swearing Adultery Sabbath-breaking and the greatest abominations Nor would the restless spirits of these persecuting Prelates be quiet till they had got all such meetings utterly suppressed men may meet together at Cock-fighting Horse-coursing Stage-playes to swear and bee drunk and unclean but they must not meet to pray and confer together of the Scriptures no not in those places and Parishes where the Ministers are no better than dumb Idols Behold here the Tyranny of our Prelates And then for publick meetings the antient laudable exercise of Prophecy I mean not in that sense the word is lately taken for private spirits to interprer Scripture But prophesying by men in office peculiarly gifted and called to that work these must bee banished ejected silenced the publick and most frequented Lectures blasted publick fasts by consent of Ministers which had of long time been used in many parts of the Kingdome are become piacular a Sermon at next Church the forbidden fruit when they had none at home or worse than none The Prelates have been and still are very diligent to suppress holy Assemblies under the notion of Conventicles and seditious meetings whilst they keep up their Cathedrals and Popish service VIII Rule propounded by the Jesuit The eighth means to reduce us to Popery is By severity of Laws and punishments to compel the obstinate unto duty and yet the rigor of the Law must be slowly drawn out and not against all but onely such as be most dangerous Now what severity not onely ad summum Jus to the highest Apex of the Law but even supra Jus beyond the extent and rigor of the Law hath been used to such as stood in the way of their great design let the walls of their High Commission Court speak and if that Babell were once raised up again in England which the Lord in mercy prevent not onely the ordinary people but the Gentry of this Nation if they do but cross the ambitious designs of these men should drink deep of their cruelty and rigor Our Chronicles report that when our Fore-fathers demolished the Abbies they found in their Walls and Vaults and Ponds heaps of skulls and bones the Monuments of their smothered cruelties I doubt not but the Abolishers of that High Commission have found as manifest evidence of their cruel practices heaps of the blood of Innocents whose skin hath been flead from off them Mâ—c 3. and their bones broken and they and their families chopped in peeces as flesh for the Caldron And this fruit they reaped of their severity mannaged with this Art which the Jesuit promised That though compulsory Reformation could do no good upon old standers * Itaque reforâ—atio quae provâ—ctos non adâ—uvat atatem tamen puerilem Catholicam raddet Contzen yet it would render the younger sort Catholicks IX Rule of the Jesuit The ninth means and as hee saith of all the rest most effectual is That such as are in authority and have the publick mannagement of Ecclesiastical Affairs do religiously practise and maintain Integrity of life and purity of manners The Reformation of Religion that is the introducing of Popery into a Reformed Church will go on very slowly and prove very difficult unless the Prelates and Doctors shall outshine the whole Common-wealth not onely in innocency but in reputation and fame of integrity Now though this Rule be far from the practice of most of the servants followers and adherents of the Prelates who for the most part are prophane Atheistical and debauched persons in whom there is little appearance of morality and less of Religion yet some of the Grand Masters of this faction do counterfeit much devotion and piety in their outward Garb looks gestures conversation Or else it were not possible for them at any time to obtain so far upon the hearts of Prince and Parliament whose Interests do thwart the ambitious designs of the Prelates as to leave the disposing of all Church Affairs wholly unto them If
they should not outwardly demean themselves as the onely Saints upon earth as incarnate Angels men wholly composed of Devotion to God Compassion to his Church * Quem ubi vident constanter Religions adharentem non adeò temerarii sant ut directe calumnieutur traducant apud eum Orthodoxam Religionem sed occasiones commodas accipiunt quibus dâ—plorem turbat … pacem Ecclesiae hortantur principem ad eam restituendam id facile esse dicunt auferatur modo contentionis studium quod dissidium non sit in rebus magai momenti sed exigui ponderis Vedel de prud vet Eccles l. 2. c. 5. grief for the Rents and breaches of it Zeal for the peace and good of it they could not prevail with the Magistrate to trust them with so much power specially considering how often they have abused it in this Nation and intrenched upon the Royal Prerogative and the authority of Parliaments as appears by above a hundred instances in the English Chronickle Doubtless it stands not with reason that a Protestant Prince should knowingly and willingly give way to the re-establishing of the Popish Religion and therein ipso facto divest himself of his Supremacy and lay his head at the Popes feet for him to kick off the Crown from his Royal Brow with a spurn of his disdainful foot at pleasure But why the Bishops specially such of them as have been observed to wish well to Popery ab Incunabulis should contrive and carry on such a Plot some reason may be given For could they but once obtain this That Popery should Triumph over the Reformed Religion then they know that the Miter would soon Trample upon the Crown and Scepter Haec enim est veritaes c. saith Bellarmine (a) Bell. de offic princip Christi L. 1 c. 5. This is the Truth whatever custome hath introduced That the Bishop is the Father Pastor and Doctor as well of the Prince as of the rest of the people And according to these Appellations the Prince ought to be subject to his Bishop and not the Bishop to his Prince Swarez saith (b) Swarez Dâ—fens fidâ—i lib. 3. cap. 17. ss 18. lib. 4. c. 17. ss 16 17. cap. 15. ss 1. unusquisque Rex Subditus est c. Every King is subject to his Bishop in spiritualibus unless he be exempted by the Pope Would not this be a brave world for our Bishops and the whole Clergy too to be exempted from the power of Laws and civil Judicature Leges non obligant Clericos c. saith Swarez again The Law doth not binde the Clergy by vertue of any Laâ—k Jurisdiction neither can Kings binde the Clergy by laying any special Law upon them And again Ecclesiastical persus are priviledged in Court not onely in case of Ecclesiastical but of Civil Crimes And therefore Reader though thou canst see no Reason why a Prince or State professing the Protestant Religion having sufficiently smarted under the Popes and Prelates Tyranny should decline to Popery yet thou mayest see strong reason why a proud Prelacy and a corrupt Clergy should underhand indeavour to bring it in and thou mayest here take notice of the method and waies whereby they may compass their designs and neither Prince nor people shall know nor see and yet our Prelatical Clergy are so confident of the truth of their Maxime No Bishop no King That they would make us beleeve that it is as true as the Gospel whereas their great design is to make the Scepter subject to the Miter so much are they for the Royal Prerogative and the Power of Parliaments It is well enough known he that runs may read it that the Jesuits Rules for introducing Popery have been practised by our English Prelates of late years and still are practised by them Let any ingenious spirit judge of their intentions by their actions I have only let you see from whose Quiver they have drawn their shafts you may hereby judge of the mark whereat they aim You have seen whose Heifer it is they plowed with Judge by that of the seed they would have sown If they never knew that a Jesuit had delivered these Rules for the altering of Religion in a Christian state they were very unhappy in complying so exactly with them when they did not know them And what can we think but that they were and are acted by the same Genius or the same Angelus informans that the Jesuit was when he penned them But if they know as it is most probable they do that these are the Rules this the Art delivered by a Jesuit for the subverting the true Reformed Religion and the introduction of Popery again and yet do knowingly and de Industria conform to them and make proof of them what can we think is their intention but to alter our Religion But blessed bee the Lord who hath said and will perform it That no weapon formed against his Jerusalem shall prosper Give me leave Gentle Reader here to subjoyn the sayings of some wife and learned men as well Papists as Protestants touching the Grotian Arminian Design carried on by the Prelats and their Adherents in England for introducing Popery and reducing England to the Church of Rome A Jesuit writes in a Letter to the Rector at Brussels thus Father Rector c. We have now many strings to our Bows and have strongly fortified our Faction and have added two Bulwarks more for when King J. lived we know he was very violent against Arminianisme and interrupted with his pestilent wit and deep learning our strong designs in Holland Now we have planted the Sovereign Drug Arminianisme c. which we hope will purge the Protestants from their heresie This Letter was seized in Archbishop Lands Study and attested against him at the Lords Bar. An English Jesuit in a Book inscribed A Direction to be observed by N. N. printed 1636. p. 20 22. Thus writes To speak truth what learned judicious man can after unpartial examination embrace Protestantisme which now waxeth weary of it self Its professors declare themselves to love temper and moderation allow of many things which some years ago were usually condemned as superstitious and Antichristian And are at this time more unresolved where to fasten then in the infancy of their Church for do not the Protestant Churches begin to look with another face Their walls to speak with another language Their Preachers to use a sweeter Tone Their annual publick Tenets in the Universities to be of another stile and matter Their books to appear with Titles and Arguments which once would have caused much scandal among thâ— Brethren Their Doctrine to be altered in many things and even in those points for which their Progenitors forsook the then visible Church of Christ Their 39 Articles the summe the confessions and almost the creed of their faith are patient yea ambitious of some sense wherein they may seem to be Catholick To alledge wife and children in these
dayes is but a weak plea to compass a Benefice Fiery Calvinisme once a Darling in England is at length accounted Heresie yea and little less than Treason men in word and writing willingly use the once fearful names of Priests and Altars nay if one do but mutter against the placing of the Altar after the old fashion for a warning he shall be well warmed with a Cole from the Altar c. That aspiring Prelate Dr. Laud in his Letter to Bishop Hall concerning Episcopacy hath these words You do extreamly well to distinguish the Scottish business from the state of the foreign Churches but yet to those Churches and their Authors you are a little more favourable than our case will now bear What should bee the intendment of this word Now Bishop Carleton in his Examination of Mountagues Appeal page 62. What greater pleasure saith he can a man procure to the exemies of the truth than to speak evil and odiously of those men whose service God hath used and made them excellent Instruments to make the truth known to us Some take it for a sign of such as are looking towards Popery when they offer such a service to the Papists as to speak evil of them who have been the greatest enemies to Popery the greatest Propagators of the truth Dr. Robert Abbot Bishop of Sarum in a Sermon preached before the University of Oxford 1615. Men under the pretence of truth and preaching against the Puritans saith he strike at the heart and root of faith and Religion now established among us This preaching against the Puritans was but the practise of Parsons and Campians counsel when they came into England to seduce young Students and when many of them were afraid to lose their places if they should professedly be thus the counsel they then gave them was That they should speak freely against the Puritans and that should suffice And they cannot pretend that they are accounted Papists because they speak against the Puritans but because they are Papists indeed they speak not against them If they do at any time speak against the Papists They do beat a little upon the Bush and that softly too for fear of troubling or disquieting the Birds that are in it They speak of nothing but that in which one Papist will speak against another as against Equivocation the Popes temporal Authority and the like and perhaps against some of their blasphemous speeches but in the point of Free-will Justification Concupiscence being sin after Baptisme inherent Righteousness Certainty of salvation the Papists beyond the Sea can say They are wholly theirs and the Recusants at home make their brags of them And in all things they keep themselves so near the Brink that upon all occasions they may stop over them The University of Cambridge in a Letter March 8. 1595. to their Chancellor subscribed unanimously by the Heads of the Colledges They desire his Lordship to use some effectual remedy for suppressing of Baroes Arminian opinions lest say they by permitting passage to these errors the whole body of Popery should by little and little break in upon us to the overthrow of our Religion And a little after Vouchsafe your Lordships aid and advice both to us wholly consenting and agreeing in judgement and all others of the University soundly affected and to the suppression in time not only of these Errours but even of gross Popery like by such means in time easily to creep in among us as we finde by late experience it hath dangerously begun Declaration of the House of Commons to his late Majesty The hearts of your subjects are perplexed when with sorrow they behold a daily growth and spredâ—â—â—g of the faction of the Arminians that being as your Majesty well knows but a cunning way to bring in Popery And the professors of those opinions the common disturbers of the Protestant Churches and Incendiaries of those States in which they have gotten any head being Protestants in shew but Jesuits in opinion and practice The Noble Lord Falkeland in his excellent speech to the House of Commons printed anno 1641. pag. 3 4 5.6 7. Master Speaker hee is a great stranger in Israel who knows not that this Kingdome hath long laboured under many and great oppressions both in Religion and Liberty and his acquaintance here is not great or his ingenuity less who doth not both know and acknowledge that a great if not a principal cause of both thâ—se hath been some Bishops and their adherents Mr. Speaker A little search will serve to finde them to have been the destruction of Unity under pretence of Uniformity To have brought in Superstition and scandal under the titles of reverence and decency to have defiled our Church by adorning our Churches to have slackned the strictness of that Union which was formerly between us and those of our Religion beyond the Sea an action as unpolitick as ungodly And again p. 7. As Sir Thomas Moore saies of the Casuists their business was not to keep man from sinning but to inform them quam prope ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accecere so it seemed their work meaning the Prelates was to try how much of a Papist might bee brought in without Popery and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospel without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by the Law Mr. Speaker to go yet further some of them have so industriously laboured to deduce themselves from Rome that they have given great suspition that in gratitude they desire to return thither or at least to meet it half way some have evidently laboured to bring in an English though not a Roman Popery I mean not the outside onely and dress of it but equally absolute a blinde dependance of the people upon the Clergy and of the Clergy upon themselves And have opposed Papacy beyond the Sea that they might settle one beyond â—â—e Water Nay Common fame is more than ordinarily false if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England be so absolutely directly and cordially Papists that it is all that 1500 l. per annum can do to keep them from confessing it And again p. 9. Wee shall finde of them to have o th kindled and blown the common fire of both Nations to have both sent and maintained that Book of which the Author hath no doubt long since wished with Nero Utinam nescissem literas and of which more than one Kingdome hath cause to wish That when he writ that he had rather burned a Library though of the value of Prolomies Wee shall finde them to have been the first and principal cause of the breach I will not say of but since the Pacification at Barwick Wee shall finde them to have been the almost sole Abetters of my Lord of Strafford whilest hee was practising upon another Kingdome that manner of Government which hee intended to settle in this where hee committed so many so mighty and so manifest enormities as the like have not been committed by any Governour in any Government since Verres left Sicily And after they had called him over from being Deputy of Ireland to be in a manner Deputy of England all things here being governed by a Juntillo and that Juntillo governed by him to have assisted him in the giving of such Counsels and the pursuing of such courses as it is a hard and measuring cast whether they were more unwise more unjust or more unfortunate and which had infallibly been our destruction if by the Grace of God their share had not been as small in the subtilty of Serpents as in the innocence of Doves FINIS