Gods Word for feare lest if hee retracted them the people would suspect the rest and so fall back again by an absolute recidivation to Popery hee counted it more safe to declare his judgement in private and to leave the rooting out of those weeds by insensible degrees to his Disciples To effect which the French and Helvetian churches did readily afterwards afford the Germanes divers publike conferences But Doctor Andreas John Brentius and other Pseudo-Lutherans having suckt in the poyson of the Anabaptists the Devils Master-engine in this latter age with the Jesuites to restore Pelagianisme to the World and having added those old blasphemies that concern the advancement of mans free-will above Gods grace to Luthers new Masse as the Papists then and still in a bitter scoffe or sarcasme call it grew into so extreme an hatred against the maintainers of Gods truth both within and without Germany as they became more bitter in their invectives against them then against the Papists themselves and did even then by their false and preposterous courses threaten a ruine to themselves and the whole Euangelicall party which they have since most miserably effected and brought to passe in a great part of the Christian world which drew the King of great Britain in the yeer 1611. to remonstrate to the united States of the lower Germany upon the death of James Arminius the Anabaptist or Pseudo-Lutheran whom hee calls the Enemy of God and their electing of Vorstius into his chaire whom hee calls a blasphemer that if they did not in time prevent the growing of that pestilentiall Sect it would in the issue prove the utter ruine of their flourishing Common-wealth SECT. IV. THe Electorall House of Saxonic upon the devesting of that brave and pious Prince John Frederick the true heire by Charles the fifth and the investing of the younger House to usurp that honour hath ever since proved a greater friend to the Popish party then to the purer Churches of Christendome of the French and Helvetick confession Miurice that usurped that Dutchie and Electorate upon the incaptivating of the said Duke John Frederick his Cousin first ruined the Princes of the Smalcaldick union to which himself had subscribed and then casting an ambitious eye upon the Empire it self broke his faith with the Emperor that had raised him and having patched up that defection by the means of Eerdinand of Austria King of Bohemia afterwards setled in the Imperiall Throne he lastly perished by a violent death in a pitcht battell sought against his fellow-Protestants and left his brother Augustus to succeed him This new Electorall family aided the Leaguers in France against that victorious Prince Henry the Great They ruined and took prisoner their Cousin the Duke of Saxon Weymar the principall branch of their House in the Castle of Goth in the time of Maximilian the Emperor they put in their far-fetcht pretentions to the Dutchie of Cleeve and Juliers in our dayes and joyned their Armes with the Archduke Leopold against the Marquesse of Brandenburg and the Duke of Newburg the indubitate heires thereof whose right also was asserted by the whole Protestant party besides of Christendome These were the fruits of their miserable errors in doctrine brought in and established by James Andreas Osiander and their fellow Pseudo-Lutherans retaining still their Images and Altars in the places of their publique worship although they confesse them to minister matter of offence to many of the better learned and matter of superstition to most of the ignorant multitude Nay hence in the yeer 1580. did the Pseudo-Lutherans proceed to inforce the Ministers of Saxonie to subscribe amongst other Articles to that monstrous error of the Ubiquity of Christs body exploded with just derision by Bellarmine and all learned Papists And from enforced subscription which is ever for the most part the fore-runner of persecution they fell in the yeare 1591. upon the death of Duke Christian the best of all the Electors of the aforesaid Augustus line and race to shed the innocent bloud of that brave Gentleman and faithfull servant of the State Paulus Krelius Chancellor of that Dutchy for no other delict but because he was a known friend to the purest doctrine a stout Protector of those whom they stiled Calvinists After which followed the suspension and imprisonment of Urbanus Pierius Professor of Wittenberg and of divers other learned and godly Ministers yea within a yeare or two after such was the furious virulencie of the Inhabitants of the Town of Leipsich led by the Scholars of the Universitie there who have since in these later Germane wars fully tasted of the divine indignation as they fell upon the houses and movables of such as embraced the Helvetick Confession despoiled them of their goods and committed divers other outrages upon them But most fatall have been the effects of this last Duke of Saxonie's hovering neutrality in matter of Religion when at first he refused to be comprised in the Protestant union entred into by the Germane Princes in the yeare 1617. for their necessary safety when secondly he sided the yeare following with the Emperor Matthias against the Protestant Bohemians And thirdly when in the yeare 1620. he joyned his Armies with those of the Emperour Ferdinand the second that but a few yeares before lay hid in obscurity in his slender Patrimony at Gratz and so proved one of the chief causes of the utter subversion for ought we yet see of the Religion and Liberties of Germany For had not Frederick the fifth Prince Elector Palatine rather aimed at the upholding of true Religion in Bohemia then at any ambitious ends of his own he had never hazarded the peace plenty and quiet he enjoyed at Heidelberg to have accepted that controversall crown at Prague and to have entred that Kingdome in a hostile manner which for above the space of twelve moneths before had been filled with warre and misery SECT. V. I Doe not finde that any higher or greater punishment was inflicted upon Hereticks themselves in the Primitive times though they remained obstinate after all other meanes used for convincing them of their errours then exile or banishment St. Austin writing to Proculianus the Donatist acknowledgeth such as erre from the truth must be drawn home by milde instruction and not by cruell enforcement And when Bishop Itacius in the yeare 383. being a man of a turbulent spirit and fierce nature had caused Priscillian the Heretique and divers of his followers to be put to death he was first condemned for that bloudy act by Thcognistus And St. Ambrose afterwards meeting with some Bishops at Triers that had partaken with Itacius in that cruell execution would not so much as entertain any communion with them Theodosius the Emperour in the Synod of Constantinople in stead of bloud and irons caused a publick dispute to be afforded the Arrians themselves although they had been before condemned by the Councell of Nice The like mercifull provision did Charles the
profits of them And not many yeers after he gave liberty also to the very Mahometan Moores in Spain amounting to divers thousands to depart freely thence into any Province of Africa there to enjoy freedome from the bloody Inquisitors and with his own shipping conveyed many of them safe into France through which by the graclous permission of Henry the Great they had safe and free passage Charles the ninth also the French King did by his Agents earnestly sollicite Lewes de Clermont Prince of Conde and Gaspar de Colignie Earle of Cistillion Admirall of that Kingdome being the chief Commanders and Directors of the Protestants affaires to depart the Kingdome with the rest of the Religion and that they might begin a Plantation in the Island of Florida in America hee not only gave leave to the first expedition which was undertaken by John Ribald in the yeer 1562. but also at the same Admirals intreaty did contribute very largely himself to the second navigation which was entred upon not long after the first by Renate Laudonere and divers other Protestants But it pleased God that this fair occasion not only of enlarging the French Empire but also of planting a blessed Church amongst those Heathen people was in the very bloome and infancy prevented and brought to nothing by the precipitation of Luidonere himself and by those factious Romanists about the King who occasioned new civill wars and tumults in the Realme After the horrible and inhumane massacre of Paris in the yeer 1572. which was partly resolved upon because the Protestants would not upon any terms remove out of France and so desert and leave their deare and native countrey Charles Duke of Loraine intending to take that occasion to extirpate the true Religion out of his own Dominions which he might have done by their slaughters yet gave them liberty to depart whithersoever they would in safety and full time to sell and dispose of their goods and estates Nay Queen Mary of England whose bloody persecutions shall make her raign infamous to the worlds end yet in her first yeer expressed so much mercy as having publikely declared that she meant to restore the Romish Religion shee further permitted to all her subjects that would not professe the same free liberty to depart out of her kingdome by which the lives and ravagings of many hundreds were saved and amongst them divers of the Clergie for the first sensible persecution began then in St. Johns Colledge in Cambridge where the Idolatrous bowing to the Masse and Altar being wickedly practised and pressed divers immediatly left the same Colledge thereupon Now if the Popish Prelates of those times who accounted the Protestants arch-heretiques and mortally hated them did yet perswade the Kings and Princes they served and too often misadvised to permit the Protestants freedome of departure with liberty and time to sell their goods and estates is it possible that there should live in and under any Protestant Church such inveterately hating Prelates against the weaker and humbler Christians who dissent from them as themselves pretend only in matters of form and order arbitrary to be abolished or retained by the supreme Magistrate as neither to suffer them to live quietly at home without vexation suites fines suspension deprivation and imprisonment which in many cases occasioneth their immature deaths nor yet suffer them to depart quietly to plant a Church amongst the very Heathens themselves to the honour of God and the inlargement of their Soveraignes Empire and profit Is it possible that so many miles distance should not abate and asswage the very malice of Rome it self against them Were their departure like that of the fugitive Romanists a few yeers since to joyn with the publike enemies of the Kingdome to invade it and to be more forward to subdue it to a cruell and barbarous Nation as they were in eighty eight then the adversaries themselves then might there be some colourable reason to use all extremity and cruelty against them for their ruine and extirpation but when their hearts and soules breath forth nothing but loyaltie and innocencie the throne and kingdome fare the better for their prayers and humiliations and the worst they desire is but the quiet of their own consciences how is it possible they should be so prodigiously hated of any that would but pretend truly to love the Gospel and heartily to vote the flourishing of it Certainly it is impossible they should be so transported with barbarous rage as some of the Popes have been who rather desired to see the ruine of those innocent Christians then of the very Turks and Mahometans unlesse they will yeeld themselves to be as deeply toxicated with the dregs of that Romish cup as the Jesuites are who in the yeere 1578. began to preach and teach publikely that it was a more acceptable work to God for Christian Princes to root out and persecute all Sectaries and Schismatikes amongst themselves then for them to joyn their forces against the Turks and Infidels A doctrine saith Monsieur de Thou one of their own Historians contrary to all Christian pietie and mansuetude who with the rest of the sober and moderate Romanists by their charitable and advised censures given of the strictest and most tender conscienced Christians notwithstanding they most abhor any the least intermixtures and additions in Gods Worship which have been introduced by the Papists shall at the last day rise up in judgement against the invectives of many seeming Protestants of both orders against the same persons endeavouring thereby to prepossesse the eares and fascinate the judgements of the greatest Princes that so they may obtain license and power under them utterly to ruine and destroy their humble and pious fellow-Christians who are notwithstanding permitted quietly and safely to enjoy the publike liberty of their conscience in those Kingdomes and States where the Romish Religion it self flourisheth SECT. XXIV UNder Henry the fourth the late great and victorious French King the major part of the Papists of that kingdome continued in a most obstinate and furious war against him during the first four yeers of his raigne calling into their succours the Spaniards the sworn enemies of that Crown and State and yet he offered them not only to permit all his Romanized subjects the publike exercise of their Religion but also to continue it in all places in the same forme and freedome as it had been used at the time of the murther of Henry the third his predecessor by a Jesuited assassinate And further implored his own Subjects Not to endeavour to force him to the change of his Religion which he knew to be the truth being a cruelty hee desired not to practise upon the meanest of them The Protestants will yeeld up their Religion as false and wicked if ever such an example can be produced against them where they had libertie of conscience sincerely afforded them and yet took up armes against their lawfull Soveraign But those
at any time excused by the inadvertent default of the Priest admits the losse opposition And I have often wondred why some of that active rabble could not as well and as secretly on the sudden have supposited true flesh instead of the Hostia as they have by an insensible legerdemaine sprinkled pure and lively bloud from a lancinated singer upon the Wafer Cake it selfe Certainly there is no truth in Scripture more plainly set down then that doctrine of the Church of England and of the more Orthodox reformed Churches in which they maintaine and teach that Christs body is ascended into heaven and there remaineth as visibly and circumscriptively as it did upon earth before it ascended that it is onely present given and taken in the Sacrament after an heavenly and spirituall manner and that to worship it or make it a sacrifice are blasphemous and dangerous deceits from all which it will undoubtedly and necessarily follow that Christs body is no more present at the Sacrament really and carnally after the words of Consecration then it was present with the Bread before it was brought into the Church or with that which is left after the administration of the Sacrament ended and is carried againe out of the Church where also it may as lawfully be adored as at any time during the holy administration it selfe each adoration being grosse Idolatry Were the ignorantest men and silliest women able in Queene Maries dayes to assert this truth even by dispute against those bloudy Bishops and Idolatrous Priests that would have obtruded Christs reall presence in the Sacrament and their blasphemous sacrifice of the Masse upon them and after to die for it and shall wee not thinke thousands will be now ready also in all humilitie and patience to lay downe their lives for the same Truth How dangerous in all ages this idolatrous adoration or bowing to Images Altars the Hostia Reliques and such other trumpery hath been to the very moderate Papists themselves appeares by a pretty relation in the History of learned De Thou That Francis the second in the yeare 1559. being perswaded by the Cardinall of Lorraine and some others of his faction that there was no way to discover and irretiate the Protestants like that of their Images did cause them to be erected and set up with Candles burning before them in severall streets and eminent places of Paris to which there assembled divers tankard-bearers scullions and other such like of the dregs and scumme of the people who to the shame of the Priests and all Church-Discipline prophanely chanted and sang before them And when any passed by were he Papist or Protestant if he did not presently deliver them money towards the maintenance of those Tapers and adore the Idoll they fell upon him and not contented to make him tast of their fists and handy-blowes or to throw him into the dirt and trample on him did after all those grosse abuses carry him to prison there to be further questioned many sober Papists having hast of businesse not seeing the Images or otherwise not regarding the disorderly carroling of such a company of Varlets were by them basely assaulted beaten and spoiled to the great distaste and open repining of the best and discreetest Citizens though otherwaies truly caec-obedient and zealous Romanists SECT. XXII YEt must we not think that Heresie or Heretiques ought so to be indulged as thereby to be confirmed and made more pertinacious in their heresies They ought to be instructed reproved and discountenanced and if they prove irrecoverably obstinate exiled Wee see God himself commanded the Jewes to put an Idolater and a blasphemer to death and though I do not conceive that to be an Evangelicall precept but onely a judiciall law proper and peculiar to that people and Church yet doubtlesse it may thence by the rule of Analogie be concluded that where Idolatry and Heresie are mixed together as amongst Papists and Montanists or Altar-adorers or where blasphemy and heresie meet in one as amongst the Arrians Pelagians or Anabaptists the followers of Sebastian Castellio and James Arminius there a more severe course may be warrantably practised to stop the dispersing of that poyson then for the suppressing of any other Heretiques who are not guilty of those two abominations but onely hold some lesser errours Incomparable Monsieur de Thou saith in the Preface before his History dedicated to Henry the Great of France that exile or banishment was the first and greatest punishment that ever the ancient Church inflicted upon Heretiques which on all sides is acknowledged to have been a true Church as wee see in the banishment of the Manichees under those two pious Emperors Theodosius Valentinian and in the exilement of divers kinds of Heretiques under Constantine and Marcianus But when men have joyned either open rebellion and treason or proditorious positions to their Religion as the Papists or have maintained Anarchicall Theses as a part of their doctrine condemning Monarchie Magistracie and all civill government as the Anabaptists In these cases although they did absolutely defend dogmaticall and fundamentall errors yet were their exilement or a greater punishment justly inflicted on them because the case is now altered from matter of conscience to matter of offence crime Had the Protestants been but once guilty of such an unmatched villanie as the Powder-plot was in any part of the world where they are tolerated they had doubtlesse been for ever rooted out from thence for though some desperate Romanists only were ingaged in the execution yet in the generall questionlesse all the Recusants of England knew that a great action was in hand against Church and State and that their Romish Synagogue was to be erected in Great Britain upon the ruines of them both And for the prosperity of it as Henry Garnet himself confessed they all prayed Nay when divers English Papists admonished by the guilt of their own conscience fled upon the discovery thereof into France and were kindly received there by the Governour of Callis and he comforting them in respect they had left their countrey estates and friends No saith one of them to him again Wee grieve not at all for those losses but that so brave and excellent an action meaning the Powder-treason had no better successe At which answer the said Governour was so extremely incensed as hee often after himself related to the same de Thou who delivers the Story that hee verily thought to have precipitated the varlet headlong into the sea And as for their Romish doctrines manifestly tending to treason conspiracy and rebellion they were so exactly collected together into one bo ly by learned Bishop Morton and published in the yeere 1605. a little after the discovery of that treason as wee shall need a great deal of charity to believe they can be good subjects in and under any Protestant Prince or State Neither do the Anabaptists come much short of the Papists in their dangerous tenets or