imposture or if it were a true miracle then the Protestants alledged that it might much more justly be interpreted to the advantage of the Protestant Church then of their own That first the place where the tree grew being dedicated to the memory of Innocents argued the innocency of those who were martyred and that as the same tree at that season of the yeere being in August though it shewed life yet could not have blossomed without a miracle So the Protestant Church and Religion in France which seemed by this blow to be utterly extinct and ruined should again revive blossome forth and flourish by the miracalous power of God in as great splendor and beauty as over it had done formerly which the event and issue notwithstanding all the great Processions and high Masses of Pope Gregory the thirteenth and his Conclave at Rome did accordingly verifie SECT. XX HOw shall these sober minded and moderate Papists rise up in judgement at the last day against all loose ignorant and prophane Protestants of both orders who for the smallest offences and for the very tendernesse of conscience it self vex molest cite sue imprison fine suspend deprive and utterly undo their innocent godly and peaceable fellow Christians For if it be neither warranted by the practice of the Primitive Church nor consonant to reason policie or the property of the true Church to kill an Heretique by a long and noysome imprisonment or to adjudge and put him to a violent death If persecution for conscience sake be accounted and that justyl a brand of the Antichristian Church and that Luther and his followers had even necessary cause in the yeer 1517. in that respect only to depart out of the Romish Babylon as from a Malignant Synagogue how is it possible that Protestant Prelates should persecute any at all with imprisonment and despoiling them of their goods though convicted of Schisme it self but much more such sober and innocent Christians who by their own confession hold nothing in matter of doctrine contrary to the truth live inoffensively and vertuously in respect of their conversation and are ready in all humility to submit to any particulars in matters supposed to be indifferent which they shall be convinced out of Gods Word to be so It is confessed on all hands that it is a most dangerous sin to do any thing yea a lawfull act against the dictate and perswasion of Conscience and shall pious Christians in all other respects for this alone be persecuted and followed with greater violence then Adulterers Swearers or Fornicators themselves The authority and glory of a Prince had been as fully extended in removing those particulars which made the breach as in retaining them it being acknowledged on all hands that the removall of them is and was alwayes as lawfull as the retention of them but if the wisdome of any Church conceive it self upon great and sound motives rather obliged to retain them and to adde new burthens rather then to abolish or change the old yet doubtlesse withall some course may be considered of how those who in all main and fundamentall truths are the true servants of God the humble and obedient children of the Church and of innocent and vertuous lives might in the mean time enjoy the Ordinances of God in peace and quiet For doubtlesse if one Protestant may lawfully vex cite fine suspend deprive excommunicate and imprison another which in some cases necessitates a lingring death for things accounted by themselves no way essentiall to Gods worship normans salvation then is all we have said against the Romists Synagogue of no validity at all nay there being no Magis and Minus in persecution it will follow necessarily that for the same causes one Protestant may as well put to death another as imprison him and so Samaria shall of necessity justifie her sister Sodome That the supreme Magistrate in things lawfull ought to be obeyed for Conscience sake is a certain truth But yet it is too apparent that such as are more violent for these lesser matters so to ravage and trample on the weaker and more humble Christians by pressing obedience to the Magistrate are commonly themselves the most outrageously disobedient for though they seeme most eager to obey him in these formall and outward commands yet where the commands of God himself and the Magistrates meet together forbidding Adultery Fornication swearing blaspheming unlawfull gaming starving of souls maintaining erroneous doctrines and divers other horrible and Atheisticall offences here neither God nor Prince Law nor Gospel heaven nor hell can restrain their lustful practices or scandalous lives Did Cardinall Sadolet himself intercede with Francis the first the Grandfather and the Arcbishop of Vienne and Bishop of Valence with Francis the second the Grandchilde two of the French Kings for the Protestants of their times whom yet they accounted Heretiques and is it possible any Protestant Prelate or Divine should stir up any Protestant Prince or State to ruine their Protestant-fellow-Ministers and other Christians because they cannot submit to such particulars as in themselves can no way hinder or impeach the unity of faith nor could breake if Gods glory were only aimed at the bond of love The Apostle Paul having left the true Church that incomparable Catholike Rule That the stronger Christians should beare with the weaker and that the weaker Christians should not condemn the stronger SECT. XXI THere were in all ages even in the first and purest times Confessions set out by the Primitive Christians to be a Guide and a Rule for all Conditions to walk by and when the Nicene Creed was penned by the learned Fathers of that Councell it was all that was required of any to be publikly confessed that had been either accused or suspected of Heresie The Protestants in all ages when they were questioned and especially since the yeere 1500. that the differences about Religion have even filled Europe with the sharp disputes of the sword and pen have not only offered to do whatsoever the ancient Fathers required as an act sufficient to cleare and acquit such as were in their times suspected of heresie but further to put their cause to the triall of the Scriptures the best and surest Rule nay to admit the Decrees of the first Generall Councels and the united Tenets of the Orthodox Fathers for the first five hundred yeers But the Romish Synogogue degenerating first in manners and then in doctrine first introducing innumerable Trinkets and Ceremonies to pester Gods publique worship and afterwards severall Idolatries absolutely to kill and poison it could not satisfie themselves with pressing upon the Protestants the confession of those Truths they yet maintain'd an I held but that not a grain of corn might remain in their great heap of chaffe nor one true Professor be hidden amongst the multitude they invented four manner of unchristian and tyrannicall courses whereby to insnare and illaqueate not only the most innocent but even the most prudent and
HAving with as much delight as diligence read over this excellent Discourse entituled The Primitive practise for preserving Truth and finding it richly furnished with variety of learned and select Story eminently usefull for common information against persecution meerly for Conscience sake I conceive it very worthy of the Presse John Bachiler THE PRIMITIVE PRACTISE FOR PRESERVING TRUTH OR AN HISTORICALL NARRATION Shewing what course the PRIMITIVE Church anciently and the best Reformed Churches since have taken to suppresse Heresie and Schisme AND Occasionally also by way of Opposition discovering the Papall and Prelaticall courses to destroy and roote out the same truth and the judgements of GOD which have ensued upon persecuting Princes and Prelates By Sir Simonds D' Ewes The second Impression more exact then the former LONDON Printed by M. S. for Henry Overton and are to be sold at his Shop in Popes-head Alley TO THE READER JUDICIOUS READER THIS ensuing Discourse being penned by mee about eight yeeres since not only for recreation amidst my severer studies but as a Preparative also by which I desired to fit my self either for a voluntary exitement or a necessary suffering I intended it only for a private use For I then residing in the County of Suffolke which had newly groaned under the Prelaticall tyranny of Bishop Wren as did all other parts of his Diocesse did know that the Presse was then onely open to matters of a contrary subject But now upon the perusall thereof conceiving that it might be of some use in respect of the many distractions amongst us at this present when a blessed Reformation is so neere the birth and yet the Church seems to want strength to bring it forth I was content to yeeld to the publishing thereof I did at first purposely omit the citations of those many and select Authorities out of which this ensuing Discourse was drawn lest the margin thereby should have swoln to a greater proportion then the Discourse it self some whole Sections or Paragraphs being almost entirely extracted out of the Records of this Kingdome And I have through the whole Tractat chiefly laid down the matter of fact out of Story not only extant in print but yet remaining also in M. S. and have lest the debate of the dogmaticall part of it to those whose calling and leisure is more proper for it My many present imployments both publike and private did scarce permit mee to supervise it and to amend it in some few places which puts mee almost out of all hope ever to transmit to posterity any one of those severall great and more necessary Works I had in part collected and prepared for the good and benefit of this Church and Kingdome in the time of my leisure and freedome S. D. THE PRIMITIVE PRACTISE For preserving TRUTH SECTION I. IT is the undoubted Mark or Brand of the Church Antichristian and Malignant to persecute of the Church Christian Orthodox and truly Catholike to be persecuted For the Truth if it have but equall countenance and safety will not only prosper and flourish amongst the professors thereof but will also in due time sometimes by a sudden power profligate and trample upon Heresie as it did upon Pelagianisme among the ancient Protestant Britains in Wales about the yeer of our Lord 466. and sometimes by insensible degrees waste and wear out falshood as it did the contagion of the Arrians amongst the Eastern Christians but Falshood Heresie mens Inventions burthensome Superstitions intermixed with Gods Worship and Idolatry or any divine Creature-adoration consisting in mens bowing to or towards Images Crosses Altars Communion-tables Reliques or the like can never be generally and publikely established without sharp and cruell persecution be exercised and practised upon the goods estates liberties and lives of the godly The Pope and the Turk have both upheld and propagated their abominations by the sword although no indifferent and impartiall judgement can deny but that the Romish Antichrist in this one particular exceeds the Ottomanish Muphti in that he makes it a part of the Tridentine Faith and so a Tenet of his Religion to persecute destroy and root out all the Euangelicall party under the false and personated names of Heretiques Whereas the Turk acknowledgeth this Truth that the Conscience neither can nor ought to be compelled and therefore they permit the free exercise not only of the Protestant Religion in all their dominions but of the Popish also in many places of the same whom yet they justly abhor as the Jewes do also led by the morality of the second Commandement for setting up Images in the places of their publike Assemblies and committing Idolatry by adoring them SECT. II. A Protestant Church if it desire to intermix any superstitious Ceremonies or Idolatrous actions with the power and purity of the Gospel must likewise be enforced to borrow some part of the other Characters also from the Church Malignant by enforcing the observation of such additions with the persecution of Gods children in their estates goods and liberties equalling in many respects the shedding of their bloods and reckoned up together by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrewes for so many kindes or species of martyrdome There are in all parts of the world amongst the very Christians themselves the greater number ignorant prophane and vicious who neither regard to know the truth nor desire to suffer for it but will alwayes run with the multitude and be carried with the stream They will of Protestants become Papists to morrow rather then lose either goods life or liberty of Papists the next day Anabaptists with Sebastian Castellio and James Arminius of Anabaptists the third day if by that means they may escape danger and rise to preserment become Turks or Abisens For doubtlesse in running from truth to falshood as in turning from the medium to an extreme there is no essentiall but only a graduall difference As Constantine filled the Empire with Christians so Julian with Atheists and Persecutors The greater number with holy King Edward in England even Harding and Boner among others for company embraced the Protestant truth and as soone as hee died all again generally licked up the old vomit under Queen Mary whose bloody fires were scarce quenched by her death and the royall Scepter throughly grasped by her blessed sister but all again for the most part as if Religion had been but a fashion which commonly deriveth its frenzie into the countrey by the Court changed with the new Prince and especially the Church-men among whom through the whole Realm not twenty in a thousand did stick to their infallible Head the Romish Antichrist SECT. III. WHen learned and pious Luther lay on his death-bed he * acknowledged his errors which coming but newly out of darknesse had been embraced by him amongst his many truths and obtruded from him upon the Church of God especially those two monsters of Consubstantiation and Ubiquity yet taking counsell rather of men then of
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
govern'd under their own proper and peculiar Justices that if any Jew dyed whose heire became a Christian he should inherit all the estate of his Ancestors without any further sine or composition with the Prince The Master of the Rolls-house in London and other places in other Cities of the Kingdome were appointed for the entertainment of those Christian converts and were thence called Domus Conversorum All which may clearly be gathered out of those Records of the Exchequer commonly called The great Pipe Rolles and the Communiâ— Rolles By which allurements some of the Jewes out of malice to their fellowes or having committed some penall offence to escape the punishment practised amongst themselves or els for lucre sake the sin of avarice being connaturall to most of them were baptized and became Christians outwardly without any due instruction in the Christian faith before-hand and being convinced also that the Papists adoring or bowing to and towards Images Altars Reliques and the like trumpery was absolute Idolatry against the second Commandement they proved as commonly the Jewes and Christians at this day do when they turn Turks the wretchedest varlets in the whole Kingdome What were the poor Indians wont to say when to avoid the Spaniards extreame and inhumane cruelties they were drawn to their Masses but that since they became Christians they had learned to swear and drink It was an excellent and just sentence which one of the Grand Seignienrs pronounced against divers hundreds of Christians that falling down-before him made declaration that they had deserted their Sacra and given up their names to Mahomet he inquired of them why they did so and they confessing plainly that they did it to be freed from those many taxes contributions and oppressions which they before groaned under he rejected their enforced conversion for outward ends and commanded their taxes and levies to be continued This Heroick action of the Turkish Monarch was not much short of that policie of one of the ancient Christian Emperours who having his Army mixed of Christians and Pagans and desiring to discover who of the first were little better then those of the latter made like another Jehu a publike Declaration for the restoring of Paganisme upon which divers of the Christian Commanders shewing themselves forward to desert the truth and to follow the stream and time he presently reproved and cashier'd them alledging that all such were unworthy to serve any Prince that had proved unfaithfull to that divine Majesty by which Princes rule SECT. VIII AS it is against the Dictamen of Christian Charity to make matter of Religion a capitall crime or to enforce the conscience without a full and clear conviction from the profession of one Religion to another or to any new burthensome Ceremonies to be superadded in the publick worship of God although the Religion it self remain the same it was before in the generall so it is against the rules of Reason it self This was confessed by Henry 3. of France one of the most impotent Princes that ever swayed that Scepter and most inveterate enemy that ever the Protestants had having been instructed to hate betray and persecute them by Katherine de Medices his bloudy mother even from his very Cradle yet when James Clement a Jesuited Monk had sheathed a knife in his bowels and that hee saw himself neer the minute in which hee was to give an account of all his cruelties to the supreme Judge of Heaven and earth he made an effectuall speech to the chief Commanders of his Army being most of them Romanists To acknowledge and obey the King of Navar then a Protestant as their lawfull Soveraigne and the lineall heire of the French Crown and to know this undoubted truth for the future That Religion which is distilled into the souls of men by God himself cannot he enforced by man The same truth likewise and almost in these very words did the Lord Brederode and the other Protestants of the lower Germany alledge for their just excuse in their united Apologie published in the yeere 1566. and further added That if the Papists did conceive their Religion to be the truth they should in sieed of blood fines imprisonments and exilings follow the seasonable advice of wise Gamaliel and try a while whether the Protestants separation from them were of God or not for otherwise if by force and tyrannie they did compell them to professe and practice those actions in Gods worship which they accounted abominable and did also restrain them from performing those holy duties towards God wherein they were convinced the truth of his service consisted their consciences must needs be shipwracked and undone and so in stead of making them new Converts they should leave them Atheists and Libertines This very objection also in the yeere 1572 did Katherine de Medices of Florence then Queen mother of France though she little practised the truth of the Consequence make in the Treaty of marriage of Francis de Valois her youngest sonne with Queen Elizabeth of England The great rub pretended on both sides though the match was never really intended by either Queen was matter of Religion in which that glorious Virgin Monarch having given her Ambassador expresse instructions not to yeeld so far as that the Duke of Alenzon should be permitted the celebration of his Masse in private What Mr. Walsingham saith the Queen-mother upon his next audience Will your Mistresse have my Son turn Atheist and professe no Religion at all For with your Church he cannot joyn till he be further instructed and you will not suffer him to continue those Sacra by which hee hath hitherto served God what shall hee turn Heathen till you have converted him Though this unfortunate Lady did by this her wise answer discover the true madnesse of all persecutors yet did she not forbeare to bath her cruell hands for many yeers after in the blood of Gods Saints and caused many as St. Paul witnesseth of himself before his conversion to blaspheme by their ejuration of the known truth and their subscriptions to the Popish trumperies of which some that persisted in Papistry turned prodigious sinners and libertines and others with the King of Navar and Prince of Conde as soon as they got loose returned to the known truth The heroick answer of that brave Prince John Frederick Elector and Duke of Saxonie is worthy to be ingraven in leters of gold on pillars of brasse who being taken prisoner by the Emperor Charles the fifth in the yeer 1547. and threatened with present death except he would renounce and yeeld up his Electorate and Dutchie to his false and treacherous Cousin Maurice and become a Romanist yeelded readily to all the former conditions but absolutely refused the latter And when in the yeer following that wicked interim was yeelded unto by all the Princes of Germany some being driven by fear and others drawn on by flattery which was That Popery should be restored in all places till
a generall Councell were called and further order taken for the liberty of Religion This godly Prince though Cesâ—rs captive could never be drawn to subscribe to it and when those two subtile Perenots Nicholas Cardinall Granvellan the Father and Anthony the Bishop of Arras his son had used many arguments to perswade him What saith hee would you draw me to I am convinced the Religion I now live in to be the truth and should I outwardly make profession of any other I should but dissemble with God and the Emperor and so draw neer to that unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost with which answer Charles the fifth himself was so pleased as he more respected and honoured the Duke ever after What this pious Prince foresaw and avoided too many by lamentable experience have found true and repented who having abjured the truth for fear and felt but a while the horror of an afflicted and wounded conscience have hasted to those Popish Officers as divers in England did in Queen Maries time where their abjurations and recantations remained and having gotten sight of them have rent them into many pieces and joyfully imbraced not only their Irons but the stake it self as a far more easie suffering then what they before felt and indured Had Charles the 9th of France but followed the good counsell was openly given him in the Parliament at St. Germans the first yeer of his reign That the differences of Religion neither ought nor ever could be composed by blood and cruelty but by Gods Word and seasonable conferences he had never made his raign and memory so infamous to posterity as now it is nor drawn the divine vengeance upon himself by shedding so much innocent blood as afterwards he did For as divers were butcher'd by him in that barbarous massacre at Paris in the yeer 1572. so Henry de Clermont commonly sirnamed Bourbon Prince of Conde was some days after the generall slaughter of the Protestants committed there appointed by him to die but his pardon being obtained by Elizabeth a name it seems only proper to gracious and excellent soveraignesses his Queen one of the daughters of the good Emperor Maximilian although Conde knew it not hee comes to him and tels him of three things he must elect one either to heare Masse to die or to suffer perpetuall imprisonment the young Prince no whit abashed makes him this sudden and brave answer God forbid Sir that I should choose the first but of the two latter I am ready to submit to that which your Highnesse shall appoint There is as rare a story of the Lady Jane Gray eldest daughter of Henry Gray Duke of Suffolk not much inferiour in birth and extraction to Conde himself by her mothers side who was grandchilde and co-heire to Edward the 4th King of England related by a Gentleman and a Courtier as it seems for I finde not his name under Queen Mary in the yeer 1553. who dined at Mr. Partriges house within the Tower with her whilest she remained a prisoner there which narration well deserving to be transmitted to posterity doth here ensue out of a Manuscript History of a great part of that Queens time the very Autograph it self being in my Library written by the said Gentleman with his own hand some few words being added which were at first casually omitted by his haste or inadvertency in penning of it and some other words changed and written according to the manner of speech now used On Tuesday the 29th of August I dined at Partriges house with my Lady Jane c. After that we fell in discourse of matters of Religion and she asked what he was that preached at Pauls on Sunday before and so it was told her to be one I pray you quoth she had they Masse in London Yea forsooth quoth I in some places It may be so quoth she it is not so strange as the sudden conversion of the late * Duke for who would have thought said shee hee would have so done It was answered her Perchance hee thereby hoped to have had his pardon Pardon quoth shee Wo worth him hee hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity and misery by his exceeding ambition but for the answering that hee hoped for life by his turning though other men be of that opinion I utterly am not for what man is there living I pray you although hee had been innocent that would hope for life in that case being in the field against the Queen in person as Generall and after his taking so hated and evill spoken of by the Commons and at his coming into prison so wondred at as the like was never heard by any mans time who can judge that hee should hope for pardon whose life was odious to all men But what will yee more like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation so was his end thereafter I pray God I nor no friend of mine die so should I who am young and in the flower of my yeeres forsake my faith for the love of life Nay God forbid much more hee should not whose fatall course although hee had lived his just number of yeers could not have long continued But life was sweet it appeared so hee might have lived you will say hee did not care how indeed the reason is good for hee that would have lived in chains to have his life belike would leave no means unattempted but God be mercifull to us for hee saith Whoso denyeth him before men hee will not know him in his Fathers Kingdome How justly may the masculine constancie of this excellent Lady whose many vertues the pens of her very enemies have acknowledged rise up in judgement against all such poore spirits who for feare of death or other outward motives shall deny God and his truth and so crown the Trophees of the Antichristian or mongrill adversaries by their lamentable apostasie For what shee here spake Christianly shee within a few moneths after performed constantly her life being taken from her on the 12th day of February 1553. having lived first to see Mr. Harding her fathers Chaplain revolted to Antichrist to whom she wrote an effectuall Letter of admonition and reproof published by Mr. Fox in his Acts and monuments p. 1291. not unworthy the perusall of the ablest Christians and greatest Doctors SECT. IX AS it is against the dictamen of reason to make matter of Religion a capitall crime so it is against the rules of policy it self in respect that heresie and falshood which would in time die of themselves are thereby increased propagated and so the end for which force and violence are used is no wayes obtained thereby This was verified in the death of Prisciliian the heretique of old by which his followers were mightily encreased and having before but reverenced him as a holy man did afterwards adore him as a Martyr The present age verifies it in the death of Michael Servetus the Spaniard and
of Paris in the great slaughter committed on Gods Saints and Martyrs about twelve yeers before There now only remained Henry the third the French King alive of all the first contrivers and principall executioners of that inhumane massacre which no age no time no action of the most barbarous nations of the world could ever pattern neither believe I can any ancient or modern History parallel the following punishments of the chief actors therein in all respects who not only all of them perished by violent and bloody ends but proved also the murtherers one of another Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine was presently upon the death of his brother made Generall of the holy League Paris it self and in a manner all the Popish cities beyond the Loire giving up their names and forces to the Henotick faction supported by Pope Sixtus the fifth from Rome and Philip the second from Spain When the King saw that neither his acting the Monk with the Flagellators nor his playing the Persecutor against the Protestants would secure him from a speedy ruine by the violent hands of the rebels He sends to the victorious King of Naver his brother in Law and to the Euangelicall Army before whose known valour the Popish Forces hastened back from the Loire to the Seine Henry the third pursues them and pitched his royall Pavilion at St Clou not far from the gates of Paris But his old cruelties and persecutions of the godly were doubtlesse the Remora of his new expected victories and the divine providence so ordered it that in the very place where the last resolution was taken by himself his Mother his brethren and others for the speedy execution of the before-mentioned belluine Massacre about seventeen yeers before nay in the very same house of Hierome de Gondy and in the very same roome or chamber saith John de Serres was he murthered by James Clement a Jesuited Monk in the yeer 1589. and in the thirty and ninth yeer of his age The assassination was furthered by the authority of Pope Sixtus the fifth by the seditious preachings of the Jesuites Priests and Friers in Paris who had secretly drawn infinite numbers into open rebellion before by their auricular confession and by the perswasion of the Lady Katharine Mary Dutchesse of Mompensier sister of the deceased Duke of Guise whose horrible transport with malice against the Protestant party and desire of revenge against the King himself did so far excaecate and blind her nobler endowments as she prostituted her body to that Jesuited wretch as impartiall de Thou himself relates to incourage him the more in the accomplishment of the murther and so to stupefie and harden his soul by that fatall sin of lust that it might not startle at the commission of any other wickednesse whatsoever Yet as this King some moneths before his death altered his former bloody resolutions against Gods servants so did the Divine providence at his death afford him some hours of repentance and sorrow after the bloody knife had been sheathed in his belly In which he acknowledged his error and sin his error in having been so long mis-led by his ambitious and factious Vassalls his sin in having persecuted his Protestant Subjects and inforced the consciences of many to submit to Popery against the known truth by cruelty and threatning SECT. XIV IN this fifteenth age also within the compasse of which wee shall confine our discovery of Gods Judgements upon persecuting Princes the truth began to spread forth its beames in this other world of Great Britain in a more resplendent lustre then formerly not but that I dare undertake to prove by some select and perhaps fearce known monuments of Antiquity that the Gospel was planted here in the Primitive time that the Protestants Religion flourished here neer upon four hundred yeers before Austine the Monk the first Popish Archbishop of Canterbury poysoned the purity of Gods worship with his burthensome Trinkets and Ceremonies Finally that it was from the first plantation preserved amongst the Welsh and Scots to the dayes of John Wickleffe without any interruption and was secretly practised also in England from Henry the seconds time at the least to the begun Reformation of King Edward the sixth But this requiring a reasonable Volume of it self to be at large deduced I must passe over as improper for this place We may begin in England with Henry the eighth in whose raign no Papist can deny but that divers Protestants were not only hunted after fined imprisoned compelled to abjure and otherwise disciplined but were likewise consumed in the merciless flames as Heretiques And therefore when the Papall side take so much pains to recount either the ill successes of his own raign or the dying issulesse of all his posterity as the signes and characters of Gods indignation against him they do but furnish the Orthodox party with weapons against themselves For the truth is he did only abolish the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome not the Pontifician or Papall Church which to this day as also in the former ages in France hath been so hedged up and incircled under certain restrictions and limits as it is of small consequence to help the Prelates and of little power to hurt the King So that Cuffetellus the Dominican proved it at large in an elaborate Work published in the yeer 1609. and the Sorbonists determined it in the yeer 1611. that the Pope had no power or Jurisdiction in that Kingdome in matter of Temporalities Neither did Henry the eighth in England proceed any further in this particular of abolishing the Popes power then those his two coaetaneous Princes Francis the first and Charles the fifth did at sundry times in their severall Dominions upon lesse provocations So the same Charles the fifth writing to the Councell assembled at Bononie superscribed his Letters only Conventui Bononiae as did afterwards Henry the second of France writing to the Tridentine Conspirators fule it only the Convention of Trent who also in the former and better part of his raign fairly cut shorter a great-part of the Popes Ecclesiasticall authority in France And how little Philip the second himself of Spain the sworn enemy of the godly regarded the Pope further then he did ancillate to his ambitious ends appeares plainly in this one particular that when upon the unfortunate death of Sebastian King of Portugall there were divers competitors for that kingdome and that Don Antonio had already assumed the title thereof he would not admit the Popes intercession to have the matter composed by Treaty or referre the cause to his decision Nay that bloody Charles of France of whose fatall end we have but a while before discoursed when Pius the fourth in the yeer 1563. had cited Odetus de Coligny Cardinall of Chastillion John de Monluce Bishop of Valence and others of his Subjects to appeare at Rome before his Inquisitors he sent him a stout Message by Henry Clutinius his Ambassador then
sort of Citizens or sober and morally vertuous men but one Turry and a number of other infamous lewd persons like himself joyned themselves together for the effecting of that bloudy execution The like villany was accomplished at the great city of Roane in Normandy by one Maronie a most infamous Ruffian and a great many other base varlets who assembled themselves to him as their ring-leader but in none of them were these two hellish sins of advoutrie and bloud more adaequately coupled together then in one Ruygaillard the masterbutcher at Angiers who having long continued an Adulterer was at last enticed by his harlot to murther his own wife Thus we see that it is not the sober and vertuous but the lustfull and vicious Papist that inveterately and irreconciliably hates the godly and sober Protestant not but that common experience teacheth us how the loose and debauched persons of either Religion do as well agree together in their plots and excesses as if there were no difference of opinion between them but that there should be such prodigious malice in the looser and erroneous Protestant against the more strict and Orthodox as to wish their extirpation rather then the conversion of the Romanists nay to joyn their armes with those of the vassals of Antichrist for the eradication and subversion of them is such a mystery of the lower region as the horrible and vast desolation of Gods true Church in our dayes gives us as much cause to lament it as the ages to come will have abundant occasion to admire it Amongst the Turks Jewes Indians Persians and the Papists themselves at this day the most zealous and holiest as they conceive them in their Religion are most esteemed and honoured and onely in the greater part of the Protestant Churches the most knowing and tenacious of the Evangelicall truth and the most strict and godly in their lives are hated nicknamed disgraced and vilified and grace which should onely adde a lustre to learning riches honours noble extraction and all other outward gifts either naturall or acquisite that alone obscureth all the rest and brings the contempt not onely of great ones but even of the scum and dregs of the multitude upon the persons so qualified Doubtlesse this shewes that the Protestant Religion where the Gospel is maintained in the power and purity of it is the very truth it self And that the Prince of darknesse seeing the greatest zealoters amongst the Turks Jews and Papists hasten on in a false and fatall course never opposeth them no more then he doth the debauched loose and Atheistical Protestant but only stirreth up all he may the hatred scorn and persecution of all sorts against those pious Christians who are convinced of the truth and by their innocent lives and godly conversations maintain and demonstrate that it undoubtedly is the true Religion which they professe SECT. XVIII LVther had scarce planted the Gospel in Germany in the yeere 1517 but within the space of some five yeers after Melchior Hofman Thoms Muncer Bernard Rotman and other Anabaptists planted there also as may be strongly collected divers Pelagian blasphemies of free-will recidivation from grace and the rest to which they joyned community of goods and the extirpation of all Monarchie and Magistracie saying Luther and the Pope were two false Prophets but of the two Luther was the worst because Luther especially laboured to advance Gods grace and to beat down the hereticall tenet of mans free-will Michael Servetus the Spaniard and Bernardin Ochinus as may probably be gathered did succeed Muncer and Rotman as the chief Doctors of that pestilentiall Sect but as may easily appear upon diligent search did cunningly conceal their dangerous doctrine of not allowing temporall Princes and Magistrates because they saw it inevitably drew upon them the necessary opposition of all Kings and well governed States Theodore Bibliander and Sebastian Castellio the Savoyard grew famous amongst their fellow Anabaptists after Servetus death and the same Castellio translated into Latin the Dialogues which the said Ochinus had written in the Dutch or German tongue which Dialogues are ordinarily at this day imprinted with the rest of Castellio's Works And in the last age from the time this Sect took its first beginning in Holland till about the yeer 1611. they knew no other name or appellation but of Anabaptists only which title also with much alacrity and confidence they assumed and appropriated to themselves in their own books they published James Arminius a flashie and shallow Divine of Leyden as may easily be evinced was so taken and overtaken with the perusall of Castellio's Dialogues and the secret conferences of some of the Anabaptists themselves as it clean turned his judgement from the truth to falshood and therefore to justifie his own apostasie and to perpetuate the memory of his new Masters labours without once doing honour to his name he re-prints his said Dialogues and other Works almost verbatim altering only the frame of them and patching them out also with some pieces he had borrowed from the Jesuites polemicall volumes against the Dominicans the latter opposing and the first defending the hereticall tenets of Pelagius the Britain as learned de Thou himself freely acknowledgeth After the death of Arminius in the yeer 1611. the name of Anabaptists by which the maintainers and asserters of those errors had for above fourscore yeers last past been known and called by as in the Articles of the Church of England published in the yeer 1552. Article 8. and elsewhere and sometimes also Anabaptists or Servetians from Michael Servetus as by the same de Thou in his story lib. 34. p. 239. began to be deserted as too odious and grosse for this learned age and by the ignorance of the Orthodox Divines who saw not the admirable use of story in their polemical Tractates they have atchieved the senslesse and new name of Arminians when poor Arminius himself took up his errors upon trust at the third or fourth hand stealing that out of Castellio which he had borrowed from Ochinus the scholar of the Spaniard Servetus And Barnevelt himself in his Apologie confesseth that he had learned those points in Germany many yeers before he knew Arminius nay as men extracted from base beginnings and advanced to high honours do commonly pretend by an adulterate and a false descent to noble ancestors so these impudent fellows are not ashamed to father their forgeries on judicious Luther himself as if there were no other difference between them and the Orthodox Protestants then was between Luther and Calvin whereas it appeared plainly in the yeer 1560. by the very confession of the Papists themselves that upon a strict inquiry then made it was found that the Protestants dissented from the Romanists in forty points of doctrine But those of the Helvetick and Augustane confessions amongst themselves but in two whereas if these new coiners do but daily increase their dangerous errors for the time to come as