other Anabaptists though most necessarily cut off by the sword of the Magistrate for their blasphemous opinions and lawless Tenets tending to the utter subversion of all Civill government The Anabaptists in their Dialogues published in the English tongue in Queen Maries dayes though they craftily withdrew many of their Anarchicall Tenets agreeing almost verbatim with the workes since penned by James Arminius and the latter Anabaptists doe extoll that Servetus as a Prophet of the Lord and their numbers are at this day so increased as they constitute or make a considerable party in divers parts of Christendome But those cursed enemies of the truth that thinke by persecuting it to abolish it as they fight against God himselfe in so doing so have they heretofore and shall still in despight of all their devillish policy for the time to come increase and propagate the same This if all other Instances wanted would sufficiently appeare in that famous example of an English Schoolmaster a most zealous Papist in the dayes of King Edward the sixt who afterwards in the beginning of Queen Maries government frequenting the fires of some of the Martyrs was so convinced with hearing what they spake and seeing how chearfully they suffered as he himselfe relinquishing the former ignorance and idolatry he had so long embraced at last witnessed the truth with his own bloud Not he onely but many thousands also besides were doubtless inabled by the cleare shining of those fires to discerne the foulnesse of those mysteries of darkness under which they had been so long held captive And after her short Raigne infamoused by so much bloud-shed was expired it facilitated the way for her royall sister Elizabeth to restore the truth at an easie rate When the Executioner came behind John Hus to kindle the pile that encompassed him Come hither my friend said he and kindle it here before for had I feared what thou bringest I had not appeared at this Stake to day His death brought so incredible progresse to the true Church in Bohemia as did also that of Jerome of Prague his Contemporanie that their bloudy persecutors had just cause within a few yeares after their decease to acknowledge their own errour in having hastened their ends As fruitfull a seed-time to the Church in France proved the death of Annas Burgus a Senator of Paris in the yeare 1559. under Francis the second A man he was so vertuous and innocent in his life as some of the very enemies of the Truth laboured his delivery when he was in prison and so resolute and chearfull in his death as it incouraged thousands in that Kingdome in the constant profession of the Reformed Religion What better successe had all the bloudy executions of Ferdinand de Toledo that merciless Duke of Alva and of his new erected Bishops in the lower Germany but that the Gospel at the last got the victory over hell and all the powers of darkness Neither indeed could those cruell Inquisitors have expected other issue had they but truly considered what Religion had been and that Princes and States may command the bodies but not the soules and consciences of men Which having been once perswaded by Instruction and Information to embrace and beleeve any opinions though hereticall and therefore much more the Truth it selfe can never be driven from them but by the same meanes of a further and more cleare Instruction The godly have ever lookt upon chaines prisons racks and fires as the tryall and reward of their faith more fearing to doe evill then to suffer evill well knowing that they shall neither suffer more nor their cruell enemies be able to inflict more then God shall turne to his own endlesse glory and their everlasting good Did the Heathen Poet desire to be sent back to the Mines a life more tedious then that of the Gallyes rather then he would commend a few bad Verses contrary to his judgement Could Epicurus that impure Philosopher say of a wise man that if he were scorched in Phalaris Bull he would not be moved with it but onely cry out Dulce est ad me non attinet Or the young Stoick in Gellius to maintaine the Apathie of his Sect neither groane nor frowne in the midst of a burning feaver And shall we thinke that Gods Saints who have their reason heightened and irradiated by grace and their soules immoveably founded upon a lively and living faith will feare to lose their estates liberties and lives for the Truths sake No doubtless but as the Gold is tryed by the Furnace and cleared from the drosse so in time of persecution they shall be discerned from all hypocrites Atheists Libertines and Time-servers whatsoever SECT. X. BUt oh that Princes and Great ones would shake off those fleshflyes and Sycophants who tell them the contrary and know the Truth to be that nothing can more infamouze their raignes and memories to Posterity nothing bring more inevitable ruine to their Persons nothing finally prove so deadly a Consumption amongst their posterity as to inforce the Consciences of their Subjects by fines imprisonments subscriptions recantations depauperations and death Charles the fift having obtained the Imperiall Chaire by the money and meanes of Henry the eighth of England was the most potent Emperour that ever Germany had as long as he maintained the peace of Religion but having yeelded to the Popes instigations and prospered a while in his intended extirpation of the Truth he found at last by experience what his brave and valiant Generall Castaldus had foretold him That these violent proceedings would in the end prove fatall to himselfe For having first fled away at mid-night in a cold and rainy season from Onspruch for feare of the Protestant Army he was afterwards in stead of setling his sonne Philip in his own Chaire which he had fully intended faine to surrender up the Empire to Ferdinand his Brother who for divers moneths before had entred into a secret league with the Protestant Princes of Germany and so having lived a few yeares after in a despised and disconsolate solitude heat last ended his life very ingloriously His sonne Philip the second the most inveterate enemy of the Gospel that ever lived did not onely set up Shambles and Butcheries for Gods Saints in most of his own large Dominions by his Inquisitors but continually ayded the Rebells in France England and Ireland against their lawfull Soveraignes and plotted to invade all other Protestant Dominions in Christendome that so at last by one generall carnage of them all he and his holy Father the Pope might have shared the Christian world by a double Monarchy of the Church and Empire between them But did this bloudy Prince prosper in these his ambitious and cruell designes Certainly nothing lesse for what got he by his invading France by land England and Ireland by Sea and by his large Pensions conferred on the traytors and secret enemies of either State but that in the issue having wasted about
sagacious man alive First they proceeded against any person they suspected without accuser witnesse or proofe and fettered his eares with so many Questions to be answered unto upon oath and with so many severall examinations at severall times that at last as John de Monluce Bishop of Valence well observed of the Spanish Inquisition in the yeer 1562. that it was Decipula ad vexandos bonos illaâ— queandas conscientias Though hee came into their clutches unjustly suspected yet he was sure never to escape their griping talons justly acquitted A second invention was to adde many new matters to be confessed as matters of faith which were before left as matters of liberty and fact either to hold or not to hold and in this particular did that fatall Conventicle of Trent so blasphemously transcend the bounds of all sobriety as to adde twelve new Articles of faith to the ancient Creed to be believed upon pain of damnation and to this they commonly adjoyned as a slip or branch of it adjuration of all former truths or at least a Recantation Miserable experience hath taught the Lutherans and Pseudo-Lutheran in Germany the tyrannie of the Romanists in this particular who having assisted them to ruine those godly Protestants in the Empire of the most sound and Orthodox Helvetick or French confessions did as a reward of their treacherie finde them more implacable against them inforcing upon them a most dangerous and blasphemous abjuration then against the others These two former wayes of Inquisition went yet no further then the tongue but the next that followed included the hands also and compelled subscription to many false blasphemies and dangerous heresies Thus the Lutherans of Saxonie desiring to root out all the godly Ministers amongst them of the purer Confessions would have them subscribe to those two portentuous and monstrous errors of Consubstantiation and Ubiquity And it was a notable Machiavilian policy of charles the ninth of France who having enforced the consciences of the King of Navar and Prince of Conde in the yeer 1572. by the cruell murther of divers in their sight and by threatning death to themselves to cause them to write to Pope Gregorie the thirteenth by their Letters under their own hands that both their conversion to Popery and abjuration of the truth had been gratefull and voluntary But the fourth and last invention is a down-right and never failing way either of discovering the godly or of shipwracking their consciences being one of those sins Divines call Peccata vastantia Conscientiam and that is their enforcing them to adore their severall Idolls by bowing to and towards their hee-Saints and shee-Saints Altars Reliques Crucisixes and their great Moloch of the Masse This skill they learnt from the Heathens themselves who to avoid multiplicitie of Interrogations with the first holy and Primitive Christians who abhorred the placing of Images in their publique Temples and Oratories they asked them in a few words Will you sacrifice to the Image Charles the ninth of France never demanded of Henry de Clermont Prince of Conde whether he would turne Papist but will you goe said he to Masse He knew raw flesh to be harder for a true Protestant to digest then all the other parts of Popery And doubtless he that will adore and bow unto or towards an Image the Sacrament an Altar a Communion Table or any other creature where the bowing is not meerly Civill will never stumble at any other part or point of Popery but may safely passe to Rome or Rhemes Oh that the Papists could but see their own vanity in bowing to and adoring the Wafer Cake as God! For they confesse it is not transsubstantiated into Christs flesh unlesse the Priest that consecrate intend to turne and change it And what then if the Priest be so ignorant as many be that he know not the words at which his quu or turne is come by his imagination onely to worke a miracle what if his minde be roving about his necessary affaires or more unnecessarie and vainer thoughts usuall with them that reade one particular often over and so inadvertently he forget to joyne his intention to the words of Consecration Doubtless these cases and divers besides might be instanced in which the Priest hath often and doth daily faile to create his Saviour blasphemy I confesse positively to affirme for want of meere advertency and premeditation within the rules of the Romish Synagogue it selfe And then what follows but formall and materiall Idolatry by their owne confessions when they adore it So as should the Papists themselves see a Protestant Prelate or Minister bowing to and adoring the Elements of Bread and Wine in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper before or after Consecration he could not but account him a Poishly affected Priest belonging to his owne Church or an absolute Idolater For in the 29th Article of Religion published by the Church of England agreeing expresly with the Helvetick and French Confessions it is plainly let downe That Transubstantiation or any change of the substance of Bread and Wine is repugnant to the plaine words of the Scripture overthroweth the nature of the Sacrament and hath given occasion to many superstitions That the body of Christ is given taken and eaten in the Supper of the Lord onely after an heavenly and spirituall manner And that the meane whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith And that the Sacrament was not by Christs Ordinance reserved carried about lifted up or worshipped So the Article of the Church of England When therefore any Papist shall see his Masse celebrated by any English Divine with Elevation and Adoration or bowing to and towards it both gestures being condemned by the doctrine of that Church he must either within and by the rules of his own Church give him up for an adaquate Idolater in giving adoration to the substances of Bread and Wine which action the Romanists abhorre and condemne or else in charitie suppose howsoever in outward shew he seem an heretick yet in truth he is a good Catholick and did intend in and by the words of Consecration to make his Saviour and so supposing his body to be really there before him doth adore and bow to it The Lutherans condemne the Popish Transubstantiation the Jesuites deride the Lutherans Consubstantiation and Ubiquitie and both justly But should they heare of any subtle wittall that hath in theso dayes found out a third and more sublime invention out of the Bush that the man in the Moone carries at his back and can finde Christs body in the Sacrament as really and naturally as it was in the Virgins wombe but yet will not say he is bodily there either Con Sub or Trans they would most justly hisse him out of their Churches and Schooles Doubtlesse the Popish Transubstantiation is of the three the most rationall and profound error because that being accompanied with a supposed Miracle and may be
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