The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 1 – Section 3
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 Churchmen, 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 *Lutherus paulò ante mortem, age… cum Phil…ppo Melancthone, fatetur, in negotio Coenae…n mium esse factum, &c. Dr Rainoldus prelectione 4a. in lib. Apocryphos, p. 53. Col. 1. Et Orat. Isaac Bootii Vesalii de controversiis Sacramentariis Edit. Basilere Ao. Dm. 1601. ad Calcem Polani Analys. in Ho…seam, p. 405.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.