The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 17
SECT. XVII.
THe fruitfull seed-time of severall vices, and of lust especially in the Popish Prelacie and Clergie, brings in a large encrease in the Laity also, to fill up the reaping time, or harvest; and not onelyonly their lust and Epicurisme, but their malice against the truth, and thirsting after the bloud of the professors thereof, like a contagious gangrene, hath likewise infected, especially, since the yeare 1500. the vicious and prophane lay-Papists themselves. What was Escovedo the great Instrument of the King of Spains cruelties against the Evangelicall party in the lower Germany, but a lump of lust, which in the end proved fatall to him? But as the horrible massacre committed in France, in severall places, in the yeare 1572. is not to be paralleld, in respect of the treachery and inhumanity of it in any Story of the most barbarous Nations of the world: so it will not be amisse, seeing the examples of this kinde would else prove endlesse, to confine our selves, with taking a summary view of the chief undertakers in that master-piece of hell, which was never in any possibilitie to be equalled since, but with the Romish Powder-plot in England, had it succeeded. To begin with Paris it selfe; the murtherers The late inhumane ma… sacre and bu… chery in Ireland hath since excee… ed it.there, were for the most part, brutish and lustfull souldiers, or prophane varlets of the scumme of the Citie, their leaders were indeed more noble, but lesse vertuous: The Dukes of Guise and Aumale, Albert Gondy, Earle of Rets, Tavanne, and others of them, having been bred up in lusts, revellings, and other Aulicall deviations. The place that came neerest to Paris in the cruelties of their murthers, was the Citie of Lyons, where the numbers of the slaine and massacred were so great, as their bodies being cast into the river Rosne, corrupted and stained the streame, the violence whereof carrying them downe upon heaps to Tornou, and the inhabitants not knowing what they were, but fearing an invasion by enemies or robbers, assembled themselves in armes together for their mutuall defence. The chief abetters and ring-leaders of which butchery, Monsieur de Thou himselfe confesseth to have been Boidon, Mornieu, and Clou, three of the most wicked and vilest varlets that a Kingdome could harbour: which Boidon was after executed at Clermont, in Auvergne; and if Merniue escaped a shamefull end, yet doubtlesse he deserved it as well as his fellow-persecutor, having before, as witnesseth Serranus, procured the murther of his own father. At Tholouse also, a few dayes after, there was a great slaughter of the godly committed, but by whom? not by the better 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 onelyonly 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 onelyonly 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 onelyonly 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.