The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 18
SECT. XVIII.
LVther had scarce planted the Cospel 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 they have done for the time past, since Sebastian Castellio's death, they will dissent as much from learned Luther, as he did from the Papists themselves. And how little coherence there was between Luther and those Anabaptists of his time, whom Castellio followed, is apparently expressed in the very Preface it self prefixed before his Dialogues, and other his Latin Works, printed in the yeere 1613. where the Author of the said Preface (a stout Anabaptist) freely acknowledgeth, that Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Martin Barrha, did all defend Gods absolute and eternall Decree, and the Power of his Grace, following therein St. Augustine; and falsly addeth, That a way is thereby opened to a secure and loose life: which inconvenience, saith the same Prefacer, Erasmus Roterodamus, Theodore Bibliander, and Sebastian Castellio, fore-seeing and desiring to prevent, did oppose the said doctrine, and maintained free-will to be in man, or an ability in and from himself, without the assistance of Gods grace, to do good. The Pseudo-Lutherans, or Anabaptists in Germany, that had even overspread the whole Dominions of the Elector of Saxonie, before the Enangelicall Jubilee was there celebrated in the yeer 1617. were within two yeers after, the direct Instruments of ruining the Gospel it self: For they mistake themselves ignorantly, or are wilfully blind in the passages of that time, who impute all the miseries that Germany hath now for these eighteen yeers last past groaned under, to Frederick the fifth, Prince Elector Palatine, his accepting of the Bohemian Crown, in the yeere 1619. in respect that the Protestants of that Kingdome, after the election of Ferdinand of Gratz, for the King thereof, in 1617. finding that he was wholly swayed by the Jesuites themselves, or his Jesuited Counsellors, and began to infringe the liberty of Religion there established, they acquainted the Emperor Matthias therewith, during whose life, the said Ferdinand was not to intermeddle with the affaires of that Realme. But the Emperor, whether hee feared that his said Cousin of Gratz should supplant him, as he had formerly done his own brother, Rodolphus the second; or whether out of immoderate love to him, I know not, neglected the Bohemians, just Petitions and Romonstrances; whereupon, in the yeer following, there being a great Assembly of them in the Chancerychamber, within the Castle of Prague, and some sudden alteration happening, they threw out three of the Emperors Counsellors at the windows, and though none of them were slain or maimed with the fall, yet the Bohemians themselves took this outrage to be an offence so unpardonable, as they presently prepared themselves for an offensive and defensive war, elected thirty Directors to govern the Kingdome, and raised two Armies to be in readinesse, the one under the Earl of Thurne, and the other under Ernest, Count of Mansfield. The Emperor also, and his Cousin Ferdinand, made great preparation for war, nominating the Counts of Dampetre and Buequoi for the Generalls, upon which there presently followed divers hot skirmishes, between the forces on both sides, the miserable Inhabitants of Bohemia proving already a lamentable prey to the licencious Souldier. And now let any indifferent and impartiall man judge, what fault or error all this time, did the said Prince Elector Palatine commit; Nay, on the contrary, the Jesuite himself confesseth in his Austrian Laurel, pag. 104. that the said Prince Elector laboured by all means to have composed this difference in a Treatable and amicable way by his letters and Internuncio's, till seeing the Emperors Armies, notwithstanding all his intercession to have entred and wasted Bohemia, their aime to be chiefly at the extirpation of Religion; and himself as the prime Prince of the new Union, to be obliged in honour and conscience to have a care of the Euangelicall cause, hee was necessitated to joyn his Armes to theirs, not refusing also the Crown, being, for ought hee knew, most justly laid at his feet, after a generall and unanimous election: Could he fore-see that any Euangelicall Prince should be so Pseudo Lutheranized, as to betray the whole body of the Protestant Religion, and the fundamentall liberties of the Empire in Germany to the Antichristian adversary? In all humane reason, had the Elector of Saxonie but looked on, and done nothing, much more had he but assisted the Bohemians, professing the same Gospel with himself, that fair branch of the third family in Christendome had now flourished in those ancient regalities their Ancestors enjoyed, and the Church and Empire had been as glorious and happy as now they are desolate and miserable. But God that decrees all most justly and wisely for his own glory, and the good of his children, will, I doubt not, by some means, though yet hidden, replant again the royall branches of this Imperiall Vine, as to the admiration of the whole Christian world, both enemies and friends, he hath hitherto supported the Royall root of those branches with patience and alacrity.