The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 23 – Section 24
SECT. XXIII.
WE have seen the greatest and uttermost punishment that the Primitive Church thought fit to be inflicted on the Heretiques of those times was exilement, in which case they had alwayes a competent time allowed to provide conveniences before they receded, safe conduct for their departure, and a full power given them, either to retain their praediall and fixed estates they left, and to receive by their deputed agents the yeerly revenues of them, or else sell them. And if wee do seriously peruse the Histories of later times, we shall finde the cruellest Tygres, and most Wolvish Prelates that ever miscarried the affaires of any Kingdome or State since the yeare 1500. never to have grown to that senslesse and belluine height of malice against the godly, as neither to suffer them to enjoy their liberty and quiet of their consciences at home, nor yet peaceably and innocently to leave their deare and native countrey, and to plant themselves in such parts of the world as they may enjoy their inward peace without offence or scandall to any. Philip the second of Spain, who was one of the most prodigious offenders against God, in his time, having vitiated women of the noblest rank, violated contracts of the deepest nature, murthered his eldest son, and third wife, unjustly detained the Kingdome of Navarre, broken his oath with Arragon, Naples, and the Netherlands, and the most resolved and premeditated persecutor of Christendome, being wholly actuated & precipitated to it by Nicholas Perenot, Cardinall of Granvellan, and the bloody Inquisitors, yet in the yeer, 1575. he set out a publick Declaration touching all the Inhabitants of the Netherlands, that it should be lawfull for any that would not embrace the Rom m Religion, to depart from thence whither soever they would, and to sell their estates, or else to. retain them, and to receive the profits of them: And not many yeers after, he gave liberty also to the very Mahometan Moores in Spain, amounting to divers thousands, to depart freely thence, into any Province of Africa, there to enjoy freedome from the bloody Inquisitors, and with his own shipping conveyed many of them safe into France, through which, by the graclous permission of Henry the Great, they had safe and free passage. Charles the ninth also, the French King, did by his Agents earnestly sollicite Lewes de Clermont, Prince of Conde, and Gaspar de Colignie, Earle of Cistillion, Admirall of that Kingdome, being the chief Commanders and Directors of the Protestants affaires, to depart the Kingdome, with the rest of the Religion; and that they might begin a Plantation in the Island of Florida in America, hee not only gave leave to the first expedition, which was undertaken by John Ribald, in the yeer 1562. but also, at the same Admirals intreaty, did contribute very largely himself to the second navigation, which was entred upon, not long after the first, by Renate Laudonere, and divers other Protestants. But it pleased God, that this fair occasion, not only of enlarging the French Empire, but also of planting a blessed Church amongst those Heathen people, was in the very bloome and infancy prevented and brought to nothing by the precipitation of Luidonere himself, and by those factious Romanists about the King, who occasioned new civill wars and tumults in the Realme. After the horrible and inhumane massacre of Paris, in the yeer 1572. which was partly resolved upon, because the Protestants would not upon any terms remove out of France, and so desert and leave their deare and native countrey: Charles Duke of Loraine intending to take that occasion, to extirpate the true Religion out of his own Dominions, which he might have done by their slaughters, yet gave them liberty to depart whithersoever they would in safety, and full time to sell and dispose of their goods and estates. Nay Queen Mary of England, whose bloody persecutions shall make her raign infamous to the worlds end, yet in her first yeer expressed so much mercy, as having publikely declared, that she meant to restore the Romish Religion; shee further permitted to all her subjects that would not professe the same, free liberty to depart out of her kingdome; by which the lives and ravagings of many hundreds were saved, and amongst them divers of the Clergie; for the first sensible persecution began then in St. Johns Colledge in Cambridge, where the Idolatrous bowing to the Masse and Altar, being wickedly practised and pressed, divers immediatly left the same Colledge thereupon. Now if the Popish Prelates of those times, who accounted the Protestants arch-heretiques, and mortally hated them, did yet perswade the Kings and Princes they served, and too often misadvised, to permit the Protestants freedome of departure, with liberty and time to sell their goods and estates; is it possible that there should live in and under any Protestant Church, such inveterately hating Prelates, against the weaker and humbler Christians, who dissent from them, as themselves pretend, only in matters of form and order, arbitrary to be abolished or retained by the supreme Magistrate, as neither to suffer them to live quietly at home without vexation, suites, fines, suspension, deprivation, and imprisonment, which in many cases occasioneth their immature deaths, nor yet suffer them to depart quietly, to plant a Church amongst the very Heathens themselves, to the honour of God, and the inlargement of their Soveraignes Empire and profit? Is it possible that so many miles distance should not abate and asswage the very malice of Rome it self against them? Were their departure like that of the fugitive Romanists a few yeers since, to joyn with the publike enemies of the Kingdome, to invade it, and to be more forward to subdue it to a cruell and barbarous Nation, as they were in eighty eight, then the adversaries themselves, then might there be some colourable reason to use all extremity and cruelty against them for their ruine and extirpation; but when their hearts and soules breath forth nothing but loyaltie and innocencie, the throne and kingdome fare the better for their prayers and humiliations, and the worst they desire, is but the quiet of their own consciences; how is it possible they should be so prodigiously hated of any, that would but pretend truly to love the Gospel, and heartily to vote the flourishing of it? Certainly it is impossible they should be so transported with barbarous rage, as some of the Popes have been, who rather desired to see the ruine of those innocent Christians, then of the very Turks and Mahometans, unlesse they will yeeld themselves to be as deeply toxicated with the dregs of that Romish cup as the Jesuites are, who in the yeere 1578. began to preach and teach publikely, that it was a more acceptable work to God, for Christian Princes to root out and persecute all Sectaries and Schismatikes amongst themselves, then for them to joyn their forces against the Turks and Infidels; A doctrine, saith Monsieur de Thou, (one of their own Historians) contrary to all Christian pietie and mansuetude, who with the rest of the sober and moderate Romanists, by their charitable and advised censures, given of the strictest and most tender conscienced Christians, (notwithstanding they most abhor any the least intermixtures and additions in Gods Worship, which have been introduced by the Papists) shall at the last day rise up in judgement against the invectives of many seeming Protestants, of both orders, against the same persons, endeavouring thereby to prepossesse the eares and fascinate the judgements of the greatest Princes, that so they may obtain license and power under them, utterly to ruine and destroy their humble and pious fellow-Christians, who are notwithstanding permitted quietly and safely to enjoy the publike liberty of their conscience in those Kingdomes and States where the Romish Religion it self flourisheth.
SECT. XXIV.
UNder Henry the fourth, the late great and victorious French King, the major part of the Papists of that kingdome continued in a most obstinate and furious war against him, during the first four yeers of his raigne, calling into their succours the Spaniards the sworn enemies of that Crown and State, and yet he offered them, not only to permit all his Romanized subjects the publike exercise of their Religion, but also to continue it in all places in the same forme and freedome as it had been used at the time of the murther of Henry the third his predecessor, by a Jesuited assassinate. And further implored his own Subjects, Not to endeavour to force him to the change of his Religion, which he knew to be the truth, being a cruelty hee desired not to practise upon the meanest of them. The Protestants will yeeld up their Religion as false and wicked, if ever such an example can be produced against them, where they had libertie of conscience sincerely afforded them, and yet took up armes against their lawfull Soveraign. But those unreasonable French Papists, being true limbs of the Romish Synagogue, whose faith was then faction, and whose Religion was then rebellion, would embrace no conditions of peace, no offers of pacification from their own undoubtedly lawfull and warlike King, as long as he continued in the open profession of that truth, in which he had been educated under Joan D'Albret, hereditary Queen of Navarre, his royall and godly mother; who also upon her death-bed had expresly charged him never to recede from it. This brave Prince seeing nothing but an utter ruine threatened to his kingdome of France, either by cantonizing it into Provinces, or setting a forainer on the Throne, (which Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine had out of some ambitious and self-respects of his own, a while opposed and prevented) in the yeer 1593. submitted himself to a publike recidivation, which though it brought on an outward peace to that Realme, yet was the King himself never freed from continuall Treasons and Conspiracies, hatched against him in the dens and nests of the Jesuites, till at the last he perished under one of them to the irreparable losse, not only of France, but likewise of all Christendome. Neither did the Papists cease to vilifie his very act of reconciling himself to their Church, saying, as Monsieur de Thou himself confesseth, that either his conversion was fained, as it had been before in the yeer 1572. and that a false Catholike would do more hurt in their Church then a true Heretique, or else that he loved the Crown of France better then he did the kingdome of Heaven, that to gain that without any inward convincement, would turn from one Religion to another.