The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 25 – Printer to the reader
SECT. XXV.
AFter this martiall Prince had deserted the Protestant Religion to the great astonishment and excessive griefe of all the Professors of the Gospel, both at home and abroad; What did his French Subjects of the Helvetick Confession instantly rebell against him, and deny him due and lawfull obedience, as his Popish Subjects had done before? Nothing lesse; but all the disobedience they shewed to him, or expressed towards him, consisted in humble supplications and Remonstrances, that they might still enjoy the publique libertie of their Consciences; and he as graciously yeelded to their just and Christian Petitions; and all the time he raigned, never forgat their cause or prayers, or suffered any of his bloudy Prelates, or Jesuited Counsellors, to molest, vex, cite, fine, suspend, deprive, or imprison any of them, and much lesse to butcher them, or draw bloud from them; because he knew every one of those acts are essentially true and down-right persecution, as well as shedding their blouds; onelyonly there is a graduall difference in the Martyrdomes of the sufferers as well as in the cruelty of the destroyers. As strange was the example of Henry the eight of England, who led by the advice of some of his Sycophanticall Popish Prelates, thought to have established the Romish Religion, without admitting the influence of the Papacy, whose unerring spirit is to that Synagogue like the soule to the body, or the Sunne to the firmament. But he soone saw his error, and would doubtless, had he lived, have made that integrall and saving Reformation, which his Royall Sonne so piously finished; for he himselfe and his new Popery, were more abhorred by the Bishop of Rome, and his Vassalls, as a monstrous and inconsistent Church, then the Princes of Germanie themselves, who had made a rationall and intire defection from that man of sonne. For the Pope and his Conclave employed Cardinall Poole (Henry the Eighths neare kinsman) as their Ambassadour to Charles the fifth the Emperour, to exhort and perswade him instantly to invade the King of Englands Dominion, rather then to make warre against the Turke himselfe. And the reason why the Pope was so vehement in his prosecution against that King, doth palpably and fully appeare from the very words ensuing of the Decree of Pope Boniface the eighth, in his Extravagants set forth by himselfe in the eighth yeare of his Papacy, about the yeare 1300. Subesse Romano pontifici (saith he) omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus, definimus, & pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salut is: We declare, define, and pronounce, that it is necessary for every one that is to be saved, to be subject to the Pope of Rome. The same doctrine doth the Bull of Pope Pius the fifth, bearing date there in the yeare 1564. & the Romish Catechisme set out a little after, doth maintain and confirme in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Sections thereof, in their exposition of the twentieth Article of their new Creed, (to which Creed their Prelates and other Ecclesiasticks are compelled to sweare, that they hold it to be the true Catholick faith) it being strongly disputed for also by Suarez in his first booke and twelfth Chapter against the Lutherans, by Gregorie de Valentia in his Analysis, lib. 6. cap. 1. and by Bellarmine in his third booke and fifth Chapter of the Church Militant; That though any Prince, Prelate, Priest, State, or Church, should receive all the other parts of the Romish faith & Religion, abolishing the doctrine and discipline of the Protestants, and should onelyonly deny the Popes Supremacy and subjection to him, yet they should still remaine damnable and wicked hereticks; So as the light of the Sunne is not more cleare then that the Pope in this one particular imitates God himselfe, hating more a linsey-woolsey mungrell halting Popish Protestant, then a true and zealous one. Blessed therefore are those Monarchs, Princes, and States, who preserve the Evangelick truth, without the least intermixtures of false doctrine and Pontificall additions; for to halt between light and darknesse, and to intermix Idolatrous actions, or Popish errors, with saving truths, will necessarily draw on the ruine of the godly, and the hatred of the Papacy, and bring downe Gods judgements as causally as an absolute, entire, and plenary defection and recidivation. And then if the Popes headship be once admitted, a volume would not suffice, how not onelyonly every proud Prelate, but even every Popish Priest; might trample on the Soveraignes Crowne and Dignitie, murther their fellow-subjects, and be guilty of a thousand other villanies, without dreading or regarding the punishment of the Temporall sword.
SECT. XXVI.
MAtthew Paris, the Monke of St Albanes, (a witnesse without exception) doth truly relate a pithy Story, to shew the ancient deplorable and base state and condition of the English Kings under the Papall tyranny; That Pope Innocent the 4th in the year 1253. in the 37th yeare of Henry the third, being set in his Conclave, in the middle of his Cardinalls, after mature deliberation and advisement upon a very small and trifling occasion, brake out into this vehement Interrogation; Nonne Rex Anglorum (saith he) noster est vafsallus, & ut plus dicam, mancipium, qui possumus eum nutu nostro incarcerare & ignominiae mancipare? That is, Is not the King of England our vassall, or to say more, is he not our slave, who have power as often as wee please, either to mue him up in prison, or to expose him to ignominy? Justly therefore did Henry the eight of England free himselfe from this Papall Tyranny: and if he had been possibly sensible of those bodily pangs, or inward remorses and horrors upon his death-bed, which the Papists mention, yet could not these divine flagellations be imputed to his defection from Rome, and error, as they pretend, but to his shedding of so much innocent bloud of Gods Saints, by the instigation of his sanguinary Prelates. For in France after that barbarous and cruell Massacre in the yeare 1572. upon the eighth day of November the same yeare, there appeared a dreadfull Comet, touching which some learned Protestant immediately published an elaborate and exquisite Poem, presaging that it was Gods Herald or Messenger to denounce his judgement shortly to ensue upon that Kingdome, for their newly perpetrated inhumane butcherie. His verses were … dispersed, when there suddainly broke out in Poitou a new … and before unknowne disease commonly called the Poit…vin Cholick, which wasted that goodly Kingdome for above thirty yeares after It was accompanied with so many extreame paines and torments, not onelyonly in the outward parts of the body, but in the inwards and vitals also, as it drew on divers horrid convulsions, and in many blindnes it self before they dyed. The strange originall, the hidden nature and those unparalleld torments it produced, sometimes resembling the very stabs and gashes made with swords and poygnards, gave all impartiall judgements just ground to conclude it to be the finger of God himself, in punishing the mercilesse murthers of his dear Saints. And a blessed warning it may be to all Christian Kingdoms and States, that a seasonable remedie to stop the growing of the plague, pestilence, and other severall diseases and judgements may questionlesse be applyed, by inhibiting and abolishing the power and malice of such Popish Prelates as count it their chiefest solace to waste and persecute the pious and godly Protestants, that so the true Catholick Church might againe flourish, as it did in the Primitive times under learned, religious, sober, faithfull, preaching Pastors and Ministers. Which incomparable blessing, the Divine Providence vouchsafed to the Scottish, French, and Helvetick Churches upon their first Reformation.
The Printer to the Reader.
I Am here courteous Reader, instead of troubling thee with an Index of the Errata, to give thee notice, that so great care hath been used, in this second Impression, as it needs none; neither was it my fault, but my mis-fortune, that the first had so many greater errours as well as lesser slips; for I had the use of a very imperfect Copie, transcribed from the Originall by two or three severall hands in some hast; by which I was mis-led almost in every Section. Those errours, and such as escaped the Presse, are now amended to thy hand.
FINIS.
End of the text · Simonds D Ewes, The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth (1645)