The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 8
SECT. VIII.
AS it is against the Dictamen of Christian Charity, to make matter of Religion a capitall crime, or to enforce the conscience, without a full and clear conviction, from the profession of one Religion to another, or to any new burthensome Ceremonies, to be superadded in the publick worship of God, although the Religion it self remain the same it was before in the generall; so it is against the rules of Reason it self. This was confessed by Henry 3. of France, one of the most impotent Princes that ever swayed that Scepter, and most inveterate enemy that ever the Protestants had, having been instructed to hate, betray, and persecute them, by Katherine de Medices his bloudy mother, even from his very Cradle; yet when James Clement a Jesuited Monk had sheathed a knife in his bowels, and that hee saw himself neer the minute in which hee was to give an account of all his cruelties to the supreme Judge of Heaven and earth, he made an effectuall speech to the chief Commanders of his Army, being most of them Romanists: To acknowledge and obey the King of Navar (then a Protestant) as their lawfull Soveraigne, and the lineall heire of the French Crown, and to know this undoubted truth for the future; That Religion which is distilled into the souls of men by God himself, cannot he enforced by man. The same truth likewise, and almost in these very words, did the Lord Brederode, and the other Protestants of the lower Germany alledge for their just excuse in their united Apologie, published in the yeere 1566. and further added; That if the Papists did conceive their Religion to be the truth, they should in sieed of blood, fines, imprisonments and exilings, follow the seasonable advice of wise Gamaliel, and try a while, whether the Protestants separation from them were of God or not; for otherwise, if by force and tyrannie they did compell them to professe and practice those actions in Gods worship which they accounted abominable, and did also restrain them from performing those holy duties towards God, wherein they were convinced the truth of his service consisted, their consciences must needs be shipwracked and undone, and so in stead of making them new Converts, they should leave them Atheists and Libertines. This very objection also (in the yeere 1572) did Katherine de Medices of Florence, then Queen mother of France, (though she little practised the truth of the Consequence) make in the Treaty of marriage of Francis de Valois her youngest sonne, with Queen Elizabeth of England. The great rub pretended on both sides, (though the match was never really intended by either Queen) was matter of Religion; in which that glorious Virgin Monarch, having given her Ambassador expresse instructions, not to yeeld so far as that the Duke of Alenzon should be permitted the celebration of his Masse in private. What Mr. Walsingham, saith the Queenmother upon his next audience, Will your Mistresse have my Son turn Atheist, and professe no Religion at all? For with your Church he cannot joyn, till he be further instructed; and you will not suffer him to continue those Sacra by which hee hath hitherto served God, what shall hee turn Heathen till you have converted him? Though this unfortunate Lady did by this her wise answer discover the true madnesse of all persecutors, yet did she not forbeare to bath her cruell hands for many yeers after, in the blood of Gods Saints, and caused many, as St. Paul witnesseth of himself, before his conversion, to blaspheme, by their ejuration of the known truth, and their subscriptions to the Popish trumperies; of which, some that persisted in Papistry, turned prodigious sinners and libertines; and others with the King of Navar, and Prince of Conde, as soon as they got loose, returned to the known truth. The heroick answer of that brave Prince, John Frederick Elector, and Duke of Saxonie, is worthy to be ingraven in leters of gold on pillars of brasse, who being taken prisoner by the Emperor, Charles the fifth, in the yeer 1547. and threatened with present death, except he would renounce and yeeld up his Electorate and Dutchie to his false and treacherous Cousin Maurice, and become a Romanist, yeelded readily to all the former conditions, but absolutely refused the latter: And when in the yeer following, that wicked interim was yeelded unto by all the Princes of Germany; some being driven by fear, and others drawn on by flattery, which was, That Popery should be restored in all places, till a generall Councell were called, and further order taken for the liberty of Religion; This godly Prince, though Ces…rs captive, could never be drawn to subscribe to it; and when those two subtile Perenots, Nicholas Cardinall Granvellan the Father, and Anthony the Bishop of Arras his son, had used many arguments to perswade him, What (saith hee) would you draw me to? I am convinced the Religion I now live in to be the truth, and should I outwardly make profession of any other, I should but dissemble with God and the Emperor, and so draw neer to that unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost: with which answer, Charles the fifth himself was so pleased, as he more respected and honoured the Duke ever after. What this pious Prince foresaw and avoided, too many by lamentable experience have found true, and repented, who having abjured the truth for fear, and felt but a while the horror of an afflicted and wounded conscience, have hasted to those Popish Officers, as divers in England did in Queen Maries time, where their abjurations and recantations remained, and having gotten sight of them, have rent them into many pieces, and joyfully imbraced, not only their Irons, but the stake it self, as a far more easie suffering then what they before felt and indured. Had Charles the 9th of France but followed the good counsell was openly given him in the Parliament at St. Germans the first yeer of his reign, That the differences of Religion neither ought, nor ever could be composed by blood and cruelty, but by Gods Word and seasonable conferences, he had never made his raign and memory so infamous to posterity as now it is, nor drawn the divine vengeance upon himself, by shedding so much innocent blood as afterwards he did. For as divers were butcher'd by him in that barbarous massacre at Paris, in the yeer 1572. so Henry de Clermont (commonly sirnamed Bourbon) Prince of Conde, was some days after the generall slaughter of the Protestants, committed there, appointed by him to die, but his pardon being obtained by Elizabeth (a name, it seems, only proper to gracious and excellent soveraignesses) his Queen, one of the daughters of the good Emperor Maximilian, (although Conde knew it not) hee comes to him, and tels him, of three things he must elect one: either to heare Masse, to die, or to suffer perpetuall imprisonment; the young Prince no whit abashed, makes him this sudden and brave answer: God forbid, Sir, that I should choose the first, but of the two latter, I am ready to submit to that which your Highnesse shall appoint. There is as rare a story of the Lady Jane Gray, eldest daughter of Henry Gray, Duke of Suffolk, not much inferiour in birth and extraction to Conde himself, by her mothers side, who was grandchilde and co-heire to Edward the 4th, King of England, related by a Gentleman, and a Courtier, as it seems (for I finde not his name) under Queen Mary, in the yeer 1553. who dined at Mr. Partriges house within the Tower with her, whilest she remained a prisoner there, which narration well deserving to be transmitted to posterity, doth here ensue out of a Manuscript History of a great part of that Queens time, the very Autograph it self being in my Library, written by the said Gentleman with his own hand, some few words being added, which were at first casually omitted by his haste, or inadvertency in penning of it, and some other words changed and written according to the manner of speech now used: On Tuesday, the 29th of August, I dined at Partriges house with my Lady Jane, &c. After that we fell in discourse of matters of Religion, and she asked what he was that preached at Pauls on Sunday before, and so it was told her to be one :::::::: I pray you (quoth she) had they Masse in London? Yea forsooth (quoth I) in some places: It may be so (quoth she) it is not so strange as the sudden conversion of the late *John Dudley Duke of Northumberland.Duke, for who would have thought, said shee, hee would have so done? It was answered her, Perchance hee thereby hoped to have had his pardon. Pardon! (quoth shee) Wo worth him, hee hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity and misery by his exceeding ambition; but for the answering that hee hoped for life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am not: for what man is there living, I pray you, although hee had been innocent, that would hope for life in that case, being in the field against the Queen in person as Generall, and after his taking so hated and evill spoken of by the Commons, and at his coming into prison so wondred at, as the like was never heard by any mans time; who can judge that hee should hope for pardon, whose life was odious to all men? But what will yee more? like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so was his end thereafter: I pray God I, nor no friend of mine die so; should I, who am young, and in the flower of my yeeres forsake my faith for the love of life? Nay, God forbid; much more hee should not, whose fatall course, although hee had lived his just number of yeers, could not have long continued: But life was sweet, it appeared so hee might have lived, you will say, hee did not care how; indeed the reason is good: for hee that would have lived in chains to have his life, belike would leave no means unattempted: but God be mercifull to us, for hee saith, Whoso denyeth him before men, hee will not know him in his Fathers Kingdome. How justly may the masculine constancie of this excellent Lady, whose many vertues the pens of her very enemies have acknowledged, rise up in judgement against all such poore spirits, who for feare of death, or other outward motives, shall deny God and his truth, and so crown the Trophees of the Antichristian or mongrill adversaries by their lamentable apostasie. For what shee here spake Christianly, shee within a few moneths after performed constantly, her life being taken from her on the 12th day of February, 1553. having lived first to see Mr. Harding her fathers Chaplain revolted to Antichrist, to whom she wrote an effectuall Letter of admonition and reproof, published by Mr. Fox in his Acts and monuments, p. 1291. not unworthy the perusall of the ablest Christians and greatest Doctors.