shadows of Mortality and false appearances of Happiness which do now impose on our bewitched minds and seduce us into a thousand Errors and Follies And thus again we see how Conscience stifles the very first motions of disorder and teaches us to be subject 4. A fourth Occasion of disorder is a busie medling Temper that cannot contain its self within its own Limits and Sphere but will engage in things beyond its understanding and above its reach Some cannot stay at home and do their own business but must ramble abroad and insinuate themselves on all Affairs and Company and are ever gaping for some change hoping it may make way for their appearing in another figure These are ever sucking in ill Reports which they are sure to belch up again in all Companies not without additions They delight to asperse Governours and Government and either to find or make faults in every thing that is done and a volatile unfixedness of disposition makes them weary of established Laws and Customs and gape for Changes through a fond affectation of Novelty Now these Vermine creeping into all Companies must certainly weaken the Nerves and Sinews of Government and most attempts for repressing this humour make it boil with the greater vehemence But as the Wiseman instructed us of old To fear God and honour the King and not to meddle with those that were given to change and not to say Why were the former days better than these for we do not enquire wisely concerning that matter So the doctrine of the Gospel commands every man To do his own business to stay at home not to be a busie-body nor meddle in other mens affairs but to pay tribute to whom tribute is due fear to whom fear and honour to whom honour is due These being the Rules of Religion I may appeal all the World to shew anything can so settle Order and Authority as this which guards against the first appearances of Clouds and Storms But as Conscience doth meet the earliest beginnings of disorders in their less discernible and more plausible colours so it ties a man to that severe conduct of himself that he cannot embark in Designs which must be managed with so much fraud and dissimulation as the contrivers of wicked courses must needs carry along with them in all their practices Pretending the highest respect when they mean worst lying and forswearing and sometimes assassinating as it may serve their ends and never meaning what they say nor saying what they mean but shuffling and warping as Interest carries them Nor can wicked Projects appear at first barefaced lest they should be entertained with horrour by all to whom they are proposed but must go masked till they be so strong as to dare to throw off the disguise Nay Religion will be perhaps called in to serve a turn and Scriptures wrested to a favourable construction all this base and foul dealing will so wound a tender and sincere Conscience that it will either contract a hardness and callus and become proof against all these awakenings or pull a man out of these base Courses that must be carried on by so bad Methods for there is nothing so candid as Conscience and therefore S. Paul chargeth us not to lye one to another since we have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man for he that does all things as in the sight of God can do nothing that he fears should be seen or known of men And thus I have dispatched the First part of my Design that Conscience obliges us to Subjection by resisting all the first Motions that lead to Disorder or Confusion 2. Nor does it only put out of the way those dangerous Stumbling-blocks but it drives the sense of Duty deep into our Minds Law and Government can only watch over the Actions and Words of Subjects but can neither discover nor over-rule their Thoughts which a cautious man wrapping up within himself can reserve to a fit opportunity but Conscience insinuates the Duty we owe the Sovereign Power upon our secretest thoughts and Religion obliges us not to curse the King in our thoughts and has made the Duty we pay Authority a part of its self and of these returns of the holy Fear and humble Obedience we owe the great King of Kings But this must not be so far carried as if those who are vested with the Sovereign Power had Authority to command us to embrace whatever Religion they enjoyn according to the pestiferous spawn of that Infernal Leviathan who by this Assertion doth at once destroy both Religion and Government For that base Flatterer of Princes pretending to offer them more than was due to them hath struck at the Root of their Authority and at once robbed them of all their Rights For we are either bound to obey the Sovereign by some obligation the Law of God brings on us or not If not then all the Sacredness of Authority is gone and the Prince has nothing but Force to maintain his Right and every Usurper that Masters him shall have a better Right by how much more Power he has to strengthen his ambitious Pretensions But if we be bound by the Laws of God to obey the Supreme Power then these Laws had a prior Title to our Obedience and infer the Duties of Subjects as a particular Effect of their Doctrine Therefore these Laws having the first Right to our Obedience must oblige us Nor can we be allowed to pick out that one of obeying the Magistrate and leave the rest behind us for all the Laws of God being enacted by the same Authority must equally bind us and as no deputed Magistrate can void the Laws of the Supreme Power so neither can Princes void the Laws of God without sopping the Foundations of their own Authority But none of these magnifyings of Magistracy are necessary to make it great it being by God himself exalted to so culminating a height and the rendring to God the things that are God's does not prejudice Caesar in the things that are Caesar's But Religion ingages us to so full an Obedience to the Laws that our violating them when they contradict no Command of God's makes us guilty in his sight and though we disguise what we do with so much cunning that the Secular Power can fix no Censure on us yet our Consciences will accuse us before God for those secret Transgressions which no humane Care can discover There is a Tribunal set up by God for the Magistrate in all our Breasts which will pass Sentence severely and not be put off by the tricks of Law the boldness of Denials the cunning of Excuses or any other Arts that may impose upon or abuse such Judges who must proceed upon clear evidence and not on dubious conjectures But when a man is retired inward and his Conscience takes him to task then all these visors are pulled off and he must needs appear in
expresses in a Paper written with his own Pen Concerning Goodman the Priest the reason why I reprieved him is that as I am informed neither Queen Elizabeth nor my Father did ever allow that any Priest in their times was executed meerly for Religion which to me seems to be this particular case yet seeing I am pressed by both Houses to give way to his Execution because I will avoid the inconvenience of giving so great a discontentment to my People as I perceive this mercy may produce I remit this particular case to both Houses but I desire you to take unto your serious consideration the inconveniences which as I conceive may upon this occasion fall upon my Subjects and other Protestants abroad especially since it may seem to other States to be a severity with surprize which I having thus represented do think my self discharged from all ill consequences that may ensue upon the execution of this person For his fidelity in observing his Treaties I have already in another branch of this Discourse mentioned some passages that shew how religiously he resolved to observe them and his refusing to serve his Interests by Promises which how useful soever they might have been to him yet since he could not with a good Conscience observe them he would not make them shews how sacred he accounted all his Promises and his offering to quit the command of the Militia either for a determinate number of years or for his whole life shews how carefully he intended to observe all he promised since he was willing to give such a security which as it was strong so it diminished his Authority in the most tender and most sacred part of it I shall to these add only one instance When he saw those of his Native Kingdom engaging in the War against him in this Kingdom it is obvious enough how much the securing Berwick might have advanced his service and his Armies in the North could easily have done it yet since by the Treaty with that Kingdom it was not to be garrisoned so religiously did he observe the Treaty that he would not put a Garrison in it But that fidelity was not minded by those who conspired against him who did notwithstanding the Treaty Garrison the place upon which occasion he wrote what follows No industry hitherto could have so far prevailed with us as to have gained any belief that our Scotch-Subjects would countenance much less assist this bloody Rebellion in England yet we know not how to understand the levying Forces both Foot and Horse within our Native Kingdom and their entering the Town of Berwick in a hostile manner Our most malicious Enemies must bear us witness how religiously we have observed these Articles on our part whereas if we had not been more tender than the advisers of this breach have been of the Publick Faith it is obvious to any how easily we could have secured that Town from all Rebels And after he had refuted the Pretence they made use of he adds Such then as shelter themselves under that pretext will find from thence but a slender warrant before God who knows the integrity of our heart and how inviolably we intend to preserve all that we have granted that Kingdom so long as they suffer themselves to be capable of our Protection and those favours He likewise wrote in another Letter at that same time these words Such high indignities to us and to our Authority make us believe they have forgot they have a King and their Oaths in preserving us in our just power as their King But God will discover and punish such undutiful thoughts how closely soever they be clouded with pretences of safety to Religion and Liberty which they know will be ever dearer to us than our own preservation 3. And to close up this Parallel Saul when in danger betook himself to the basest Arts and went to the Witch at Endor to ask Responses about the event of that Battel he was to give the Philistines not considering how he had provoked God to withdraw his protection from him and that all the powers of Hell and evil Spirits were no longer able to preserve him and having got a sad answer to his over-curious Question the common fate of all who will by these forbidden Arts thrust into the secrets of the Divine Councels we find him wofully faint-hearted sore afraid fall flat on the ground and refuse to eat And after that fatal Battel he had neither the courage to out-live it nor the strength to finish his desperate design upon himself but after he had fallen on his own Sword he called an Amalekite to compleat that Self-murder which he begun by his falling on his Sword and finished by these cruel Orders he gave But nothing of all this belongs to our Royal Martyr who depended on God and submitted to his will in the course of all his Councels both of Peace and War And when it pleased God for the punishment of his People to expose him to the malice and cruelty of his Enemies even then he proved more than Conquerour and according to the prospect he had of it long before he was a Patient Martyr Nor did he express the least meanness of spirit when brought lowest he would neither give up the Rights of the Church nor the Crown of People nor Parliaments to their insulting pride who trampling on all Laws Sacred and Humane had made themselves the sacrilegious Masters of his Person and Power And as he was not cowardly or languid under all his misfortunes so he maintained his Authority as long as he was able and did not faintly despond nor abandon his own Rights or the Protection of his People But this leads me to the sad part of my Discourse wherein I am to compare the Reasons we have for mourning with these David and the People of Israel had on this Occasion and it will be easily allowed ours must be by so much the greater by how much our Royal Martyr did exceed their King which hath been demonstrated in the Parallel I have given First This Kings Death was his own Deed and though the Victory his Enemies got drave him to that despair yet none of the People were of accession to it and for the Amalekite if his relation was true as it was an Alien from their Commonwealth that did it so Saul was well served for not destroying the Amalekites as Samuel had commanded him therefore they had no particular reason to be sorry but only because they had lost a King who as he was none of the worst so he was far from being one of the best Princes Perhaps David had some more reason to fast and mourn and as his Conscience did before accuse him for cutting off the Hem of his Garment so now the Arms he bare against him did trouble his Conscience For though much may be said for David in that case he was the designed heir of the Crown by Gods appointment he
his Dominions on some other more zealous Votary of that See And any that will read the Decretals Bulls and Breves of many of the aspiring Popes will find that these were not only ambitious and disclaimed practises the guilt of which being personal died with themselves but they founded them on the Rights of the See of Rome and in the stile of an Universal Pastor imposed the belief of that on the World Now I would presume to ask any of that Communion if they believe these Popes were Infallible in those Decisions and Instructions they imposed on the World or not If any say they were Infallible in them they are without more ceremony of words Traitors who subject our Sovereign's Rights which he derives from God only to a foreign Superior Power If they were not Infallible in these Decisions then what is become of the Pope's Infallibility For the present Pope can have no more than his Predecessors had and if they erred he may likewise erre But I must advance this a little farther to shew that those of that Communion though they reject the Popes Infallibility yet if they submit to the Infallibility of their General Councils are still in the same hazards of being Rebels For the Council of Lateran which in the Roman Church is held General and Oecumenical that first decreed Transubstantiation did also by the Third of its Canons decree That all temporal Princes should exterminate I shall not critically examine that word which must amount to banishment at least all Hereticks adding That if any Temporal Lord being admonished by the Church did neglect to purge his Lands he should be first excommunicated and if he continued in his contempt and contumacy a years notice was to be given of it to the Pope who thenceforth should declare his Vassals absolved from the Fidelity they owed him and expose his Lands to be Invaded by Catholicks who might possess it without any contradiction having exterminated the Hereticks out of it and preserve it in the Purity of the Faith This is so plain that I suppose without any hesitation it may be called a down-right Conspiracy against all Sovereign Princes and this being decreed by a General Council must either be Infallibly true or the Foundation on which they have raised all their Superstructure of the Infallibility of their General Councils is overturned But the same Equality of Justice and Freedom that obliged me to lay open this ties me to tax also those who pretend a great heat against Rome and value themselves on their abhorring all the Doctrines and Practises of that Church and yet have carried along with them one of their most pestiferous Opinions pretending Reformation when they would bring all under Confusion and vouching the Cause and Work of God when they were destroying that Authority he had set up and opposing those impowred by him And the more Piety and Devotion such daring pretenders put on it still brings the greater stain and imputation on Religion as if it gave a Patrociny to those Practises it so plainly condemns This is Iudas-like to kiss our Master when we betray him and to own a Zeal for Religion when we engage in courses that disgrace and destroy it But blessed be God our Church hates and condemns this Doctrine from what hand soever it come and hath established the Rights and Authority of Princes on sure and unalterable Foundations enjoyning an entire Obedience to all the lawful Commands of Authority and an absolute Submission to that Supreme Power God hath put in our Sovereign's hands This Doctrine we justly glory in and if any that had their Baptism and Education in our Church have turned Renegades from this they proved no less enemies to the Church her self than to the Civil Authority So that their Apostasie leaves no blame on our Church which glories in nothing more than in a well-tempered Reformation from the later Corruptions which the dark Ages brought in to the pure and Primitive Doctrines which our Saviour and his Apostles taught and the first Christians retained and practised for many Ages To Resume all then Let us adorn our holy Profession with a Life suitable to it and let us shew to the World that we take not up nor maintain our Religion upon Interest but found it on sure and unmoveable Foundations which being the same always will ever oblige us to the same Duties and Practises Let us study to empty our selves of all big self-conceiting Thoughts of all hot and inflamed Passions and Appetites of all unruly and unbounded Desires of all Levity and unstayedness of mind that with humble Hearts calm Minds contented Spirits and steady Thoughts every one may follow the Duties of his Station and contain himself within it as becomes a Christian paying inwardly in our very thoughts that reverence we owe the Higher Powers and offering up to God the constant Tribute of our Prayers for them considering they are God's Vicegerents and by his own warrant are called Gods And if the Conduct of Affairs do not suit our wishes or desires yet for all that we are to trust to and depend on God's Providence not daring once to think of attempting against the Lord's anointed nor to engage in courses that may bring on so much mischief and confusion but let us ever set before our eyes our blessed Saviour Who endured the Cross and despised the shame who when he was reviled reviled not again and when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously And let us also consider that Cloud of Witnesses that followed him That so we may run with patience the race that is set before us and not look to or imitate the later practises of some distempered and degenerated Christians And then we shall be an honour to our Profession and give a credit to that Church wherein we were Born Baptised and Instructed when we shew that we are subject not only for Wrath but for Conscience-sake And to end as I begun Let us with astonishment and wonder contemplate the shining glories of our most holy Faith which tends to raise Mankind to the highest pitch of true Greatness that his limited Nature can ascend to and as far excels all the attempts of Philosophy or any other Religion whatsoever as the bright Splendor of the Day doth the fainter Shinings of the Night For nothing can be more the Interest of all men than the receiving this Faith which both secures a man in all his Rights and obliges all others to pay him what ever is due from the Relations they stand in Does a Father desire dutiful Children or Children an affectionate Father Make them good Christians and they are sure of what they desire Do Husband and Wife expect the Fidelity and Sacred performance of the Ties of Wedlock This must certainly follow on their being good Christians Do Masters desire honest and careful Servants and Servants a just and gentle Master Make them good Christians and they will prove such Do all men desire to live by honest well-natured and affectionate Neighbours Their being good Christians will certainly make them such Do Subjects desire a good King Let them pray that he be a good Christian and then he shall certainly govern well And do Kings desire good and obedient Subjects Let them take care that they be good Christians and then they will be Subject Not only for Wrath but for Conscience-sake Now to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords be all Honour Praise and Glory for ever and ever Amen THE END Matth. 7. 12. S. Jam. 4. 2. The Case of the Duke of Guise in Henry the Thirds time S. Matth 11. 29. Phil. 2. 3. 1 S. Pet. 5. 5. Col. 3. 8. Col. 3 13. S. Jam. 3. 17. S Matth. 5. 25 34. Prov. 24. 26. Eccles. 7. 10. 1 Thess. 4. 11. 1 S. Pet. 4. 15. Col. 3. 9. Eccles. 11. 20. 1. Tim. 2. 1 2 Ver. 1 2 3. Psal. 82. 6. 1 Sam. 24. 4 5 6. 1. S. Pet 2. 13. Rom. 8. 28 2 Sam. 6 7 S. Jam. 1. 20. Heb. 2. 10. S. Matth. 22. 21. S. Matth. 26. 5. S. John 18. 36. 1 S. Pet. 2. 13. ver to the end and 3. 14 15 16 17. verses Lib. 10. Ep. 97. Cap. 37. Ad Scap. c. 2.
Israel for whom David had that respect that even when he was most unjustly hunting his life yet he would not stretch forth his hand against him seeing he was the anointed of the Lord. And in this our Royal Martyr was his Parallel since he was by a tract of an undisputed Succession that which Saul was by immediate Revelation the Lord 's Anointed And indeed he looked on himself as having his Authority from God as will appear from the following instances which before I mention I must preface with this that I will not enlarge on the whole field of that Murdered Princes Vertues for that were both endless they being so many and needless they being so well known But having by a great happiness seen not a few I may add hundreds of Papers under his own Royal Pen I shall only now offer divers passages drawn out of those that vvill give some Characters of his great Soul And as in the Indies the Art of Painting is only the putting together little Plumes of several colours in such method as to give a representation of vvhat they design vvhich though it be but coarse vvork yet the Colours are lively so I can promise no exact vvork but true and lively Colours I vvill offer being those mixed by our Martyr himself though perhaps unskilfully placed by me And as the Popish Legend tells of tvvo Pictures of our Saviour done by himself one particularly vvhich he left in Veronica's Handkercher vvhen he vviped his face vvith it so from the svveat of our Royal Martyr some Lineaments of his Face shall be offered And to return to make good the character of our late Soveraign he ovvned all his Authority to be derived from God and therefore in one of his Papers I find these vvords vvhen he is acknovvledging the great blessings and eminent protection he had received from the hands of the Almighty he adds To whom we know we must yield a dear account for any breach of trust or failing of our duty towards our People And in another Paper reflecting on the Demand concerning the Militia he gives the reason vvhy he could not consent to it as it vvas proposed Because thereby he wholly divested himself as he conceived of the power of the Sword intrusted to him by God and the Laws of the Land for the Protection and Government of his People thereby at once disinheriting his Posterity of that Right and Prerogative of the Crown which is absolutely necessary for the Kingly-Office and so weakening Monarchy in this Kingdom that little more than the name and shadow of it will remain In another Paper he expresses his zeal to preserve the Lavvs as became Gods Vicegerent in these vvords If we wanted the Conscience we cannot the discretion to tempt God in au unjust quarrel the Laws of our Kingdom shall be sacred to us we shall refuse no hazard to defend them but sure we shall run none to invade them And that Paper vvhich is very long he thus concludes God so deal with us and our Posterity as we shall inviolably observe the Laws and Statutes of our Kingdom and the Protestations we have so often made for the Defence of the true Reformed Protestant Religion the Laws of the Land and the just Priviledges and Freedom of Parliaments From these Evidences it will appear what severe thoughts he had of the Obligations he lay under to Almighty God from whom he had his power and to whom he knew he was to give account of his Administration 2. We find it is said of Saul that after he was anointed God gave him another heart and that meeting a company of Prophets he prophesied to the astonishment of those that beheld him How much of this Divine Spirit rested on our Blessed Martyr all those Meditations which were his Exercises in his retirement do abundantly declare If by Saul's prophesying be meant the foretelling what was to come I meet somewhat very near it from his Royal Pen Anno 1642 in a Letter wherein he writes these words I have set up my rest on the justice of my cause being resolved that no extremity or misfortune shall make me yield for I will either be a Glorious King or a Patient Martyr and as yet not being the first and at present not apprehending the other I think it now no unfit time to express this my resolution to you A very overly observer will see much in these words even without a Commentaty Or if by prophesying be to be understood an elevated way of trusting in God and adoring him then I shall add what I find under the same Sacred Pen when he was at Newcastle in a Letter to one of his Subjects Know that I rather expect the worse than the better event of things being resolved by the Grace of God and without the least repining at him to suffer any thing that injury can put upon me rather than sin against my Conscience And in another Letter Now for the sad consequences I know no so good antidote as a good Conscience which by the Grace of God I will preserve whatever else happen to me A third Character we have of Saul is that he was very careful to protect his Subjects when in danger as appears both by his haste to relieve Iabish-Gilead when sore pur to it by the King of Ammon and by his engaging against the Philistines with so much Personal danger to himself and his Family Now what our Martyrs zeal for protecting his Subjects was I speak not of his care in protecting the oppressed Protestants in Germany and France which I leave to the Historians I shall make appear from the following Evidences What vast Concessions he made to his native Kingdom every body knows and therefore he concluded a Paper he signed on his Pacification with them in these words And as we have just reason to believe that to our peaceable and well-affected Subjects this will be satisfactory so we take God and the World to witness that whatever Calamities shall ensue by our necessitated suppressing of the Insolencies of such as shall continue in their disobedient Courses is not occasioned by us but by their own procurement And in a Letter to one of his Commissioners there he writes But if the madness of our Subjects be such that they will not rest satisfied with what we have given you power to condescend to which notwithstanding all their Insolencies we still allow you to make good to them We take God to witness that what misery soever fall to that Country hereafter it is no fault of ours but their own procurement And in another Letter at that same time We take God to witness we have permitted them to do many things for establishing of Peace contrary to our own judgment How far he complied with their most unreasonable desires to the very great diminutions of his Royal Authority is well enough known When he saw them inclined to engage in the Civil War in this Kingdom he
the World to see such numbers of all Ages Sexes and Qualities with that alacrity and chearfulness of Submission offer up their Lives for the Faith and neither the Cruelty of their unrelenting Persecutors nor the continued Tract of their Miseries which did not end but with their days prevailed on them either to renounce the Faith or do that which is next degree to it throw off the Cross and betake themselves to seditious Practices for their preservation but continued stedfast both in their Faith and Patience by which they inherited the Promises Nor was Christianity endamaged by all that fury on the contrary the Bloud of the Martyrs was the Seed of the Church whose Field being thus fatned did spring up thirty sixty and a hundred sold so that for every new harvest of a persecution there was a plentiful crop of Christians And there is no reason to think these blessed Martyrs endured all their sufferings constrained by necessity because they could do do no other for as we find in the inspired History that at two Sermons there were Eight thousand Converts so Profane as well as Ecclesiastical Writers assure us the numbers of the Christians became very soon so vast that nothing but the Conscience of the Duty they owed the Supreme Powers obliged them to be subject Pliny who lived a hundred years after our Saviour wrote to Trajan That in Pontus and Bithynia there were great numbers of Christians of all Ranks both in Cities and Villages so that the Temples of their Gods were by the prevailing Growth of Christianity left desolate A little after him Marcus Aurelius had a Legion of Christians in his Army of whom he gives this Character in his Edict That they carried God in their Consciences and when there were so many in the Army we may on a fair computation reckon their numbers to have been very great Not long after that does Tertullian plead for those in his days in his admired Apologetick and tells the Romans That if they would stand to their own defence they wanted not the strength of Numbers and Armies that neither the Moors nor Parthians nor any other of the Nations that fought with the Romans could match them who filled the whole World all their places Towns Islands Castles Villages Councils Camps Tribes Senate and Market-places only they abandoned their Temples to them adding That to what War were they not both fit and ready even though they were less numerous who were butchered so willingly if their Discipline did not allow them rather to be killed than to kill And elsewhere he vindicates the Christians That none of them were ever found guilty of conspiracies against the Emperors whom they acknowledged to be set up by God and therefore judged themselves bound to love reverence and honour them But as the Christian Religion continued to spread by a vast and prodigious increase so did the spite of the Infernal Furies grow fierce against it by the same proportion and in the last Persecution which continued about twenty years we find the Martyrs of one Province Egypt reckoned to be betwixt eight and nine hundred thousand and yet no tumults were raised against all this Tyranny and Injustice And though after that the Emperors turned Christian and established the Faith by Law yet neither did the subtil attempts of Iulian the Apostate nor the open Persecutions of some Arrian Emperors who did with great violence prosecute the Orthodox occasion any seditious Combinations against Authority These are the great Precedents this holy Doctrine of the Cross hath in the first and purest Ages and though Religion suffered great Decays in the succession of many Ages yet for the first ten Centuries no Father or Doctor of the Church nor any Assembly of Church-men did ever teach maintain or justifie any Rebellions or seditious Doctrines or Practises 4. And thus I have made good what I undertook to evince That Conscience doth with the greatest evidence of Reason and Authority bind us to an absolute Subjection to the Higher Powers and have observed what was the Path our blessed Saviour himself followed the Traces whereof are to be known by those bloudy steps he hath left behind him for our Example and Instruction We have also seen a glorious Cloud of Witnesses following him in the same way he both opened up and consecrated to them But after all this it may be perhaps objected That all Christians at least all pretenders to it have not followed the same Rule and that some Divisions of Christendom which in all other things run very wide from one another yet meet in this Doctrine of resisting the Supreme Authority and not only so but they vouch Religion for their Warrant and their Quarrel both and pretend a Zeal for God his Church and his Cause in all they do This is the last part of my Discourse to which I obliged my self in the beginning and I will handle it with the round plainness that such a Point how tender soever some may think it requires It is true about the end of the Eleventh Century this pestiferous Doctrine took its Rise and was first broached and vented by Pope Gregory the Seventh commonly called Hildebrand the first Pope of that name though a far better man had basely and shamefully courted the cruel and perfidious Phocas and treated him in a stile of mean and sordid Flattery that misbecame any man much more so great a Bishop But the Pope I now speak of went more briskly to work and begun that insolent and bold pretension of the Temporal power of the Popes over all Kings and Princes that they being Christ's Vicars on Earth must have all Power in Heaven and Earth deputed to them and that as S. Peter's Successors they had the two Swords the Spiritual and the Temporal put in their hands Upon this he aspired and exalted himself above those whom the Scripture calleth Gods Nor did this rest in a bare speculation but any that will read his Epistles and knows the History of his Life will see what dismal confusions he brought on Germany and Italy and laid the Foundations of those bloudy Wars which followed and continued for some Ages Then did the Factions of the Guelphs and Gibellins divide Nations Towns and Families and fill all places with bloud and confusion How other Popes did afterwards set the same pretensions on foot both in France England and in many other places is well enough known to all that are acquainted with History and for two or three Ages the Tyranny of this was so heavy that any Insolent Church-man was able to disturb Government by carrying Complaints to Rome of some pretended Incroachments on the Ecclesiastical Immunity upon which Monitory Breves and Bulls were dispatched from Rome and every Prince was either to obey these how much soever they might prejudice his Government or to look for the Thunders of Excommunication Deposition absolving his Subjects from their Oaths of Fidelity and the transferring