Priests in your houses and now doe in opposition to and in defiance of the firme lawes of this Kingdome who cease not to trouble the whole State Kingdome and to set all on fire with their scandalous and fabulous reports and with their seditious and libellous Pamphlets who daily pervert the Kings good subjects and draw them by as many devices as the great Plot-master of Hell can hatch or invent from their duty to God and allegiance to the King then which there are no stricter obligations no ties more sacred You promise to doe the contrary of which you most wilfully performe even while the promise comes warme from your mouths Is not this meere juggling Fifthly bee not so nominall doe not call them Fathers and supreame Judges and acknowledge their power to frame or change of whom you beleeve otherwise then you speake It is the generall Tenent of your Church and if you be not as ignorant of your Doctrine as you are of your Service you will confesse it to be so that Judges yea Princes extra Ecclesiam Catholicam out of the Catholike Church have not power to frame Decrees or make Lawes prejudiciall to your Faith And therefore your Church sayes that your Priests are not obliged or bound by conscience to give a just account to such Judges of their proceedings even those which fall out of confession because those Judges have no true and lawfully-derived power by which to fasten any such engagement upon them And it is a received Maxime amongst your Jesuits that even a Popish Common-wealth when the Church and Common-wealth in some sense are in eodem gradu atque ordine in one and the same degree and order of Faith cannot validly decree any thing prejudiciall to the glory of the Church or to the Canons and constitutions of it Sixthly doe not mince your tearmes lest you are suspected in all things and shroud the most black attempts and most bloody practises of the Romish See against our State with the faire-coloured Mantle of extraordinary proceedings They were extraordinary indeed that is above all ordinary wayes of wickednesse In truth you are extraordinary in your expressions though not as extraordinary as your Church in her proceedings And how dangerous are those people that call the top of all mischiefe but extraordinary proceedings I will not straine this point farther lest I learne of the Jesuits to break into that Cabinet of secrecie which the Italian cals ragioni di stato And heare me doe not father the Gun-powder treason upon a few discontented persons but lay the greater waight of imputation where the greatest waight of sinne was O England give me I pray thee a resting place while I live and when I am dead a place of buriall For the Church of Rome cast backe into her Ingredients is nothing but deceit and colour You shall finde another lesson in this booke and other Authors of that Aggregate of malice and mischiefe And whereas a grosse part of our English Papists are Jesuited let the world judge to what myriads of mischiefes we lie open Seventhly do not pleade so confidently that you are in no wise guilty of the wicked facts of your Progenitours because you are guilty of their Religion and beliefe in conformity to which waighed down with a graine or two of Ghostly perswasion they became guilty of those wicked facts And posita causa sequitur effectus say the Logicians The cause being put the common cause the Catholike cause the cause of Religion the effect helped home by the last disposition of a little Ghostly instruction may follow And as you love me call not your errours supposed errours as if we supposed errours in you while you are certaine of our errour I must tell you that wee are as certaine you erre as we are certaine that God and his word erre not And therefore let your truth be supposed but not your errours Eightly leave the old tricke of closing with our Divinity when it makes for your present occasion and turne and againe forsaking it at every turne Whatsoever all Divines say now beliefe was enforced in Queene Maries dayes And suppose that Beliefe as being opus Gratiae a worke or effect of Grace is not to be enforced would you be suffered to possesse your innocent children sufficiently Baptized with a strange beliefe to encrease your number another would say your pestiferous and viperous brood but I will not by threats and promises and rich rewards and thus you enforce beliefe while you thinke not of it to win a maine part of our Clergie though not to your Faith yet to your occasions and by continuall entertainments of them and theirs make them in many practises of high note and consequence more yours then their owne or ours especially when your Priests are still besieging your eares and there whispering that you ought to labour at all times and by all meanes that are feiceable to set up the Popes Throne in all places Ninthly be not so large in the blazoning of your due obedience I will put you a case If your Prince blowne forward with the zeale of Gods truth should endeavour to pull the Pope the grand Father of delusion and Idolatry out of his Chaire in which men talke he sits infallible and utterly to extirpate such a monster-power out of the Christian world Answer me would your Religion permit you to assist your Prince in that most honourable cnterprise And therefore all your promises I turne over to his examination that trieth the heart and searcheth the reines Onely take heed that a mentall reservation is not at the dore And if you are ready in good earnest to minister assistance with your fortuns pray turn the Channel and that masse of money which you bestow on your death-beds to Jesuits Monks Friers and Priests and to the superabundant maintenance of their houses in strange lands reserve for the safety of your poore Country which in your liberall contributions to Popish uses you take paines to ruinate Lastly for shame doe not hope that your affaires may be settled in as great peace and security as theirs who are united in the same reformed Church with his Majesty and not onely serve him faithfully but also beleeve honourably of his profession and are one soule with him who send not their children by stealth into forraine Countries that soiled with strange manners and a strange Religion in strange Countries they may returne at length to teach disseminate in his Dominions the peace of which you promise with submission and in all humility to preserve a Religion coupled with manners dangerous to all that he cals his One thing I dare presume that in this publike Jubilee it is not intended that Vice shall sit hand in hand rejoycing with Vertue or Errour with truth And so farewell And pray when we meete againe in this kinde be true and reall in omni apice in every tittle of what you write And thinke not that although I acted
When yee shall have done all those Lu. 17. 10. things which are commanded you say wee are unprofitable servants we have done that which was our dutie to doe Humilitie doth not consist in esteeming our selves the greatest sinners for then it should consist in a lye because we are not all the greatest but in esteeming our selves great sinners and ready to be the greatest if God should pull away himselfe from us and feeble workers with Gods grace Our Saviours case was different for hee was most humble yet could not esteeme himselfe a sinner O Humilitie saith Saint Bernard Quà m facilè S. Bern. vincis invincibilem How easily doest thou conquer him that is invincible For man was made to fill up the now-disturbed number of the Angels which were created some while before the World not long for it is not likely that so noble a part of the World should be long created before the whole to which it belonged They fell downe though not from the possession yet from the title of happinesse by pride Not from the possession for had they beene united to God by the Beatifical Visiō they could not have sinned and therfore not have lost it by sin Wee rising up to the seats prepared for them ascend by Humility rising by falling and falling by rising if wee rise before he raiseth us who being dead and buried was not raised but rose from death to life by his own power Pride and Humility are of contrary dispositions and moreover they worke contrarily upon the subjects in which they are lodged and are in the effect and course of their proceedings contrary even to themselves Pride was the first sin in the Angels and therefore Humilitie is the first vertue in men and all your thoughts words and actions must be steeped in it Other Vertues keepe within a compasse or only now and then goe some of them together or always or direct all Vertues outwardly in respect of the Vertues as Prudence but Humility is an ingredient in every Vertue RULE 4. IN your entrance upon every worke having first examined the motives ingredients and circumstances for one evill circumstance will corrupt the whole lumpe and poyson a good action and it is not vertuous to pray ordinarily in the streets with outward observance though it be vertuous to pray and it being now cleere to you that your intended work falleth in wholly and meeteth in the same point with Gods holy will commend it seriously to GOD. And when you goe to dinner or to bed or turne to the acts and exercises of your Vocation begin all with a cleane and pure intention for the love and honour of GOD. And even the naturall work to which your nature is vehemently carried and by which you gaine temporally being turned towards the true Loadstone and put in the way to Gods glory doth rise above nature and above it selfe and is much more gainfull spiritually as being performed not because it is agreeable with your desire but because it is conformable to the divine will And often in the performance and execution of the worke if it require a long continuance of action renew and if need bee rectifie smooth and polish your intention for being neglected it quickly groweth crooked And when you are called to a difficult work or a work that lyes thwart and strives against the current of your naturall inclination dignifie and sweeten it often with the comfortable remembrance of your most noble end And whereas wee are openly commanded so closely to carrie the good deeds of the right hand that the left hand be not of the Counsell and again to turn so much of our selves outward that our light may shine before men it is in our duty to observe the Golden Mean and keep the middle way betwixt the two Rocks Carry an even hand betvvixt your concealing your good vvorks and your being a light to others You must not conceale all neither must you shine onely Hide the inward but shew the outward not alwayes nor with a sinister intention to the left hand but to GOD and those that will bee edified Every Vertue standeth betwixt two extreames and yet toucheth neither whereof the one offendeth in excesse the other in defect The one is too couragious the other is over-dull but under the Vertue Now the Devill delighteth much to shew himselfe not in his own likenesse but in that extream which is like and more nigh to the Vertue or at least to the appearance of it as Prodigalitie is more like to Liberalitie then Covetousnesse God hath true Saints and true Martyrs which are both inside and outside The Devill hath false Saints and false Martyrs which are all outside like his fairnesse As Prudence is the Governesse of all Vertues so principally of Devotion RULE 5. KEep your heart always calme and suffer it to be stirred onely with the gentle East and West-winds of holy inspirations to zeal and vertuous anger Examine your inward motions whether they be inspirations or no before you cry come in for when God offereth an inspiration hee will stand waiting with it while you measure it by some better known and revealed Law of his And be very watchfull over such Anger For it is a more knottie and difficult piece of work to be answerable to Ephes 4. 26. the rule of Saint Paul Be angry and sin not the Prophet David spoke the same words from the same spirit then not to be angry As the Curre taken out of the kennell and provoked to barke will need an able and cunning hand to hold him And maintaine alwayes a strong Guard before the weake doores of your senses that no vain thing invade the sense of seeing hearing or the rest and use in times of such danger Ejaculations and Aspirations which are short sayings of the soule to God or of things concerning God and are like darts cast into the bosome of our beloved These motions will do excellently at all times when they come in the resemblance of our pious affections As upon this occasion Lord shut the windows of my soule that looking thorow them she may not be defiled O sweet Comforter speak inwardly to my soul and when thou speakest to her speake words of comfort or binde her with some other chaine that busied in listning to thee shee may not heare thy holy name dishonoured And upon other occasions Oh that my head were waters Jer. 9. 1. and mine eyes a fountain of teares that I might weepe day and night O Lord Whom Psal 73. 25 have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee Take counsell my soule Commit thy way unto the Psal 37. 5. Lord trust also in him and hee shall bring it to passe Hearke my soule when we taste the thing we taste is joyned to us We neither see nor heare in this manner and having tasted we know And when the Body tasteth wee commonly see first and
By the falling out of two children playing at ball hee turned all Italy into a combustion wherein many thousands lost their pretious lifes passing by degrees as hee doth in all his Temptations from children to men from Parents to all of the same bloud from them to friends and from these friends to their friends and their friends friends from houses to Cities from Cities to Countries and all this began from the play of two little children I will give you a touch of his wonderfull deceits out of my Experience One seeing a dead man and hearing the people that were present say it was a beautifull corps was fired with a great Temptation to kill himselfe that it might be said of him likewise It is a beautifull corps This was a vain-glorious end now for a seemingly vertuous end Another would faine have killed himselfe that he might have revenged God's quarrell and made an end of sinning against so blessed and sweet a God The devill is a great Politician he hath his faire ends and his foule ends ends to shew and ends which hee will not shew ends that are but veyles drawne over his ends ends without end many ends for one action This is not the rich Jesuits Rule but the poore Carpenters Rule And more Rules of this kind because I must not dwell here betwixt Spaine and the Low-Countries you shall meet with hereafter THE THIRD BOOKE CHAP. I. I Am now a Monke in Doway and shaved to the Scull as I learned of them for three reasons especially first because all Slaves were ever shav'd and I was now a Slave to God and must come and goe at the least beck of his pleasure Secondly to give me notice that all superfluities must be cut from me in all kindes Thirdly to make better roome for a Crown of glory But there are Monkes in the same house yet living apart from the English belonging to the rich Abbat of Arras that are not of so bare a cut and no Courtier can set out and make more of the haire they have then they doe It is in use with the Church of Rome both in the giving of their orders and their degrees of orders and initiations to orders and also in the state of Episcopacie and the staires of it as the Bishop the Arch-Bishop the Patriarch and the Pope to shave the haire wider and wider into a greater and a greater circle as the persons more dignified and therefore the Pope is the most shaved of them all In this Monastery my dislike grew by little and little from these reasons That which I feare heated some of them chilled me For although I was not permitted to eate flesh amongst the Monkes for the space of three quarters of a yeare yet they sent me plenty of flesh when I dined in my chamber And I had great variety of excellent meates both in one place and the other And lest I should be scandalized it was suggested to me that now mens natures are not able to brooke fasting as they have done I have not lost it out of my memory that I turn'd my eye aside one time in the end of dinner and saw a Monke leaning backwards and stretching out his belly as like a Glutton as might be I had forgot to tell you that no King doth fare better or is fed with more variety then the Iesuits in their feasts if we consider how much a man can eate Here followes another deceit of the Monkes somewhat like the former In the end of Lent Father Prior the head-Monke washed the feete of all his inferiour Monkes in imitation of Christ who washed his Disciples feete but warning was given the day before and every one was commanded to wash and purifie his owne feete and yet when they came to the Prior he did scarce touch their feete either with his hands or with the water and here was all the imitation of Christ Such another businesse and as like it as an Egge is to an Egge is acted by his Holinesse at Rome who is said to wash the feete of certaine poore Pilgrims The man hath not reason who saith these are any thing but the bare shadowes of humility The Monks in the place of their meeting to their meales speake not but performe all by signes and they have a booke which teaches the Art of making signes either by way of speech or answer But this is onely an outward colour presented in publike For the Monke whose onely conversation I enjoyed of all that were settled in the house being esteemed one of the wisest men in Christendome was full of words and many of them were bad ones Hee laboured to beget in me an opinion to which I did incline for some reasons that the Jesuits at my departure from them had poysoned me And said this Monke poyson of their giving may lye gnawing insensibly in your body and kill you at seven yeeres end The Jesuits may remember they had provided a Gammon of Bacon which I should have carried with me If it was mans meate they have the lesse to answer for Another dish I did eate of the working of which I afterwards much feared But in that journey the Sea cleansed my body throughly Of this Monke I learned that the Pope had as deepe a hand in the Gunpowder treason as the Jesuits and both were very deepe in it And the Jesuits being so wryed and so closely knit to the Pope by obedience durst not have attempted so high and so publike an Treason without his knowledge That whosoever commeth from the Jesuits exposeth himselfe to the lash of so many foule mouthes as there are men amongst them that the Jesuits will nip a man as if a man should nip a young bud of a Flower or Tree or a Witch a young childe in the Cradle that he shall never thrive after The great Cathedrall Church in Cambray neere Doway useth a peculiar way of service much different from the Church-demeanour and service of Rome And the Church of Rome hath long endeavoured there to introduce her customes And I know said this Monk to me that upon admission of such a change in the next age the Church of Rome would perswade the world that the Church in Cambray did never dissent in any small point from her This is a great satisfaction to me that the Church of Rome both is and hath beene a long while altogether upon the catch and that she leadeth her people age after age still into more blindnesse I condemne in this Monke that he spoke most irreverently of a person in high authority amongst us and one of the fairest flowers in Christendome when he speakes the words againe I pray God his tongue may ake It is very common with our English Romanists beyond the Seas to speake very uncivilly of those in England to whom they owe duty This Monk related a homely story and I had many from him for it is their use to cheere up their subjects with merry