Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A43533
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France painted to the life by a learned and impartial hand.
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Heylyn, Peter, 1600-1662.
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1656
(1656)
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Wing H1710; ESTC R5545
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193,128
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366
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live happily if they can be content to live obediently that which is taken from them being matter of strength onely not priviledge Let us now look upon them in their Churches which we shall find as empty of magnificence as ceremony to talk amongst them of Common prayers were to fright them with a second coming of the Mass and to mention Prayers at the burial of the dead were to perswade them of a Purgatory Painted glass in a Church window is accounted for the flag and ensign of Antichrist and for Organs no question but they are deemed the Devils Bap pipes Shew them a Surplice and they cry out a rag of the Whore of Babylon yet a Sheet upon a Woman when she is in childâ—bed is a greater abomination than the other A strange people that could never think the Mass-book sufficiently reformed till they had taken away Prayers nor that their Churches could ever be handsome until they were ragged This foolish opposition of their first Reformers hath drawn the Protestants of these parts into a world of dislike and envy and been no small disadvantage to their side whereas the Church of England though it dissent as much from the Papists in point of doctrine is yet not uncharitably thought on by the moderatest Catholikes by reason it retained such an excellency of discipline When the Liturgie of our Church was translated into Latine by Doctor Mocket once Warden of All-Souls Colledge in Oxford it was with great approof and applause received here in France by those whom they call Catholikes Royal as marvelling to see such order and regular devotion in them whom they were taught to condemn for heretical An allowance which with some little help might have been raised higher from the practise of our Church to some points of our judgement And it is very worthy of our observation that which the Marquess of Rhosney spake of Canterbury when he came as extraordinary Embassadour from King Henry the fourth to welcome King James into England for upon the view of our solemn Service and Ceremonies he openly said unto his fellows that if the reformed Churches in France had kept the same orders amongst them which we have he was assured that there would have been many thousands more of Protestants than now there are But the Marquess of Rhosney was not the last that said so I have heard divers French Papists who were here at the Queens coming over and ventured so far upon an excommunication as to be present at our Church solemn Services extolling them and us for their sakes even almost unto Hyperboles So graciously is our temper entertained amongst them As are their Churches such is their discipline naked of all antiquity and almost as modern as the men which embraced it The power and calling of Bishops they abrogated with the Mass upon no other cause then that Geneva had done it As if that excellent man Mr. Calvin had been the Pythagoras of our age and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Ipse dixit had stood for Oracle The Hierarchi of Bishops thus cast out they have brought in their places Lay-Elders a kind of Monsters never heard of in the Scriptures or first times of the Gospel These men leap from the stall to the Bench and partly sleeping and partly stroaking their beard they enact Laws of government for the Church So that we may justly take up the complaint of the Satyrist saying Surgunt nobis e Sterquitineo magistratus nec dum tot is manibus publica tractant negotia yet to these very men composed equally of ignorance and a Trade are the most weighty matters of the Church committed In them is the power of ordaining Priests of conferring places of Charge and even of the severest censure of the Church Excommunication When any business which concerneth the good of the Congregation is befallen they must be called to counsel and you shall find them there as soon as ever they can put off their aprons Having blotted out there a little classical non-sense and passed their consents rather by nodding of their heads than any other sensible articulation they hasten to their Shops as Quinctius the Dictator in Florus did to his Plow Vt adopus relictum festinasse videatur Such a platform though it be as needeth no further confutation then to know it yet had it been the more tolerable if the Contrivers of it had not endeavoured to impose it on all the reformation by which meanes what troubles have been raised by the great Zealots here in England there is none so young but hath heard some tragical relations God be magnified and our late King praised by whom this weed hath been snatched up out of the garden of this our Israel As for their Ministery it is indeed very learned in their study and exceeding painful in their calling by the first they confute the ignorant of the Romish Clergy by the second their laziness And questionless it behoveth them so to be for living in a Country full of opposition they are forced to a necessity of book-learning to maintain the Cause and being continually as it were beset with spies did therefore frequent the Pulpits to hold up their credits The maintenance which is alotted them scarce amounteth to a competency though by that name they please to call it With receiving of tythes they never meddle and therefore in their Systematical Tractats of Divinity they do hardly allow of paying of them Some of them hold that they are Jewish and abrogated with the Law Others think them meerly to be Jure Humano and yet that they may be lawfully accepted where they are tendered It is well yet that there are some amongst theÌ„ which will commend grapes though they cannot reach them This Competency may come to forty or fifty pound yearly or a little more Beza that great and famous Preacher of Geneva had but eighty pound a year and about that rate was Peter du Moulins pension when he preached at Clarenton These stipends are partly paid by the King and partly raised by way of Collection So the Ministers of those Churches are much of the nature of the English Lecturers As for the Tythes they belong to the several Parish Priests in whose precincts they are due and those I warrant you according to the little learning which they have will hold them to be Jure Divino The Sermons of the French are very plain home-spun little in them of the Fathers and less of humane learning it being concluded in the Synode of Sappe that onely the Scriptures should be used in their Pulpits they consist much of exhortation and use and of nothing in a manner which concerneth knowledge A ready way to raise up and edifie the will and affections but withall to starve the understanding For the education of them being Children they have private Schools when they are better grown they may have free recourse unto any of the French Academies besides the new Vniversity of Saumus which
in their Religion If the eye be blind the body cannot chuse but be darkned and certainly there is nothing that hath prepared many of this Realm more to embrace the reformation than this blockishness of their own Clergy an excellent advantage to the Protestant Ministers could they but well humor it and likely to be a fair inlargement to their party if well husbanded Besides this the French Catholicks are not over earnest in their cause and so do lye open to the assaults of any politick enemy to deal with them by main force of argument and in the servent spirit of zeal as the Protestants too often do is not the way Men uncapable of opposition as this people generally are and furious if once thwarted must be tamed as Alexander did his Horse Bucephalus Those that came to back him with the tyranny of the spur and a cudgel he quickly threw down and mischieved Alexander came otherwise prepared for turning his Horse toward the Sun that he might not see the impatiency of his shadow he spake kindly to him and gently clapping him on the back till he had left his flinging and wildness he lightly leapeth into the saddle the Horse never making resistance Plutarch in his life relateth the storie and this the Morall of it CHAP. XII The correspondency between the King and the Pope This Pope An Omen of the Marriage of France with England An English Catholick's conceit of it His Holiness Nuntio in Paris A learned argument to prove the Popes universality A continuation of the Allegory of Jacob and Esau The Protestants compelled to leave their Forts and Towns Their present estate and strength The last War against them justly undertaken not fairly mannaged Their insolence and disobedience to the Kings command Their purpose to have themselves a free Estate The War not a War of Religion King James in justice could not assist them more than he did First forsaken by their own party Their happiness before the War The Court of the Edict A view of them in their Churches The commendation which the French Papists give to the Church of England Their Discipline and Ministery c. WE have seen the strength and subtilty as also somewhat of his poverties at home let us now see the alliance which this French Esau hath abroad in the world in what credit and opinion he standeth in the eye of Bâ—eâ—i the Romish Hittite the daughter of whose abominations he hath married And here I find him to hold good correspondency as being the eldest son of the Church and an equal poize to ballance the affairs of Italy against the potency of Spain Oâ— this ground the present Pope hath alwayes shewed himself very favorable to the French side well knowing into what perils a necessary and impolitick dependance on the Spanish party onely would one day bring the state Ecclesiastick As in the general so in many particulars also hath he expressed much affection unto him as first by taking into his hand the Valtolin till his Son of France might settle himself in some course to recover it secondly his not stirring in the behalf of the Spaniard during the last warrs in Italy and thirdly his speedy and willing grant of the dispensation of Madames marriage of which his Papacy was so large an Omen so fair a Prognostick Est Deus in nobis agitante calescimus illi The Lar or Angel Guardian of his thoughts hastened him in it in whose time there was so plausible a presage that it must be accomplished For thus it standeth Malachy now a Saint then one of the first Apostles of the Irish one much reverenced in his memory to this day by that Nation left behind him by way of prophesie a certain number of Motto's in Latine telling those that there should follow that certain number of Popes onely whose conditions successively should be hereby expressed in those Motto's according to that order he had placed them in Messingham an Irish Priest Master of the Colledge of Irish fugitives in Paris hath collected together the lives of all the Irish Saints which book himself shewed me In that volume and the life of that Saint are the several Motto's and the several Popes set down columewise one against the other I compared the lives of them with the Motto's as farre as my memory would carry me and found many of them very answerable as I remember there are thirty six Motto's yet to come and when just as many Popes are joyned to them they are of opinion for so Malachy foretold that either the world should end or the Popedom be ruined Amongst others the Motto of the present Pope is most remarkable and sutable to the cheif action likely to happen in his time being this Lilium Rosa which they interpret and in my mind not unhappily to be intended to the conjunction of the French Lillie and the English Rose To take from me any suspition of imposture he shewed me an old book printed almost two hundred years ago written by one Wion a Flemming and comparing the number of the Motto's with the Catalogue of the Popes I found the name of Vrban now Pope directly to answer it upon this ground an English Catholike whose acquaintance I gained in France made a Copy of Verses in French and presented them to the English Embassadors the Earles of Carlisle and Holland because he is my Friend and the conceit is not to be despised I begged them of him and these are they Lilia juncta Rosis Embleme de bon ' presage de l' alliance de la France avec l' Angleterre Ce grand dieu quid ' un oecl voit tout ce que les aâ—s Souos leurs voiles sacrez vont a nous yeax cathans Descouvre quelque fois ainsi qui bon luy semble Et les moux avenir et les biene tout ensemble Ainsc fit il iadis a ce luy qui primier Dans l' Ireland porta de la foye le laurier Malachie son nom qu' autymon de l' Eglise On verra soir un jour il qui pour sa devise Aura les Lys chenus ioints aux plus belles fleures Qui docent le pinâ—temps de leurs doubles couleurs CHARLES est le fleuron de la roso pour pree HENRITTE est le Lys que la plus belle pree De la France nâ—urit pour estrâ— quelque iour Et la Reine des flâ—ures et des roses l' amour Adorable banquet bien beu reux courâ—nne Que la bonte du ciel en parrage nous donne Heu reux ma partie heu reux mille fois Cela qui te fera reflorrier en les Roys With these verses I take my leave of his Holiness wishing none of his successors would presage worse luck unto England I go now to see his Nuntio to whose house the same English Catholike brought me but he was not at home his name is Ferdinando d' Espado a