HAving with as much delight as diligence read over this excellent Discourse entituled The Primitive practise for preserving Truth and finding it richly furnished with variety of learned and select Story eminently usefull for common information against persecution meerly for Conscience sake I conceive it very worthy of the Presse John Bachiler THE PRIMITIVE PRACTISE FOR PRESERVING TRUTH OR AN HISTORICALL NARRATION Shewing what course the PRIMITIVE Church anciently and the best Reformed Churches since have taken to suppresse Heresie and Schisme AND Occasionally also by way of Opposition discovering the Papall and Prelaticall courses to destroy and roote out the same truth and the judgements of GOD which have ensued upon persecuting Princes and Prelates By Sir Simonds D' Ewes The second Impression more exact then the former LONDON Printed by M. S. for Henry Overton and are to be sold at his Shop in Popes-head Alley TO THE READER JUDICIOUS READER THIS ensuing Discourse being penned by mee about eight yeeres since not only for recreation amidst my severer studies but as a Preparative also by which I desired to fit my self either for a voluntary exitement or a necessary suffering I intended it only for a private use For I then residing in the County of Suffolke which had newly groaned under the Prelaticall tyranny of Bishop Wren as did all other parts of his Diocesse did know that the Presse was then onely open to matters of a contrary subject But now upon the perusall thereof conceiving that it might be of some use in respect of the many distractions amongst us at this present when a blessed Reformation is so neere the birth and yet the Church seems to want strength to bring it forth I was content to yeeld to the publishing thereof I did at first purposely omit the citations of those many and select Authorities out of which this ensuing Discourse was drawn lest the margin thereby should have swoln to a greater proportion then the Discourse it self some whole Sections or Paragraphs being almost entirely extracted out of the Records of this Kingdome And I have through the whole Tractat chiefly laid down the matter of fact out of Story not only extant in print but yet remaining also in M. S. and have lest the debate of the dogmaticall part of it to those whose calling and leisure is more proper for it My many present imployments both publike and private did scarce permit mee to supervise it and to amend it in some few places which puts mee almost out of all hope ever to transmit to posterity any one of those severall great and more necessary Works I had in part collected and prepared for the good and benefit of this Church and Kingdome in the time of my leisure and freedome S. D. THE PRIMITIVE PRACTISE For preserving TRUTH SECTION I. IT is the undoubted Mark or Brand of the Church Antichristian and Malignant to persecute of the Church Christian Orthodox and truly Catholike to be persecuted For the Truth if it have but equall countenance and safety will not only prosper and flourish amongst the professors thereof but will also in due time sometimes by a sudden power profligate and trample upon Heresie as it did upon Pelagianisme among the ancient Protestant Britains in Wales about the yeer of our Lord 466. and sometimes by insensible degrees waste and wear out falshood as it did the contagion of the Arrians amongst the Eastern Christians but Falshood Heresie mens Inventions burthensome Superstitions intermixed with Gods Worship and Idolatry or any divine Creature-adoration consisting in mens bowing to or towards Images Crosses Altars Communion-tables Reliques or the like can never be generally and publikely established without sharp and cruell persecution be exercised and practised upon the goods estates liberties and lives of the godly The Pope and the Turk have both upheld and propagated their abominations by the sword although no indifferent and impartiall judgement can deny but that the Romish Antichrist in this one particular exceeds the Ottomanish Muphti in that he makes it a part of the Tridentine Faith and so a Tenet of his Religion to persecute destroy and root out all the Euangelicall party under the false and personated names of Heretiques Whereas the Turk acknowledgeth this Truth that the Conscience neither can nor ought to be compelled and therefore they permit the free exercise not only of the Protestant Religion in all their dominions but of the Popish also in many places of the same whom yet they justly abhor as the Jewes do also led by the morality of the second Commandement for setting up Images in the places of their publike Assemblies and committing Idolatry by adoring them SECT. II. A Protestant Church if it desire to intermix any superstitious Ceremonies or Idolatrous actions with the power and purity of the Gospel must likewise be enforced to borrow some part of the other Characters also from the Church Malignant by enforcing the observation of such additions with the persecution of Gods children in their estates goods and liberties equalling in many respects the shedding of their bloods and reckoned up together by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrewes for so many kindes or species of martyrdome There are in all parts of the world amongst the very Christians themselves the greater number ignorant prophane and vicious who neither regard to know the truth nor desire to suffer for it but will alwayes run with the multitude and be carried with the stream They will of Protestants become Papists to morrow rather then lose either goods life or liberty of Papists the next day Anabaptists with Sebastian Castellio and James Arminius of Anabaptists the third day if by that means they may escape danger and rise to preserment become Turks or Abisens For doubtlesse in running from truth to falshood as in turning from the medium to an extreme there is no essentiall but only a graduall difference As Constantine filled the Empire with Christians so Julian with Atheists and Persecutors The greater number with holy King Edward in England even Harding and Boner among others for company embraced the Protestant truth and as soone as hee died all again generally licked up the old vomit under Queen Mary whose bloody fires were scarce quenched by her death and the royall Scepter throughly grasped by her blessed sister but all again for the most part as if Religion had been but a fashion which commonly deriveth its frenzie into the countrey by the Court changed with the new Prince and especially the Church-men among whom through the whole Realm not twenty in a thousand did stick to their infallible Head the Romish Antichrist SECT. III. WHen learned and pious Luther lay on his death-bed he * acknowledged his errors which coming but newly out of darknesse had been embraced by him amongst his many truths and obtruded from him upon the Church of God especially those two monsters of Consubstantiation and Ubiquity yet taking counsell rather of men then of
a generall Councell were called and further order taken for the liberty of Religion This godly Prince though Cesâ—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 * 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 SECT. IX AS it is against the dictamen of reason to make matter of Religion a capitall crime so it is against the rules of policy it self in respect that heresie and falshood which would in time die of themselves are thereby increased propagated and so the end for which force and violence are used is no wayes obtained thereby This was verified in the death of Prisciliian the heretique of old by which his followers were mightily encreased and having before but reverenced him as a holy man did afterwards adore him as a Martyr The present age verifies it in the death of Michael Servetus the Spaniard and
of Paris in the great slaughter committed on Gods Saints and Martyrs about twelve yeers before There now only remained Henry the third the French King alive of all the first contrivers and principall executioners of that inhumane massacre which no age no time no action of the most barbarous nations of the world could ever pattern neither believe I can any ancient or modern History parallel the following punishments of the chief actors therein in all respects who not only all of them perished by violent and bloody ends but proved also the murtherers one of another Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine was presently upon the death of his brother made Generall of the holy League Paris it self and in a manner all the Popish cities beyond the Loire giving up their names and forces to the Henotick faction supported by Pope Sixtus the fifth from Rome and Philip the second from Spain When the King saw that neither his acting the Monk with the Flagellators nor his playing the Persecutor against the Protestants would secure him from a speedy ruine by the violent hands of the rebels He sends to the victorious King of Naver his brother in Law and to the Euangelicall Army before whose known valour the Popish Forces hastened back from the Loire to the Seine Henry the third pursues them and pitched his royall Pavilion at St Clou not far from the gates of Paris But his old cruelties and persecutions of the godly were doubtlesse the Remora of his new expected victories and the divine providence so ordered it that in the very place where the last resolution was taken by himself his Mother his brethren and others for the speedy execution of the before-mentioned belluine Massacre about seventeen yeers before nay in the very same house of Hierome de Gondy and in the very same roome or chamber saith John de Serres was he murthered by James Clement a Jesuited Monk in the yeer 1589. and in the thirty and ninth yeer of his age The assassination was furthered by the authority of Pope Sixtus the fifth by the seditious preachings of the Jesuites Priests and Friers in Paris who had secretly drawn infinite numbers into open rebellion before by their auricular confession and by the perswasion of the Lady Katharine Mary Dutchesse of Mompensier sister of the deceased Duke of Guise whose horrible transport with malice against the Protestant party and desire of revenge against the King himself did so far excaecate and blind her nobler endowments as she prostituted her body to that Jesuited wretch as impartiall de Thou himself relates to incourage him the more in the accomplishment of the murther and so to stupefie and harden his soul by that fatall sin of lust that it might not startle at the commission of any other wickednesse whatsoever Yet as this King some moneths before his death altered his former bloody resolutions against Gods servants so did the Divine providence at his death afford him some hours of repentance and sorrow after the bloody knife had been sheathed in his belly In which he acknowledged his error and sin his error in having been so long mis-led by his ambitious and factious Vassalls his sin in having persecuted his Protestant Subjects and inforced the consciences of many to submit to Popery against the known truth by cruelty and threatning SECT. XIV IN this fifteenth age also within the compasse of which wee shall confine our discovery of Gods Judgements upon persecuting Princes the truth began to spread forth its beames in this other world of Great Britain in a more resplendent lustre then formerly not but that I dare undertake to prove by some select and perhaps fearce known monuments of Antiquity that the Gospel was planted here in the Primitive time that the Protestants Religion flourished here neer upon four hundred yeers before Austine the Monk the first Popish Archbishop of Canterbury poysoned the purity of Gods worship with his burthensome Trinkets and Ceremonies Finally that it was from the first plantation preserved amongst the Welsh and Scots to the dayes of John Wickleffe without any interruption and was secretly practised also in England from Henry the seconds time at the least to the begun Reformation of King Edward the sixth But this requiring a reasonable Volume of it self to be at large deduced I must passe over as improper for this place We may begin in England with Henry the eighth in whose raign no Papist can deny but that divers Protestants were not only hunted after fined imprisoned compelled to abjure and otherwise disciplined but were likewise consumed in the merciless flames as Heretiques And therefore when the Papall side take so much pains to recount either the ill successes of his own raign or the dying issulesse of all his posterity as the signes and characters of Gods indignation against him they do but furnish the Orthodox party with weapons against themselves For the truth is he did only abolish the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome not the Pontifician or Papall Church which to this day as also in the former ages in France hath been so hedged up and incircled under certain restrictions and limits as it is of small consequence to help the Prelates and of little power to hurt the King So that Cuffetellus the Dominican proved it at large in an elaborate Work published in the yeer 1609. and the Sorbonists determined it in the yeer 1611. that the Pope had no power or Jurisdiction in that Kingdome in matter of Temporalities Neither did Henry the eighth in England proceed any further in this particular of abolishing the Popes power then those his two coaetaneous Princes Francis the first and Charles the fifth did at sundry times in their severall Dominions upon lesse provocations So the same Charles the fifth writing to the Councell assembled at Bononie superscribed his Letters only Conventui Bononiae as did afterwards Henry the second of France writing to the Tridentine Conspirators fule it only the Convention of Trent who also in the former and better part of his raign fairly cut shorter a great-part of the Popes Ecclesiasticall authority in France And how little Philip the second himself of Spain the sworn enemy of the godly regarded the Pope further then he did ancillate to his ambitious ends appeares plainly in this one particular that when upon the unfortunate death of Sebastian King of Portugall there were divers competitors for that kingdome and that Don Antonio had already assumed the title thereof he would not admit the Popes intercession to have the matter composed by Treaty or referre the cause to his decision Nay that bloody Charles of France of whose fatall end we have but a while before discoursed when Pius the fourth in the yeer 1563. had cited Odetus de Coligny Cardinall of Chastillion John de Monluce Bishop of Valence and others of his Subjects to appeare at Rome before his Inquisitors he sent him a stout Message by Henry Clutinius his Ambassador then