people for which cause the Lord first sent among them such a contagious plague that the living were scarce sufficient to bury the dead and when by this punishment they were not reclaimed then by their owne counsels and procurement the Lord brought upon them a fierce and mighty nation even the Saxons of Germany who albeit they came at first as helpers and succorers of them against their enemies yet ere long proved their sorest foes themselves and after much bloudshed drave them almost quite out of their Kingdome confining them into a haven nooke and corner of the same where they remaine till this day and all this came upon them saith that reverend Authour for their ingratitude for Gods mercies and contempt of the Word of God Againe we reade a little before this how that God stirred up Gildas a godly learned man to preach to the old Brittons and to exhort them to repentance and amendment of life and to forewarne them of plagues to come if they repented not but what availed it Gildas was laughed to scorne and taken for a false Prophet the Brittons with whorish faces and unrepentant hearts went forward in their sins and what followed God to punish their contempt of his Word and Ministers sent in their enemies on every side and destroying them gave their land to other nations Againe not many yeares past Almighty God seeing idolatry superstition hypocrisie and wicked living used in this land raised up that godly learned man Iohn Wickliffe to preach unto our fathers repentance and to exhort them to forsake their idolatry and superstition but his exhortations were not regarded he with his sermons was despised his bookes and himselfe after his death were burnt What ensued A most grievous and heavy vengeance they slew their lawfull King and set up three other on a row under whom all the noble bloud was slaine up and halfe the Commons destroyed what by warre in France and civile discord among themselves the cities and towns were decayed and the land brought half to a wildernesse O extrem plagues of Gods just vengeance But these examples be generall over whole nations now let us descend to particular judgments upon private persons for contemning scorning or despising the Word of God the holy Sacraments and the Ministers of the same Hemingius a learned Divine in his exposition upon the first chapter of S. Iohns Gospell reporteth That about the yere 1550 there was a certain lewd companion in Denmark who had long made profession to mocke at all Religion and at devout persons This fellow entering into a Church where there was a sermon made by the Minister of the place began contrary to all those that were present to behave himselfe most prophanely and to shew by lewd countenances and gestures his dislike and contempt of that holy exercise to whom the preacher being instant upon his businesse in hand spake not a word but only sighing praied unto God that this mocker might be suppressed who seeing that the Preacher would noâ— contest against him but contemned his unworthy behaviour goeth out of the Church but yet not out of the reach of Gods vengeance for presently as he passed out a tyle fell from the house upon his head and slew him upon the place a just judgement upon so prophane a wretch From whence all scorners and deriders of godly sermons and the preachers of the same may take example for their amendment if they have any grace in them Christopher Turke a Counsellor of Estate to a great Nobleman in Germany going one day to horse and mocking at a certaine godly Nobleman who was then prisoner in his enemies hands uttered these or such like speeches See what is become of these gallants that sung so much one with anotheâ— When any one doth wrong us God is our succor and defence but he had scarce ended his words when as a sudden griefe tooke him so that he was forced to alight from his horse and to be carried to bed where in stead of singing he dyed in dispaire drawing forth his tongue as blacke as a cole and hanging out of his mouth This happened the ninth of Iune 1547. The contempt of the Sacrament of baptisme was most notably punished in a certaine Curate of Misnia in Thuring whose custome was whensoever hee had baptised any women children in contempt of the foeminine sex and without any regard to the holy Sacrament to say That they should not carry them backe to the house but cast them into the River This prophane Curate looking one day over the bridge of Elbe which is a large and a deepe River how the boats did passe no man touching him nor his braine any way altered but by a secret judgement of God fell over the bridge into the water and was presently drowned that he which so impiously wished drowning to other and that at the Sacrament of Baptisme was drowned himselfe This happened in the yeare 1505. The contemptuous and irreverent handling of the Word of God in the pulpit together with open hatred of the Gospel was most famously revenged in one Nightingale the Parson of Gondal besides Canterbury in the raigne of Queen Mary Anno 1555. This wretched Parson upon Shrove Sunday which was the third day of the moneth of March making a Sermon to his parishioners entred beside his text into an impertinent discourse of the Articles lately set forth by the Popes authority in commendation thereof and to the disgrace of the Gospell saying more over thus unto the people My masters and neighbours rejoice and be merry for the prodigall sonne is come home for I know that the most part of you are as I am I know your hearts well enough and I shall tell you what happened to me this weeke past I was before my Lord Cardinall and he hath made me as cleane from sinne as I was at the Font-stone and he hath also appointed me to notifie unto you the Bull of the Popes pardon and so reading the same unto them he thanked God that ever he lived to see that day adding moreover that he beleeved that by the vertue of that Bull he was as cleane from sinne as that night that he was borne which words he had no sooner uttered but the Lord to shew that he lyed stroke him with sudden death and so he fel down out of the pulpit never stirring hand nor foot not speaking word but there lay an amazement and astonishment to all the people Denterius an Arrian Bishop being at Bizantium as he was about to baptise one Barbas after his blasphemous manner saying I baptise thee in the name of the Father through the Sonne in the holy Ghost which forme of words is contrary to the prescript rule of Christ that bad his disciples to baptise all nations In the Name of the Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost the water suddenly vanished so that he could not then be baptised wherefore Barbas all amased
so rotten within that no man could abide the smell of him His sonne called Iames after hee had spent all his fathers substance riotously fell downe suddenly in Newgate market and there wretchedly dyed Iohn Peter sonne in law to the said Alexander and no lesse cruell to the poore Christians rotted away and so dyed Cox an earnest Protestant in King Edwards dayes and in Queene Maries time a Papist and a Promoter going well and in health to bed as it seems was dead before the morning All these almost with many more which I could recite dyed suddenly being most cruell and horrible persecutors of the flocke of Christ. Many there were which though they escaped sudden death yet did not avoid a most miserable and wretched end In the number whereof I may place first Alexander the Keeper of Newgate together with his sonne in law Iohn Peter of whom mention was made before Also Master Woodroofe the Sheriffe of London who used to rejoyce at the death of the poore Saints of Christ and would not suffer Master Rogers going to his Martyrdome to speake with his children this man lay seven or eight yeares bed-rid having one halfe of his body all benummed and so continued till his dying day Also one Burton the Bayliffe of Crowland in Lincolneshire who having been a Protestant in outward shew in King Edwards dayes as soone as Queene Mary was quietly seated in the kingdome became very earnest in setting up the Masse againe and constrained the Curate by threats to leave the English Service and say Masse This blinde Bailiffe not long after as he was riding with one of his neighbours a Crow flying over his head let her excrements fall upon his face the poysoned stinke and savour whereof so annoyed his stomacke that he never lest vomiting untill he came home and there after certaine dayes with extreame paine of vomiting crying and cursing the Crow desperately he dyed without any token of repentance Also one Robert Baldwine who being stricken with lightning at the taking of William Seaman pined away and dyed Robert Blomfield also Bailiffe to Sir Iohn Ierningham after he had prosecuted one Master Browne pined away both in his goods and body by a consumption of both William Swallow the cruell tormentor of George Egles was shortly after plagued of God that all the haire of his head and nailes of his fingers and toes went off his eyes were well neere closed up that he could scant see his wife was also stricken with the falling sicknesse with the which malady she was never infected before Lastly to omit many others one Twiford is not to be forgotten who in King Henries dayes was a busie doer in setting up stakes for the burning of poore Martyrs and seeing the stakes consume so fast provided a big tree cutting off the top and set it up in Smithfield saying I will have a stake that shall hold But behold Gods hand before ever that tree was consumed the state of Religion turned and he fell into an horrible disease rotting alive above the ground before he dyed Besides these many there were that hanged themselves As for example one Clarke an open enemy to the Gospell in King Edwards dayes hanged himselfe in the Tower So did Pavier the Towne Clarke of London another bitter enemy to the Gospell So did the sonne of one Levar a husbandman that mocked and scorned at the holy Martyr Master Latimer being dead and that at the same houre as neere as could be gathered whilst his father was railing upon the dead Martyr So did Henry Smith a Lawyer who having been a Protestant became a Papist Others drowned themselves as namely Richard Long at Calice in King Henry the eights dayes Iohn Plankney a Fellow of New Colledge in Oxford in the yeare of our Lord 1566. And one Lanington a Fellow of the same Colledge in a Well at Padua or as some thinke at Rome Others were stricken with madnesse in which ranke place first Justice Morgan of whom wee made mention a little before Then a Sheriffes servant that railed upon Iames Abbes a godly Martyr as he was going to be burned saying That hee was an Heretique and a mad man but as soone as the fire was put to the Martyr such was the fearefull stroke of Gods justice upon him he was there presently in the sight of all the people stricken with a frenzy crying out aloud that Iames Abbes was saved but he was damned and so continued till his dying day So likewise one William a Student in the inner Temple in the midst of his railing against the Gospell of Christ and the Professors thereof fell starke mad Many other examples of the like kind I could here adde but he that desireth to know and read more thereof let him have recourse unto the latter end of the Acts and Monuments of the English Church where he shall find a whole Catalogue of such like examples The overthrow of many mighty ones in our Age serve for a looking glasse to represent the high exploits of the wonderfull judgements which the King of Kings hath sent upon those that have in any place or countrey whatsoever resisted and strove against the Truth whereof some after great victories which by their singular dexterity and worldly wisedome in the mannaging of their affaires have atchieved by a perverse and overthwart end contrary to their former prosperity have darkned and obscured the renowne and glory of all their brave deeds their good report dying with their bodyes and their credit impaired and buried with them in their graves Others in like manner having addressed all their forces and laid their battery and placed all their Pieces and Canons against the wals of Sion and thinking to blow it up and consume it to ashes have made many breaches into the sides thereof yea they have so bent all their strength against it and afflicted it with such outragious cruelty and unmercifull effusion of bloud that it is pitifull and lamentable to remember howbeit after all their policies and practises their courage hath been at length abated and themselves raked one after another out of this world with manifest markes of the just vengeance of God upon them For though it may seem for a time that God slepeth and regardeth not the wrongs and oppressions of his servants yet he never faileth to carry a watchfull eye upon them and in his fittest time to revenge himselfe upon their enemies CHAP. XIV A Hymne of the persecution of Gods Church and the deliverance of the same ALong the verdant fields all richly dy'd With Natures paintments and with Flora's pride Whose goodly bounds are lively Chryst all streames Begirt with bow'rs to keep backe Phoebus beames Even when the quenchlesse torch the Worlds great eye Advanc'â— his rayes orethwartly from the skie And by his power of heavenly influence Reviv'd the seeds of Springs decay'd essence Then many flockes unite in peace and love Not seeking ought but naturall behove Past quietly uncharg'a
of all so strucke him after that he died Ioram King of Iuda although his father Iosaphat had instructed him from his childehood with holy and wholsome precepts and set before his face the example of his owne zeale in purging the Church of God from all Idolatry and superstition and maintaining the true and pure service of God yet did he so foulely runne astray from his fathers steps that allying himselfe by the marriage of Athalia to the house of Achab he became not only himselfe like unto the Kings of Israel in their filthy idolatry but also drew his people after him causing the inhabitants of Ierusalem and men of Iuda to runne a whoring after his strange gods for which cause Elias the Prophet most sharply reproved him by letters the contents whereof in summe was this That because he rebelled against the Lord God of his Fathers therefore the people that were in his subjection should rebell against him Presently the Arabians and Philistims rose up against him wasted his countrey robbed him of his treasures tooke away his wives and put all his children to the sword except little Ochozias his youngest sonne that was preserved And after all these miseries the Lord smote him with so outragious and uncurable disease in his bowels that after two yeares torment he died thereof his guts being fallen out of his belly with anguish Ioas also King of the same country was one to whom God had bin many wayes beneficiall from his infancy for he was even then miraculously preserved from the bloudy hand of Athalia and after brought up in the house of God under the tuition of that good Priest Iehoiada yet he was no sooner lifted up into his royall dignity but by and by he and his people started aside to the worship of stocks and stones at that time when hee had taken upon him the repaire of the House of God But all this came to passe after the decease of that good Priest his Tutor whose good deeds towards him in saving his life and giving him the Crowne he most unthankfully recompenced by putting to death his sonne Zacharias whom hee caused for reproving and threatning his Idolatry in a publique assembly incited thereto by the Spirit of God to be stoned to death in the porch of the Temple But seeing he did so rebelliously set himselfe against the holy Spirit as if he would have quite oppressed and extinguished the power thereof by the death of this holy Prophet by whom it spake God hissed for an army of Syrians that gave him battell and conquered his souldiers who in outward shew seemed much too strong for them His Princes also that had seduced him were destroyed and himselfe vexed with grievous diseases till at length his owne servants conspired against him for the death of Zacharias and slew him on his bed yea and his memory was so odious that they could not afford him a burying place among the sepulchres of their Kings Amazias the sonne of this wicked father carried himselfe also at the first uprightly towards God in his service but it lasted not long for a while after he was corrupted and turned aside from that good way which he had begun to tread in the by-paths of his father Ioas for after he had conquered the Idumaeans and slaine twenty thousand men of warre and spoyled divers of their cities in stead of rendring due thanks to God who without the ayde of the Israelites had given him that victory he set up the gods of the Edomites which he had robbed them of to be his gods and worshipped and burned incense to them so void of sence and reason was he And being rebuked by the Prophet of his adverse dealing he was so farre from humbling and repenting himself thereof that quite contrary he proudly withstood and rejected the Prophets threatnings menacing him with death if he ceased not Thus by this means having aggravated his sinne and growing more and more obstinate God made him an instrument to hasten his owne destruction for being proud and puffed up with the overthrow which he gave the Edomites he defied the King of Israel and provoked him to battell also but full evill to his ease for he lost the day and was carried prisoner to Ierusalem where before his face for more reproach foure hundred cubits of the wall was broken downe the Temple and Palace ransackt of his Treasures and his children carried for hostages to Samaria And not long after treason was devised against him in Ierusalem so that he fled to Lachish and being pursued thither also was there taken and put to death Likewise King Ahaz for making molten Images for Baalim and walking in the idolatrous wayes of the Kings of Israel and burning his sonnes with fire after the abhomination of the heathen in the valley of Ben-Hinnon was forsaken of the Lord and delivered into the hands of the King of Syria who carried him prisoner to Damascus and not onely so but was also subdued by Pekah King of Israel in that great battell wherein his owne sonne with fourescore thousand men at armes were slaine yea and two hundred thousand of all sorts men women and children were taken prisoners for all these chastisements did he not once reforme his life but rather grew worse and worse To make up the number of his sinnes he would needs sacrifice to the gods of Damascus also thinking to finde succour at their hands so that he utterly defaced the true service of God at Ierusalem broke in pieces the holy Vessels lockt up the Temple dores and placed in their steads his abhominable Idols for the people to worship and erected Altars in every corner of the city to doe sacrifice on But as he rebelled on every side against his God so God raised up enemies on every side to disturbe him the Edomites and Philistims assaulted him on every side beat his people tooke and ransackt his cities on the other side the Assyrians whom he had hired with a great sum for his help turned to his undoing and utter overthrow and confusion Wat shall we thinke of Manasses who re-edified the high places and Altars which the zeale of Ezechâ— as his father had defaced and throwne downe and adored and worshipped the planets of Heaven the Sunne the Moone and the Starres prophaned the porch of Gods Temple with Altars dedicated to strange gods committing thereon all the abhominations of the Gentiles yea and caused his sonnes to passe through the valley of Ben-Hinnon and was an observer of times and seasons and gave himselfe over to witchcraft charming and sorceries and used the help of familiar spirits and Soothsayers and that which is more placed a carved Image in the house of God flat against the second commandement of the Law So that he did not only go astray and erre himselfe in giving over his mind to most wicked and damnable heresies but also seduced the people by his pernitious example and
who having conspired treacherously and raised warre against his father together with the Earle of Brittaine his supporter were both vanquished and put to flight but the Earle was slaine in the pursuit The Prince himselfe also thinking to escape by sea where lay provided certaine ships ready to receive him was in the mid way overtaken together with his wife and children whom he purposed to make partakers of his fortune and were altogether by the expresse commandement of his father shut up in a little house and there burned together In this wise did Clotarius revenge the treachery and rebellion of his sonne after a more severe cruell and fierce manner than King David did who would have saved his sonne Absolons life notwithstanding all his wickednesse and malitious and furious rebellion but this man contrariwise being bereft of all fatherly affection would use no compassion towards his sonne but commanded so cruell an execution to bee performed not onely upon him but upon his daughter in law also and their children perchance altogether innocent and guiltlesse of that crime A very rare and strange example seeing it is commonly seene that grandfathers use more to cherish and cocker their childrens children than their own Therefore we must think that it was the providence of God to leave behind a notable example of his most just and righteous severity against disobedient and rebellious children to the end to amase and feare all others from enterprising the like Philip Comineus hath recorded the treacherous tragedy of a most wicked and cruell sonne called Adolphus for the world waxeth every day worse than other that came in an evening suddenly to take his father the Duke of Gilderland prisoner even as he was going to bed and would not give him so much liberty as to pull on his hose for he was bare legged but carried him away in all haste making him march on foot without breeches five long Almaine miles in a most cold weather and then clapt him up in the bottome of a deep tower where there was no light save by a little window and there kept him close prisoner six moneths together After which cruell fact he himselfe was taken prisoner in like manner and carried bound to Namur where he lay a long time untill the Gaunts reprived him forthwith and led him with them against Tournay where he was slain in the while of his imprisonment his father yeelding to nature disinherited him of all his goods for his vile ingratitude and unnaturall cruelty and left the succession of his dukedome to the Duke of Bourgondy In the yeare of our Lord 1461 in a village called Iuchi neere to Cambray there dwelt a certaine man or rather a beast that in a great rage threw his owne mother out of his doores thrice in one day and the third time told her in fury That hee had rather see his house on fire and burnt to coles than that she should abide there but one day longer It happened that the very same day according to his cursed speech his house was indeed fired but how or whence no man could judge and the fire was so fierce that it consumed to ashes not only that house but also twelve other houses adjoyning which was an evident figure of Gods just judgement in punishing so vile and unnaturall a deed by fire seeing he deserved at the least to lose his house for banishing her out of it that had borne him in her belly and nourished him with the milke of her paps In this place I may fitly insert two memorable examples of the same subject gathered by an author of credit and fame sufficient to this effect It is not long saith he since a friend of mine a man of a great spirit and worthy to be beleeved recounted to me a very strange accident which he said hapned to himselfe and proved his saying by the testimony of many witnesses which was this That being upon a time at Naples at a kinsmans and familiars house of his he heard by night the voice of a man crying in the street for aid which caused him to rise and light a candle and run out to see what the matter was being come out of the doores he perceived a cruell and ougly shaped divell striving with all his force to catch and get into his clouches a yong man that strove on the other side to defend himselfe and for feare raised that outcry which he had before heard the yong man seeing him ran to him forthwith and catching fast hold by his cloathes and pitifully crying to God would in no case let go his hold untill his cruell enemy forsooke him and being brought into the house all dismaied and beside himselfe would not let go his hold untill he came to his sences againe out of that exceeding feare The cause of which assault was he had led all his time a most wicked life and had been a contemner of God and a Rebell against his parents using vile railing and bitter speeches against them in such sort that in stead of blessing they had layd a curse upon him And this is the first example Concerning the second I will also set downe the Authors owne words as followeth Of all the strange things saith he that ever I heard report of that which happened not long since at Rome is most worthy to be remembred of a certaine yong man of Gabia borne of a base and poore family but endued with terrible and furious nature and addicted to a loose and disordinate life This gallant picking a quarrell with his owne father in his anger reviled him with most grosse and reprochfull tearmes In which mad fits as one wholly given over to the Divell he purposely departed to Rome to practise some naughty device against his father but his ghostly father the Divell met him in the way under the shape of a cruell and ougly fellow with a thicke bushie beard and haire hanging disorderly and cloathes all rent and tattered who as they walked together enquired of him why he was so sad He answered that there had passed some bitter speeches betwixt his father and him and now he devised to work him some mischiefe The Divell by and by like a crafty knave soothed him up said that he also upon the like occasion went about the same practise and desired that they might pursue both their voyage and enterprise together it was soone agreed upon betwixt them being like to like as the proverbe goeth Therefore being arrived at Rome and lodged at the same Inne one bed did serve them both where whilest the yong man securely and soundly slept the old malicious knave watching his opprtunity caught him by the throat to strangle him whereat the poore wretch awoke and cried for help to God so that the wicked spirit was constrained to forsake him without performing his purpose and to flee out at the chamber with such force and violence that the house roofe crackt and the tyles
King of England sonne of Geffrey Plantagenet and Maud the Empresse after he had raigned twenty yeares was content to admit his young sonne Henry married to Margaret the French Kings daughter into participation of his Crowne but he like an unnaturall son to requite his fathers love sought to dispossesse him of the whole for by inciting the King of France and certaine other Nobles hee tooke armes and raised warre against his owne naturall father betwixt whom divers strong battels being fought as well in England by the Deputies and friends of both parties as also in Normandy Poytou Guian and Britain the victory alwayes inclined to the father so that the rebellious son with his allies were constrained to bend to his fathers will and to desire peace which he gently granted and forgave his offence Howbeit the Lord for his disobedience did not so lightly pardon him but because his hasty mind could not tarry for the Crowne till his fathers death therefore the Lord cut him short of it altogether causing him to die six yeares before his father being yet but young and like to live long Lothair King of Soissons in France committed the rule of the province of Guian to his eldest son Cramiris who when contrary to the mind of his father he oppressed the people with exactions and was reclaimed home he like an ungratious and impious son fled to his uncle Childebert and provoked him towarre upon his owne father wherein he himselfe was by the just vengeance of God taken and burned with his wife and children to death Furthermore it is not doubtlesse but to a very good end enacted in the law of God That he which curseth his father or mother should die the death and that rebellious children and such as be incorrigible should at the instance and pursuit of their owne parents by order of law be stoned to death As children by all these examples ought not onely to learne to feare to displease and revile their parents but also to feare and reverence them lest that by disobedience they kindle the fire of Gods wrath against them so likewise on the other side parents are here advertised to have great care in bringing up and instructing their children in the feare of God and obedience to his will lest for want of instruction and correction on their part they themselves incurre a punishment of their carelesse negligence in the person of their children And this is proved by experience of the men of Bethel of whose children two and forty were torne in pieces by Beares for that they had been so evill taught as to mocke the holy Prophet Elizeus in calling him bald-pate Heli likewise the high priest was culpable of this fault for having two wicked and perverse sonnes whom no feare of God could restraine being discontent with that honourable portion of the sacrifices allotted them by God like famished and unsatiable wretches fell to share out more than was their due and by force to raven all that which by faire meanes they could not get and that which is worse to pollute the holy Tabernacle of God with their filthy whoredomes in such sort that the Religion of God grew in disgrace through their prophane dealings And albeit it may seem that their father did his duty in some sort when he admonished and reproved them yet it is manifest by the reprehension of the man of God that he did no part of that at all or if he did yet it was in so carelesse loose and cold manner using more lenity than hee ought or lesse severity than was necessary that God turned their destructions when they were slaine at the overthrow of Israel by the Philistins to be his punishment for understanding the dolefull newes of his sonnes death and the Arkes taking at once he fell backewards from his stoole and burst his necke being old and heavy even fourescore and eighteene yeares of age not able either to help or stay himselfe David also was not free from this offence for hee so much cockered some of his children that they proved the greatest plagues and scourges unto him especially Absolon and Adonijah for the one openly rebelled against him and almost drove him out of his kingdome the other usurped the title and honour of the kingdome before his fathers death of this it is recorded That David so cockered and pampered him that he would never displease him from his youth But see how he was punished in them for this too great lenity both of them came to an untimely death and proved not onely the workers of their owne destruction but also great crosses to their father Ludovicus Vives saith That in his time a certain woman in Flanders did so much pamper and cocker up two of her sonnes even against her husbands will that she would not suffer them to want money or any thing which might furnish their roiotous life both in drinking banquetting and dicing yea she would stoale from her husband to minister unto them but as soone as her husband was dead she was justly plagued in them both for they fell from royoting to robbing which two vices are commonly linked together and for the same one of them was executed by the sword and the other by the halter she her selfe looking on as a witnesse of their destructions whereof her conscience told her that her indulgence was the chiefest cause Hither may we referre that common and vulgar story and I suppose very true which is almost in every childes mouth of him that going to the gallowes desired to speake with his mother in her care ere he dyed and when she came unto him in stead of speaking bit off her care with his teeth exclaiming upon her as the causer of his death because she did not chastise him in his youth for his faults but by her flatteries established him in vice which brought him to this wofull end and herein she was doubly punished both in her sonnes destruction and her owne infamy whereof she carried about her a continuall maâ—ke This ought to be a warning to all parents to looke better to the education of their children and to root out of them in time all evill and corrupt manners lest of small sprigs they grow to branches and of qualities to habits and so either be hardly done off or at least deprave the whole body and bring it to destruction but above all to keep them from idlenesse and vaine pleasures the discommodity and mischiefe whereof this present example will declare At a towne called Hannuel in Saxony the Devill transforming himselfe into the shape of a man exercised many jugling trickes and pretty pastime to delight young men and maids withall and indeed to draw after him daily great companies one day they followed him out of the city gates unto a hill adjoyning where he played a jugling tricke indeed with them for he carried them all away with him so that they were never
truely is nothing else but to reject and disannull that which Saint Paul requireth as a duty of all Christians namely That fornication and all uncleannesse should not once be named amongst us neither filthinesse foolish talking or jesting which are things not comely forsomuch as no whoremonger nor unclean person can have any inheritance in the Kingdom of God Plate the Philosopher though a Panim and ignorant of the knowledge of the true God for bad expresly in his common wealth Poets and Painters to represent or set to the view any unclean and lascivious counterfeit whereby good manners might be any wayes depraved Aristotle following his masters steps ordained in his Politiques That all filthy communication should be banished out of his City How far then were they from giving leave and liberty for filthy and stinking brothel-houses to be erected and maintained In this therefore the very Heathen are a shame and reproach to those that call themselves Christians and Catholiques Besides the goodly reason which they alleage for their upholding of their Stues is so far from the truth that the contrary is ever truer namely that by their odious and dishonest liberty more evill ariseth to the world than otherwise would insomuch as it setteth open a wide door to all dissolutenesse and whoredomes and an occasion of lechery and uncleannesse even to those that otherwise would abstain from all such filthy actions How many young folke are there as well men as women that by this meanes give themselves over to loosenesse and undo themselves utterly How many murders are have been and still will be committed thereby What a disorder confusion and ignominy of nature is it for a father to lie with her with whom his son had been but a little before Or the son to come after the father and such like but by the just judgement of God it commeth to passe that that which is thought to be enclosed within the precincts of certain appointed places spreadeth it selfe at large so far that oftentimes whole streets and Cities are poysoned yea even their houses who in regard of their place either in the Law or policy ought to stop the stream of such vices nay which is more marvell they that with open mouth vaunt themselves to be Gods Lieutenants on earth Christs Vicars and Successours to his Apostles are so filthy and abhominable as to suffer publike bauds and whores to be under their noses uncontroled and which is more to enrich their treasures by their traffique Cornelius Agrippa saith That of all the â—e-bauds of his time Pope Sextus was most infamous for he builded a most glorious and stately Stues if any state or glory can abide in so bad a place as well for common Adultery as unnaturall Sodomy to be exercised in He used as Heliogabalus was wont to do to maintain whole heards of whores with whom he participated his friends and servants as they stood in need and by Adulteries reared yearly great revenues into his purse Baleus saith That at this day every whore in Rome payes tribute to the Pope a Iulle which amounted then to twenty thousand Ducats by the year at least but now the number is so encreased that it ariseth to fourty thousand I thinke there is none ignorant how Pope Paul the third had by computation five and fourty thousand whores and curtezans that paid him a monethly tribute for their whoredomes and thus also this holy Father was a protectour and upholder of the Stues and deserved by his villanous behaviour for he was one of the lewdest Adulterers of that time to bear the name of the master and erectour of these filthy places and herein both he and the rest of that crue have shewed themselves enemies to God and true Antichrists indeed and have not onely imitated but far surpassed shamelesse and wicked Caligula in all filthy and monstrous dealings Thou shalt not saith Moses bring the hire of a whore into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow by what title then can these honest men exact so great rent from their whorish Tenants seeing it is by the Law of God a thing so abhominable Truly it can no otherwise be but a kinde of art of baudery as may be gathered out of the Law which is in F. deritu nupt L. palem Qui habet mancipia c. The meaning whereof is That he which for gain prostituteth his slaves to the lust of men and draweth thereby commodity to himselfe is a Baud He is also stained with infamy by the Law Athletas that partaketh the gain or wages of a whore How much more then is that Law of Iustinian to be commended which commandeth all whores to be banished out of the confines of Cities and Commonwealths It was also a worthy and memorable act of Theodosius when he rooted the Stues out of Rome and of Saint Lewis King of France that pulled downe the Stues at Paris and chased away as neer as he could all loose and whorish women from his Dominions The antient Romans permitted no woman to become an open whore before she had made a formall declaration of her intent before the Aediles thinking by this meanes to quench their hot lust because they would be ashamed to make such an open confession And by a decree of the Senate it was enacted That no woman comming of gentile stocke should be suffered to give her selfe over to this Trade it being a stain and blot to true Nobility CHAP. XXIIII Of Whoredomes committed under colour of Marriage SEeing that oftentimes it falleth out that those which in shew seem most honest thinke it a thing lawfull to converse together as man and wife by some secret and private contract without making account of the publike celebration of Marriage as necessary but for some worldly respects according as their foolish and disordinate affections misperswadeth them to dispence therewith It shall not be impertinent as we go to give warning how unlawfull all such conversation is and how contrary to good manners and to the laudable customes of all civill and well governed people For it is so far from deserving the name of Marriage that on the other side it can be nothing but plain whoredom and fornication the which name and title Tertullian giveth to all secret and privy meeting which have not been allowed of received and blessed by the Church of God Again besides the evill examples which is exhibited there is this mischief moreover that the children of such a bed cannot be esteemed legitimate yea God himselfe accurseth such law lesse familiarity as the mischiefes that arise therefrom do declare whereof this one example which we alledge shall serve for sufficient proof In the reigne of Lewis the Ninth King of France and Iulius the Second Pope of Rome there was a Gentleman of Naples called Antonio Bologne that had been Governour of Fredericke of Arragons house when he was King of Naples and had the same
Office under the Duchesse of Malfi after she was widow with whom in protract of time he grew to have such secret and privie acquaintance albeit she was a princesse and he her servant that he enjoyeed her as his owne wife And thus they conversed secretly together under the colour of Marriage accorded betwixt them the space of certain yeares untill she had bore unto him three children by which meanes their private dealings which they so much desired to smother and keep close burst out and bewrayed it selfe The matter being come to her brothers eares they took it so to the heart that they could not rest untill they had revenged the vile injury and dishonour which they pretended to have been done to them and their whole house equally by them both Therefore when they had chased them first from Ancona whither in hope of quietnesse they had fled out of Naples they drave them also out of Tuscane who seeing themselves so hotly pursued on every side resolved to make towards Venice thinking there to finde some safety But in the midway she was overtaken and brought backe to Naples where in short space she miserably ended her life for her brothers Guard strangled her to death together with her chambermaid who had served in stead of a Baud to them and her poor infants which she had by the said Bologne But he by the goodnesse of his horse escaping took his flight to Milan where he sojourned quietly a long while untill at the instant pursuit of one of her brothers the Cardinall of Arragon he was slain in the open streets when he least mistrusted any present danger And this was a true Cardinall like exploit indeed representing that mildenesse mercifulnesse and good nature which is so required of every Christian in traiterously murdering a man so many yeares after the first rancour was conceived that might well in halfe that space have been digested in fostering hatred so long in his cruell heart and waging ruffians and murderers to commit so monstrous an act wherein albeir the Cardinals cruelty was most famous as also in putting to death the poor infants yet Gods justice bare the sway that used him as an instrument to punish those who under the vail of secret Marriage thought it lawfull for them to commit any villany And thus God busieth sometime the most wicked about his will and maketh the rage and fury of the Devill himselfe serve for meanes to bring to passe his fearfull judgements CHAP. XXV Of unlawfull Marriages and their issues NOw to redres all such evils as have before been mentioned and to avoid all inconveniences in this case God of his bountifull mercy hath ordained Marriage as a remedy to be applied to all such as have not the gift of continency least they should fall into fornication which notwithstanding many shamelesse creatures that blush not at their owne filthinesse but rather rejoyce therein make no account of Such are they that making Marriage one of the Sacraments of the Church do neverthelesse despise as a vile and prophane thing albeit that the Apostle saith That Marriage is honourable among all men and the bed undefiled but whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge But they have it not in that estimation seeing by authority they are deprived of the use thereof and not of Adultery That which is honest and laudable is forbidden and that which is sinfull and unlawfull allowed of This saith Sleiden is the custom of the Germane Bishops for money to suffer their Priests to keep harlots not exacting any other punishment saving their purses to privilege their knaveries But these reines of liberty were let more loose in certain Villages of the Cantons of Switzers where it was not onely winked at but also commanded That every new Priest should have his private whore for his owne tooth that he might not intermeddle with other mens Neither was it without reason that Iohn le Maire said how under the shew and colour of chastity Priests whoredomes did overflow being men abandoned to all dissolute and riotous living Now then it were far better to marry than to burne yet in such sort to marry that all giddinesse and inconsideration set aside every one should matcht himselfe according to his degree and age with great respect and good advisement had unto them both to the end to avoid those mischiefes and enormities which oftentimes happen when either by an over-hardy foolish and rash presumption a man would nestle himselfe in an higher nest than his estate and calling requireth or by a sensuall and fleshly lust passing the bounds of reason goeth about to constrain and interrupt the law of nature The chiefest thing that is required in Marriage is the consent of parties as well of themselves that are to be joyned together as of each of their parents the contrary whereof is constraint where either party is forced as it hapned to those two hundred maids which the Benjamites took by force and violence to be their wives This was a reproach to Romulus the first King of Rome when he ravished the Sabine virgins that came to see their sports which was cause of great war betwixt them Moreover besides the mutuall joint of love which ought to be betwixt man and wife it is necessary that they that marry do marry in the Lord to serve him in greater purity and with lesse disturbance which cannot be if a Christian marry an Infidell for the great difficulties and hinderances that usually spring from such a root Therefore it was straitly forbidden the people of God to contract Marriages with Idolaters yea and the holy Patriarchs before any such law was given had carefully great regard in the Marriages of their children to this thing as the example of Abraham doth sufficiently declare Therefore they that have any manner of government and authority over unmarried folkes whether they be fathers morthers kinsmen or Tutors ought to have especiall care and regard thereof Yea Christian Princes and Lords or Rulers of Common-wealths should not in this respect be so supine and negligent in the performance of their Offices as once to permit and suffer this amongst them which is so directly contrary to the Word of God but rather by especiall charge forbid it to the end that both their Lawes might be conformable and in every respect agreeable to the holy Ordinance of God and that the way might be stopped to those mischiefes which were likely to arise from such evil concluded Marriages For what reason is it that a young maid baptised and brought up in the Church of Christ should be given in marriage to a worshipper of Images and Idols and sent to such a Countrey where the worship of God is not so much as once thought upon Is not this to plucke a soul out of the House of God and thrust it into the house of the devill out of Heaven into Hell than which what greater apostasie or falling from God can there
his three and thirtieth Sermon Ad fratres in eremo relateth this strange example of one Cyril a Cittizen of Hippo a man well esteemed and beloved in the Citie He having one onely sonne did so cocker him forbearing either to checke him or correct him but loving him as that holy Father saith not onely above all things but even above God himselfe that by his too much liberty and indulgence his sonne grew wonderfull debaushed and gave himselfe to filthy drunkennesse Upon a time being vilely overtaken with drinke he came home and tumbled over his mother being great with childe would have ravished his sister slew his father and wounded to death two of his other sisters O fearefull effect of drunkennesse thus God punished the father for his too much love and indulgence of his sonne and the sonne for his vile impiety Not unlike to this I finde in Philip Lonicerus Page 486. A certain man saith he that gave himselfe to the studie of Godlinesse was daily assaulted with the temptation of the Divell who perswaded him if hee would bee quiet to choose one of these three sinnes either to make himselfe drunke or to commit adulterie with his neighbours wife or to kill his neighbour himselfe The poore man thinking drunkennesse the least sinne chose that but being enraged with wine he was easily drawn to the committall of the other sinnes for being with wine enflamed with lust he feared not to vitiate his neighbours wife nor yet to kill her husband comming in the meane while seeking to be revenged of him so giving himselfe to drunkennesse hee wraps himselfe in all other wickednesse On the eighteenth of August 1629 one Thomas Wilson labourer a knowne and common blasphemer of Gods name by oathes and curses and given much to drinking to excesse upon a slight occasion moved to displeasure against his wife and not daring to doe much violence unto her turned it upon himselfe and with his knife stabbed himselfe many of his friends and neighbours being present and so he died On the 10 day of May 1629 one Iohn Bone of Ely coachman unto one Master â—aluâ—â—â— of Beenham a fellow very vitious and exceeding in those two evils of prophane swearing and drunkennesse on the Sabbath day in the Sermon-time dranke himselfe drunke so that when he was to sit in the coach-box to drive the coach he fell out thereof under the horses feet where he was trodden to death or so hurt at least that he died shortly On the six and twentieth of November 1621 one Richard Borne servant to Iaspâ—r Bâ—rch Gardiner of Ely accustomed to travell upon the Lords day and making no reckoning of the Sabbath seldome or never comming to Church on that day but went onwards to Saint Iâ—es market and so spent the day and being drunke was at length overtaken by the just judgement of God and going up the streame in his boate which he had loaden with marketable wares he fell into the river and was so drowned On the third day of August 1618 one Thomas Alred of Godmanchester in the Countie of Huntington Butcher an accustomed Drunkard being entreated by a neighbour to unpitch a load of hay and being at that very time in drinke letting his pitch-forke slip out of his hand and stooping to take it up againe slipped from the cart with his head down-wards his fork standing 〈◊〉 with the tines he fell directly upon them which it once ran into his breast and stroke his heart so that he died suddenly On the sixteenth day of July 1628 one Iohn Vintner of 〈…〉 Gardiner a knowne drunkard and one that would prophanely especially in his 〈◊〉 scoffe at religion and abuse good men fell from the top of a 〈…〉 the ground and brake his necke and so died These â—ive lust examples were reported unto me and written with his owne hand by a worthy Minister Master Goorge Nelson Preacher of the Word of God in Godmanchester CHAP. IX Of rebellious and disobedient Children to their Parents AGathias in his Booke of the Persian manners reporteth this storie That certaine Philosophers going into Aegypt and finding there a promiscuous commixture of fathers and mothers with their daughters and sonnes and a miserable neglect of children towards their parents returned speedily into Greece and in a certaine Citie there finding the dead body of a man wanting buriall they in compassion committed the same into the earth the next day comming the same way againe they found the same body digged out of the earth which whilest they went about to bury the second time a fearefull spectrum appeared unto them and forbad them to doe it saying That he was a man unworthy to be buried because he had committed incest with his mother and despised and contemned his father This narration sheweth that the very earth doth execrate and abhorre such unnaturall lust and disobedience Laâ—terbius in his Booke of the discipline of children reports a storie of a certaine young man who had a father very old that had bestowed upon him all his substance This old man being by the fault of age unmannerly at the table of his sonne his sonne caused a woodden trough to be made for his father to eate his meate in like a hogge which when his sonnes young childe perceived he asked his father for what use it should serve his father answered That it was for his Grandfather to eate his meate in and what saith the childe must I provide the like for you when you are old Whereat his father being astonished threw away the trough and ever after entertained his old father with greater reverence and obedient respect CHAP. X. Of Murtherers ROmulus having marked out with a plough the compasse of the walls of the Citie of Rome which he was a building and had forbidden that no man should leape over the same his brother Rhâ—mus in scorne leaped over the wall which Romulus taking in evill part slew his brother and reigned alone but at length being hated of the people for his insolencie he himselfe was slaine by the fathers of the Senate at Caprea Constantine the Great after he had overcome Licinius his partner in the Empire and obtained the sole Monarchie grew both insolent and cruell for he first put to death his owne sisters next his owne sonne Crispâ—â— which he had by Minervea then he slew his owne wife Fausta in the bathes and lastly a number more of his friends For which cruelty though hee was a man endued with excellent vertues yet God strucke him with a filthy Leprosie which continued upon him untill such time that he was converted to the faith of Christ and baptised by Pope Silvester after which he proved a most famous protector of the Church of Christ. Perillus that devised the brasen Bull for the Tyrant Phalaris wherein men being inclosed and scorched with the heat that was under the Bull did imâ—tate the lowing of an Oxe to the end that there should be no compassion shewed unto them by
and then afterwards making shew before Constantine the Emperour with a solemne oath to recant his old errours and approve the profession of Faith which the Councell of Nice had set forth concernning Christs divinity whereunto also he subscribed his name but all that he did was in hypocrisie to the end to renew and republish the more boldly his false and pernitious doctrine But when he thought himselfe neerest to the attainment of his purpose and braved it most with his supporters and companions even then the Lord stroke him with a sudden fear in the open street and with such horrible pangs in his guts and vehement desire of disburthening nature that he was faine to come unto the publick houses appointed for that purpose taking them which were next at hand for a shift but he never shifted from them again for his breath went out of his mouth and his guts ran out of his fundament and there lay he dead upon his owne excrements As the Emperour Constantius was a great favourer and supporter of this sect and maintained it against and in despight of true Christans and by that meanes stirred up schismes and dissentions throughout all Christendome so the Lord to requite him stirred up Iulian whom he himselfe had promoted to honour to rebell against him whose practices as he went about to suppresse and was even ready to encounter a grievous Apoplexy sudenly surcharged him so sore that he died of it before he could bring his purpose to passe The Emperour Valens was infected also with this poyson wherewith likewise he infected the Gothes who by his means were become the greater part Arrians and not Christians but neither went he unpunished for when he marched forth to represse the rage of the furious Gothes who were spread over all Thracia and had given them battell he lost the day and being shamefully put to flight was pursued so fiercely that hee was faine to hide himselfe in a little house which being set on fire by the Gothes he was burnt therein As for Nestorius which would maintaine by his foolish and dangerous opinions that the divinity of Christ was divided from his humanity making as it were two Christs of one and two persons of one and so turned upside downe that whole ground-worke of our salvation escaped no more the just vengeance of God than all other Hereticks did for first he was banished into a far country and their tormented with a strange disease the very wormes did gnaw in pieces his blasphemous tongue and at length the Earth opened her mouth and swallowed him up Concerning the Anabaptists which rose up about five hundred yeares since it is evidently known how divers wayes God scourged and plagued many of them some of them were destroyed by troops and by thousands others miserably executed and put to death in divers places as well for their monstrous and damnable heresies as for many mischiefes and outrages which they committed By all which things God doth exhibit and set before our eyes how deere and precious in his sight the purenesse of his holy Word and the unity of his Church is and how carefull and zealous every one of us ought to be in maintaining and upholding the â—ame when as he revengeth himselfe so sharply upon all those that go about to pervert and corrupt the sincerity thereof or which be breeders of new sects and divisions among his people Olympus by office Bishop of Carthage but by profession a â—avourer and maintainer of the Arriah heresie being upon a time in the Bath 〈◊〉 himselfe he uttered with an impious mouth blasphemous words against the holy Trinity but a threefold thunderbolt came from above and stroke him dead in the same place teaching him by his paine and all other by experience what it is to blaspheme the Lord of Heaven or with polluted lips to mention his sacred Majesty This hapned in the yeare of our Lord God five hundred and ten Cyril hath recorded unto us of his owne knowledge a more wonderfull and admirable wonder of God upon an Heretique than all the rest and such an one indeed as the like I dare say was never heard of The history is this After the decease of Saint Hierome there stood up one Sabinianus a perverse and blasphemous fellow that denied the distinction of persons in the Trinity and affirmed the Father the Sonne and the Holy-Ghost to be but one distinct person and to give credit to his heresie he wrot a booke of such blasphemies tending to the confirmation of the same and fathered it upon Saint Hierome as being the Author of it But Silvanus the Bishop of Nazaren mightily withstood and reproved him for depraving so worthy a man now dead and offering his life for the truth made this bargain with Sabinianus That if Saint Hierome the next day did not by some miracle testifie the falsenesse of his cause he would offer his throat to the hangman and abide death but if he did that then he should die This was agreed upon by each party and the day following both of them accompanied with great expectation of the people resorted unto the Temple of Jerusalem to decide the controversie Now the day was past and no miracle appeared so that Silvanus was commanded to yeeld his neck to that punishment which himselfe was Author of which as he most willingly and confidently did behold an Image like to Saint Hierome in shew appeared and stayed the hangmans hand which was now ready to strike and vanishing forthwith another miracle succeeded Sabinianus head fell from his shoulders no man striking at it and his carkasse remained upon the ground dead and sencelesse Whereat the people amased praising God clave unto Silvanus and abjured Sabinianus heresie Whence wee may observe the wonderfull wisedome of God both in punishing his enemies and trying his children whither they will stand to his Truth or no and learne thereby neither rashly to measure and limit the purposes of God nor yet timorously to despaire of help in a good cause though we see no meanes nor likelihood thereof Grimoald King of Lombardy was infected with the Arrian heresie for which cause the Lord punished him with untimely death for having been let bloud the eleventh day after as he strove to draw a bow he opened the veine anew and so bled to death â—abades King of Persia when he saw his sonne Phorsuasa addicted to the Maniches he assembled as many as he could of that sect into one place and there setting his Souldiers on them slew them till there was not one left Photinuâ— a Gallograecian for renuing the heresie of Hebion and affirming Christ to be but an excellent man borne naturally by Mary after the manner of other men excelling in justice and morall vertues was by the Emperour Valentinianus justly banished The Emperor Iustinian favouring the heresie of the Apthardocites when as he gave out one Edict whereby Anastasius the Bishop and all other that
maintained the truth should be banished suddenly he was stroken with an inward and invisible plague which took away his life and forestalled his wicked and cruell determination from comming to the desired effect In all which examples we may see how God doth not onely punish heretiques themselves but also their favorers and supporters yea the very places and cities wherein they lived and broached their blasphemies as by the destruction of Antioch is seene which being a very sinke of hereticks was partly consumed with fire from Heaven above in the seventh yeare of Iustinus the Emperour and partly overthrowne with earth-quakes below wherein Euphrasius the Bishop and many other were destroyed Moreover besides those there were under Pope Innocent the third certaine heretickes called Albigenses or Albiani which being possessed with the same spirit of fury that the Maniches were affirmed that there were two Gods the one good and another evill they denied the Resurrection despised the Sacraments and said that the soules of men after their separation passed either into hogs oxen serpents or men according to their merits they would not spare to pollute the Temples appointed for the service of God with their excrements and other filthy actions and to defile the holy Bibles with ruine in despight and contumely This heresie like an evill weed so grew and increased that the branches thereof spread over almost all Europe a thousand cities were polluted therewith so that it was high time to cut it short by violence and the sword as it was for they were oppressed with so huge a slaughter that an hundred thousand of them were slaine partly by war partly by fire at one time Gregory of Tours hath recorded the life and death of an hereticall Monk of Bordeaux that by the help of Magicke wrought miracles and tooke upon him the name and title of Christ saying hee could cure diseases and restore those that were past help by physick unto their healths hee went attired with garments made of goats haire and an hood professing an austerity of life abroad whereas he plaid the glutton at home but at length his cousenage was discovered and he was banished the city as a man unfit for civill society In the yeare of our Lord God 1204 in the Empire of Otto the fourth there was one Almaricus also that denied the presence of Christ in the Sacrament and said that God spake as well in prophane Ovid as holy Augustine he scoffed at the doctrine of the Resurrection and esteemed heaven and hell but as an old wives fable Hee being dead his disciples were brought forth into a large field neere Paris and there in the presence of the French King degraded and burnt the dead carkasse of Almaricus being taken out of the Sepulchre and burnt amongst them it fell out that whilest they were in burning there arose so huge a tempest that heaven and earth seemed to move out of their places wherein doubtlesse the soules of these wicked men felt by experience that hell was no fable but a thing and such a thing as waited for all such Rebels against God as they were Anastasius Emperour of Constantinople being corrupted with the heresie of Eutiches published an Edict wherein all men were commanded to worship God not under three persons as a Trinity but as a Quaternity containing it in foure persons and could not by any counsell be brought from that devillish error but repelled from him divers Bishops with great reproach which came to perswade him to the contrary for which cause not long after a flash of lightning from Heaven suddenly seised upon him and so hee perished when he had raigned twenty eight yeares Iustinus the second also who after the death of Iustinian obtained the Imperiall Crowne was a man of exceeding pride and cruelty contemning poverty and murthering the Nobility for the most part In avarice his desire was so insatiate that he caused iron chests to be prepared wherein he might locke up that treasure which by unjust exactions he had extorted from the people Notwithstanding all this he prospered well enough untill he fell into the heresie of Pelagius soone after which the Lord bereft him of his wits and shortly aster of his life also when hee had raigned eleven yeares Mahomet by birth an Arabian and by profession one of the most monstrous hereticks that ever lived began his heresie in the yeare 625. His off-spring was out of a base stocke for being fatherlesse one Abdemonoples a man of the house of Ismael bought him for his slave and loved him greatly for his favour and wit for which cause he made him ruler over his merchandise and other businesse Now in the meane while one Sergius a Monk flying for heresie into Arabia instructed him in the heresie of Nestorius a while after his Master died without children and left behinde him much riches and his wife a widow of fifty yeares of age whom Mahomet married and when she died was made heire of all her riches So that now what for his wealth and cunning in Magick he was had in high honour among the people Wherefore by the counsell of Sergius hee called himselfe the great Prophet of God And shortly after when his fame was published he devised a Law and kinde of Religion called Alcaron wherein hee borrowed something almost of all the heresies that were before his time with the Sabellians he denied the Trinity with the Maniches he said there was but two persons in the Deity he denied the equality of the Father with the Sonne with Eunomius and said with Macedone that the Holy Ghost was a creature and approved the community of women with the Nicholaits he borrowed of the Jewes circumcision and of the Gentiles much superstition and somewhat he tooke of the Christian verity besides many devillish fantasies invented of his owne braine those that obeyed his Law he called Sarazins Now after he had lived in these monstrous abuses forty yeares the Lord cut him off by the falling sicknesse which he had dissembled a long time saying when he was taken therewith that the Angell Gabriel appeared unto him whose brightnesse hee could not behold but the Lord made that his destruction which be imagined would be for his honour and setting forth his Sect. Infinite be the examples of the destruction and judgement of private Heretiques in all ages and therefore we will content our selves with them that be most famous In the yeare of our Lord 1561 and the third yeare of the raigne of Queen Elizabeth there was in London one William Geffery that constantly avouched a companion of his called Iohn Moore to bee Christ our Saviour and could not bee reclaimed from this mad perswasion untill hee was whipped from Southwarke to Bedlam where the said Moore meeting him was whipped also untill they both confessed Christ to bee in Heaven and themselves to bee sinfull and wicked men But most strange it is how divers sensible and wise men
the Bishop of Eureux his house which was accordingly executed This happened in the yeare 1453. In the raigne of the same King 1457 there was a certaine Curate of a village neere to Soissons who to revenge himselfe of a Farmer that retained from him the tenths which were appointed to the Knights of the Rhodes went to a Witch of whom he received in gift a fat toad in an earthen pot which she had a long while fed and brought up which she commanded him to baptise as he also did and called it by the name of Iohn albeit I tremble to recite so monstrous and vile a fact yet that every man might see how deadly besotted those sort of people are that give themselves over to Satan and with what power of errour he overwhelmeth them and beside how full of malice this uncleane spirit is that as it were in despight of God would prophane the holy Sacrament of Baptisme This good holy Curate after he had consecrated the holy host gave it also to the toade to eat and afterward restored it to the Witch again who killing the toade and cutting it in pieces with other such like sorceries caused a young wench to carry it secretly into the Farmers house and to put it under the table as they were at dinner whereupon immediately the Farmer and his children that were at the table fell suddenly sicke and three dayes after died the Witch her selfe being detected was burned but the Curate suffered onely a little imprisonment in the Bishop of Paris house and that not long for what with friendship and money he was soone delivered Froissard who was Treasurer and Canon of Chymay reporteth of another Curate in the countrey of Beare under Charles the seventh that had a familiar spirit which hee called Orthon whose helpe hee used to the disturbance of the Lord of Corosse by causing a terrible noise to bee heard every night by him and his servants in his castle because the said Lord withheld his tythes from him and converted them to his owne use In the yiare 1530 at Nuremburg a certaine Priest studied Art Magick and being very covetous of gold and silver the Devill whom hee served shed him through a Chrystall certaine treasures hidden in the city he by and by greedy of this rich prey went to that part of the city where hee supposed it to have lien buried and being arrived at the place with a companion whom he brought to this pretty pastime fell a searching and digging up a hollow pit untill he perceived a coffer that lay in the bottome of the hole with a great blacke dog lying by it whither he was no sooner entred but the earth fell downe and filled up the hole and smothered and crushed him to death So this poore Priest was entrapped and rewarded by his master no otherwise than he deserved but otherwise than he expected or looked for Howbeit they are not onely simple Priests and Friers that deale with these cursed Arts but even Popes themselves Silvester the second as Platina and others report was first a conjuring Frier and gave himselfe to the Devill upon condition he might be Pope as he was indeed and having obtained his purpose as it seemed he began earnestly to desire to know the day wherein he should die which also his Schoolmaster the Devill revealed unto him but under such doubtfull tearmes that he dreamed in his foolish conceit of immortality and that he should never die It chanced on a time as he was singing Masse at Rome in a Temple called Ierusalem which was the place assigned him to die in and not Ierusalem in Palestina as he made himselfe falsly to beleeve he heard a great noise of Devils that came to fetch him away note that this was done in Masse while whereat he being terrified and tormented and seeing himselfe not able any way to escape hee desired his people to rend his body in pieces after his death and lay it upon a charriot and let horses draw it whither they would which was accordingly performed for as soone as he was dead the pieces of his carkasse were carried out of the Church of Laterane by the wicked spirit who as he ruled him in life so he was the chiefe in his death and funerals By like means came Benedict the ninth to the Popedome for he was a detestable Magitian and in the ten yeares wherein he was Pope having committed infinite villanies and mischiefs was at last by his familiar friend the Devill strangled to death in a forrest whither he went to apply himselfe the more quieter to his conjurings Gregory the sixth scholler to Silvester as great a conjurer as his master wrought much misery in his time but was at last banished Rome and ended his life in misery in Germany Iohn the two and twentieth being of no better disposition than these we have spoken of but following judiciall astrology sed himselfe with a vain hope of long life whereof he vaunted himselfe among his familiars one day above the rest at Viterbum in a chamber which he had lately builded saying that he should live a great while he was assured of it presently the floore brake suddenly in pieces and he was found seven daies after crushed to pieces under the ruines thereof All this notwithstanding yet other Popes ceased not to suffer themselves to be infected with this execrable poison as Hildebrand who was called Gregory the seventh and Alexander the sixth of which kinde we shall see a whole legend in the next booke Doe but marke these holy Fathers how abhominable they were to be in such sort given over to Satan Cornelius Agrippa a great Student in this cursed Art and a man famous both by his owne works and others report for his Necromancy went alwaies accompanied with an evill spirit in the similitude of a blacke dogge but when his time of death drew neer and he was urged to repentance hee tooke off the inchanted collar from the dogs neck and sent him away with these termes Get thee hence thou cursed beast which hast utterly destroyed mee Neither was the dog ever after seen some say he lept into Araris and never came out againe Agrippa himselfe died at Lyons in a base and beggarly Inne Zeroastres King of Bactria is notified to have bin the inventer of Astrology and Magicke But the Devill whose ministry he used when he was too importunate with him burned him to death Charles the seventh of France put Egedius de Raxaâ— Marshall of his Kingdome to a cruell and filthy death because he practised this Art and in the same had murthered an hundred and twenty teeming women and yong infants he caused him to be hanged upon a forke by a hot fire and roasted to death Bladud the sonne of Lud King of Britaine now called England in the yeare of the World 3100 hee that builded the city of Bath as our late Histories witnesse and also
so brazen-faced as to command angels and devils as Clement the fifth did in one of his buls so impudent as to be carried like Idols upon their vassals shoulders and weare three crownes upon their heads so proud and arrogant as to constraine Kings and Emperours to kisse their feet to make them their vassals to usurp lordship and dominion over them and all their lands and possessions and to dispossesse whom they like not of Kingdomes and install in their roome whom they please and all this by the thunder of excommunication whereby they make themselves feared and stood in awe of By which dealing of theirs they verifie in themselves that which the Scripture speaketh of Antichrist which is the man of sinne the sonne of perdition an adversary and one that exalteth himselfe against all which is called God or which is worshipped till he be set as a God in the Temple of God shewing himselfe that he is God Wherefore also the heavy vengeance of God is manifest upon them by the great and horrible punishments they have been tormented with for some of them have had their eyes pulled out others have dyed in prisons a third sort have bin smothered to death a fourth hath bin killed with the sword a fifth hath died with hunger a sixth hath been stoned a seventh poysoned and yet there hath not wanted an eighth sort whom the Devill himselfe hath stifled This it is to over-reach the clouds and not content with earthly power to usurp a supremacy and preheminence over Kings such was the pride of Pope Boniface the eighth when he sent an embassage to Philip the Faire King of France to command him to take upon him an expedition against the Sarazens beyond the sea upon paine of forfeiting of his Kingdome into his hands and when having his sword by his side he shamed not to say that he alone and none else was Emperour and Lord of all the world in demonstration whereof he bestowed the Empire upon Duke Albert together with the Crowne of France and not content herewith his insolency was so importunate that he charged Philip the Faire to acknowledge himselfe to be his subject in all causes as well spirituall as temporall and to levy a subfidy for his holinesse out of his clergy disabling his authority in bestowing Church livings which prerogative he challenged to his See the conclusion of this bull was in these words Aliud credentes fatuos reputamus as much to say as whosoever is of another mind than this we esteeme him a foole Whereunto the King answered in this wise Philippus Dei gratia Francorum Rex Bonifacio se gerenti pro summo pontifice salutem modicam sive nullam Sciat tua maxima fatuitas in temporalibus nos alicui non subesse Ecclesiarum Prebendarum vacantium collationem ad nos jure regio pertinere secus autem credentes fatuos reputamus deviantes In English thus Philip by the grace of God King of France to Boniface bearing himselfe for Pope little or no health Be it knowne to thy exceeding great foolishnesse that we in temperall affaires are subject to none that the bestowing of Benefices belongs to us by our royall right and if there be any that thinke otherwise we hold them for erroneous fools A memorable answer well beseeming a true royall and French heart Immediately he assembled together a nationall Councell of all the Barons and Prelates within his dominion at Paris wherein Boniface being pronounced an Hereticke a Symonist and a Manslayer it was agreed upon by a joint consent that the King should doe no more obeisance but reject as nothing worth whatsoever he should impose Wherefore the King to tame his proud and malitious nature dispatched secretly two hundred men at armes under the conduct of one Captaine Noguard towards Avian in Naples whither his Holinesse was fled for feare of divers whose houses and castles he had caused to be rased downe there to surprise him on a sudden which stratagem they speedily performed and carried him prisoner to Rome where he died most miserably Peter Mesie a Spanish Gentleman of Sevill saith in many of his Lectures that he died in prison inraged with famine Nicholas Gilles in his first volume of French Chronicles reporteth that he died in the castle Saint Angelo through a fluxe of his belly which cast him into a frenzy that he gnew off his owne hands and that at the houre of his death there were heard horrible thunders and tempests and lightenings round about this is he in whose honour this fine Epitaph was made Intravit ut Vulpes regnavit ut Leo mortuus est ut Canis He entred like a Fox raigned like a Lyon and dyed like a Dog And this was he that on the first day of Lent giving ashes to the Bishop of Genes in stead of using the ordinary forme of speech which is Memento homo quòd cinis es in cinerem converter is Remember man that thou art ashes and into ashes thou shalt returne said in despight and mockery Memento homo quia Gibellinus es cum Gibellinis in cinerem converter is Rember that thou art a Gibelline and together with the Gibell nes thou shalt be turned into ashes and in stead of laying the ashes upon his forehead threw them into his eyes and forthwith deprived him of his Bishopricke and would have done worse if it had been in his power marke what little account this holy father himselfe made of these ceremonies and therefore it is no marvell if others mocke at them seeing the Popes themselves make them but matters of pastime If it be so therefore that no man ought to arrogate to himselfe any title of deity then consequently it is no lesse unlawfull to give that divine honour to any other mortall creature and therefore the people of Caesarea faulted greatly when blasphemously they called King Herod a god as hath been declared before Likewise it was high and proud presumption in the Senat of Rome not to receive any god to their Common-wealth without their owne fore-approbation and consent As if that God could not maintaine his dignity nor stand without the good liking and assent of men or as if that man could defie whom he liâ—ted which is a most ridiculous and absurd thing And thus the Romanes in time of Tiberius consecrating to themselves a whole legion even thousands of false gods would not admit of the true God and his Sonne Christ but rejected him above all others Among all the vanities of the Athenians this was one worthy noting how they ordained that Demetrius Alexanders successor for re-establishing their popular and antient liberty with his father Antigonus should be called Kings and honoured with the title of Saving gods and to have a Priest that should offer sacrifice unto them and moreover caused their pictures to be drawne in the same banner where the pictures of Iupiter and Minerva the protectors of their city were drawne
that commeth beyond the mountaines from that scientificall Vniversity and Colledge of the right reverend Masters and from the excellent holinesse of some of their Popes whose manner of life is so dissolute lascivious dishonest and Sardanapal like that thereby their Atheisme is evidently and notoriously knowne and talked of by every one Hereof Pope Leo the tenth a Florentine by birth may serve for an example who as he was a very effeminate person given to all manner of delights and pleasure having no other care but of himselfe and his owne filthy carkasses ease so had he no more taste at all nor feeling of God and his holy Word than a dog he made the promises and threats contained in holy Scripture and all else that we beleeve matter to laugh at and things frivolous and of no weight mocking at the simplicity the faith and beleefe of Christians for one day when Cardinall Bembus who also shewed himselfe to be none of the best Christians in the world by his Venetian history where as ost as he speaketh of God be useth the plurall number after the manner of heathen writers alleadged a place out of the Gospell his damnable impudency was so great as to reply That this fable of Christ had brought to him and such as he no little profit Oh stinking and cursed throat to belch out such monstrous blasphemy doe not these speeches bewray a villanous and abhominable Atheist if ever any were Is not this to declare himselfe openly to be Antichrist For he is Antichrist which denieth Iesus to be Christ and which denieth the Father and the Sonne according as Saint Iohn saith Albeit in the meane while this cursed caitife that had as much religion as a dog made shew to be the protector and defender of the Catholicke Faith making warre with all his power against Christ Iesus in the person of his servant Luther Now after he had by his pardons and indulgences drawne out a world of money and heaped up great treasures by the maintenance of courtizans and whores and had enriched his bastards one day being at meat he received newes of the overthrow of the French in Lombardy whereat hee rejoyced out of measure and for that good tidings doubled his good cheare suddenly he was constrained to turne his copy from joy into sadnesse from pleasure into griefe and gnashing of teeth by a most bitter and unlooked for death which deprived him at once of all his pleasures to make him drink the cup of Gods fierce wrath and to throw him downe headlong into everlasting paines and torments which were provided for him Pope Leo saith Saint Martin of Belay in his second booke of memorable things hearing of the great losse which the Frenchmen sustained at Milan tooke so great joy thereat that a catarrhe and an ague ensuing killed him within three dayes after a happy man indeed to die with joy Pope Iulius the third was one of the same stampe nothing inferiour to the former in all manner of dissolute and infamous living and vile and cursed talke making knowne by his impiety that he had none other god but his belly and that he was none of Christs fold but one of Epicures crew he was such a glutton and so passionate in his lusts and so prophane a despiser of God and his Word that once at supper being inraged and blaspheming because they had not served in a cold Peacocke which he commanded to be kept whole at dinner though there were other hot on the table a Cardinall that was present desired him not to be so moved for so small a trifle What quoth he if it pleased God to be so angry for eating of an apple as to thrust Adam and Eve out of paradise should not I which am his Vicar be angry for a Peacocke which is far more worth than any apple See how this wicked wretch prophaned the holy Scripture and like an Epicure and Atheist mocked God but he died of the gout after he had been long plagued with it together with other diseases leaving none other good name behind him save the report of a most wicked and abhominable man Philip Strozze whom Paulus Iovius reporteth to have bin commonly bruited to be an Atheist was an Exile of Florence and afterwards prisoner there in the time of Cosimus Medius the Prince of that Commonwealth against whom this Philip had enterprized to make warre and being in prison he killed himselfe with the sword of a Spaniard his keeper which by oversight he had left behinde setting the point against his throat and falling downe upon it so may all Atheists perish and come to naught Francis Rabelais having suckt up also this poison used like a prophane villain to make all Religion a matter to laugh and mocke at but God deprived him of his sences that as he had led a brutish life so he might die a brutish death for he died mocking all those that talked of God or made mention of mercy in his eares How miserable was the end of Periers the author of that detestable book intituled Symbolum mundi wherein he openly mocked at God and his Religion even finally he fell into despaire and notwithstanding all that guarded him killed himselfe Iodelle also a French tragicall Poet being an Epicure and Atheist made a very tragicall and most pittifull end for he died in great misery and distresse even pined to death after he had rioted out all his substance and consumed his patrimony Ligneroles the Courtier to make himselfe seeme a man of service made open profession of Atheisme but his end and destruction came from thence whence he looked for credit and advancement To bring the matter to an end I will here set downe a notable and strange thing that chanced in the raigne of Lewis the ninth as Enguerran de Monstrelet in his second volume of Histories recordeth it upon the fifteenth day of Iune in the yeare of our Lord God 1464 there happened a strange thing in the Palace at Paris So it was that there was a matter in law to be tried betwixt the Bishop of Angiers and a rich citicen whom the Bishop charged to have spoken before many witnesses that he beleeved not that there was either God or Devill Heaven or Hell Now whilst the Bishops Lawyer laid to his charge these things the place began to tremble very much wherein they were and a stone fell downe from the roof amongst them all without hurting any yet every man was sore afraid and departed out of the house untill the morrow then the matter was begun againe to be pleaded which was no sooner in hand but the chamber began afresh to shake and one of the summers came forth of his mortisehole falling downwards two foot and there stayed so that all that were within the hall looking to have been slaine outright ran out so violently that some left behinde them their caps others their hoods others their slippers summarily glad was he
up for their deliverance some grievous punishment befell them for then being without law or government every man did that which seemed good in his owne eyes and so turned aside from the right way Now albeit these examples may seeme to have some affinity with Apostasie yet because the ignorance and rudenesse of the people was rather the cause of their falling away from God than any wilfull affection that raigned in them therefore we place them in this ranke as well as they have bin alwaies brought up and nuzled in Idolatry One of this câ—â—w was Ochosias King of Iuda sonne of Ioram who having before him an evill president of his wicked father and a worse instruction and bringing up of his mother Athaliah who together with the house of Achab pricked him forward to evill joyned himselfe to them and to their Idols and for that cause was wrapped in the same punishment and destruction with Ioram the King of Israel whom Iehu slew together with the Princes of Iuda and many of his neere kinsmen And to be short Idolatry hath been the decay and ruine of the kingdome of Iuda as at all other times so especially under Ioachas sonne of Iosias that raigned not above three moneths in Ierusalem before he was taken and led captive into Aegypt by the King thereof and there died from which time the whole land became tributary to the King of Aegypt And not long after it was utterly destroyed by the forces of Nabuchadnezzar King of Babel that came against Ierusalem and tooke it and carried King Ioachim with his mother his Princes his servants and the treasurers of the Temple and his owne house into Babylon and finally tooke Zedechias that fled away and before his eyes caused his sonnes to be slaine which as soone as he had beheld commanded them also to be pulled out and so binding him in chaines of yron carried him prisoner to Babylon putting all the Princes of Iudah to the sword consuming with fire the Temple with the Kings Palace and all the goodly buildings of Ierusalem And thus the whole kingdome though by an especiall prerogative consecrated and ordained of God himselfe ceased to be a kingdome and came to such an end that it was never re-established by God it is no marvell then if the like hapned to the kingdome of Israel which was after a sort begun and confirmed by the filthy idolatry of Ieroboams calves which as his successors maintained or favoured more or lesse so were they exposed to more or lesse plagues and incumbrances Nadab Ieroboams sonne being nuzled and nurtured up in Idoll worship after the example of his father received a condigne punishment for his iniquity for Baasa the sonne of Ahijah put both him and all the off spring of Ieroboams house to the sword and raigned in his stead who also being no whit better than those whom he had slaine was punished in the person of Ela his sonne whom Zambri also his servant slew And this againe usurping the crowne enjoyed it but seven dayes at the end whereof seeing himselfe in danger in the city of Tirza taken by Amri whom the people had chosen for their King went into the palace of the Kings house and burned himselfe As for Achab he multiplied Idolatry in Israel and committed more wickednesse than all his predecessors wherefore the wrath of God was stretched out against him and his for he himselfe was wounded to death in battell by the Syrians his son Ioram slain by Iehu and threescore and ten of his children put to death in Samaria by their governors and chiefe of the city sending their heads in baskets to Iehu Above all a most notable and manifest example of Gods judgement was seene in the death of Iezabel his wife that had been his spurre and provoker to all mischiefe when by her Eunuchs and most trusty servants at the commandement of Iehu she was throwne downe out of a window and trampled under the horse feet and last of all devoured of dogs Moreover the greatest number of the kings of Israel that succeeded him were murthered one after another so that the kingdome fell to such a low decline that it became first tributary to the King of Assyria and afterward invaded and subverted by him and the inhabitants transported into his land whence they never returned but remained scattered here and there like vagabonds and all for their abhominable Idolatry Which ought to be a lesson to all people Princes and Kings that seeing that God spared not these two Realmes of Iuda and Israel but destroyed and rooted them out from the earth much lesse will he spare any other kingdome and Monarchy which continue by their Images and Idol-worship to stirre up his indignation against them CHAP. XXV Of many evils that have come upon Christendome for Idolatry IF we consider and search out the cause of the ruine of the East Empire and of so many famous and flourishing Churches as were before time in the greatest part of Europe and namely in Greece we shall finde that Idolatry hath been the cause of all for even as it got footing and increase in their dominions so equally did the power of Saracens and Turkish tyranny take root and foundation among them and prospered so well that the rest of the world trembled at the report thereof God having raised and fortified them as before time he had done the Assyrians and Babylonians as whips and scourges to chasten the people and Nations of the world that wickedly had abused his holy Gospel and bearing the name of Christians had become Idolaters for no other name than this can be given them that in devotion doe any manner of homage to Images and pictures whatsoever may superficially be alleadged to the contrary For be it the Image either of Prophet Apostle or Christ Iesus himselfe yet it is necessary that the law of God stand whole and sound which saith Thou shalt make thy selfe no graven Image nor any likenesse of things either in heaven above or in earth beneath thou shalt not how downe to them nor worship them c. Wherefore he performed the part of a good Bishop that finding a vaile spread in the entrance of a Church dore wherein the Image of Christ or of some other Saint was pictured rent it in pieces with these words That it was against the authority of the sacred Scriptures to have any Image of Christ set up in the Church After the same manner Serenus Bishop of Marscilla beat downe and banished all Images out of his Churches as occasions of Idolatry and to shun them the more it was ordained in the Elibertine Councell that no Image nor picture should be set up in any Church for which cause also the Emperour Leo the third by an open Edict commanded his subjects to cast out of their Temples all pictures and statues of Saints Angels and whatsoever else to the intent that all occasions of Idolatry might be
enemy declareth that therein he feareth him but feareth not God and careth for him but contemneth God It was therefore not without good reason that all antiquity ever marked them with the coat of infamy that forswore themselves And thereupon it is that Homer so often taunteth the Trojans by reason of their so usuall Perjuries The Egyptians had them in detestation as prophane persons and reputed it so Capitall a crime that whosoever was convinced thereof was punished by death The ancient Romanes reverenced nothing more then faith in publike affaires for which cause they had in their Citie a Temple dedicated to it wherein for a more strait bond they used solemnely to promise and sweare to all the conditions of Peace Truces and Bargaines which they made and to curse those which went about first to breake them for greater solemnity and confirmation hereof they were accustomed at those times to offer sacrifices to the image of faith for more reverence sake Hence it was that Attilius Regulus chiefe Captaine of the Romane Army against the Carthaginians was so highly commended of all men because when he was overcome and taken prisoner and sent to Rome he onely for his oathes sake which he had sworne returned againe to the enemy albeit hee knew what grievous torments were provided for him at his returne Others also that came with him though they were intreated and by their Parents Wives and Allies instantly urged not to returne to Hannibals Campe could in no wise be moved thereunto but because they had sworne to the enemie if the Romans did not accord to those conditions which were offered to come againe they preferred the bond and reverence of their promised faith though accompanied with perpetuall captivity before their private commodities and neerest linke of affection But two of these ten for so many were they falsified their oath and whatsoever mist they might cast to darken and disguise their Perjury with yet were they condemned of all men for cowards and faint-hearted Traytors insomuch that the Censors also nored them with infamy for the fact whereat they tooke such griefe and inward sorrow that being weary of their lives they slew themselves Now what can they pretend that professe themselves Christians and Catholickes to excuse their Perjuries seeing that the very Heathen cry out so loud and cleere That an oath and faith is so sacredly to be kept towards our enemies This is one of the greatest vertues and commendations which the Psalmist attributeth to the faithfull man him that feareth God and whom God avoucheth for his owne Not to falsifie his oath that he sweareth though it be to his dammage The Gibeonites although they were so execrable a people that for their great and horrible wickednesses and ahominations they might be well esteemed for Hereticks yet the Princes of Israel after they had sworne and given their faith unto them would in no wise retract or goe against their oath albeit therein they were deceived by them for feare of incurring the wrath of God that suffereth not a Perjurer to goe unpunished Vpon what ground or example of holy Scripture then may that Doctrine of the Councell of Constance be founded the purport whereof is That a man ought not to keepe his faith with Hereticks I omit to speake how these good Fathers by Hereticks meant those men who fearing God relyed themselves upon his Word and rejected the foolish and superstitious inventions of men And under what colour can the Popes usurpe this Authority to quit and discharge subjects of their oath wherewith they are bound to their Superiors yet this was the impious audacity of Pope Zacharia Pope Boniface the 8 and Pope Benedict de la Lune who freed the Frenchmen from their duty and obedience which they ought unto their Kings In like manner disgorged Gregory the 7 his choler and spight against the Emperour Henry by forbidding his Subjects to be his Subjects and to yeeld that obedience unto him which Subjects were bound to doe How be it if an oath be made either against God or to the damage and hurt of our neighbour it being for that cause unlawfull it behoveth us to know that we ought to revoke it lest wee fall into the sinne of Saul and Herod Now what punishments God hath laid upon Perjuries these Examples that follow shall make known unto us Osee the last King of Israel being made by Gods just judgement for his sinnes subject and tributary to Salmanazar King of Ashur without regard to the bond wherewith he was bound and to his faith which he had plighted conspired and entered league with the King of Aegypt against him but he discovering their seditious and privie conspiracies assembled his forces spoyled his countrey and bad them warre on all sides laying fiege to the chiefe Citie of his Kingdome after three yeeres tooke it together with the forsworne King whom he put in close prison and kept very straightly leading him and his whole Nation captive into Syria to end their dayes in misery of which evill as of all others that happened in that warre the disloyalty and Treason of Osee was the next and chiefest cause Among the bed-roll of sinnes which Zedechias the last King of Iuda is noted withall in holy Scripture Perjury is one of the count for notwithstanding he received his Kingdome of Nabuchadnezzar and had sworne fealty to him as to his Soveraigne yet brake he his oath in rebelling against him which was the very cause of his destruction for Nebuchadnezzar to be revenged on his disloyalty sent a puissant Armie against Ierusalem which took spoyled and burnt it and overtooke the Perjurer in his flight and first made him a beholder of the slaughter of his owne children and then had his owne eyes bored out and was carried in chaines to Babylon serving for a spectacle to all posteritie of Gods wondrous judgements upon Perjurers And thus both the Kingdomes of Israel and Iuda were for breach and falsifying their Oath quite extinguished and rased out The great deceiver and most treacherous person one of them that ever Greece saw was Lisander the Lacedemonian a busie-body full of cunning subtilty and craft and one that performed the most of his acts of Warre more by fraud and stratagems than by any other meanes this was he that said That when the Lions skinne meaning Fortitude would not serve it was needfull then to sow unto it the Foxes case meaning subtilty he made so little reckoning of forswearing himselfe that he would often say That children were to be cousened with trifles as Dice and Cockles and old men with Oathes but with deceitfull tricks he was occasion of much evill and divers murders but at last this Foxe making warre against the Thebans for that they had taken part with the Athenians against him and given them succour and meanes for recovering their liberty was taken in the trap and slaine at the foot of their walls
corrupt custome used commonly to wish he might be drowned in a privy and as he wished so it hapned unto him for he was so served and murthered at S. Peters Monastery in Erford in the yeare of our Lord 1148. The like befell a young Courtier at Mansfield whose custome was in any earnest asseveration to say The Devill take me if it be not so the Devill indeed tooke him whilest hee slept and threw him out of a high window where albeit by the good providence of God he oâ—ught no great hurt yet he learnt by experience to bridle his tongue from all such cursed speeches this being but a tast of Gods wrath that is to fall upon such wretches as he At Oster a village in the duchy of Megalopole there chanced a most strange and fearefull example upon a woman that gave her selfe to the Devill both body and soule and used most horrible cursings and oathes both against her selfe and others which detestible manner of behaviour as at many other times so especially shee shewed at a marriage in the foresaid village upon S. Iohn Baptists day the whole people exhorting her to leave off that monstrous villany but she nothing bettered continued her course till all the company were set at dinner and very merry Then loe the Devill having got full possession of her came in person and transported her into the aire before them all with most horrible outcries and roarings and in that sort carried her round about the towne that the Inhabitants were ready to die with feare and by ct by tore her in foure pieces leaving in four severall high wayes a quarter that all that came by might be witnesses of her punishment And then returning to the marriage threw her bowels upon the table before the Major of the towne with these words Behold these dishes of meat belong to thee whom the like destruction awaiteth if thou doest not amend thy wicked life The reporters of this history were Iohn Herman the Minister of the said towne with the Major himselfe and the whole Inhabitants being desirous to have it knowne to the world for example sake In Luthers conferences there is mention made of this story following Divers noblemen were striving together at a horse race and in their course cried The Devill take the last Now the last was a horse that broke loose whom the Devill hoisted up into the aire and tooke cleane away Which teacheth us not to call for the Devill for he is ready alwayes about us uncalled and unlooked for yea many legions of them compasse us about even in our best actions to disturbe and pervert us A certaine man not far from Gorlitz provided a sumptuous supper and invited many guests unto it who at the time appointed refused to come he in anger cried Then let all the Devils in hell come Neither was his wish frivolous for a number of those hellish fiends came forthwith whom he not discerning from men came to welcome and entertaine but as he tooke them by the hands and perceiued in stead of fingers clawes all dismaied he ran out of the doores with his wife and left none in the house but a young infant with a foole sitting by the fire whom the Divels had no power to hurt neither any man else save the goodly supper which they made away withall and so departed It is notoriously knowne in Oundle a towne in Northamptonshire amongst all that were acquainted with the partie namely one Hacket of whom more hath spoken before how he used in his earnest talke to curse himselfe on this manner If it be not true then let a visible confusion come upon me Now he wanted not his wish for he came to a visible confusion indeed as hath been declared more at large in the twentieth chapter of this booke At Witeberg before Martin Luther and divers other learned men a woman whose daughter was possessed with a spirit confessed That by her curse that plague was fallen upon her for being angry at a time she bad the Divell take her and she had no sooner spoken the word but he tooke her indeed and possessed her in most strange sort No whit lesse strange and horrible is that which happened at Neoburg in Germanie to a sonne that was cursed of his mother in her anger with this curse she prayed God she might never see him returne aliue for the same day the yong man bathing himselfe in the water was drowned and never returned to his mother alive according to her ungodly wish The like judgement of God we read of to have beene executed upon another sonne that was banned and cursed by his mother in the citie of Astorga The mother in her rage cursed one of her sons with detestable maledictions betaking him to the Diuels of hell and wishing that they would fetch him out of her presence with many other horrible execrations This was about ten a clocke at night the same being very darke and obscure the boy at last through feare went out into a little court behind the house from the which hee was suddenly hoised up into the ayte by men in shew of grim countenance great stature and loathsome and horrible gesture but indeed cruell fiends of hell and that with such swiftnesse as he himselfe after confessed that it was not possible to his seeming for any bird in the world to fly so fast and lighting downe amongst certaine mountaines of bushes and briers was trailed through the thickest of them and so all torne and rent not only in his cloaths but also in his hands and face and almost his whole body At last the boy remembring God and beseeching him of helpe and assistance the cruell fiends brought him backe againe through the aire and put him in at a little window into a chamber in his fathers house where after much search and griefe for him hee was found in this pittifull plight and almost besides himselfe And thus though they had not power to deprive him of his life as they had done the former yet the Lord suffered them to afflict the parents in the sonne for the good of both parents and sonne if they belonged unto the Lord. But above all this is most strange which hapned in a town of Misina in the yeare of our Lord God 1552 the eleventh of September where a cholericke father seeing his sonne flacke about his businesse wished hee might never stirre from that place for it was no sooner said but done his sonne stucke fast in the place neither by any meanes possible could be removed no not so much as to fit or bend his body till by the praiers of the Faithfull his paines were somewhat mitigated though not remitted three yeares he continued standing with a post at his backe for his ease and foure yeares sitting at the end whereof he died nothing weakened in his understanding but professing the faith and not doubting of his salvation in
Christ Iesus When he was demanded at any time how he did he answered most usually That he was fastened of God and that it was not in man but in Gods mercy for him to be released Iohn Peter sonne in law to Alexander that cruel Keeper of Newgate being a most horrible swearer and blasphemer used commonly to say If it be not true I pray God I may rot ere I die and not in vaine for he rotted away indeed and so dyed in misery Hither we may adde a notable example of a certaine yong gallant that was a monstrous swearer who riding in the company of divers gentlemen began to sweare and most horribly blaspheme the name of God unto whom one in the company with gentle words said he should one day answer for that the Yonker taking snuffe thereat Why said he takest thou thought for me Take thought for thy winding sheet Well quoth the other amend for death giveth no warning as soone commeth a lambes skin to the market as an old sheeps Gods wounds said he care not thou for me raging still on this manner worse and worse till at length passing on their journey they came riding over a great bridge upon which this gentleman swearer spurred his horse in such sort that he sprang cleane over with the man on his backe who as hee was going cried Horse and man and all to the Divell This terrible story Bishop Ridley preached and uttered at Pauls crosse and one Haines a Minister of Cornwall the reprehender of this man was the reporter of it to Master Fox out of whom I have drawne it Let us refraine then wretches that we are our divelish tongues and leave off to provoke the wrath of God any longer against us let us forbeare all wicked and cursed speeches and acquaint our selves as well in word as in deed to praise and glorisie God CHAP. XXXII Punishments for the contempt of the Word and Sacraments and abuse of holy things NOw it is another kind of taking the Name of God in vaine to despise his Word and Sacraments for like as among earthly princes it is accounted a crime no lesse than treason either to abuse their pictures to counterfeit or deprave their seales to rent pollute or corrupt their letters patents or to use unreverently their messengers or any thing that commeth from them So with the Prince of heaven it is a fin of high degree either to abuse his Word prophanely which is the letters patents of our salvation or handle the Sacraments unreverently which are the seales of his mercy or to despise his Ministers which are his messengers untous And this he maketh knowne unto us not only by Edicts and Commandments but also by examples of his vengeance on the heads of the offendors in this case For the former look what Paul saith That for the unworthy receiving of the Sacraments many were weake and sicke among the Corinthians and many slept How much more then for the abusing and contemning the Sacraments And the Prophet David That for casting the Word of God behinde them they should have nothing to do with his Covenant How much more then for prophaning and deriding his Word And Moses when the people murmured against him and Aaron saith That their murmurings were not against them which were but Ministers but against the Lord. How much more then is the Lord enraged when they are scoffed at derided and set at naught Hence it is that the Lord denounceth a Wo to him that addeth or taketh away from the Word and calleth them dogs that abuse such precious pearles But let us come to the examples wherein the grievousnesse of this sinne willly more open than by any words can be expressed First to begin with the house of Israel which were the sole select people of the Lord whom he had chosen out of all other nations of the world to be his owne peculiar flocke and his chiefe treasure above all other people of the earth and a kingdome of Priests and a holy Nation when as they contemned and despised his Word spoken unto them by his prophets and cast his law behinde their backe he gave them over into the hands of their enemies and of Ammi made them Loammi that is of his people made them not his people and of Ruhama Loruhama that is of such as had found mercy and favour at Gods hand a nation that should obtain no mercy nor favour as the Prophet Hosea speaketh This we see plainly verified first in the ten tribes which under Ieroboam fell away from the Scepter of Iuda for after that the Lord had sundry times scourged them by many particular punishments as the famin sword and pestilence for their idolatry and rebellion to his law at the last in the ninth yere of the raign of Hoshea King of Israel he brought upon them a finall and generall destruction and delivered them into the hands of the King of Ashur who carried them away captive into Assyria and placed them in Hala and in Habor by the river of Gosan and in the cities of the Medes and in stead of them seated the men of Babel of Cuthah Ava Hamath and Sepharvaim in the cities of Samaria Thus were they utterly rooted up and spued out of the land of their inheritance and their portion given unto strangers as was threatned to them by the mouth of Moses the servant of the Lord and the cause of all this is set down by the holy Ghost 2 Kin. 17. 13. to be for that though the Lord had testified to them by al his prophets seers saying Turn from your evill wayes and keepe my commandements and my statutes according to all the Law which I commanded your fathers neverthelesse they would not obey but hardned their necks then it followeth in the 18 ver Therfore the Lord was exceeding wroth with Israel and put them out of his sight and none was left but the Tribe of Iuda onely Now though the kingdome of Iuda continued in good estate long after the desolation of the ten tribes for this hapned in the raigne of Ahaz King of Iuda yet afterward in the raigne of Zedekiah the great and famous citie Ierusalem was taken by Nabuchadnezzar the King of Babel and utterly ruined and defaced the glorious and stately temple of the Lord built by Salomon the wonder of the world was burnt down to ashes together with all the houses of Ierusalem and all other great houses in the land all the rich vessels and furniture of the temple of gold silver and brasse were carried to Babel by Nabuzaradan the chiefe steward The king himselfe was bound in chaines and after he had seen his owne sons slaine before his eyes had his owne eyes put out that he might never more take comfort of the light The priests and all the greatest and richest of the people were carried away in captivity and only the poore were left behind to dresse the vines
to the hurting and endangering of many sometime one thing sometime another hath fallen out to the great damage and hurt of many that have no conscience of this day yea often to the endangering of their lives and that which is most strange within these late yeares a whole town hath been twice burnt for the breach of the Sabbath by the inhabitants as all men judged The just report thereof I passe over here to set downe untill such time as I shall be better instructed Famous and memorable also is that example which happened at London in the yeare 1583 at Paris garden where upon the Sabbath day were gathered together as accustomably they used great multitudes of prophane people to behold the sport of Beare baiting without respect of the Lords day or any exercise of religion required therein which prophane impiety the Lord that he might chasten in some sort and shew his dislike thereof he caused the scaffolds suddenly to breake and the beholders to tumble headlong downe so that to the number of eight persons men and women were slaine therewith besides many others which were sore hurt and bruised to the shortening of their dayes The like example happened at a towne in Bedford shire called Risley in the yeare 1607 Where the floore of a chamber wherein a number were gathered together to see a play on the Sabbath day fell downe by meanes whereof many were sore hurt and some killed Surely a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves with the cruelty of beasts and vain sports than with the works of mercy and Religion the fruits of a true faith which ought to be the Sabbath dayes exercise And thus much for the examples of the first Table whereof if some seeme to exceed credit by reason of the strangenesse of them yet let us know that nothing is impossible to God and that hee doth often worke miracles to controll the obstinate impiety and rebellion of mortall men against his commandement Besides there is not one example here mentioned but it hath a credible or probable Author for the avoucher of it Let us now out of all this that hath been spoken gather up this wholsome lesson to love God with all our heart and affection to the end we may worship him invocate his holy name and repose all the confidence of our salvation upon him alone through Christ Iesus seeking by pleasing and obeying his will to set forth his glory and render him due thanks for all his benefits FINIS THE SECOND BOOKE CHAP. I. Of rebellious and stubborne children towards their Parents WEe have seene in the former Booke what punishments they have incurred that either malitiously or otherwise have transgressed and broken the commandements of the first Table Now it followeth to discover the chastisements which God hath sent upon the transgressors of the second Table And first concerning the first commandement therof which is Honour thy father and mother that thy dayes may be prolonged in the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee C ham one of old Noah's sonnes was guilty of the breach of this Commandement who in stead of performing that reverence to his father which he ought and that presently after the deluge which being yet fresh in memory might have taught him to walke in the feare of God came so short of his duty that when he saw his nakednesse hee did not hide it but mocked and jeasted at it for which cause hee was cursed both of his father and of God in the person of his youngest sonne Chanaan and made a servant to the servants of his brethren which curse was fulfilled in his posterity the Canaanites who being forsaken of God were rooted up and spued out of their land because of their sinnes and abhominations Marvellous strange was the malice of Absolon to rebell so furiously against his father David as to wage warre against him which he did with all his strongest endeavours without sparing any thing that might further his proceedings insomuch that he grew to that outrage and madnesse through the wicked and pernitious counsell of Achitophel that hee shamed not villanously to commit incest with his fathers concubines and pollute his bloud even before the eyes of the multitude by which means being become altogether odious and abhominable hee shortly after lost the battell wherein though himselfe received no hurt nor wound yet was he not therefore quit but being pursued by Gods just judgement fell unwittingly into the snare which he had deserved for as he rode along the forrest to save himselfe from his fathers army his moyle carrying him under a thicke oake left him hanging by the haire upon a bough betwixt heaven and earth untill being found by Ioab he was wounded to death with many blowes Whereby every man may plainly see that God wanteth no means to punish sinners when it pleaseth him but maketh the dumbe and sencelesse creatures the instruments of his vengeance for hee that had escaped the brunt and danger of the battell and yet not having therefore escaped the hand of God was by a bruit beast brought under a sencelesse tree which God had appointed to catch hold of him as an executioner of his just judgement which if wee consider is as strange and wonderfull an accident as may possible happen and such an one as God himselfe provided to punish this wicked proud and rebellious wretch withall for seeing his outrage and villany was so great as to rebell against his father and so good and kinde a father towards him as he was it was most just that he should endure so vile a punishment Beside herein doubtlesse God would lay open to the eyes of all the world a fearefull spectacle of his judgements against wicked and disobedient children thereby to terrifie the most impudent and malitious wretches that live from this horrible sinne And for the same cause it was his pleasure that that wicked and false Achitophel should fall into extreme ignominy and confusion for forsaking David and setting forward with counsell and presence yong Absolon against his father for which cause with despaire he hung himselfe Now by this example it is easie to perceive how unpleasant this sin is in Gods sight and how much he would have every man to hate and detest it seeing that Nature her selfe teacheth and instructeth us so farre as to yeeld duty and obedience unto those that begat nourished and brought us up Notwithstanding all this yet is the world full of ill advised and ill nurtured youth that are little lesse disobedient unto their parents than Absolon was as Adramalech and Saraser that slew their father Sennacherib as he was worshipping in the Temple of Nisroth his god but whereas they looked for the soveraignty they lost the benefit of subjection and were banished into Armenia their brother Esarhaddon raigning in their stead Gregory of Tours maketh mention of one Crannius the son of Clotarius King of France
clattered downe aboundantly The host of the house being awaked with the noyse cryed out to know what the matter was and running into the chamber where this noyse was with a candle in his hand found the poore young man all alone betwixt dead and alive of whom recovered he learnt out the whole truth as hath been told but he after this terrible accident repented him of his wicked life and was touched with the sence of his grievous sinne so nearly that ever after he led a more circumspect and honest life Thus much we finde written in that Author Henry the fifth inspired with the furies of the Pope of Rome made warre upon his father Henry the fourth vexing him with cruell and often battels and not ceasing till he had spoiled him of his Empire and till the Bishop of Mentz had proudly and insolently taken from him his Imperiall ornaments even in his presence but the Lord in recompence of his unnaturall dealing made him and his army a prey unto his enemies the Saxons and to flie before them stirring up also the Pope of Rome to be as grievous a scourge unto him as he had beene before time to his father Now as the ambition of a Kingdome was the cause of this mans ingratitude so in the example following pride and disdaine ruled and therefore he is so much the more to be condemned by how much a Kingdome is a stronger cord to draw men to vice than a mans owne affection There was saith Manlius an old man crooked with age distressed with poverty and almost pined with hunger that had a sonne rich strong and fat of whom he intreated no gold or silver or possession but food and sustenance for his belly and clothes for his backe but could not obtaine it at his hands for his proud heart exalted with prosperity thought it a shame and discredit to his house to be borne of so poore and base parentage and therefore not onely denied him reliefe but also disclaimed him from being his father and chased him away with bitter and crabbed reproaches The poore old man thus cruelly handled let teares fall as witnesse of his griefe and departed comfortlesse from his Tygre minded sonne But the Lord that gathereth up the tears of the innocent looked down from heaven in justice and sent a fury into the sences and understanding of this monstrous son that as he was void of nature and compassion so he might bevoid of reason and discretion for ever after Another not so cruell and disdainfull as the former yet cruell and disdainfull enough to plucke downe vengeace upon his head would not see his father beg indeed nor yet abjure him as the other did but yet undertaking to keepe him used him more like a slave than a father for what should be too deare for him that gives us life yet every good thing was too deare for this poore father Vpon a time a dainty morsell of meat was upon the boord to be eaten which as soone as he came in he conveied away and foisted in courser victuals in the roome But marke what his dainties turned to when the servant went to fetch it againe he found in stead of meat snakes and of sauce serpents to the great terrour of his conscience but that which is more one of the serpents leaped in his face and catching hold by his lip hung there till his dying day so that hee could never feed himselfe but he must feed the serpent withall And this badge carried he about as a cognisance of an unkinde and ungratefull sonne Moreover this is another judgment of God that commonly as children deale with their parents so doe their children deale with them and this in the law of proportion is most just and in the order of punishing most usuall for the proofe whereof as experience daily teacheth so one example or two I will subjoyne It is reported how a certaine unkind and perverse sonne beat his aged father upon a time and drew him by the haire of his head to the threshold who when hee was old was likewise beaten of his sonne and drawne also by the haire of the head not to the threshold but out of doores into the durt and how hee should say he was rightly served if he had left him at the threshold as he left his father and not dragged him into the streets which hee did not to his Thus did his owne mouth beare record of his impiety and his owne conscience condemne him before God and men Another old man being persuaded by his son that had maried a yong wise with faire and sugred promises of kindnesses and contentments to surrender his goods and lands unto him yeelded to his request and found for a space all things to his desire but when his often coughing annoyd his yong and dainty wise he first removed his lodging from a faire high chamber to a base under roome and after shewed him many other unkinde and unchildly parts and lastly when the old man as ked for cloathes he bought foure elnes of cloath two wherof he bestowed upon him and reserved the other two for himselfe Now his young sonne marking this niggardise of his father towards his grandfather hid the two elles of cloath and being asked why hee hid them whether by ingeniousnesse or instinct of God he answered To the end to reserve them for his father against he was old to be a covering for him Which answer touched his father so neere that ever after hee shewed himselfe more loving and obsequious to his father than he did before Two great faults but soone and happily amended Would it might be an example to all children if not to mitigate them yet at least to learne them to feare how to deale roughly and crookedly with their parents seeing that God punisheth sinne with sinne and sinners in their owne kinde and measureth the same measure to every man which they have measured unto others The like we read of another that provided a trough for his old decrepit unmannerly father to eat his meat in who being demanded of his sonne also to what use that trough should serve answered for his grandfather What quoth the childe and must we have the like for you when you are old Which words so abashed him that he threw it away forthwith At Millan there was an abstinate and ungodly sonne that when he was admonished by his mother of some fault which he had committed made a wry mouth and pointed his fingers at her in scorne and derision Whereat his mother being angry wished that he might make such a mouth upon the gallowes Neither was it a vaine wish for within few daies he was taken with a theft and condemned by law to be hanged and being upon the ladder was perceived to wryth his mouth in griefe after the same fashion which he had done before to his mother in derision Henry the second of that name
kind of treason and another ranke of traitors as pernitious as any of the former and as odious before God and man Such are they which either upon private quarrels or received injuries or hope of gaine or any other silly respect forsake their countries and take part with the enemies to fight against it or they that in time of necessity refuse to fight or dare not fight in defence of it the former sort are called fugitives the latter cowards As touching the first they havebeen alwayes in detestation in well governed Policies and also evermore severely punished The Aeginates punished them with the losse of their right hand thumbs to the end they might no more handle a speare or a sword but an oare the Mitylenians with losse of their lives the inhabitants of Samos marked them in the face with the picture of an Owle and the Romans punished them after divers fashions Fabius Maximus caused all those that had fled from the Roman succours to the enemy to lose their hands Africanus the former though gentle and mild by nature yet in this respect he borrowed from forreine cruelty for having conquered Carthage and got into his power all those Romane Rebels that tooke part against his countrey he hung the Romans as traitors to their countrey and mitigated the punishment of the Latines as but perfidious confederates Africanus the later when hee had subdued the Punicke Nation he threw all fugitives amongst wilde beasts to be devoured Lucius Paulus aftor the conquest of the King of Persia committed these fellowes to the mercy of Elephants Generally there is no Nation under the Sunne which holdeth them not in execration and therefore our English fugitives who under cloke of Religion not onely abandon their countrey their kindred and their Prince but also conspire the undoing and sweare the destruction of them are they not worthy to be handled like traitours and to have their quarters spectacles of perfidy The bridge and gates of London beare witnesse of the wofull ends that these runnagates come unto As touching cowards I meane such as preferring their lives or liberty or any other by-respects before their countries welfare and either dare not or will not stand stoutly in defence of it in time of warre and danger they deserve no lesse punishment than the former seeing that as they are open oppugners so these are close underminers of the good thereof And therefore the Romanes did sharpely chasten them in their government as may appeare by diverse examples of the same as first they were noted with this ignominy never to eat their meat but standing and hereunto they were sworne Nay they were in such hatefull account amongst them that when Annibal offered the Senate 8000 captives to be redeemed they refused his offer saying That they were not worthy to be redeemed that had rather be taken basely than die honestly and valiantly The same Senate dealt more favourably with the captives which King Pyrrhus tooke for they redeemed them but with this disgrace degrading them from their honours and places untill by a double spoile they had woon their reputation againe L. Calpurnius Piso handled Titius the captaine of his horsemen in Sicilia one who being overcharged with enemies delivered his weapons unto them on this manner he caused him to goe bare footed before the army wearing a garment without seames he forbad him society with any save such as were noted with the same fault and from a Generall over horsemen he debased him to a common souldier How did the same Senate correct the cowardise of Caius Vatienus who to the end to priviledge himselfe from the Italicke warre cut off all the fingers of his left hand even they proscribed his goods and cast him into perpetuall prison that that life which hee refused to hazard in defence of his countrey he might consume in bondage and fetters Fulgosius saith That among the Germanes it was so unhonourable a part to lose but a shield in the warre that whosover had happened to doe so was suspended both from the place of common councell and from the temples of Religion insomuch that many as he reporteth killed themselves to avoid the shame The people called Daci punished cowards on this sort they suffered them not to sleepe but with their heads to the beds feet-ward and besides by the law they made them slaves and subjects to their owne wives What viler disgrace could there be than this And yet the Lacedemonians plagued them more shamefully for with them it was a discredit to marry in the stocke of a coward any man might strike them lawfully and in their attire they went with their clothes rent and their beards halfe shaven Thus are all kind of traitors continually punished of the Lord by one meanes or other and therefore let us learne to shun treason as one of the vilest and detestablest things in the world CHAP. IIII. Of such as have murthered their Rulers or Princes ZImri Captaine of halfe the chariots of Elah King of Israel conspired against his Lord as he was in Tirza drinking till he was drunke in the house of Arze his Steward and came upon him suddenly and smote him till hee died and possessed the Kingdome in his roome Howbeit herein he was the Lords rod to punish the house of Baasha yet when the punishment was past the Lord threw the rod into the fire for he enjoyed the Crowne but seven dayes for all Israel detesting his fact made Omri King over them who besieged him in Tirza and drove him into that extremity that hee went into the palace of the Kings house and burnt himselfe and the house with fire Iozachar the sonne of Shimeah and Ieozabed the sonne of Shomer came to no better end for murthering Iehoash King of Iuda for Amaziah his sonne after the kingdome was confirmed unto him caused them both to be put to death but their children he slew not according to that which is written in the Booke of the law The fathers shall not be put to death for the children nor the children for the fathers but every man shall beare this owne sin Neither did Shallum that slew Zacharia King of Israel prosper any better for he reigned but one month in Samaria when Menahim the sonne of Gadi rebelled against him and slew him as he had done his master Amon the sonne of Manasseh was slaine by his owne servants but the Lord stirred up the people of the Land to revenge his death and to kill all them that had conspired against their King But to let passe the holy histories of the sacred Scripture wherein ever after any treason the Holy Ghost presently setteth downe the punishment of traitours as it were of purpose to signifie how the Lord hateth all such Rebels that rose up against his owne ordinance let us consider a little the consequents of these in prophane yet credible authors and apply them unto our purpose Archelaus
King of Macedonia had a minion called Cratenas whom hee loved most entirely but he againe requited him not with love but with hatred and stretched all his wits to install himselfe in his kingdome by deposing and murthering him which though he accomplished yet his deserts were cut short by the vengeance of God for he continued not many dayes in his royalty but he was served with the same sauce that he had made Archelaus before him to taste of even betraied and murthered as he well deserved Lodovicus Sfortia to the end to invest himselfe with the Dukedome of Millain spared not to shed the innocent bloud of his two Nephewes the sonnes of Galenchus together with their tutors and one Francis Calaber a worthy and excellent man but the Lord so disposed of his purposes that he in stead of obtaining the kingdome was taken prisoner by the King of France so that neither he nor any of his off spring injoyed that which he so much affected When Numerianus was to succeed â—arus his father in the Empire Arrius Axer his father in law to the end to translate the Empire unto himselfe entered a conspiracy and slew his sonne in law that nothing mistrusted his disloyalty but the Pretorian army understanding the matter discharged Arrius and elected Dioclesian in his roome who laying hold upon his competitour laied an action of treason to his charge and put him to death in the sight of the multitude Theodoricke and Fredericke conspired against their owne brother Thurismund King of the Visigothes to the intent to succeed him in his Kingdome And albeit that nature reclaymed them from the act yet they slew him without all compassion But after thirteene yeres reigne the same Theodericke was requited by his other brethren with the same measure that he before meted to his brother Thurismund And so though vengeance slept a while yet at length it wakened Aelias Antonius Gordianus Emperour of Rome though so excellent a young Prince that he deserved to be called the Love and Iewell of the World yet was he slaine by one promoted by himselfe to high honour called Philip Arabs when he was but two and twenty yeres old after whose decease this Philip got himselfe elected Emperour by the Band and confirmed by the Senate All which notwithstanding after five yeres Decius rebelled and his owne souldiers conspired against him so that both he at Verona and his sonne at Rome were slaine by them about one time After the death of Constantine the Great his three sonnes dividing the Empire betwixt them succeeded their father Constantine the eldest had for his share Spaine France the Alpes and England Constance the second held Italy Africa Graecia and Illyricum Constantine the younger was King and Emperour of the East But ambition suffered them not to enjoy quietly these their possessions for when the eldest being more proud and seditious than the other not content with his alotted portion made warre upon his brother Constance his Provinces and strove to enter Italy he was slaine in a battell by Aquileia when he was but five and twenty yeares old by which meanes all the provinces which were his fell to Constance and therewithall such a drowsinesse and Epicurisme for want of a stirrer up after his brothers death that he fell into the gout and neglected the governement of the Empire Wherefore in Aâ—sourge and in Rhetia they created a new Emperour one Magnentius whose life before time Constance had saved from the souldiers and therefore his treachery was the greater This Magnentius deprived and slew Constance but was overcome by Constantine the third brother in Illyricum yet in such sort that the conqueror could not greatly brag for he lost an infinit company of his men and yet missed of his chiefe purpose the taking of Magnentius for he escaped to Lyons and there massacring all that he mistrusted at last growing I suppose in suspition with his owne heart slew himselfe also and so his traiterous ingratefull and ambitious murther was revenged with his owne hands Victericus betrayed Lnyba king of Spaine and succeeded in his place seven yeares after another traitour slew him and succeeded also in his place Mauritius the Emperor was murthered by Phocas together with his wife and five of his children he seating himselfe Emperour in his roome Howbeit traitors and murtherers can never come to happy ends for as he had slaine Mauritius so Priscus Heraclianus and Phorius three of his chiefest captaines conspiring against him with three severall armies gave him such an alarme at once at his owne doores that they soone quailed his courage and after much mangling of his body cut him shorter by the head and the kingdome at one blow In the time of Edward the second and Edward the third in England one Sir Roger Mortimer committed many villanous outrages in shedding much bloud and at last King Edward himselfe lying at Barkley castle to the end that he might as it was supposed enjoy Isabel his wife with whom he had very suspitious familiarity After this he unjustly accused Edmund Earle of Kent of treason and caused him to bee put to death therefore and lastly he conspired against King Edward the third as it was suspected for which cause he was worthily and deservedly beheaded Among this ranke of murtherers of Kings we may fitly place also Richard the third usurper of the Crowne of England and divers others which he used as instruments to bring his detestable purpose to effect as namely Sir Iames Tirrèl Knight a man for natures gifts worthy to have served a much better Prince than this Richard if he had well served God and beene endued with as much truth and honesty as he had strength and wit also Miles Forest and Iohn Dighton two villaines fleshed in murthers But to come to the fact it was on this sort When Richard the usurper had enjoyned Robert Brackenbury to this piece of service of murthering the young King Edward the fifth his Nephew in the Tower with his brother the Duke of Yorke and saw it refused by him he committed the charge of the murther to Sir Iames Tirrel who hasting to the Tower by the Kings Commission received the keyes into his owne hands and by the helpe of those two butchers Dighton and Forest smothered the two Princes in their bed and buried them at the staires feet which being done Sir Iames rode back to king Richard who gave him great thankes and as some say made him knight for his labour All which things on every part well pondered it appeareth that God never gave the world a notabler example both of the unconstancy of worldly wâ—ale and also of the wretched end which ensueth such despightfull cruelty for first to begin with the ministers Miles Forest rotted away peecemeale at Saint Martins Sir Iames Tirrel died at the Tower hill beheaded for treason King Kichard himselfe as it is declared elsewhere was slaine
it was good reason that she should partake some of that punishment which they both deserved as she did for being surprised by her enemies to the intent she might not be carried in triumph to Rome she caused an aspe to bite her to death Marke here the pittifull Tragedies that following one another in the necke were so linkt together that drawing and holding each other they drew with them a world of miseries to a most wofull end a most transparent and cleere glasse wherein the visages of Gods heavy judgements upon all murtherers are apparently deciphered CHAP. VI. Other examples like unto the former AFter that the Empire of Rome declining after the death of Theodosius was almost at the last cast ready to yeeld up the ghost and that Theodorick king of the Goths had usurped the dominion of Italy under the Emperor Zeno he put to death two great personages Senators and chiefe citizens of Rome to wit Simmachus and â—oetiâ—â— only for secret surmise which he had without probability that they two should weave some she web for his destruction After which cruell deed as he was one day at supper a fishes head of great bignesse beeing served into the table purposing to be very merry suddenly the vengeance of God assailed amased oppressed and pursued him so freshly that without intermission or breathing it sent his body a senselesse trunk into the grave in a most strange and marvellous manner for he was conceited as himselfe reported that the fishes head was the head of Simmachus whom he had but lately slaine which grinned upon him and seemed to face him with an overthwart threatning and angry eye wherewith hee was so scarred that he forthwith rose from the table and was possessed with such an exceeding trembling and icle ehilnesse that ran through all his joynts that he was constrained to take his chamber and goe to bed where soone after with griefe and fretting and displeasure hee died He committed also another most cruell and traiterous part upon Odoacer whom inviting to a banquet he deceitfully welcommed with a messe of swords in stead of other victuals to kill him withall that he might sway the Empire alone both of the Gothes and Romanes without checke It was not without cause that Attila was called the scourge of God for with an army of five hundred thousand men he wasted and spoiled all fields cities and villages that he passed by putting all to fire and sword without shewing mercy to any on this manner he went spoiling through France and there at one time gave battell to the united forces of the Romans Vicegothes Frenchmen Sarmatians Burgundians Saxons and Almaignes after that he entered Italy tooke by way of force Aquilea sacked and destroyed Millan with many other cities and in a word spoiled all the countrey in fine being returned beyond Almaigne having married a wife of excellent beauty though he was well wived before he died on his marriage night suddenly in his bed for having well carowsed the day before he fell into so dead a sleepe that lying upon his backe without respect the bloud which was often woont to issue at his nostrils finding those conduits stopped by his upright lying descended into his throat and stopped his winde And so that bloudy tyrant that had shed the bloud of so many people was himselfe by the effusion of his owne bloud murthered and stifled to death Ithilbald king of Gothia at the instigation of his wife put to death very unadvisedly one of the chiefe peeres of his realme after which murther as he sate banquetting one day with his princes environed with his gard and other attendants having his hand in the dish and the meat between his fingers one suddenly reached him such a blow with a sword that it cut off his head so that it almost tumbled upon the table to the great astonishment of all that were present Sigismund king of Burgundy suffered himselfe to be carried away with such an extreame passion of choler provoked by a false and malicious accusation of his second wife that he caused one of his sonnes which he had by his former wife to be strangled in his bed because he was induced to think that he went about to make himselfe king which deed being blowne abroad Clodomire sonne to Clodovee and Clotild king France and cousin german to Sigismund came with an army for to revenge this cruell and unnaturall part his mother setting forward and inciting him thereunto in regard of the injury which Sigismunds father had done to her father and mother one of whom he slew and drowned the other As they were ready to joyne battell Sigismunds souldiers forsooke him so that hee was taken and presently put to death and his sonnes which he had by his second wife were taken also and carried captive to Orleance and there drowned in a Well Thus was the execrable murther of Sigismund and his wife punished in their owne children As for Clodomire though he went conqueror from this battell yet was he encountered with another disastrous misfortune for as hee marched forward with his forces to fight with Sigismunds brother he was by him overcome and slaine and for a further disgrace his dismembred head fastened on the top of a pike was carried about to the enterview of all men Hee left behinde him three young sonnes whom his owne brethren and their uncles Clotaire and Childebert notwithstanding their young and tender yeres tooke from their grandmother Clotildes custody that brought them up as if they would install them into some part of their fathers kingdome but most wickedly and cruelly to the end to possesse their goods lands and seigniories bereft them all of their lives save one that saved himselfe in a Monastery In this strange and monstrous act Clotaire shewed himselfe more than barbarous when he would not take pity upon the youngest of the two being but seven yeares old who hearing his brother of the age of tenne yeres crying pittifully at his slaughter threw himselfe at his uncle Childeberts feet with teares desiring him to save his life wherewith Childebert being greatly affected entreated his brother with weeping eies to have pity upon him and spare the life of this poore infant but all his warnings and entreaties could not hinder the savage beast from performing this cruell murther upon this poore childe as he had don upon the other The Emperour Phocas attained by this bloudy means the imperiall dignity even by the slaughter of his lord and master Mauricius whom as he fled in disguised attire for feare of a treason pretended against him he being beforetime the Lievtenant Generall of his army pursued so maliciously and hotly that he overtooke him in his flight and for his further griefe first put all his children severally to death before his face that every one of them might be a severall death unto him before he died and then slew him also This murtherer was he that first exalted to
son to Lodouick the third was possessed tormented with a divell in the presence of his father the Peeres of the Realme which he openly confessed to have justly happened unto him because he had pretended in his mind to have conspired his fathers death and deposition what then are they to expect that doe not pretend but performe this monstrous enterprise A certaine degenerate and cruell son longing and gaping after the inheritance of his father which nothing but his life kept him from wrought this means to accomplish his desire he accused his father of a most filthy unnameable crime even of committing filtâ—inesse with a Cow knowing that if he were convicted therof the law would cut off his life herein he wroght a double villany in going about not only to take away his life which by the law of nature he ought to have preserved but also his good name without respecting that the stain of a father redoundeth to his posterity and that children commoÌ„ly do not only inherit the possessions but also imitate the conditions of their parents but all these supposes laid aside together with all feare of God he indicted him before the Magistrate of incest and that upon his own knowledge insomuch that they brought the poore innocent man to the rack to the end to make him confesse the crime which albeit amidst his tortures he did as soon as he was out he denyed again howbeit his extorted confession stood for evidence and he was condemned to be burned with fire as was speedily executed and constantly endured by him exclaiming still upon the false accusation of his son and his own unspotted innocency as by the issue that followed most cleerely appeared for his son not long after fell into a reprobate mind and hanged himselfe and the Judge that condemned him with the witnesses that bare record of his forced confession within one moneth died all after a most wretched and miserable sort And thus it pleased God both to revenge his death and also to quit his reputation and innocency from ignominy and discredit in this world Manfred Prince of Tarentum bastard son to Frederick the second smothered his father to death with a pillow because as some say he would not bestow the kingdome of Naples upon him and not content herewith he poisoned also the heirs of Frederick to the end he might attain unto the crown as Conrade his elder brother and his nephew the son of Henry the heir which Henry died in prison and now onely Conradinus remained betwixt him and the kingdome whom though he assayed to send after his father yet was his intention frustrate for the Pope thundered out his curses against him and instigated Charles Duke of Angiers to make war against him wherein bastard and unnaturall Manfred was discomfited and slaine and cut short of his purpose for which he had committed so many tragedies Martin Luther was wont to report of his own experience this wonderfull history of a Locksmith a yong man riotous and vicious who to find fuel for his luxury was so bewitched that he feared not to slay his own father mother with a hammer to the end to gain their mony and possessions after which cruell deed he presently went to a shoomaker and bought him new shooes leaving his old behind him by the providence of God to be his accusers for after an houre or two the slain bodies being found by the Magistrate and inquisition made for the murderer no manner of suspition being had of him he seeming to take such griefe therat But the Lord that knoweth the secrets of the heart discovered his hypocrisie and made his owne shooes which hee had left with the Shoomaker rise up to beare witnesse against him for the blood which ran from his fathers wounds besprinckled them so that thereof grew the suspition and from thence the examination and very soon the confession and last of all his worthy and lawfull execution From hence we may learne for a generall trueth that murder never so secret will ever by one means or other be discovered the Lord will not suffer it to goe unpunished so abominable it is in his sight Another son at Basil in the yeare of our Lord God 1560 bought a quantity of poyson of an Apothecary and ministred it to none but to his own father accounting him worthiest of so great a benefit which when it had effected his wish upon him the crime being detected in stead of possessing his goods which he aimed at he possessed a vile and shamefull death for he was drawne through the streets burnt with hot Irons and tormented nine houres in a wheele till his life forsooke him As it is repugnant to nature for children to deale thus cruelly with their parents so it is more against nature for parents to murder their children insomuch as naturall affection is of greater force in the descent than in the ascent the love that parents bear their children is greater than that which children redound to their Parents because the childe proceedeth from the father and not the father from the childe as part of his fathers essence and not the father of his Can a man then hate his own flesh or be a rooter out of that which himselfe planted It is rare yet sometimes it commeth to passe Howbeit as the offence is in an high degree so it is alwayes punished by some high judgement as by these examples that follow shall appeare The ancient Ammonites had an Idoll called Moloch to the which they offered their children in sacrifice this Idoll as the Jewes write was of a great stature and hollow within having seven chambers in his hollownesse whereof one was to receive meat another turtle Doves the third a sheep the fourth a ram the fifth a calfe the sixth an oxe and the seventh a childe his hands were alwayes extended to receive gifts and when a childe was offered they were made fire hot to burne it to death none must offer the childe but the father and to drowne the cries of it the Chemarims for so were the Priests of that Idoll called made a noise with bels cymbals and horns thus is it written that king Ahab offered his son yea and many of the children of Israel beside as the Prophet David affirmeth They offered saith he their sons and daughters to Divels and shed innocent blood c. this is the horrible crime Now marke the judgement concerning the Canaanites the landspued them out for their abominations Achab with his posterity was accur sed himselfe being slaine by his enemies and the crowne taken from his posterity not one being left of his off-spring to pis against the wall according to the saying of Elias as for the Jewes the Prophet David in the same place declareth their punishment when he saith That the wrath of the Lord was kindled and he abhorred his inheritance and gave them into the hands of the
and stones echoed France into his eares And on this manner was his flight to Sicilie King Charles in the meane while having by force and bloodshed to terrifie the rest taken two passages that were before him the whole Realme without any great resistance yeelded it selfe unto his mercy albeit that the young King had done what he could to withstand him But at length seeing the Neapolitanes ready to rebell and himselfe in danger to be taken prisoner he fled from the Castle of Naples and with a small company got certaine Brigandines wherein he sayled to the Island Ischia thirty miles from Naples saying at his departure this verse out of the Psalmes How vaine are the watchmen and gards of that City which is not garded and watched by the Lord which he often repeated and so long as Naples was in his view And thus was cruelty punished both in Ferdinand the father and Alphonso the sonne Artaxerxes Ochus the eight King of the Persians began his raigne with thus many murders he slew two of his owne brethren first secondly Euagoras King of Cyprus his partner and associate in the kingdome thirdly he tooke Gidon traiterously and was the cause of forty thousand mens deaths that were slaine and burned therein beside many other private murders and outrages which he committed for which cause the Lord in his justice rained downe vengeance upon his head for Bagoas one of his Princes ministred such a fatall cup to his stomacke that it mortified his senses and deprived him of his unmercifull soule and life and not onely upon his head but upon his Kingdome and his sonne Arsame also for he was also poysoned by the same Bagoas and his Kingdome was translated to Darius Prince of Armenia whom when the same Bagoas went about to make taste of the same cup which his predecessors did he was taken in his owne snare for Darius understanding his pretence made him drinke up his owne poyson which he provided for him and thus murder was revenged with murder and poyson with poyson according to the Decree of the Almighty who saith Eye for eye tooth for tooth c. In the yeare of the World 3659. Morindus a most cruell and bloody minded Prince raigned here in England who for his cruelties sake came to an unhappy and bloody end for out of the Irish seas came forth a Monster which destroyed much people whereof he hearing would of his valiant courage needs fight with it and was devoured of it so that it may truly here be said that one Monster devoured another There was as Aelianus reporteth a cruell and pernicious Tyran who to the end to prevent all practises of conspiracy and treason as Tyrans are ever naturally and upon desert timerous that might be devised against him enacted this Law among his subjects That no man should conferre with another either privately or publikely upon paine of death and so indeed he abrogated all civill society For speech as it was the beginning and birth of fellowship so it is the very joynt and glue thereof but what cared he for society that respected nothing but his owne safety hee was so farre from regarding the common good that when his subjects not daring to speake signified their mindes by signes he prohibited that also and that which is yet more when not daring to speake or yet make signes they fell to weeping and lamenting their misery he came with a band of men even to restraine their teares too but the multitudes rage being justly incensed they gave him such a desperat welcome that neither he nor his followers returned one of them alive And thus his abominable cruelty came to an end together with his life and that by those meanes which is to be observed by which he thought to preserve and maintaine them both Childericus who in the yeare 697 succeeded in the Kingdome of France Theodoricke that for his negligence and sluggish government was deposed and made of a King a Frier exercised barbarous and inhumane cruelty upon his subjects for he spared neither noble or ignoble but mixtly sent them to their graves without respect of cause or justice One of the noble sort he caused to be fastened to a stake and beaten with clubbes not to death but to chastisement which monstrous cruelty so incensed the peoples mind against him that there wanted no hands to take part with this club-beaten man against the Tyran his enemie Wherefore they layed wait for him as he came one day from hunting and murdered him together with his wife great with childe no man either willing or daring to defend him Tymocrates the King or rather Tyran of the Cyrenians will give place to none in this commendation of cruelty For he afflicted his subjects with many and monstrous calamities insomuch that he spared not the priests of his gods which commonly were in reverent regard among the Heathen As the bloody death of Menalippus Apollo's priest did witnesse whom to the end to marry his faire and beautifull wife Aretaphila he cruelly put to death how beit it prospered not with him as he desired for the good woman not contented with this sacrilegious contract sought rather meanes to revenge her first husbands death than to please this new letchers humour Wherefore she assayed by poyson to effect her wish and when that prevailed not she gave a yong daughter she had to Leander the Tyrans brother to wife who loved her exceedingly but with this condition that he should by some practise or other worke the death and destruction of his brother which indeed he performed for he so bribed one of the groomes of the Tyrans chamber that by his helpe he soone rid wicked Tymocrates out of the way by a speedy and deserved death But to abridge these long discourses let us looke into all times and ages and to the histories of all Countries and Nations and we shall finde that Tyrans have ever come to one destruction or other Diomedes the Thracian King fed his horses with mans flesh as with provender but was made at last provender for his owne horses himselfe by Hercules Calippus the Athenian that slew Dion his familiar friend and deposed Dionisius the Tyran and committed many other murders amongst the people was first banished Rheginum and then living in extreame necessity slaine by Leptines and Polysperchon Clephes the second King of the Lumbards for his savage cruelty towards his subjects was slaughtered by one of his friends Damasippus that massacred so many Citizens of Rome was cut off by Scylla Ecelinus that played the Tyran at Taurisium guelding Boyes deflowring Maydes mayming Matrons of their Dugs cutting children out of their mothers bellies and killing 1200 Patavians at once that were his friends was cut short in a battell In a Word if we read and consult Histories of all Countries and times we shall find seldome or never any notorious Tyran and oppressor of his subjects that came to
dreaming of nothing lesse whereat they being at the instant amazed quickly gathered their spirits together and putting themselves in defence fought it out with such courage and eagernesse that the traitors Army was wholly discomfited and he himselfe with one of his sonnes slain The Gothes having gotten this victory broke off their voyage to France and turned their course backe again to Italie with purpose to destroy and spoil and so they did for they laid waste all the Countrey of Piemont and Lumbardy and elsewhere and besieged Rome it selfe so that from that time Italie never ceased to be scourged and tormented with the Gothes for the space of eighteen yeers Moreover whosoever else have been found to follow the steps of these truce peace and promise-breakers void of truth and regard of reputation alwayes underwent worthy punishment for their unworthy acts and fell headlong into confusion and ignominy making themselves subjects worthy to be curst and detested of all men CHAP. XVI Of Queenes that were Murtherers IF these and such like cruelties as we have spoken before be strange and monstrous for men what shall we then say of wicked and bloudy women who contrary to the nature of their sex addict themselves to all violence and bloudshedding as cursed Iezabel Queen of Israel did of whom sufficient hath been spoken before Athaliah Ahabs daughter and wife to Ioram King of Judah was a bird of the same feather for she was possessed with such a spirit of fury and rage that after the death of her son Ochosias that died without issue she put to death all the bloud royall to wit the posterity of Nathan Solomons brother to whom by right of succession the inheritance of the Crown appertained to the end that she might install her selfe into the kingly diadem after this cruell butchery of all the royall male children except Ioas who by Gods providence was preserved alive she usurped the Crowne and Scepter of Juda full seven yeeres at the end of which date Ioas was exalted to the Crowne and she not onely deposed but slain by the hands of her Guard that attended upon her Semiramis the Queen of Assyria was a woman of an ambitious spirit who through her thirst of reigning counterfeited her sex and attired her selfe like a man to get more authority and reverence to her selfe She was the destruction of many thousand people by the unjust war which she stirred up besides that she was a notorious strumpet and withall a murderer of those that satisfied her lust for still as they came from her bed some lay privily in watch to kill them lest they should bewray her villany it is reported that she was so shamelesse that she solicited her owne son to commit incest with her who in detestation of her filthinesse and cruelty raised a power against her and conquering her in one great battell caused her most deservedly to be put to death Brunchild whom Histories call Brunhault a Queen of France by marriage but a Spaniard by birth was a woman that bred much mischiefe in her age and that wrought many horrible and death-deserving crimes for partly with her subtle devices and partly with her owne hands she murdered ten Kings of France one after another she caused her husband to slay his owne brother she procured the death of her nephew Meroveus whom against all equity and honesty she had secondly espoused for her husband for he being hated of his father for that vile incest and perceiving himselfe in danger of taking made one of servants thrust him through After she had committed these and many other foul facts she went aboutalso to defraud Clotairius the son of Chilpericke of the right of the Crowne which pertained unto him and to thrust in another in his room whereupon arose great war in the which as she dealt more boldly and manfully than the condition of her sexe would bear so she received the due wages of her brave and vertuous deeds for she was taken prisoner with three of her nephewes whose throats she saw cut before her face and after her selfe was set upon a Camell and led through the hoste three dayes together every man reviling mocking reproaching and despighting her and at last by the award and judgement of the Princes and Captaines of the Army she was adjudged to be tied by the hair of her head one arme and one foot to the tail of a wilde and unâ—â—med horse and so to be left to his mercy to be drawne miserably to her destruction which was no sooner executed but her miserable carkase the instrument of so many mischiefes was with mens feet spurned bruised trampled and wounded after a most strange fashion and this was the wofull end of miserable Brunchild Edilburga the daughter of Offa King of Mercia in England who was married to Brigthricus King of the West Saxons was a woman so passing all the bounds of humanity and so given to cruelty and other beastly conditions that she first poysoned divers of the Nobles of the Kingdom and then having practised this wickednesse upon them she at length poysoned also the King her husband for which cause flying over into France unto Charles the Great for fear of punishment among her owne people when by reason of her beautie it was offered unto her that she should marry either with the King himselfe or with his son because she chose the son before the father married neither the one nor yet the other but was thrust into a Monastery where she not forgetting her old trade playing the harlot with a Monke was expulsed from thence and ended her life in great penury and misery About the same time that this Edilburga was thus working her feats in England Irene another most idolatrous and cruell minded woman being Emperesse of the Greekes was as busie for her part at Constantinople This wicked woman through the meanes of Pope Adrian took up the body of Constantine Emperour of Constantinople her owne husbands father and when she had burned the same she caused the ashes to be cast into the sea because he disannulled images Afterward reigning with her son Constantine the sixth son to Leo the fourth and being at dissention with him for disallowing the worshipping of images caused him to be taken and laid in prison who afterward through power of friends being restored to his Empire again at last she caused the same her owne son to be cast in prison and his eyes to be put out so cruelly that within short space he died After this the said Emperesse as it were triumphing in her cruelty and idolatry caused a Councell to be held at Nice where it was decreed That images should again be restored to the Church but this Councell was after repealed by another Councell holden at Frankford by Charles the Great and at length this wicked woman was deposed by Nicephorus who reigned after and was expulsed the Empire and after the example of Edilburga
followeth by the order of our subject now to touch the transgression of the third Commandement of the second Table which is Thou shalt not commit Adultery in which words as also in many other Texts of Scripture Adultery is forbidden and grievous threatnings denounced against all those that defile their bodies with filthy and impure actions estrange themselves from God and conjoyne themselves to whores and ribauds This sin did the Israelites commit with the woman of Madian by means whereof they were to follow strange gods and to fall into Gods heavie displeasure who by a cruell Plague destroyed 24000. of them for the same sin And forasmuch as the Madianites through the wicked and pernicious counsell of Balaam did lay this snare for them and were so villanous and shamelesse as to prostitute and be Bauds to their owne wives therefore they were by the expresse Commandement of God discomfited their Kings and false prophets with all their men and women except onely their unpolluted virgins that had knowne no man slain and all their Cities and dwellings burned and consumed to ashes As every one ought to have regard and care to their honesty so maides especially whose whole credit and reputation hangeth thereupon for they that make no account thereof but suffer themselves to be polluted with any filthinesse draw upon them not onely most vile infamy but also many great miseries as is proved by the daughter of Hippomenes Prince of Athens who being a whore her father shut up in a stable with a wilde horse giving him no provender nor other meat to eat that the horse naturally furious enough but more enraged by famine might tear her in pieces and with her carkase refresh his hunger as he did Pontus Aufidian understanding that his daughter had been betrayed and sold into a lechers hands by a slave of his that was her schoolmaster put them both to death In like manner served Pub. Atilius Falisque his daughter that fell into the same infamy Vives reporteth that in our fathers dayes two brothers of Arragon perceiving their sister whom they ever esteemed for honest to be with childe hiding their displeasure untill her delivery was past came in suddenly and stabbed her into the belly with their daggers till they killed her in the presence of a sage matron that was witnesse to their deed The same Authour saith That when he was a young man there were three in the same Countrey that conspired the death of a companion of theirs that went about to commit this villany and as they conspired so they performed it strangling him to death with a napkin as he was going to his filthinesse As for Adulterers examples are infinite both of their wicked lives and miserable ends In which number many of them may be scored that making profession of a single life and undertaking the vow of chastity shew themselves monstrous knaves and ribauds as many of the Popes themselves have done As we reade of Iohn the Eleventh bastard son to Lando his predecessour who by meanes of his Adulteries with Theodora then Governesse of Rome came by degrees to the Papacy so he passed the blessed time of his holy Popeship with this vertuous Dame to whom he served instead of a common Horse to satisfie her insatiable and disordinate lust but the good and holy father was at last taken and castin prison and there smothered to death with a pillow Benedict the Eleventh diâ—ing on a time with an Abbesse his familiar was poysoned with certain figs that he eat Clement the Fifth was reported to be a common Bawd and a protectour of whores he went apart into Avignion and there stayed of purpose to do nothing but whore-hunt he died in great torment of the bloudy flux plurisie and grief of the stomacke In our English Chronicles we reade of Sir Roger Mortimer Earl of March in the time of Edward the Third who having secret familiarity with Isabel Edward the Seconds wife was not onely the cause to stir her up to make war against her husband but also when he was vanquished by her and deposed from his Crowne his young son being installed in his Throne caused him most cruelly to be put to death by thrusting a hot spit into his body at his fundament He also procured the Earle of Kent the Kings uncle to be arraigned and beheaded at Winchester for that he withstood the Queenes and his dealings and would not suffer them to do what they listed All these mischiefes sprung out from the filthy root of Adultery But the just judgement of God not permitting such odious crimes to be unpunished nor undetected it so fell forth at the length that Isabel the old Queen was discovered to be with childe by the said Mortimer whereof complaint being made to the King as also of the killing of King Edward his father and conspiring and procuring the death of the Earle of Kent the Kings uncle he was arreigned and indicted and by verdict found guilty and suffered death accordingly like a Traitor his head being exalted upon London-bridge for a spectacle for all murderers and adulterers to behold that they might see and fear the heavy vengeance of God CHAP. XXI Of Rapes NOw if Adultery which with liking and consent of parties is committed be condemned how much more grievous and hainous is the offence and more guilty the offendour when with violence the chastity of any iâ— assailed and enforced This was the sin wherewith Sichem the son of Hemor the Levite is marked in holy Scripture for he ravished Dina Iacobs daughter for which cause Simeon and Levi revenged the injury done unto their sister upon the head of not onely him and his father but all the Males that were in the City by putting them to the sword It was a custome amongst the Spartans and Messenians during the time of peace betwixt them to send yearly to one another certain of their daughters to celebrate certain feasts and sacrifices that were amongst them now in continuance of time it chanced that fifty of the Lacedemonian virgins being come to those solemne feasts were pursued by the Messenian gallants to have their pleasures of them but they joyntly making resistance and fighting for their honesties strove so long not one yeelding themselves a prey into their hands till they all died whereupon arose so long and miserable a war that all the Countrey of Messena was destroyed thereby Aristoclides a Tyran of Orchomenus a City of Arcadia fell enamored with a maid of Stymphalis who seeing her father by him slain because he seemed to stand in his purposes light fled to the Temple of Diana to take Sanctuary neither could once be plucked from the image of the goddesse untill her life was taken from her but her death so incensed the Arcadians that they fell to Armes and sharpely revenged her cruell injury Appius a Roman a man of power and authority in the City inflamed with the love of a virgine
whose father hight Virginius would needs make her his servant to the end to abuse her the more freely and whilest he endeavoured with all his power and policy to accomplish his immoderate lust her father slew her with his owne hands more willing to prostitute her to death than to so soul an opprobry and disgrace but every man stirred up with the wofulnesse of the event with one consent pursued apprehended and imprisoned the foul lecher who fearing the award of a most shamefull death killed himselfe to prevent a further mischief In the year of our Lord 1271. under the Raigne of the Emperour Rodolph the Sicilians netled and enraged with the horrible whoredomes adulteries and Rapes which the Garrisons that had the government over them committed not able any longer to endure their insolent and outragious demeanour entered a secret and common conspiracy upon a time appointed for the purpose which was on Easter Sunday at the shutting in of the evening to set upon them with one accord and to murder so many as they could as they did for at that instant they massacred so many throughout the whole Island that of all the great multitude there survived not one to bear tidings or bewail the dead At Naples it chanced in the Kings Palace as young King Fredericke Ferdinands son entered the Privy Chamber of the Queen his mother to salute her and the other Ladies of the Court that the Prince of Bissenio waiting in the outward chamber for his returne was slain by one of his owne servants that suddenly gave him with his sword three deadly strokes in the presence of many beholders which deed he confessed he had watched three yeares to performe in regard of an injury done unto his sister and in her to him whom he ravished against her will The Spaniards that first took the Isle Hispaniola were for their whoredomes and Rapes which they committed upon the wives and virgines all murdered by the inhabitants The inhabitants of the Province Cumana when they saw the beastly outrage of the Spanish Nation that lay along their Coasts to fish for Pearle in forcing and ravishing without difference their women young and old set upon them upon a Sunday morning with all their force and slew all that ever they found by the Sea-coasts Westward till there remained not one alive and the fury of the rude uncivill people was so great that they spared not the Monkes in their Cloysters but cut their throats as they were mumbling their Masses burnt up the Spanish houses both religious and private burst in pieces their bels drew about their Images hurld downe their Crucifixes and cast them in disgrace and contempt overthwart their streets to be troden upon nay they destroyed whatsoever belonged unto them to their very dogs and hennes and their owne countrymen that served them in any service whether religious or other they spared not they beat the earth and cursed it with bitter curses because it had upholden such wicked and wretched Caitises Now the report of this massacre was so fearfull and terrible that the Spaniards which were in Cubagna doubted much of their lives also and truly not without great cause for if the Indians of the Continent had been furnished and provided with sufficient store of barkes they had passed even into that Island and had served them with the same sauce which their fellowes were served with for they wanted not will but ability to do it And these are the goodly fruits of their Adulteries and Rapes which the Spanish Nation hath reaped in their new-found land The great calamity and overthrow which the Lacedemonians indured at Lectria wherein their chiefest strength and powers were weakened and consumed was a manifest punishment of their inordinate lust committed upon two virgins whom after they had ravished in that very place they cut in pieces and threw them into a pit and when their father came to complain him of the villany they made so light account of his words that in stead of redresse he found nothing but reproach and derision so that with grief he slew himselfe upon his daughters sepulchre but how grievously the Lord revenged this injury Histories do sufficiently testifie and that Leuctrian calamity doth bear witnesse Brias a Grecian Captain being received into a Citizens house as a guest forced his wife by violence to his lust but when he was asleep to revenge her wrong she put out both his eyes and afterward complained to the Citizens also who deprived him of his Office and cast him out of their City Macrinus the Emperour punished two Souldiers that ravished their Hostesse on this manner he shut them up in an Oxes bowels with their heads out and so partly with famishment and partly with wormes and rottennesse they consumed to death Rodericus King of the Gothes in Spain forced an Earles daughter to his lust for which cause her father brought against him an Army of Sarasens and Moores and not onely slew him with his son but also quite extinguished the Gothicke kingdom in Spain in this war and upon this occasion seven hundred thousand men perished as Histories record and so a kingdom came to ruine by the perverse lust of one lecher Anno 714. At the sacking and destruction of Thebes by King Alexander a Thracian Captain which was in the Macedonian Army took a noble Matron prisoner called Timoclea whom when by no perswasion of promises he could intice to his lust he constrained by force to yeeld unto it but this noble minded woman invented a most witty and subtle shift both to rid her selfe out of his hands and to revenge his injury she told him that she knew where a rich treasure lay hid in a deep pit whither when with greedinesse of the gold he hastened and standing upon the brinke pried and peered into the bottome of it she thrust him with both her hands into the hole and tumbled stones after him that he might never finde meanes to come forth for which fact she was brought before Alexander to have justice who demanding her what she was she answered that Theagenes who led the Thebane Army against the Macedonians was her brother Alexander perceiving the marvellous constancy of the woman and knowing the cause of her accusation to be unjust manumitted and set her free with her whole Family When Câ— Manlius having conquered the Gallo-Grecians pitched his Army against the Tectosages people of Narbonia towards the Pyrene monntaines amongst other prisoners a very fair woman wife to Orgiagous Regulus was in the custody of a Centurion that was both lustfull and covetous this lecher tempted her first with fair perswasions and seeing her unwilling compelled her with violence to yeeld her body as slave to fortune so to infamy and dishonour after which act somewhat to mitigate the wrong he gave her promise of release and freedom upon condition of a certain sum of money and to that purpose sent
be whereof all they are guilty that either make up such Marriages or give their good will or consent to them or do not hinder the cause and proceedings of them if any manner of way they can Now that this confusion and mixture of Religion in Marriages is unpleasant and noysom to God it manifestly appeareth Gen. 6. where it is said that because the sonnes of God to wit those whom God had separated for himselfe from the beginning of the world to be his peculiar ones were so evill advised as to be allured with the beauties of the daughters of men to wit of those which were not chosen of God to be his people and to marry with them corrupting themselves by this contagious acquaintance of prophane people with whom they should have had nothing to do that therefore God was incensed against them and resolved simply to revenge the wickednesse of each party without respect Beside the monstrous fruits of those prophane Marriages do sufficiently declare their odiousnesse in Gods sight for from them arose gyants of strength and stature exceeding the proportion of men who by their hugenesse did much wrong and violence in the world and gained fearfull and terrible names to themselves but God provoked by their oppressions drowned their tyrannies in the Floud and made an end of the world for their sakes In the time of the Judges in Israel the Israelites were chastised by the hand of God for this same fault for they tooke to wives the daughters of the uncircumcised and gave them their daughters also In like sort framed they themselves by this meanes to their corrupt manners and superstitions and to the service of their Idolatrous gods but the Lord of heaven raigned downe anger upon their heads and made them subject to a stranger the King of Mesopotamia whom they served the space of eight yeares Looke what hapned to King Solomon for giving his heart to strange women that were not of the houshold of Gods people he that before was replenished with such admirable wisdome that he was the wonder of the world was in his olde age deprived thereof and besotted with a kinde of dulnesse of understanding and led aside from the true knowledge of God to serve Idols and to build them Altars and Chappels for their worship and all this to please forsooth his wives humours whose acquaintance was the chiefe cause of his misery and Apostasie CHAP. XXIV Touching incestuous Marriages NOw as it is unlawfull to contract marriages with parties of contrary religion so it is as unlawfull to marry those that are neare unto us by any degree of kindred or affinity as it is inhibited not only by the law of God but also by civill and politique constitutions whereunto all nations have ever by the sole instinct of nature agreed and accorded except the Aegyptians and Persians whose abhominations were so great as to take their owne sisters and mothers to be their wives Cambyses King of Media and Persia married his owne sister but it was not long ere he put her to death a just proofe of an unjust and accursed marriage Many others there were in protract of time that in their insatiable lusts shewed themselves no lesse unstaied and unbriedled in their lawlesse affections then he One of which was Antigonus King of Judea son of Herodes sirnamed Great who blushed not to marry his sister the late wife of his deceased brother Alexander by whom she had borne two children but for this and divers other his good deeds he lost not only his goods which were confiscated but was himselfe also banished out of his countrey into a forraine place from Judea to Vienna in France Herod also the Tetrarch was so impudent and shamelesse that he tooke from his brother Philip his wife Herodias and espoused her unto himselfe which shamelesse and incestuous deed Iohn Baptist reproving in him told him plainly how unlawfull it was for him to possesse his brothers wise but the punishment which befell him for this and many other his sins we have heard in the former booke and need not here to be repeated Anton. Caracalla tooke to wife his mother in law allured thereunto by her faire enticements whose wretched and miserable end hath already been touched in the former booke The Emperour Heraclius after the decease of his first wife married his owne neece the daughter of his brother which turned mightily to his undoing for besides that that under his raigne and as it were by his occasion the Saracens entred the borders of Christendome and spoiled and destroyed his dominions under his nose to his foule and utter disgrace he was over and above smitten corporally with so grievous and irksome a disease of dropsie that he dyed thereof Thus many men run ryot by assuming to themselves too much liberty and breake the bounds of civill honesty required in all Contracts and too audaciously set themselves against the commandement of God which ought to be of such authority with all men that none be they never so great should dare to derogate one jot from them unlesse they meant wholly to oppose themselves as profest enemies to God himselfe and to turne all the good order of things into confusion All which notwithstanding some of the Romish Popes have presumed to encroach upon Gods right and to disanull by their foolish decrees the lawes of the Almighty As Alexander the sixth did who by his Bull approved the incestuous marriage of Ferdinand King of Naples with his owne Aunt his father Alphonsus sister by the fathers side which otherwise saith Cardinall Bembus had been against all law and equity and in no case to be tollerated and borne withall Henry the seventh King of England after the death of his eldest son Arthur caused by the speciall dispensation of Pope Iulius his next son named Henry to take to wife his brothers widdow called Katherine daughter to Ferdinando King of Spaine for the desire he had to have this Spanish affinity continued who succeeding his father in the Crowne after continuance of time began to advise himselfe and to consult whether this marriage with his brothers wife were lawfull or no and found it by conference both of holy and prophane lawes utterly unlawfull whereupon he sent certaine Bishops to the Queene to give her to know That the Popes dispensation was altogether unjust and of none effect to priviledge such an act to whom she answered That it was too late to call in question the Popes Bull which so long time they had allowed of The two Cardinals that were in Commission from the Pope to decide the controversie and to award judgement upon the matter were once upon point to conclude the decree which the King desired had not the Pope impeached their determination in regard of the Emperour Charles nephew to the said Queene whom he was loath to displease wherefore the King seeing himselfe frustrate of his purpose in this behalfe sent into divers
the sonne and Tarquinius the father that they rebelled forthwith and when he should enter the City shut the gates against him neither would receive or acknowledge him ever after for their King Whereupon ensued war abroad and alteration of the state at homeâ— for after that time Rome endured no more King to beare rule over them but in their roome created two Consuls to be their governours which kinde of government continued to Iulius Caesars time Thus was Tarquinius the father shamefully deposed from his crowne for the adultery or rather rape of his son and Tarquinius the son slaine by the Sabians for the robberies and murders which by his fathers advice he committed against them and he himselfe not long after in the war which by the Tuscane succours he renued against Rome to recover his lost estate was discomfited with them and slaine in the middest of the rout In the Emperour Valentinianus time the first of that name many women of great account and parentage were for committing adultery put to death as testifieth Ammianus Marcellinus When Europe after the horrible wasting and great ruines which it suffered by the furious invasion of Attila began to take a little breath and finde some ease behold a new trouble more hurtfull and pernitious than the former came upon it by meanes of the filthy lechery and lust of the Emperour Valentinianus the third of that name who by reason of his evill bringing up and government under his mother Placidia being too much subject to his owne voluptuousnesse and tyed to his owne desires dishonoured the wife of Petronius Maximus a Senatour of Rome by forcing her to his pleasure an act indeed that cost him his life and many more beside and that drew after it the finall destruction of the Romane Empire and the horrible besacking and desolation of the City of Rome For the Emperour being thus taken and set on fire with the love of this woman through the excellent beauty wherewith she was endued endeavoured first to entice her to his lust by faire allurements and seeing that the bulwarke of her vertuous chastity would not by this meanes be shaken but that all his pursute was still in vaine he tryed a new course and attempted to get her by deceit and policie which to bring about one day setting himselfe to play with her husband Maximus he won of him his Ring which he no sooner had but secretly he sent it to his wife in her husbands name with this commandement That by that token she should come presently to the Court to doe her duty to the Empresse Eudoxia she seeing her husbands Ring doubted nothing but came forthwith as she was commanded where whilest she was entertained by certaine suborned women whom the Emperour had set on he himselfe commeth in place and discloseth unto her his whole love which he said he could no longer represse but must needes satisfie if not by faire meanes at least by force and compulsion and so he constrained her to his lust Her husband advertised hereof intended to revenge this injury upon the Emperour with his owne hand but seeing he could not execute his purpose whilest Actius the Captaine Generall of Valentinianus army lived a man greatly reverenced and feared for his mighty and famous exploits atchieved in the wars against the Burgundians Gothes and Attila he found meanes by suggesting a false accusation of treason against him which made him to be hated and suspected of the Emperour to worke his death After that Actius was thus traiterously and unworthily slaine the griefe of infinite numbers of people for him in regard of his great vertues and good service which he had done to the Commonwealth gave Maximusâ—it â—it occasion to practise the Emperours destruction and that by this meanes He set on two of Actius most faithfull followers partly by laying before them the unworthy death of their master and partly by presents and rewards to kill the Emperour which they performed as hee was sitting on his seat of judgement in the sight of the whole multitude among whom there was not one found that would oppose himselfe to Maximus in his defence save one of his Eunuchs who stepping betwixt to save his life lost his owne and the amazement of the whole City with this sudden accident was so great that Maximus having revenged himselfe thus upon the Emperour without much adoe not only seised upon the Empire but also upon the Empresse Eudoxia and that against her will to be his wife for his owne dyed but a little before Now the Empresse not able to endure so vile an indignity being above measure passionate with griefe and desire of revenge conspired his destruction on this manner She sent secretly into Africa to solicite and request most instantly Gensericus King of the Vandales by prayers mingled with presents to come to deliver her and the City of Rome from the cruell tyranny of Maximus and to revenge the thrice unjust murder of her husband Valentinian adding moreover that he was bound to doe no lesse in consideration of the league of friendship which by oath was confirmed betwixt them Gensericus well pleased with these newes laid hold upon the offered occasion which long time hee had more wished than hoped for and forthwith being already tickled with hope of a great and inestimable booty rigged his ships and made ready his armie by Sea lanching forth with three hundred thousand men Vandales and Moores and with this huge fleete made straight for Rome Maximus meane while mistrusting no such matter especially from those parts was sore affrighted at the sudden brute of their comming and not yet understanding the full effect of the matter perceiving the whole Citty to bee in dismay and that not only the common people but also the Nobilitie had for feare forsaken their houses and fled to the Mountaines or Forrests for safety hee I say destitute of succour tooke himselfe also to his heeles as his surest refuge but all could not serve to rid him from the just vengeance of God prepared for him for the murders which hee had beene cause of for certaine Senatours of Rome his private and secret foes finding him alone in the way of his flight and remembring their olde quarrels fell upon him suddenly and felled him downe with stones and after mangled him in pieces and threw his body into Tiber. Three dayes after arrived Gensericus with all his forces and entering Rome found it naked of all defence and left to his owne will and discretion where albeit he professed himselfe to be a Christian yet he shewed more pride and cruelty and lesse pitty than either Attila or Allaricus two heathen Kings For having given his souldiers the pillage of the City they not only spoiled all private houses but also the Temples and Monasteries in most cruell and riotous manner All the best and beautifullest things of the City they took away and carried a huge multitude of people
notoriously and fearefully manifested therein that when the holy Ghost would strike a terrour into the most wicked he threateneth them with this like punishment saying The Lord will raine upon each wicked one Fire snares and brimstone for their portion Howbeit this maketh not but that still there are too many such monsters in the World so mightily is it corrupted and depraved neither is it any marvell seeing that divers Bishops of Rome that take upon them to be Christs Vicars and Peters successours are infected with this filthy contagion As namely Pope Iulius the third whose custome was to promote none to Ecclesiasticall livings save only his buggerers Amongst whom was one Innocent whom this holy father contrary to the Suffrages of the whole Colledge would needs make Cardinall nay the unsatiable and monstrous lust of this beastly and stinking goat was so extraordinary that he could not abstaine from many Cardinals themselves Iohn de la Casae a Florentine by birth and by office Archbishop of Benevento and Deane of his Apostaticall chamber was his Legat and Intelligencer in all the Venetian Seigniories a man equall or rather worse then himselfe and such a one as whose memory ought to be accursed of all posterity for that detestable booke which he composed in commendation and praise of Sodomie and was so shamelesse nay rather possessed with some devillish and uncleane spirit as to divulgate it to the view of the world Here you may see poore soules the holinesse of those whom you so much reverence and upon whom you build your beliefe and religion you see their brave and excellent vertues and of what esteeme their lawes and ordinances ought to be amongst you Now touching the end that this holy father made it is declared in the former booke among the ranke of Atheists where we placed him And albeit that he and such like villaines please their owne humours with their abominations and approve and cleare themselves therein yet are they rewarded by death not only by the law of God but also by the law of Iulia. When Charlemaigne reigned in France there happened a most notable judgement of God upon the Monkes of S. Martin in Tours for their disordinate lusts they were men whose food was too much and dainty whose case was too easie and whose pleasures were too immoderate being altogether addicted to pastimes and merriments in their apparell they went clad in silke like great Lords and as Nichol. Gill. in his first Volume of French Chronicles saith their shooes were gilt over with Gold so great was the super fluity of their riches and pride in summe their whole life was luxurious and infamous for which cause there came forth a destroying Angel from the Lord by the report of Budes the Abbot of Clugnie and slew them all in one night as the first born of Aegypt were slaine save one only person that was preserved as Lot in Sodome was preserved This strange accident moved Charlemaigne to appoint a brotherhood of Canons to be in their roome though little better and as little profitable to their Commonwealth as the former It is not for nothing that the law of God forbiddeth to lie with a beast and denounceth death against them that commit this foule sin for there have been such monsters in the world at some times as we reade in Calius and Volaterranus of one Crathes a shepheard that accompanied carnally with a shee Goat but the Buck finding him sleeping offended and provoked with this strange action ran at him so furiously with his hornes that he left him dead upon the ground God that opened an Asses mouth to reprove the madnesse of the false Prophet Balaam and sent Lions to kill the strange inhabitants of Samaria employed also this Buck about his service in executing just vengeance upon a wicked varlet CHAP. XXXV Of the wonderfull evill that ariseth from this greedinesse of lust IT is to good reason that Scripture forbids us to abstain from the lust of the flesh and the eyes which is of the world and the corruption of mans own nature forsomuch as by it we are drawn to evill it being as it were a corrupt root which sendeth forth most bitter sowre and rotten fruit and this hapneth not only when the goods riches of the world are in quest but also when a man hunteth after dishonest and unchaste delights this concupiscence is it that bringeth forth whoredomes adulteries and many other such sinnes whereout spring forth oftentimes flouds of mischiefes and that divers times by the selfe-will and inordinate desire of private and particular persons what did the lawlesse lust of Potiphars Wife bring upon Ioseph Was not his life indangered and his body kept in close prison where he cooled his feet two yeares or more We have a most notable example of the miserable end of a certain woman with the sacking and destruction of a whole City and all caused by her intemperance and unbridled lust About the time that the Emperour Phocas was slain by Priscus one Gysulphus Governour and Chieftain of a Countrey in Lumbardy going out in defence of his Countrey against the Bavarians which were certaine reliques of the Hunnes gave them battell and lost the field and his life withall Now the Conquerours pursuing their victory laid siege to the chief City of his Province where Romilda his Wife made her abode who viewing one day from the wals the young and fair King with yellow curled lockes galloping about the City fell presently so extreamly in love with him that her minde ran of nothing but satisfying her greedy and new conceived lust wherefore burying in oblivion the love of her late husband with her young infants yet living and her Countrey and preferring her owne lust before them all she sent secretly unto him this message That if he would promise to marry her she would deliver up the City into his hands he well pleased with this gentle offer through a desire of obtaining the City which without great bloudshed and losse of men he could not otherwise compasse accepted of it and was received upon this condition within the wals and lest he should seeme too perfidious he performed his promise of marriage and made her his wife for that one night but soone after in scorne and disdaine he gave her up to twelve of his strongest lechers to glut her unquenchable fire and finally nailed her on a gibbet for a finall reward of her treâ—cherous and boundlesse lust Marke well the misery whereinto this wretched woman threw her selfe and not only her selfe but a whole City also by her boiling concupiscence which so dazled her understanding that she could not consider how undecent it was dishonest and inconvenient for a woman to offer her selfe nay to solicite a man that was an enemie a stranger and one that she had never seen before to her bed and that to the utter undoing of her selfe and all hers But even thus
many more whose hearts are passionate with love are blindfolded after the same sort like as poeticall Cupid is fained to be that not knowing what they take in hand they fall headlong into destruction ere they be aware Let us then be here advertised to pray unto God that he would purifie our drossie hearts and divert our wandring eyes from beholding vanity to be seduced thereby CHAP. XXXVI Of unlawfull gestures Idlenesse Gluttony Drunkennesse Dancing and other such like dissolutenesse LIke as if we would carry our selves chastly and uprightly before God it behoveth us to avoid all filthinesse and adultery so we must abstain from uncivill and dishonest gestures which are as it were badges of concupiscence and coales to set lust on fire and instruments to injure others withall From hence it was that Pompey caused one of his souldiers eyes to be put out in Spaine for thrusting his hand under a womans garment that was a Spaniard and for the same or like offence did Sertorius command a footman of his band to be cut in pieces O that we had in these daies such minded captaines that would sharply represse the wrongs and ravishments which are so common and usuall amongst men of war at this day and so uncontrolled they would not then doubtlesse be so rise and common as in these daies they are Kissing is no lesse to be eschewed than the former if it be not betwixt those that are tyed together by some bond of kindred or affinity as it was by antient custome of the Medes and Persians and Romanes also according to the report of Plutarch and Seneca and that which is more Tiberius Caesar forbad the often and daily practise thereof in that kinde as a thing not to be freqented but rather utterly abhorred though it be amongst kinsfolkes themselves It was esteemed an indignity among the Graecians to kisse any maid that was not in blood or assinity allyed unto them as it manifestly appeareth by the earnest suit and request of the wife of Pisistratus the Tyran of Athens to put to death a young man for kissing her daughter in the streets as he met her although it was nothing but love that moved him thereto Saint Augustine also affirmeth That he which wantonly kisseth a woman that is not his wife deserveth the whip It is true that the holy Scripture often mentioneth kissing but either betwixt father and childe or brethren or kinsfolkes or at least in a manner of salutation betwixt one another of acquaintance according to the custome of the people of God and sometimes also it is mentioned as a token of honour and reverence which the subject performeth to his superiour in this action In the former ages Christians used to kisse also but so that it was ever betwixt parties of acquaintance and in such sort that by this manner of greeting they testified to each other their true and sincere charity peace and union of heart and soule in the Lord. Such chearings and loving embracings were pure and holy not lascivious and wanton like the kisses of prophane and leacherous wretches and strumpets whereof Solomon maketh mention Furthermore every man ought to shun all meanes and occasions which may induce or entice them to uncleanenesse and amongst the rest especially Idlenesse which cannot chuse but be as it were a wide doore and passage for many vices to enter by as by experience we see in those that occupy themselves about no good nor profitable exercises but mispend their time in trifling and doing nothing and their wits either upon vaine and foolish conceit to the hurt of others or upon lascivious and unchaste thoughts to their owne overthrow whereas on the contrary to them that are well employed either in body or minde no such thing betideth wherefore wee ought to be here advertised every one of us to apply our selves to some honest and seemly trade answerable to our divers and severall estates and conditions and not to suffer our selves to be overgrowne with Idlenesse lest thereby we fall into mischiefe for whom the adversary that malicious and wicked one findeth in that case he knowes well how to fit them to his purpose and to set them about filthy and pernitious services Next to idlenesse the too much pampering the body with dainty and much food is to be eschewed for like as a fat and well fed horse winceth and kicketh against his rider so the pampered flesh rebelleth against God and a mans owne selfe This fulnesse of bread and abundance of â—â—shly delights was the cause of the destruction of Sodome and Gomorrah and therefore our Saviour to good purpose warneth us to take heed to our selves that we be not oppressed with surfetting and drunkennesse and the Apostle to take no thought for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof but to walke honestly not being given to gluttony and drunkennesse chambering and wantonnesse and in another place not to be drunke with wine wherein is excesse for besides the losse of time and mispence of goods the grievous diseases and pangs of the body and dulling and besotting of the wit which spring from intemperance many other great evils depend and wait thereon as whoredomes adulteries uncleannesses quarrels debates murders with many other such like disorders and mischiefes Noah that holy Patriarch by drinking too much wine not only discovered his owne shame but also was the occasion of that cruell curse which the Lord sent upon the posterity of Cham which even to this day lyeth heavy upon them Lot though he hated the sin of Sodome and escaped the punishment of Sodome yet being overcome with the wine of the mountaines he committed incest with his owne daughters and made a new Sodome of his owne family Balthasar rioting and revelling amongst his pots had the end both of life and kingdome denounced against him by a bodilesse hand-writing upon the wall the Lords decree Whilest Holofernes besotted his sences with excesse of wine and good cheare Iudith found meanes to cut off his head The Emperours Septimius Severus and Iovinianus dyed with eating and drinking too much Likewise a certaine African called Donitius overcharged his stomacke with so much food at supper that he dyed therewith Gregory of Tours reporteth of Childericke a Saxon that glutted himselfe so full of meat and drink over night that in the morning he was found choked in his bed In our memory there was a Priest in Rovergne neare Milan that dining with a rich farmer for his yeares dinner cheared himselfe so well and filled his belly so full that it burst in two and he dyed suddenly Alexander the great having invited many of his favourites and captaines to supper propounded a crowne in reward to him that should drinke most now the greatest drinker swallowed up foure steanes of wine and woon the prize being in value worth six hundred crownes but lost his life a jewell of greater
the squadron of Switzers now joyned to the French in attire and armour like a Switzer thinking by this tricke to save his life but all his counterfeiting could not save him from being taken and from lying ten yeares prisoner in the Tower of Loches where he also died and so all his high and ambitious thoughts which scarcely Italie could containe were pend up in a strait and narrow roome With the like turbulent and furious spirit of ambition have many Roman Bishops been inspired who what by their jugling trickes cousenages and subtill devises and what by force have prospered so well that of simple Bishops which they were wont to be they are growne temporall Lords and as it were Monarchs having in their possessions lands cities castles fortresses havens garrisons and guards after the manner of Kings nay they have exalted themselves above Kings so intollerable is their impudence and made them subject to their wils and yet they call themselves the Apostles pedigree whom Christ forbad all such domination But what of that It pertaineth not to them to succeed in vertue but in authoritie the Apostles for if that charge had concerned them then Pope Lucius the second would never have beene so shamelesse as to request in right of his Popeship the soveraigntie over Rome as hee did neither when it was denyed him to have gone about to usurpe it by force and to bring his minde about to have layed siege to the Senat house with armed men to the end that either by banishing or murdering the Senatours then assembled together he might invest himselfe with the Kingly dignitie but what got he by it Marry this the people being in an uprore in the Citie upon the sight of this holy fathers proud attempt tooke themselves to armes and ran with such violence upon master Pope that they forthwith stoned his Holinesse to death but not like Stephen the Martyr for the profession of Christ Iesus but like a vile and seditious theefe for seeking the Common-wealths overthrow Pope Adrian the fourteenth a monkes sonne succeeding Lucius both in the Papacie and also in ambition tooke in hand his omitted enterprises for he excommunicated the Romanes untill they had banished Arnold a Bishop that gave them counsell to retaine the power of electing their magistrate and governing their citie in their hands a thing repugnant to his intent and after hee had degraded the Consuls to make his part the stronger he caused the Emperour Fredericke to come with an armie to the citie whom notwithstanding hee handled but basely for his paines for hee did not onely checke him openly for standing on his feet and holding the stirrop of his horse with his left hand but also denied him the crowne of the Empire except hee would restore to him Poville which he said pertained unto him how beit he got the Crowne notwithstanding and before his returne from Rome into Germanie more than a thousand citizens that would not yeeld nor subscribe unto the Popes will were slaine After Frederickes departure the Pope seeing himselfe destitute of his further aid first excommunicated the King of Sicilie that in right of inheritance possessed the foresaid Poville but when this served him to small purpose he practised with Emanuel the Emperour of Greece to set upon him which thing turned to his finall confusion After this through his intollerable pride hee fell out with Fredericke the Emperour and to revenge himselfe upon him discharged his subjects from their fealtie to him and him from his authoritie over them Now marke his end As he walked one day towards Aviane a flie got in at his mouth and downe his throat so farre that it stopped the conduit of his breath so that for all that his physitions could do hee was choked therewith And thus he that sought by all the meanes he could to make himselfe greater than he ought to be and to get the masterie of every thing at his owne will and pleasure and to take away other mens rights by force was cut short and rebated by a small and base creature and constrained to leave this life which he was most unworthy of Hither may be referred that which befell the Emperour Albert Duke of Austria and one of his lievtenants in Switzerland for going about to usurpe and appropriat certaine lands and dominions to him which belonged not unto him This Emperour had many children whom he desired to leave rich and mighty and therefore by all meanes possible he endeavoured to augment his living even by getting from other men whatsoever he could and amongst all the rest this was one especiall practise wherein he laboured tooth and nayle to alienate from the Empire the land of the Switzers and to leave it for an everlasting inheritance to his heires which although the Switzers would in no case condiscend nor agree unto but contrariwise sued earnestly unto his Majesty for the maintenance of their antient liberties and priviledges which were confirmed unto them by the former Emperors and that they might not be distracted from the Empire yet notwithstanding were constrained to undergo for a season the yoke of most grievous tyranny and servitude imposed by force upon them and thus the poore communaltie indured many mischiefes and many grievous and cruell extortions and indignities at the hands of the Emperours officers whilest they lived in this wretched and miserable estate Amongst the rest there was one called Grislier that began to erect a strong fort of defence upon a little hill neere unto Altorfe to keepe the countrey in greater awe and subjection and desiring to descrie his friends from his foes he invented this devise He put a hat upon the end of a long pole and placed it in the field before Altorfe where were great multitudes of people with this commandement That everie one that came by should do but dieth ere he awaketh so mony taken in usurie delighteth and contenteth at the first but it infecteth all his possessions and sucketh out the marrow of them ere it be long Seeing then it is abhominable both by the law of God and nature let us shun it as a toad and flie from it as a cockatrice But when these persuasions will not serve let them turne their eyes to these examples following wherein they shall see the manifest indignation of God upon it In the Bishopricke of Collen a notable famous Usurer lying upon his death-bed ready to die moved up and downe his chaps and his lips as if he had bin eating something in his mouth and beeing demanded what hee eat hee answered his money and that the divell thrust it in his mouth perforce so that hee could neither will nor chuse but devour it in which miserable temptation he died without any shew of repentance The same author telleth of another Usurer that a little before his death called for his bags of gold and silver and offered them all to his soule upon condition it would not forsake
the woman asked her before them all whether she durst say that he had ravished her to whom she replyed yea I sweare and vow that thou hast done it for shee supposed it to have beene Athanasius whom shee never saw whereat the whole Synod perceived the cavill of the lying Arrians and quitted the innocency of that good man Howbeit these malicious hereticks seeing this practise not to succeed invented another worse then the former for they accused him to have slaine one Arsenius whom they themselves kept secret and that hee carried one of his hands about him wherewith he wrought miracles by enchantment but Arsenius touched by the spirit of God stole away from them and came to Athanasius to the end he should receive no damage by his absence whom he brought in to the Judges and shewed them both his hands confounded his accusers with shame of their malice insomuch as they ranne away for feare and satisfied the Judges both of his integrity and their envious calumniation the chiefe Broker of all this mischiefe was Stephanus Bishop of Antioch but he was degraded from his Bishopricke and Leontius elected in his roome In our English Chronicles we have recorded a notable history to the like effect of King Canutus the Dane who after much trouble being established in the Kingdome of England caused a Parliament to bee held at London where amongst other things there debated it was propounded to the Bishops Barons and Lords of that Assembly Whether in the composition made betwixt Edmond and Canutus any speciall remembrance was made for the children or brethren of Edmond touching any partition of any part of the land which the English Lords flattering the king though falsly and against the truth yea and against their owne consciences denied to be and not onely so but for the Kings pleasure confirmed their false words with a more false oath that to the uttermost of their powers they would put off the bloud of Edmond from all right and interest by reason of which oath and promise they thought to have purchased with the King great favour but by the just retribution of God it chanced farre otherwise for many of them or the most part especially such as Canutus perceived to have sworne fealtie before time to Edmond and his heires he mistrusted and disdained ever after insomuch that some he exiled many he beheaded and divers by Gods just judgement died suddenly In the Scottish Chronicles we read how Hamilton the Scot was brought unto his death by the false accusation of a false Frier called Campbel who being in the fire ready to be executed cited and summoned the said Frier to appeare before the high God as generall Judge of all men to answer to the innocency of his death and whether his accusation were just or not betwixt that and a certaine day of the next moneth which he there named Now see the heart and hand of God against a false witnesse ere that day came the Frier died without any remorse of conscience and no doubt he gave a sharpe account to Almighty God of his malicious and unjust accusation In the yeare of our Lord 1105 Henry Archbishop of Mentz being complained of to the Pope sent a learned man a speciall friend of his to excuse him named Arnold one for whom he had much done and promoted to great livings and promotions but this honest man in stead of an excuser became an accuser for hee bribed the two chiefest Cardinals with gold and obtained of the Pope those two to be sent Inquisitors about the Archbishops case The which comming into Germany summoned the said Henry and without either law or justice deposed him from his Archbishoprick and substituted in his place Arnold upon hope of his Ecclesiasticall gold Whereupon that vertuous and honourable Henry is reported to have spoken thus unto those perverse Judges If I should appeale to the Apostolike Sea for this your unjust processe had against me perhaps I should but lose my labour and gaine nothing but toyle of body losse of goods affliction of minde and care of heart Wherefore I doe appeale to the Lord Jesus Christ as to the most highest and just Judge and cite you before his judgement seat there to answer for this wrong done unto me for neither justly nor godly but corruptly and unjustly have you judged my cause Whereunto they scoffingly said Goe you first and we will follow Not long after the said Henry dyed whereof the two Cardinals having intelligence said one to the other jestingly Behold he is gone before and wee must follow according to our promise And verily they spoke truer than they were aware for within a while after they both dyed in one day the one sitting upon a jakes to ease himselfe voyded out all his entrailes into the draught and miserably ended his life the other gnawing off the fingers of his hands and spitting them out of his mouth all deformed in devouring of himselfe died And in like wise not long after the said Arnold was slaine in a sedition and his body for certaine dayes lying stinking above the ground unburied was open to the spoyle of every raskall and harlot And this was the horrible end of this false accuser and those corrupted Judges Thus were two Cardinals punished for this sinne and that we may see that the holy father the Pope is no better than his Cardinals and that God spareth not him no more than he did them let us heare how the Lord punished one of that ranke for this crime It is not unknowne that Pope Innocent the fourth condemned the Emperour Fredericke at the Councell at Lyons his cause being unheard and before hee could come to answer for himselfe For when the Emperour being summoned to appeare at the Councell made all haste hee could thitherward and desired to have the day of hearing his cause prorogued till that he might conveniently travell thither the Pope refused and contrary to Gods law to Christian Doctrine to the prescript of the law of nature and reason and to all humanity without probation of any crime or pleading any cause or hearing what might be answered taking upon him to be both Adversary and Judge condemned the Emperour being absent What more wicked sentence was ever pronounced What more cruell fact considering the person might be committed But marke what vengeance God tooke upon this wicked Judge The writers of the Annals record that when Fredericke the Emperour and Conrade his sonne were both dead the Pope gaping for the inheritance of Naples and Sicilie and thinking by force to have subdued the same came to Naples with a great hoast of men where was heard in his court manifestly pronounced this voyce Veni miser ad judicium Dei Thou wretch come to receive thy judgement of God And the next day the Pope was found in his bed dead all black and blew as though he had beene beaten with bats And this was the judgement of God which he came
evill which request was so agreeable and acceptable to God that hee granted it unto him so that he obtained such an excellent measure of incomparable wisedome that he was commended and reputed more for it than for all his great riches and precious treasure beside There is mention made in the Book of the Kings of his judiciall throne wherein he used to sit and heare the causes of the people and execute justice among them and albeit he was the most puissant and glorious King of the earth yet notwithstanding hee scorned not to hear two harlots plead before him about the controversie of a dead infant Ioram King of Israel son of Achab though a man that walked not uprightly before God but gave himselfe to worke abomination in his sight yet he despised not the complaint of the poor affamished woman of Samaria when she demanded justice at his hands although it was in the time of war when Lawes use to be silent and in the besieging and famishment of the City neither did he reject the Sunamites request for the recovery of her house and lands but caused them to be restored unto her So that then it is manifest that those Kings which in old time reigned over the People of God albeit they had in every City Judges yea and in Jerusalem also as it appeareth in the nineteenth Chapter of the second Book of Chronicles yet they ceased not for all that to give ear to suits and complaints that were made unto them and to decide controversies that came to their knowledge and for this cause it is that Wisdom saith That by her Kings reigne and Princes decree justice whereunto also belongeth that which is said in another place That a King sitting in the Throne of judgement chaseth away all evill with his eyes Moreover that this was the greatest part of the Office and duty of Kings in antient times to see the administration of justice Homer the Poet may be a sufficient witnesse when he saith of Agamemnon That the Scepter and Law was committed to him by God to do right to every man answerable to the which Virgil describing the Queen of Carthage saith She sat in judgement in the midst of her People as if there was nothing more beseeming such a person than such an action And therefore the Poets not without cause feigne Iupiter alwayes to have Themis that is to say Justice at his elbow signifying thereby not that whatsoever Kings and Princes did was just and lawfull be it never so vile in it own nature as that wanton flatterer Anaxarchus said to Alexander but that equity and justice should alwayes accompany them and never depart from their sides And hereupon it was that Eacus Minos and Radamanthus the first King of Graecia were so renowned of old antiquity because of their true and upright execution of Justice and therefore were not honoured with any greater title than the name of Judges It is said of King Alexander that although he was continually busied in affaires of war and of giving battels yet he would sit personally in judgement to hear criminall causes and matters of importance pleaded and that whilest the accuser laid open his accusation he would stop one ear with his hand to the end that the other might be kept pure and without prejudice for the defence and answer of the accused The Roman Emperours also were very carefull and diligent in this behalfe as first Iulius Caesar who is recorded to have taken great paines in giving audience to parties and in dealing justice betwixt them In like manner Augustus Caesar is commended for his care and travell in this behalfe for he would ordinarily sit in judgement upon causes and controversies of his subjects and that with such great delight and pleasure that oftentimes night was fain to interrupt his course before his will was to relinquish it yea though he found himselfe evill at case yet would he not omit to apply himselfe to the division of judgement or else calling the parties before him to his bed The Emperour Claudius though a man otherwise of a dull and grosse spirit yet in this respect he discharged the duty of a good Prince for that he would intermeddle with hearing his subjects causes and do right unto them he chanced once to make a very pretty and witty end of a suit betwixt a son and his mother who denying and disclaiming him to be her son was by the Emperour commanded to marry him and so lest he should agree to that mischief was constrained to acknowledge and avow him for her son and to be short it was very ordinary and usuall among the Emperours to take knowledge of matters controverted but especially of criminall and capitall causes by meanes whereof the Apostle Paul desirous to shun the judgement and lyings in wait of his enemies the Jewes appealed from them to Caesar which he would never have done if Caesar had not in some sort used to meddle with such affaires and for further proof hereof hither may be added the saying which is reported of Nero in the beginning of his reigne That when he should signe with his hand a sentence of death against a condemned person he wished that he could neither write nor reade to the end to avoid that necessary action The bold answer of an old woman to the Emperour Adrian is very worthy to be remembred who appealing and complaining to the Emperour of some wrong when he answered that he was not at leasure then to hear her suit she told him boldly and plainly That then he ought not to be at leasure to be her Emperour which speech went so near the quicke unto him that ever after he shewed more facility and courtesie towards all men that had any thing to do with him The Kings of France used also this custome of hearing and deciding their subjects matters as we reade of Charlemaigne the King and Emperour who commanded that he should be made acquainted with all matters of importance and their issues throughout his Realme King Lewis the first treading the steps of his father Charlemaigne accustomed himselfe three dayes in a week to hear publiquely in his pallace the complaints and grievances of his people and to right their wrongs and injuries King Lewis sirnamed the Holy a little before his death gave in charge to his son that should succeed him in the Crown amongst other this precept To be carefull to bear a stroke in seeing the distribution of justice and that it should not be perverted nor depraved CHAP. XLVIII Of such Princes as have made no reckoning of punishing vice nor regarded the estate of their People IT cannot chuse but be a great confusion in a Common-wealth when justice sleepeth and when the shamelesse boldnesse of evill doers is not curbed in with any bridle but runneth it own swinge and therefore a Consull of Rome could say That it was an evil thing to have a Prince
the King if they had uttered a humane voyce but the author thereof was the first that endured the torment thereof and after the Tyrant Phalaris himselfe was constrained to endure the same miserable end In a famous Citie of Germany at a nuptiall festivitie a certaine virgin was brought by a young man a Shoomaker that made love unto her to the solemne and usuall dancing when the maide should returne home the young man by chance was absent so that she was conducted home by another which when the Shoomaker knew supposing himselfe to be wronged hee went presently to her fathers house and calling out the young student which guided her home he slew him assoone as he came out of the doores His father hearing the death of his onely sonne died within three dayes with griefe and was buried in the same grave with his sonne the Shoomakers mother died also with griefe and the murtherer himselfe falling into desperation threw himselfe headlong into a running river and was drowned Anno 156 a certaine Nobleman abounding with wealth not farre from Augusta of the Vindiletians brought up in his house a young Blackamore which villaine when his Master was from home rose up in the night and slew not onely his Lady but the whole family excepting one little daughter of the Noblemans The Nobleman returning home after two dayes and finding his gate shut rode nearer to the walls of the house wondring Where the Blackamore upon the top of the house with a fearfull countenance spake unto him these words O thou cruell man thou rememberest how unworthily thou beatest me not long since for no fault the memory whereof I still retained in my minde and have revenged this wrong upon thine behold here part of the carkasse of thy wife whom I have slaine with thy whole family except this little child which I have reserved and will restore it if thou wilt promise me my life The father being wonderfully disturbed promised that which he desired but the devillish Moore answered I know thou wilt not keepe promise with me therefore take thy childe unto thee and threw her out of the window where she was quashed in pieces and then threw himselfe downe headlong from the top of the house that hee might avoid the vengeance of his Master This story was related unto Philip Count Nassau by the Secretarie of the Count of Hanault CHAP. XI Of Adulterie ANobleman in Burgundie having taken in war a captive a Gentleman that was his prisoner the Gentlemans wife came to this Nobleman to redeeme her husband he promised that hee should be set free if that he might have the use of her bodie the woman returned to her husband and told him upon what tearmes he stood The Gentleman said that she could not shew her love better unto him than in yeelding to his desire which being accomplished the trayterous adulterous Nobleman next day cut off the prisoners head and gave his body to his wife which horrible fact being complained of by her to the Duke of Burgundie he presently sent for the Nobleman and first constrained him to marry her but before night he cut off his head and gave her all his possessions A like example is reported by the same Author of a Spanish Captaine who kept in prison a certaine man that had violated the lawes This man having a beautifull wife sent her to the Captaine to desire his favour and freedome which he promised upon condition that she should yeeld to his lust wherewith her husband being acquainted advised her to yeeld for the saving of his life the Spaniard after he had satisfied his lust upon her commandeth over and above two hundred Duckets to be paid unto him which being received she conceiving a certaine hope of her husbands liberty the perfidious Spaniard brought him forth out of prison unto her and presently remanded him back againe into prison and there commanded his head to be cut off Which horrible fact when the poore lamentable woman complained of to the Duke of Ferara called Gonsaga he presently sent for this Captaine and finding the accusation true first commanded him to pay back againe the two hundred Duckats with an addition of seaven hundred crownes more next hee sent for a Priest and married the woman to the Captaine which being done when as he hoped to enjoy his new married wife Gonsaga sent him presently to the gallows and there he ended his miserable dayes The wife of a certaine Duke being a lascivious woman wrote two letters one to the Duke her husband and another to her Lover but it happened by chance that her letter written to her Lover was delivered to her Husband the Duke who thereby knowing her wickednesse came no sooner home but slew her with his owne hand Anno 1056 a certaine Doctor of the Law an advocate in Constance extreamely lusted after the wise of the Kings Procurator which Procurator finding the Doctor and his wife together in a bath playing and sporting and afterward in an old womans house hard by he got unto him a sharpe curry-combe and leaving three at the doore to watch that no man should come in he so curryed the Doctor that he pulled out his eyes out of his head and rent his whole body and members that he died within three dayes the like he had done to his wife but that she was with childe In the yeare 1488 a certaine Priest did so long assault the chastitie of a Citizens wife that she was constrained to declare the same unto her husband who forbad him his house threatning that if ever he came there he would geld him but this bold Priest came againe when hee imagined an opportunity the husband fell upon him and bound him hand and foot and performed what he had threatened so that he went home in a miserable case In Voitland foure murthers were committed upon the cause of one Adulterie For when the adulterous woman was banquetting with her lovers her husband came of a sudden into the Chamber and slew first him that sate next his wife the other two amazed ran downe the staires and brake both their shoulders and died within a short space Then hee slew his adulterous wife This storie Wolsiâ—s Schrencke reported to Martin Luther as he himselfe confesseth In a certaine Citie of Germany a Gentleman of good note did solicite and seduce to his lust a Citizens wife which her husband comming to the knowledge of watcht them so narrowly that he found them in bed together and rushing into the chamber first slew the adulterer himselfe and then his wife being crept under a bed and imploring his mercy till she could confesse her selfe to a Priest her husband asked her Whether shee were sorry for what she had done Who answered that she was grieved for it which words were no sooner pronounced but he thrust her through the heart with his sword and was for the same adjudged by the Citie to have done justly This story is
reported in Colloq of Luther Luther doth report that a man of great name and fame did so burne with continuall lust that he blasphemously said That if that pleasure was perpetuall he would never desire to have any part in the Kingdome of Heaven so that he might be carried from one Stewes to another and from one Harlot unto another I could adde more examples of this kinde but these shall suffice to shew that God doth not onely punish this horrible sinne in the life to come but also in this life with fearefull judgements CHAP. XII Of Theeves and Robbers SPiredon a Bishop of a certaine Citie in Cyprus was also delighted with keeping of irrationall sheepe upon a night certaine theeves entered into his sheepe-fold with an intent to steale away some of his sheepe but God protecting the sheepheard and his sheepe infatuated the theeves that they could not stirre out of that place till the morning at what time the Bishop comming to view his flock found them thus bound who presently prayed to God for their delivery and wished them to get their living hereafter by honest labour and not by stealth yet withall gave them a Ramme with this pleasant tant I give you this Ramme that you may not seeme to watch it in vaine and so set them free A certaine young man being bitten with a mad dogge fell presently after into madnesse himselfe and was faine to be bound with chaines The parents of this young man brought their sonne to an Abbot called Ammon entreating him that by his prayers hee would restore him to his former health the holy Abbot answered that they demanded that of him that passed his power But this I can signifie unto you that the Devill holdeth you all bound in his chaines by reason of a Bull which you stole from a poore widdow and untill you restore that Bull backe againe to the widdow your sonne shall never be healed The parents presently confessed their fault restored the Bull and presently their sonne was delivered from this grievous disease A certaine Baker merrily talking with his neighbour bragged that in that great time of dearth which was then he gained out of every bushell of Wheat above a crowne which words being related unto the Governour of the Citie hee sent for the Baker to supper and examined him about those speeches which the Baker could not deny whereupon the Governour commanded him presently to put off his upper garments and to knead so much dowe before him that hee might finde out the manner of his deceit which being done hee and all his fellow Bakers in the towne was cast into prison to their great disgrace The same Authour reporteth That at Prague in Bohemia a Jew being dead his friends desired that he might be buried at Ratisbone forty miles off which becaâ—se it could not bee done without paying of great tribute they put his carkasse into a hog sheâ—d full of sweet wine and committed it to a carter to convey to Ratisbone The theevish carters in the way being greedy of the wine pierced the hogshead and drinking themselves drunke with the wine mixed with the stinke of the dead carkasse most of them died The same Luther reporteth that at Wittenberge three theeves having stolne a silver dish brought it to a Goldsmiths wife to sell who desired them to come againe within an houre and then shee would bargaine with them In the meane while she related this businesse unto the Magistrates who sending presently the Sergeants to apprehend the theeves they seeing themselves to be betrayed resisted with their swords but notwithstanding one of them was taken and executed another escaped by flight and the third being pursued over a bridge leaped into the river Albis and there was drowned This example is more remarkable saith Luther because this fellow was a most notorious wicked wretch and had cut off two fingers of his owne fathers at which very instant his father not knowing of it being asked what was become of his sonne answered that he wished hee was drowned in the river Albis which wish was really performed at that very instant for it was the voyce of Gods anger out of the mouth of a father About Ailton in Huntington-shire a lewd fellow stole one of his neighbours fat weathers and bringing him home bound about his neck 〈…〉 upon a great stone in the field to â—ase himselfe where the weather stâ—â—gling fell over the stone and pulled the thiefe after him and so both striving one for life another for liberty the theefe was found dead in the morning and the weather alive CHAP. XIII Of Trecherie WHen the two Earles of Northumberland and Westmoreland had rebelled against Q. Elizabeth and being defeated in the field fled into Scotland the Earle of Northumberland hid himself in the house of Hector of Harlawe an Armestrange having confidence in him that he would be true to him he notwithstanding for money betrayed him to the Regent of Scotland from whence the Earle was sent into England condemned of high treason and beheaded But it was observed that this Hector being before a rich man fell poor of a sudden and was so hated generally that he never durst go abroad insomuch that the Proverbe to take Hectors cloake is continued to this day among them when they would expresse a man that betrayeth his friend who trusted him The like example we have of Banister who betrayed the Duke of Buckingham in the raigne of Richard the third CHAP. XIV Of the molestation of evill Spirits and their execution of Gods Iudgements upon men ALmighty God sometimes doth execute his judgements himselfe as he did upon Pharaoh in the Red Sea and upon Sodome and Gomorrah sometimes hee useth the creatures as instruments as frogs and lice c. to plague Pharaoh and the Aegyptians Sometimes hee imployeth the good Angels to that purpose as an Angell to destroy the Armie of Zenacherib before Jerusalem but most ordinarily he useth the ministery of evill Angels who being forward enough of their owne malice he giveth more strength unto by his command to execute vengeance upon wicked men Thus Sathan under the shape of a Serpent beguiled our first parents Adam and Eve and promised them great good in the stead of punishments which God had threatned unto them Gen. 3. The same Sathan vexed King Saul 1 Reg. 16. This Sathan rose against Israell and stirred up David to number the people whereat God being offended strooke Israell with a grievous peltilence 1 Chronic. 21. It was Sathan that got leave of God that hee might torture Iob with loathsome botches and boyles Iob 2. It was Sathan that slew seaven husbands to whom Sarah the daughter of Raguel had married Tobit It was Sathan that entred into Iudas Iscariots heart and moved him to betray Christ and hang himselfe Iohn 13. Acts 7. It was Sathan that instigated Ananias and Saphira to lye to the Holy Ghost whereupon they both died suddenly Acts 5. Lastly it was Sathan
his companions to a feast together with his Concubine the Divell entered in amongst the guests snatching away the young woman and saying Thou art mine neither could the Priest or any of the companie deliver her out of his hands And thou also sayeth the Divell to the Priest and I meane to fetch thee shortly Martin Luther reporteth this storie out of the mouth of Doctor Gregorius Pontanus how two Noblemen falling out in the Court of the Emperour Maximilian vowed each others death Now the Divell taking occasion out of this malicious vow slew the one of the Noblemen in the night with a sword taken out of the others sheath into the which hee put the same againe all bloudie whereupon this Nobleman was arraigned of this murther and had bin condemned but that it was prooved that he stirred not out of his chamber all that night and therefore they concluded that it was the malicious fact of Sathan And yet the Nobleman because hee intended this murther though hee acted it not was condemned by the Emperour to perpetuall banishment And thus much concerning persons infested by the Divell Now a word or two for places Saint Augustine in his two and twentieth Booke De Civitate Dei chapter the eighth reporteth of a certaine Gentleman that lived not far from him in Affrica who had his house so infested with evill Spirits that both his servants and his Cattell died frequently This man getting unto him the company of the Priests offering up the sacrifice of the body and bloud of Christ in his house with servent prayers unto God against these evill Spirits was thereby freed from any further molestation by them as this holy Father writeth Saint Gregorie telleth us of the Spirit of one Paschasius that haunted the Bathes and was seene by Sermanus the Bishop of Capua by whose meanes and prayers the place was freed from that Ghost or rather the Ghost was freed from that place Greg. lib. 4. Dialog Cap 39. Gregorie Nissen writes also of a certaine Bath which was grievously infested by evill Spirits wherein they tooke away the lives of many men The like whereof is reported by Georgius Presbyter of another house thus molested where the evill Spirits would throw stones upon the table while they were at dinner and filled the house with myce and Serpents so that no man durst dwell therein The like storie reporteth mataphrastes in the life of Saint Pautheneus and Lycas in the life of the Emperor Anastasius Pliny in his seventh Booke the twentie seventh Epistle telleth us that in an house in Athens there appeared continually a tall and leane shape of a man drawing chaines after him which when it was seene to sinke downe and vanish into a certaine place of the ground they digged and found the dead body of a man which being removed the house was freed from the molestation What should I speake of the house of Eubatis in Corinth written by Lucian or of Pausanias the King of the Spartans whose house was haunted by an evil spirit presently after he had slain his wife Cleonice as Plutarch writeth Or of the evil spirits that haunted the grave of that cruel Tyrant Caesar Caligula Suet. Or of Nero that slew his mother Agrippina who was continually after pursued with a spirit in his mothers shape or of Otto that slew his predecessor Galba after which he never ceased to be molestred with fearful and terrible visions Or a number more which I might insert but these shal suffice as a taste of a number more that Tyraeus the Iesuite hath set down in his Book De infestis Locis I adde onely two or three and so an end Alexander of Alexandro dwelling in Rome in an house so infamous for strange sights that no man durst dwell therein reporteth that beside the night tumults and horrible and fearefull noyses there appeared unto him the shape of a map of a filthie looke threatening countenance and blacke and fearfull in bodie from which the house could by no meanes be set free Cardanus Lib. 26. c. 93. De rerum varietate reporteth the like to haye happened to an house of a certaine Nobleman in Parma In which house alwaies before the death of some of the family an old woman of an hundred yeares old appeared sitting in the chimney corner In an Island neere unto the Articke Pole there is an hill out of the which like mount Aetna there bursteth out continually fire and smoake There everie night appeareth a companie of evill Spirits representing perfectly the shape of some friends which they know whom when they go to speake unto they presently vanish out of their sight Olaus magnus But enough enough of this unsaverie subject onely let us learne hereby to beware of this ambitious enemie of mankinde who as Saint Peter sayeth Goeth about somtime like a Lion to devour us Other times like a subtill Serpent to molest us but all with a desire of our destruction I may be thought too prolix in this Argument of Gods Iudgements but considering the fiercenesse of Gods wrath against notorious sinners and the hardnesse of mens hearts to be drawne to repentance nothing I thinke can be judged too much But yet to sweeten these soure pills let me cover them a little with the sugar of Gods mercifull protection of his children by his holy Angels CHAP. XV. The conclusion concerning the protection of holy angels over such as feare God NOtwithstanding all these Judgements upon the wicked yet God is good unto Israel even to those that are of an upright heart Psalme seventie three Verse the first for as he executeth his Judgements upon the one so hee defendeth the other by his mightie providence especially by the protection of Angels Of which I purpose to give you many examples in this place and first out of the holy Scriptures Two Angels came to Lâ—t in Sodome strooke the inhabitants with blindnesse and led Lot by the hand out of Sodom readie to be destroyed by fire and brimstone Genesis the nineteenth When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac an Angell held his hand and forbad him to kill his sonne promising him from God a blessing for his obedience Genesis 22. Iacob in his returne homeward was comforted and strengthened against his brother Esau by the blessed Angels Genesis the two and thirtieth An Angell of the Lord when the children of Israel came out of Aegypt stood betwixt the campe of the Aegyptians and the Israelites in a pillar of clouds by day to protect the Israelites against the Aegyptians Exodus 14. Balaam when being sent for by Balaac King of Moab to curse the Israelites an Angell with a sword drawne in his hand withstood him in the way and commanded him to speake nothing but what the Lord should put into his mouth Numbers 22. An Angel of the Lord apeared unto Gedeon comforted him and appointed him captain over the people to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Madianites Iudges
Why he made not haste home He answered That he tarryed till it was evening being insensible both of the time and of the cold They asked him againe Whether he had received any food or no The boy answered That a certaine man brought unto him bread and cheese which hee did eate Thus without doubt the childe was preserved by an Angell and the man that brought him the bread and cheese was an Angel of God Tiburtius the Governour of Areciam a Heathen man forbad two Christian brothers Pergentinus and Laurentinus to preach Christ First he allured them by flattering speeches which when it succeeded not he caused them to be beaten with clubbes But the armes of them that beat them were so withered that they could not strike a stroke Then he went about to starve them in prison but they were nourished by an Angell of God After hee commanded them to walke bare-footed upon burning coales which they did without any sense of hurt Lastly the Image of Iupiter being brought unto them to worship they calling upon the name of Jesus the brazen Image resolved into dust whereupon many of the Heathen people forsooke their Idols and turned unto the faith of Christ. This story is written by Marullus Spalatensis lib. 1. cap. 8. In that battell wherein Iudas Machabeus overcame Timotheus five men appeared in golden Armour whereof two defended Machabeus and the other three assaulted the enemies the second of Machabees Chapter the tenth Likewise in the eleventh Chapter of the same Book it is declared how two men in goodly Armour and upon white horses fought for the Jewes against their enemies as Castor and Pollux were seene to fight for the Romans against the Tusculans at the Lake Regillum When the Locrians made warre with the Crotolians there was seen two goodly young men upon white horses fighting for the Locrians who as soone as the victory was gotten were never seene more which victory at the same instant that it was gotten was declared at Athens Lacedemon and Corinth places farre distant from Locris and Crothon When Attila the King of the Hunnes calling himselfe the scourge of God had with furious rage destroyed and wasted many Cities in Italy he came at last to Rome purposing also to destroy it But Pope Leo the Great by the commandment of Valentinian the Emperour came out unto him and by his prayers and intreaties made him so milde that presently without doing any hurt he returned into his owne Countrey Hereupon being demanded by his Nobles Why he shewed himselfe so obedient to the Romane Bishop he answered That it was not in honour of the Pope but that he saw another man standing by in Priestly garments threatning him with a naked sword in his hand unlesse hee would yeeld unto Pope Leo. This doubtlesse was an Angell protecting of the Citie of Rome from that cruell and mercilesse Enemie We reade in the lives of the Fathers how a certaine religious Christian was cast into prison by the souldiers of Iulian the Apostata whom when Apolonius another godly Christian came to visit the Centurion cast him also into prison to accompany the other and set souldiers to watch the prison lest they should escape but late in the night an Angel of God was seene in a most cleare light and broke open the prison dore which being seene the Watch fell downe before those holy men and the Centurion that night having his house sore shaken with an Earthquake and some of his servants slaine the next morning came and delivered the two holy men out of prison with great trembling and feare We reade in the lives of the Fathers of one Copres a holy man that disputed with Manichee and when hee could not put him downe in words it was agreed betweene them that the tryall of the truth of their religion should be made by fire whereupon a fire being made in the Market-place Copres went into it and stood a time in it unhurt being protected by the Angell of God then the Manichee refusing to doe the like was thrust into the middest of the fire by the people and was so scortched that he scarce escaped with his life so that the people abhorring his wicked doctrine thrust him out of the Citie saying This seducer burneth alive Baratanes the King of Persia made warre upon the Romanes against whom Narsaeus the Emperours Generall prepared an Armie and when the Constantinopolitanes were in great feare two Angels in Bythinia charged certaine men that went to Constantinople to tell the Citizens that they should give themselves to prayer and fasting and feare nothing for they were sent of God to defend the Army of the Romanes against the Persians which they did accordingly for the Persian Army was defeated by Narsaeus and the Saracens that came to helpe them in great multitudes were drowned in the river Euphrates This Socrates reporteth Lib. 7. Capitulâ— 18. But to come to examples of later memory Melancthon in his explication of the tenth Chapter of the prophesie of Daniel relateth a storie of Gryneus a famous learned and godly man who having offended the Bishop of Vienna called Faba in a disputation about Religion returned unto his sociates assembled together whereof Melancthon was one where discoursing of the disputation betweene him and the Bishop I saith Melancthon was called out of the chamber to speak with a certaine grave man of a venerable countenance and habit who told me that we should remove Gryneus out of that place presently for the Sergeants were come to apprehend him and to cast him into prison whereupon we presently conducted him through the Citie and brought him unto the rivers side where we had him conveyed over into another Jurisdiction and at our returne to the Inne found that the Sergeants had beene there Thus saith Melancthon we see that this grave old man was an Angell of God that came to protect the good man from his enemies In the yeare 1539 not farre from Sitta in Germany in the time of a great dearth and famine a certaine godly matron having two sonnes and destitute of all manner of sustenance went with her children to a certaine fountaine hard by praying unto Almighty God that he would there relieve their hunger by his infinite goodnesse as she was going a certaine man met her by the way and saluteth her kindly and asked her whither shee was going who confessed that she was going to that fountaine there hoping to be relieved by God to whom all things are possible for if he nourished the children of Israell in the desart forty yeares how is it hard for him to nourish me and my children with a draught of water and when shee had spoken these words the man which was doubtlesse an Angel of God told her that seeing her faith was so constant she should returne home and there should finde six bushels of meale for her and her children The woman returning found that true which was promised In the yeare 1558 a
then is the murdering of Parents especially detestable when a man is so possessed with the Devill or transported with a hellish fury that he lifteth up his hand against his own father or mother to put them to death this is so monstrous and inormous an impiety that the greatest Barbarians ever have had it in detestation wherefore it is also expresly commanded in the Law of God That whosoever smiteth his father or mother in what sort so ever though not to death yet he shall die the death If the disobedience unreverence and contempt of children towards their Parents are by the just judgements of God most rigorously punished as hath beene declared before in the first commandement of the second Table how much more then when violence is offered and above all when murder is committed Thus the Aegyptians punished this sinne they put the committants upon a stacke of thornes and burnt them alive having beaten their bodies beforehand with sharpe reeds made of purpose Solon being demanded why he appointed no punishment in his Lawes for Paricides answered that there was no necessity thinking that the wide world could not afford so wicked a wretch It is said that Romulus for the same cause ordained no punishment in his Common wealth for that crime but called every murderer a Paricide the one being in his opinion a thing execrable and the other impossible And in truth there was not for 600 yeeres space according to Plutarchs report found in Rome any one that had committed this execrable fact The first Paricide that Rome saw was Lucius Ostius after the first Punicke warre although other Writers affirme that M. Malliolus was the first and Lucius the second how soever it was they both underwent the punishment of the Law Pompeia which enacted That such offenders should be thrust into a sacke of Leather and an Ape a Cocke a Viper and a Dog put in to accompany them and then to be throwne into the water to the end that these beasts being enraged and animated one against another might wreke their teene upon them and so deprive them of life after a strange fashion being debarred of the use of the aire water and earth as unworthy to participate the very Elements with their deaths much lesse with their lives which kinde of punishment was after practised and confirmed by the constitution of Constantine the Great And albeit the regard of the punishment seemed terrible and the offence it selfe much more monstrous yet since that time there have beene many so perverse and exceeding wicked as to throw themselves headlong into that desperate gulfe As Cleodoricke sonne of Sigebert King of Austria who being tickled with an unsatiable lust of raigne through the deceivable perswasions of Cleodovius King of France slew his father Sigebert as he lay asleepe in his Tent in a forrest at noone time of the day who being weary with walking laid himselfe downe there to take his rest but for all that the wicked wretch was so farre from attaining his purpose that it fell out cleane contrary to his expectation for after his fathers death as he was viewing his treasures and ransacking his coffers one of Cleodovius factors strooke him suddenly and murdered him and so Cleodovius seised both upon the Crowne and Treasures After the death of Hircanus Aristobulus succeeded in the government of Judea which whilest he strove to reduce into a kingdome and to weare a crown contrary to the custome of his predecessors his mother other brethren contending with him about the same he cast in prison took Antigonus his next brother to be his associate but ere long a good gratefull son he famished her to death with hunger that had fed him to life with her teares even his naturall mother And after perswaded with false accusations caused his late best beloved Antigonus to be slaine by an ambush that lay by Strato's tower because in the time of his sicknesse he entred the Temple with pompe But the Lord called for quittance for the two bloodsheds immediately after the execution of them for his brothers blood was scarce washed off the ground ere in the extreamity of his sicknesse he was carried into the same place and there vomiting up blood at his mouth and nosthrils to be mingled with his brothers he fell downe starke dead not without horrible tokens of trembling and despaire Nero that unnaturall Tyran surpassed all that lived as in all other vices so in this for he attempted thrice by poyson to make away his mother Agrippina and when that could not prevaile by reason of her usuall Antidotes and preservatives hee assayed divers other meanes as first a devise whereby she should be crushed to death as she slept a loosened beame that should fall upon her and secondly by shipwracke both which when she escaped the one by discovery and the other by swimming he sent Anicâ—tus the Centurion to slaughter her with the sword who with his companions breaking up the gate of the City where she lay rushed into her Chamber and there murdered her It is written of her that when she saw there was no remedy but death she presented her belly unto the murderer and desired him to kill her in that part which had most deserved it by bringing into the world so vile a monster and of him that he came to view the dead carkasse of his mother and handled the members thereof commending this and discommending that as his fancy led him and in the meane time being thirsty to call for drinke so farre was he from all humanity and touch of Nature but he that spared not to embrue his hands in her blood that bred him was constrained ere long to offer violence to his own life which was most deere unto him Henry the son of Nicolotus Duke of Herulia had two wicked cruell and unkind sonnes by the yonger of whom with the consent of the elder he was traiterously murdered because he had married a third wife for which cause Nicolotus their cousin-german pursued them both with a just revenge for he deprived them of their kingdome and drove them into exile where they soon after perished Selymus the tenth Emperour of Turkes was so unnaturall a childe that he feared not to dispossesse his father Bajazet of the crown by treason and next to bereave him of his life by poyson And not satisfied therewith even to murder his two brethren and to destroy the whole stock of his own blood But when hee had raigned eight yeares vengeance found him out and being at his backe so corrupted and putrified his reins that the contagion spread it selfe over all his body so that he dyed a beast-like and irksome death and that in the same place where he had before oppressed his father Bajazet with an army to wit at Chiurle a city of Thracia in the year of our Lord 1520. in the moneth of September Charles the younger by surname called Crassus
her servant that was captive with her to her friends to purvey the same which he bringing the Centurion alone with the wronged Lady met him at a place appointed and whilest he weighed the money by her counsell was murdered of her servants so she escaping carried to her husband both his money and threw at his feet the villaines head that had spoiled her of her chastity Andreas King of Hungary having undertaken the voyage into Syria for the recovery of the Holy Land together with many other Kings and Princes committed the charge of his Kingdom and Family to one Bannebanius a wise and faithfull man who discharged his Office as faithfully as he took it willingly upon him Now the Queen had a brother called Gertrude that came to visit and comfort his sister in her husbands absence and by that meanes sojourned with her a long time even so long till he fell deadly in love with Bannebanius Lady a fair and vertuous woman and one that was thought worthy to keep company with the Queen continually to whom when he had unfolded his suit and received such stedfast repulse that he was without all hope of obtaining his desire he began to droup and pine untill the Queen his sister perceiving his disease found this perverse remedy for the cure thereof she would often give him opportunity of discourse by withdrawing her selfe from them being alone and many times leave them in secret and dangerous places of purpose that he might have his will of her but she would never consent unto his lust and therefore at last when he saw no remedy he constrained her by force and made her subject to his will against her will which vile disgracefull indignity when she had suffered she returned home sad and melancholy and when her husband would have embraced her she fled from him asking him if he would embrace a whore and related unto him her whole abuse desiring him either to rid her from shame by death or to revenge her wrong and make knowne unto the world the injury done unto her There needed no more spurres to pricke him forward for revenge he posteth to the Court and upbraiding the Queen with her ungratefull and abominable treachery runneth her through with his sword and taking her heart in his hand proclaimeth openly that it was not a deed of inconsideration but of judgement in recompence of the losse of his wives chastity forthwith he flieth towards the King his Lord that now was at Constantinople and declaring to him his fact and shewing to him his sword besmeared with his wives bloud submitteth himselfe to his sentence either of death in rigour or pardon in compassion but the good King enquiring the truth of the cause though grieved with the death of his wife yet acquit him of the crime and held him in as much honour and esteem as ever he did condemning also his wife as worthy of that which she had endured for her unwomanlike and traiterous part A notable example of justice in him and of punishment in her that forgetting the law of womanhood and modesty made her selfe a Bawd unto her brothers lust whose memory as it shall be odious and execrable so his justice deserveth to be engraven in marble with characters of gold Equal to this King in punishing a Rape was Otho the first for as he passed through Italy with an Army a certain woman cast her selfe downe at his feet for justice against a villain that had spoiled her of her chastity who deferring the execution of the law till his returne because his haste was great the woman asked who should then put him in minde thereof he answered This Church which thou seest shall be a witnesse betwixt me and thee that I will then revenge thy wrong Now when he had made an end of this warfare in his returne as he beheld the Church he called to minde the woman and caused her be fetched who falling downe before him desired now pardon for him whom before she had accused seeing he had now made her his wife and redeemed his injury with sufficient satisfaction not so I swear quoth Otho your compacting shall not infringe or colludo the sacred Law but he shall die for his former fault and so he caused him to be put to death A notable example for them that after they have committed filthinesse with a maid thinke it no sin but competent amends if they take her in marriage whom they abused before in fornication Nothing inferiour to these in punishing this sin was Gonzaga Duke of Ferrara as by this History following may appear In the year 1547. a Citizen of Comun was cast into Prison upon an accusation of murder whom to deliver from the judgement of death his wife wrought all meanes possible therefore comming to the Captain that held him Prisoner she sued to him for her husbands life who upon condition of her yeelding to his lust and payment of two hundred Ducats promised safe deliverance for him the poor woman seeing that nothing could redeem her husbands life but losse and shipwracke of her owne honesty told her husband who willed her to yeeld to the Captaines desire and not to pretermit so good an occasion wherefore she consented but after the pleasure past the traiterous and wicked Captain put her husband to death notwithstanding which injury when she complained to Gonzaga Duke of Ferrara he caused the Captain first to restore backe her two hundred Ducats with an addition of seven hundred Crownes and secondly to marry her to his wife and lastly when he hoped to enjoy her body to be hanged for his treachery O noble justice and comparable to the worthiest deeds of Antiquity and deserving to be held in perpetuall remembrance As these before mentioned excelled in punishing this sin so this fellow following excelled in committing it and in being punished for it his name is Novellus Cararius Lord of Pavie a man of note and credit in the World for his greatnesse but of infamy and discredit for his wickednesse This man after many cruell murders and bloudy practises which he exercised in every place where he came fell at last into this notorious and abhominable crime for lying at Vincentia he fell in love with a young maid of excellent beauty but more excellent honesty an honest Citizens daughter whom he commanded her parents to send unto him that he might have his pleasure of her but when they regarding their credit and she her chastity more than the Tyrans command refused to come he took her violently out of their house and constrained her body to his lust and after to adde cruelty to villany chopped her into small pieces and sent them to her parents in a basket for a present wherewith her poor father astonished carried it to the Senate who sent it to Venice desiring them to consider the fact and to revenge the cruelty The Venetians undertaking their defence made war upon the Tyran and
besieging him in his owne City took him at last prisoner and hanged him with his two sons Francis and William Diocles son of Pisistratus Tyran of Athens for ravishing a maid was slain by her brother whose death when Hippias his brother undertook to revenge and caused the maidens brother to be racked that he might discover the other conspiratours he named all the Tyrans friends which by commandment being put to death the Tyran asked whether there were any more None but onely thy selfe quoth he whom I would wish next to be hanged whereby it was perceived how abundantly he had revenged his sisters chastity by whose notable stomacke all the Athenians being put in remembrance of their liberty expelled their Tyran Hippias out of their City Mundus a young Gentleman of Rome ravished the chaste Matron Paulina in this fashion when he perceived her resolution not to yeeld unto his lust he perswaded the Priests of Isis to say that they were warned by an Oracle how that Anubius the god of Egypt desired the company of the said Paulina to whom the chaste Matron gave light credence both because she thought the Priests would not lie and also because it was accounted a great renowne to have to do with a god and thus by this meanes was Paulina abused by Mundus in the Temple of Isis under the name of Anubius Which thing being after disclosed by Mundus himselfe he was thus justly revenged the Priests were put to death the Temple beaten downe to the ground the Image of Isis throwne into Tiber and the young man banished A principall occasion of the Danes first arrivall here in England which after conquered the whole Land and exercised among the Inhabitants most horrible cruelties and outrages was a Rape committed by one Osbright a deputy King under the King of the West-Saxons in the North part This Osbright upon a time journeying by the way turned into the house of one of his Nobles called Bruer who having a wife of great beauty he being from home the King after dinner allured with her excellent beauty took her to a secret Chamber where he forcibly contrary to her will ravished her whereupon she being greatly dismayed and vexed made her mone to her husband at his returne of this violence and injury received The Nobleman forthwith studying revenge first went to the King and resigned to his hands all such services and possessions which he held of him and then took shipping and sailed into Denmarke where he had great friends and had his bringing up there making his mone to Codrinus the King desired his aid in revenging of the great villany of Osbright against him and his wife Codrinus glad to entertain any occasion of quarrell against this Land presently levied an Army and preparing all things for the same sendeth forth Inguar and Hubba two brethren with a mighty Army of Danes into England who first arriving at Holdernesse burnt up the Countrey and killed without mercy both men women and children then marching towards Yorke encountered with wicked Osbright himselfe where he with the most part of his Army was slain and discomfited a just reward for his villanous act as also one chief cause of the Conquest of the whole Land by the Danes In the year of our Lord 955. Edwine succeeding his uncle Eldred was King of England this man was so impudent that in the very day of his Coronation he suddenly withdrew himselfe from his Lords and in sight of certain persons ravished his owne kinswoman the wife of a Nobleman of his Realme and afterward slew her husband that he might have unlawfull use of her beauty for which act he became so odious to his Subjects and Nobles that they joyntly rose against him and deprived him of his Crowne when he had reigned four yeares CHAP. XXII Other examples of Gods Judgements upon Adulterers AMongst all other things this is especially to be noted how God for a greater punishment of the disordinate lust of men strucke them with a new yet filthy and stinking kinde of Disease called the French Pox though indeed the Spaniards were the first that were infected therewith by the heat which they caught among the women of the new-found lands and sowed the seeds thereof first in Spain and from thence sprinkled Italy therewith wherethe French men caught it when Charles the Eighth their King went against Naples From whence the contagion spread it selfe throughout divers places of Europe Barbary was so over-growne with it that in all their Cities the tenth part escaped not untouched nay almost not a Family but was infected From thence it ran to Aegypt Syria and the graund Cair and it may near hand truly be said that there was not a corner of the habitable world where this not onely new and strange for it was never heard of in antient ages but terrible and hideous scourge of Gods wrath stretched not it selfe They that were spotted with it and had it rooted in their bodies led a languishing life full of aches and torments and carried in their visages filthy markes of unclean behaviour as ulcers boyles and such like that greatly disfigured them And herein we see the words of Saint Paul verified That an Adulterer sinneth against his owne body Now for so much as the world is so brutishly carried into this sin as to none more the Lord therefore hath declared his anger against it in divers sorts so that divers times he hath punished it in the very act or not long after by a strange death Of which Alcibiades one of the great Captaines of Athens may stand for an example who being polluted with many great and odious vices and much given to his pleasures and subject to all uncleannesse ended his life in the midst thereof for as he was in company of a Phrygian strumpet having flowne thither to the King of Phrygia for shelter was notwithstanding set upon by certain Guards which the King induced by his enemies sent to stay him but they though in number many through the conceived opinion of his notable valour durst not apprehend him at hand but set fire to the house standing themselves in armes round about it to receive him if need were he seeing the fire leaped through the midst of it and so long defended himselfe amongst them all till strength failed in himselfe and blowes encreasing upon him constrained him to give up his life amongst them Pliny telleth of Cornelius Gallus and Q. Elerius two Roman Knights that died in the very action of filthinesse In the Irish History we finde recorded a notable judgement of God upon a notorious and cruell lecher one Turgesnis a Norwegian who having twice invaded Ireland reigned there as King for the space of thirty yeares This Tyran not onely cried havocke and spoil upon the whole Countrey abusing his victory very insolently but also spared not to abuse virgins and women at his pleasure to the satisfying