Selected quad for the lemma: law_n

Word A Word B Word C Word D Occurrence Frequency Band MI MI Band Prominent
law_n king_n lord_n parliament_n 20,596 5 6.9552 4 true
View all documents for the selected quad

Text snippets containing the quad

ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
B02269 A collection of several treatises concerning the reasons and occasions of the penal laws. Viz. I. The execution of justice, in England, not for religion, but for treason: 17 Dec. 1583. II. Important considerations, by the secular priests: printed A.D. 1601. III. The Jesuits reasons unreasonable: 1662. Burghley, William Cecil, Baron, 1520-1598. Execution of justice in England for maintenaunce of publique and Christian peace.; W. W. (William Watson), 1559?-1603. Important considerations which ought to move all true and sound Catholikes. 1678 (1678) Wing C5192AC; ESTC R174039 70,520 139

There are 5 snippets containing the selected quad. | View lemmatised text

being the lawful Queen and Gods anointed Servant not to be the Queen of the Realm charging and upon pains of Excommunication commanding all her Subjects to depart from their natural Allegiances whereto by birth and by Oath they were bound Provoking also and authorising all persons of all degrees within both the Realms to Rebell and upon this Antichristian Warrant being contrary to all the Laws of God and Man and nothing agreeable to a pastural Officer not only all the rabble of the foresaid Traitors that were before fled but also all other persons that had forsaken their Native Countries being of divers conditions and qualities some not able to live at home but in beggery some discontented for lack of preferments which they gaped for unworthily in Universities and other places some Bankrupt Merchants some in a sort learned to contentions being not contented to learn to obey the Laws of the Land have many years running up and down from Country to Country practised some in one Corner The practises of the Traitors Rebels and Fugitives to execute the Bull. some in another some with seeking to gather Forces and money for Forces some with instigation of Princes by untruths to make War upon their natural Country some with inward practises to murder the Greatest some with seditious Writings and very many of late with publick infamous Libels full of despiteful vile terms and poisoned lies altogether to uphold the foresaid Antichristian and Tyrannous Warrant of the Popes Bull. And yet also by some other means to further these intentions because they could not readily prevail by way of Force finding Foreign Princes of better consideration and not readily inclined to their wicked purposes it was devised to erect up certain Schools which they called Seminaries Seminaries erected to nurse seditions Fugitives to nourish and bring up persons disposed naturally to Sedition to continue their race and trade and to become Seedmen in their Tillage of Sedition and them to send secretly into these the Queens Majesties Realms of England and Ireland under secret Masks some of Priesthood some of other inferior Orders with Titles of Seminaries for some of the meaner sort and of Jesuits for the stagers and ranker sort and such like but yet so warily they crept into the Land as none brought the marks of their Priesthood with them but in divers Corners of her Majesties Dominions these Seminaries or Seedmen and Jesuits bringing with them certain Romish trash as of their hallowed Wax their Agnus Dei many kind of Beads and such like have as Tillage-men laboured secretly to perswade the people to allow of the Popes foresaid Bulls and Warrants The Seminary Fugitives come secretly into the Realm to induce the people to obey the Popes Bull. and of his absolute Authority over all Princes and Countries and striking many with pricks of Conscience to obey the same whereby in Process of small time if this wicked and dangerous traitorous and crafty course had not been by Gods goodness espied and stayed there had followed imminent danger of horrible uprores in the Realms and a manifest bloody destruction of great multitudes of Christians For it cannot be denied but that so many as should have been induced and throughly perswaded to have obeyed that wicked Warrant of the Popes and the Contents thereof should have been forthwith in their hearts and Consciences secret Traitors and for to be indeed errant and open Traitors there should have wanted nothing but opportunity to feel their strength and to assemble themselves in such numbers with Armour and Weapons as they might have presumed to have been the greater part and so by open civil War to have come to their wicked purposes But Gods goodness by whom Kings do Rule and by whose blast Traitors are commonly wasted and confounded hath otherwise given to her Majesty as to his Handmaid and dear Servant ruling under him the spirit of Wisdom and Power Sowers of sedition taken convented and executed for Treason whereby she hath caused some of these seditious Seedmen and Sowers of Rebellion to be discovered for all their secret lurkings and to be taken and charged with these former points of High Treason not being dealt withal upon questions of Religion but justly condemned as Traitors At which times notwithstanding all manner of gentle ways of perswasions used to move them to desist from such manifest traitorous courses and opinions yet was the Canker of their Rebellious humours so deeply entred and graven into the hearts of many of them as they would not be removed from their traiterous determinations And therefore as manifest Traitors in maintaining and adhearing to the capital Enemy of her Majesty and her Crown who hath not only been the cause of two Rebellions already passed in England and Ireland but in that of Ireland did manifestly wage and maintain his own people Captains and Souldiers under the Banner of Rome against her Majesty so as no Enemy could do more These I say have justly suffered Death not by force or form of any new Laws established either for Religion or against the Popes Supremacy as the slanderous Libellers would have it seem to be The sediticus Traitors Condemned by the antient Laws of the Realm made 200. years past but by the antient temporal Laws of the Realm and namely by the Laws of Parliament made in King Edward the Thirds time about the year of our Lord 1330. which is above 200. years and more past when the Bishops of Rome and Popes were suffered to have their Authority Ecclesiastical in this Realm as they had in many other Countries But yet of this kind of Offenders as many of them as after their Condemnations were contented to renounce their former traiterous assertions so many were spared from Execution and do live still at this day Persons Condemned spared from Execution upon refusal of their treasonable opinions such was the unwillingness in her Majesty to have any blood spilt without this very just and necessary cause proceeding from themselves And yet nevertheless such of the rest of the Traitors as remain in Foreign parts continuing still their Rebellious minds and craftily keeping themselves aloof off from dangers The Foreign Traitors continue sending of persons to move sedition in the Realm cease not to provoke sundry other inferiour seditious persons newly to steal secretly into the Realm to revive the former seditious practises to the Execution of the Popes foresaid Bulls against her Majesty and the Realm pretending when they are apprehended that they came only into the Realm by the commandment of their Superiours the Heads of the Jesuits to whom they are bound as they say by Oath against either King or Country and here to inform or reform Mens Consciences from errors in some points of Religion as they shall think meet but yet in very truth the whole scope of their secret labours is manifestly proved to be secretly to win all people with whom they dare deal
Master of Truth said to Peter and his fellow-Apostles Reges gentium dominantur vos autem non sic That is The Kings of the Gentiles have rule over them but you not so may learn to forsake their arrogant and tyrannous Authorities in earthly and temporal causes over Kings and Princes and exercise their Pastoral Office as St. Peter was charged thrice at one time by his Lord and Master Pasce oves meas Feed my sheep and peremptorily forbidden to use a Sword in saying to him Converte gladium tuum in locum suum or mitte gladium tuum in vaginam That is Turn thy Sword into his place or Put thy Sword into the scabbard All which Precepts of Christ and his Apostles were duly followed and observed many hundred years after their death by the faithful and godly Bishops of Rome that duly followed the doctrine and humility of the Apostles and the doctrine of Christ and thereby dilated the limits of Christs Church and the Faith more in the compass of an hundred years than the latter Popes have done with their Swords and Curses these five hundred years Pope Hildebrand the first that made War against the Emperor An. Dom. 1074. and so continued untill the time of one Pope Hildebrand otherwise called Gregory the Seventh about the year of our Lord 1074. who first began to usurp that kind of Tyranny which of late the Pope called Pius Quintus and since that time Gregory now the Thirteenth hath followed for some example as it seemeth that is Where Gregory the Seventh in the year of our Lord 1074. or thereabout presumed to depose Henry the Fourth a noble Emperour then being Gregory the Thirteenth now at this time would attempt the like against King Henry the Eighth's Daughter and Heir Queen Elizabeth a Soveraign Queen holding her Crown immediately of God And to the end it may appear to Princes or to their good Counsellors in one example what was the fortunate success that God gave to this good Christian Emperour Henry against the proud Pope Hildebrand it is to be noted that when the Pope Gregory attempted to depose this noble Emperour Henry there was one Rodulph a Noble man by some named the Count of Reenfield that by the Popes procurement usurped the name of the Emperour The Judgement of God against the Popes false erected Emperour who was overcome by the said Henry the lawful Emperour and in fight having lost his right hand he the said Rodulph lamented his case to certain Bishops who in the Popes name had erected him up and to them he said that the self-same right hand which he had lost was the hand wherewith he had before sworn obedience to his Lord and Master the Emperour Henry and that in following their ungodly Counsels he had brought upon him Gods heavy and just Judgments And so Henry the Emperour prevailing by Gods power Pope Gregory the Seventh deposed by Henry IV. caused Gregory the Pope by a Synod in Italy to be deposed as in like times before him his Predecessor Otho the Emperour had deposed one Pope John for many hainous crimes and so were also within a short time three other Popes namely Sylvester Bennet and Gregory the Sixth used by the Emperour Henry the Third about the year of our Lord 1047. for their like presumptuous attempts in temporal actions against the said Emperours Many other examples might be shewed to the Emperours Majesty and the Princes of the holy Empire now being after the time of Henry the Fourth as of Henry the Fifth Henry 5. Frederick 1. Frederick 3. Lewis of Banar Emperours and after him of Frederick the First and Frederick the Second and then of Lewis of Bavar all Emperours cruelly and tyrannously persecuted by the Popes and by their Bulls Curses and by open Wars and likewise to many other the great Kings and Monarchs of Christendom of their noble Progenitors Kings of their several Dominions whereby they may see how this kind of tyrannous Authority in Popes to make Wars upon Emperours and Kings and to command them to be deprived took hold at the first by Pope Hildebrand though the same never had any lawful example or warrant from the Laws of God of the Old or New Testament but yet the successes of their tyrannies were by Gods goodness for the most part made frustrate as by Gods goodness there is no doubt but the like will follow to their confusions at all times to come And therefore as there is no doubt but the like violent tyrannous proceedings by any Pope in maintenance of Traiters and Rebels would be withstood by every Soveraign Prince in Christendom in defence of their Persons and Crowns and maintenance of their Subjects in Peace so is there at this present a like just cause that the Emperours Majesty with the Princes of the holy Empire Whatsoever is lawful for other Princes Soveraigns is lawful for the Queen and Crown of England and all other Soveraign Kings and Princes in Christendom should judge the same to be lawful for her Majesty being a Queen and holding the very place of a King and a Prince Soveraign over divers Kingdoms and Nations she being also most lawfull invested in her Crown and as for good governing of her People with such applause and general allowance loved and obeyed of them saving a few ragged Traiters or Rebels or persons discontented whereof no other Realm is free as continually for these twenty five years past hath been notably seen and so publickly marked even by strangers repairing into this Realm as it were no cause of disgrace to any Monarchy and King in Christendom to have her Majesties felicity compared with any of theirs whatsoever and it may be there are many Kings and Princes could be well contented with the fruition of some proportion of her felicity And though the Popes be now suffered by the Emperor in the Lands of his own peculiar Patrimony and by the two great Monarchs the French King and the King of Spain in their Dominions and Territories although by other Kings not so allowed to continue his Authority in sundry cases and his glorious Title to be the universal Bishop of the World The Title of universal Bishop is a Preamble of Antichrist which Title Gregory the Great above nine hundred years past called a profane Title full of Sacriledge and a Preamble of Antichrist yet in all their Dominions and Kingdoms as also in the Realm of England most notably by many ancient Laws it is well known how many ways the tyrannous Power of this his excessive Authority hath been and still is restrained checked and limited by Laws and Pragmatiques both ancient and new a very large field for the Lawyers of those Countries to walk in and discourse And howsoever the Popes Canonists being as his Bombarders do make his Excommunications and Curses appear fearful to the multitude and simple people yet all great Emperours and Kings aforetime in their own cases
and other places there to be more safely kept and looked unto In January following 1581. according to the general computation a Proclamantion was made for the calling home of her Majesties Subjects beyond the Seas such especially as were trained up in the Seminaries pretending that they learned little there but disloyalty and that none after that time should harbor or relieve them with sundry other points of very hard intendment towards us The same month also a Parliament ensued wherein a Law was made agreeable in effect to the said Proclamation but with a more severe punishment annexed For it was a penalty of death for any Jesuit or Seminary Priest to repair into England and for any to receive and entertain them which fell our according to Bishop Watsons former speeches or prediction what mischief the Jesuits would bring upon us We could here as well as some others have done shew our dislike with some bitterness of the said Law and penalty But to what purpose should we do so It had been a good point of wisdom in two or three persons that have taken that course to have been silent and rather have sought by gentleness and sweet carriage of themselves to have prevented the more sharp execution of that Law than by exclaiming against it when it was too late to have provoked the State to a greater severity against us And to confess something to our own disadvantage and to excuse the said Parliament if all the Seminary Priests then in England or which should after that time have come hither had been of Mr. Mortons and Mr. Saunders mind before mentioned when the first Excommunication came out or of Mr. Saunders his second resolution being then in Arms against her Majesty in Ireland or of Mr. Parsons traiterous disposition both to our Queen and Country the said Law no doubt had carried with it a far greater shew of Justice But that was the error of the State and yet not altogether for ought they knew improbable those times being so full of many dangerous designments and Jesuitical practices In this year also divers other things fell out unhappily towards us poor Priests and other the graver sort of Catholicks who had all of us single hearts and disliked no men more of all such factious enterprises For notwithstanding the said Proclamation and Law Mr. Heywood a Jesuit came then into England and took so much upon him that Father Parsons fell out exceedingly with him and great troubles grew amongst Catholicks by their brablings and quarrels A Synod was held by him the said Mr. Heywood and sundry ancient Customs were therein abrogated to the offence of very many These courses being understood after a sort by the State the Catholicks and Priests in Norfolk felt the smart of it This Summer also in July Mr. Campion and other Priests were apprehended whose answers upon their examinations agreeing in effect with Mr. Sherwins before mentioned did greatly incense the State For amongst other questions that were propounded unto them this being one viz. If the Pope do by his Bull or Sentence pronounce her her Majesty to be deprived and no lawful Queen and her Subjects to be discharged of their allegiance and obedience unto her and after and Pope or any other by his appointment and authority do invade this Realm which part would you take or which part ought a good Subject of England to take some answered that when the case should happen they would then take counsel what were best for them to do Another that when that case should happen he would answer and not before Another that for the present he was not resolved what to do in such a cafe Another that when the case happeneth then he will answer Another that if such deprivation and invasion should be made for any matter of his faith he thinketh he were then bound to take part with the Pope Now what King in the world being in doubt to be invaded by his enemies and fearing that some of his own Subjects were by indirect means drawn rather to adhere unto them than to himself would not make the best tryal of them he could for his better satisfaction whom he might trust to In which tryal if he found any that either should make doubtful answers or peremptorily affirm that as the case stood betwixt him and his enemies they would leave him their Prince and take part with them might he not justly repute them for Traitors and deal with them accordingly Sure we are that no King or Prince in Christendom would like or tolerate any such Subjects within their Dominions if possibly they could be rid of them The duty we owe to our Soveraigns doth not consist in taciturnity or keeping close within our selves such Allegiance as we think sufficient to afford them but we are especially when we are requited thereunto to make open profession of it that we may appear unto them to be such Subjects as we ought to be and as they may rely upon if either their Kingdoms or saferies be in hazard or danger And we greatly marvel that any Jesuits should be so hard laced concerning the performance of their duties towards the Fathers and Kings of those Countries where they were born and whose Vassals they are considering unto what obedience they tye themselves toward their own general provincial and other Governors unto whom they were no way tied but by their own consents and for that it hath pleased them voluntarily to submit themselves unto them If a quarrel should fall out for example betwixt the Jesuits and the Dominicans it would seem a very strange matter to the Provincial or General of that Society to be driven to be demanded of a Jesuit which part he would take But therewith we have not to intermeddle only we wish that whilst they look for so great subjection at those mens hands that be under them they do not forget their own Allegiance towards their Soveraigns or at the least so demean themselves as we poor men every way their equals and as sound Catholicks as themselves that we go no further may not be brought into hatred with her Majesty unto whom we profess all duty and true alleiance let other men qualisie the same as they list About the time of the overthrow of the Popes Forces in Ireland his Holiness by the false instigations of the Jesuits plotted with the King of Spain for the assistance of the Duke of Guise to enterprise upon the sudden a very desperate designment against her Majesty and for the delivery and advancement to the Crown of the Queen of Scotland For the better effecting whereof Mendoza the Jesuit and Ledger for the King of Spain in England set on work a worthy Gentleman otherwise one Mr. Francis Throckmorton and divers others And whilst the same was in contriving as afterwards Mr. Throckmorton himself confessed 1584. the said Jesuitical humor had so possessed the hearts of sundry Catholicks as we do unfeignedly rue in our
against the Jesuits they are both easily answered First it is objected that the Jesuits teach the Doctrine of the Pope deposing Kings It is answered That no Community can be less accused of that Doctrine than the Jesuits It 's true four or five Jesuits did many years ago teach that Dectrine as they had found it taught by others ancienter than their Order But since the first of January 1616. the General of the Jesuits forbade any of his to teach preach or dispute for that Doctrine or print any thing for it to take away the aspersion which the Writings of some few have brought upon the Society And now actually all Jesuits are obliged under pain of damnation not to teach that Doctrine either in word writing or print which none in the Church but they only are Secondly 'T is objected that the Jesuits do particularly depend on the Pope It is answered That they are obliged by a particular Vow to be ready to go even to the utmost bounds of the Earth to preach the Gospel to Insidels when the Pope shall think it fit to send them and they have no other Vow which doth particularly oblige them but this which can prejudice no Kingdom On the other side speaking of their dependence which my byass their affections they have the least dependence of the Pope of any Church-men for they are by special Vow excluded from al Benefices and Dignities by which the Pope may win the affection of other Church-men As for which is said of the Venetians and French banishing the Jesuits it is answered that both those Estates have repealed their Acts. Lastly That the Jesuits being willing to submit to whatsoever all other Catholick Priests shall agree to and offering all the security which others offer they hope they may be partakers of the same favurs which shall be granted to others that so that mercy may extend to all and the World may see that the Sanguinary Laws are truly taken away PREFACE I Expect Censures and Clamours as loud as can be against me of uncharitable uncatholick unchristian c. for seeming to lay load upon the already oppressed and contribute to and even provoke a persecution against our Fellow Cathlicks I think I have said my worst against my self let me see how I can justifie my action Premising therefore that the case of you Jesuits is apprehended by your selves and your Abettors already desperate and your Exclusion remediless and so cannot be said to spring from this paper of mine I address to my Defence and offer my Motives why I publish this little Treatise against you My first is To wipe off the aspersion laid upon Gods Church by some Tenets of yours and strongly fastened on it by your haughty calling only your selves the Catholick Church and all dissenters from your Tenets Hereticks My second Because I understand you are about to make the Common good stoop to the Particular one of your Order as is your constant practice contrary to the Law of Nature and Principles of Christianity For I have been informed that you in a boasting manner affirm the Parliament will proceed no farther about taking away the Sanguinary Laws and that some friends of yours endeavour to make it believed that it is not for his Majesties interest to make good his solemn promise from Breda of having regard to tender Consciences My third is Your stomachful frustrating my expectation For I was really glad when I heard you had published Apologetical Reasons why you should not be excepted hoping you would sincerely renounce the criminal Doctrines and Actions of your Predecessors and free Religion from scandal But finding no such thing per verba de praesenti but on the contrary a comparing and preferring your selves before others I thought my self obliged to do right to the Common Cause My fourth To oblige you to repentance and a hearty retractation of your unlawful Tenets and Practices that so you may deserve and have as much favour as others which is the worst I wish you and not to wrong your own Credits and Consciences and fool others with dissembling shews of loyalty which every one may see to be mere hypocrisie My fifth Because I owe that duty to the Civil Magistrate whose hearty Subject I am to resent a mockery put upon him as this your paper will appear to be under colour of offering satisfaction Every true hearted Subject owing his best endeavour to his King and Country that none lurk among them unless their faltring Principles of Aequivocation and disloyalty be purged out My sixth To offer even your selves an advantage if your courage and cause will stretch to improve it For the following Doubts are many of them such as Protestants themselves urge against your Reasons and are communicated here to you partly on purpose that you may provide better satisfaction My last to satisfie even the passionate too is Because your unchristian spirit of Calumny is still as unquiet as ever having of late most unjustly aspersed Principal Persons of almost every Body but your own which comportment of yours makes it but fit if Truth and the Common Good favour you not neither should I. To think and declare thus much satisfies me if it do not others I cannot help it Only I wish your favourers to beware of doing any thing that may be interpreted an abetment of you till you approve your selves heartily loyal lest they discover themselves too deeply tainted with your Principles and temper DOVBTS TO begin then My first Doubt shall be Whether you Jesuits have ground to hope the same favour with others For if you by your unjust and wicked practices provoked the Magistrates to enact those Laws if the rest of Priests and Catholicks were by you plunged in such miseries upon discovery of your Negotiations which were imputed to the whole Body of them how can you be thought to deserve remission whose seditious Principles are too deeply guilty of the Blood of Priests and Catholicks shed in the Kingdom ever since you first came into it Those who know your practices in the Countries where you by the means ordinarily of deluded Wives govern the Great Ones know this to be your Maxime to manage Religion not by perswasion but by command and force This Principle did your chief Apostle of England Robert Parsons bring in with him His first endeavours were to make a List of Catholicks which under the conduct of the Duke of Guise should have changed the state of the Kingdom using for it the pretence of the Title of Queen Mary of Scotland But her Council at Paris which understood business better were so sensible of his boldness that they took from him the Queens Cypher which he had purloyned and commanded him never more to meddle in Her affairs Poor Edmund Campian who is generally accounted an innocent and learned man and others suffered for such practices of his Parson's endeavours being suppressed by this Queen he turned himself to the Spaniard and with all
Majesty will quarrel with you for this Vow as you explicate it though to tell you my sence of it I do not know how it stands with His Prerogative that the Pope shall have power over his Subjects which may be useful to him to send them without his leave to Japan and China But this Authoity you assume to your selves and further For you do not only oblige your Subjects to come in or go out of the Kingdom when you command them but play the Judges of life and death upon the Kings natural Subjects without his leave or any crime that according to Civil Laws deserves punishment You presume by your power to send them to Watten or some such place wherein either your selves have high Justice or the high Justice is at your Devotion there frame Process against them and execute them without making account to His Majesty of the life of his Subject for pretended crimes committed in England This taking the whole story together I conceive to be no less than making your selves Soveraigns over His Majesties Subjects that is to be an Act of high Treason Yet all parts of this Action are evidently in your hands in virtue of your obedience and your having such places of high Justice in your Command so that your Subjects have other Soveraigns than the King's Majesty whom by consequence they ought to fear more than him since their power is more immediate and pressing and pressed on their Consciences As for the Practice 't is said to have been used upon one Thomas Barton an eminent Scholar among you who wrote a Book called The agreement of Faith and Reason How true it is I undertake not to justifie but if you 'l justifie your selves from High Treason it behoves you to produce the man And so you have my seventh Doubt 8. My Eighth Doubt is that you equivocate with us in this word Dependence for you turn it to be dependence by Vow whereas more likely it means dependence of Interest and signifies that 't is your interest to ingage the Pope to you by maintaining all height of Supreme Authority in him though it be ever so irrational and against Gods Law For by so doing you also can use it all for your own Interest in procuring for your selves and friends whatever lies either in the Popes Authority or Grace as Exemptions Priviledges Benefices c. For men look not on your Body as on others whose Generals have no other power than according to their Rules to look to their Discipline But on you they look as on an Army managed by one man whose Weapons are Pens and Tongues and the Arts of Negotiation and all plausible means of commending your selves to the World Which you exercise in such a height as to have had the boldness to threaten the Pope with a Schism to tell the King of Spain your Tongues and Pens had gotten him more Dominions than his Armies to attempt breaking the Liberties of Venice to be able to raise Seditions in most Countries and to be dreadful to the very Kings and Princes And all this because as Christ proposed to his Disciples the love of one another for the Badge of Christianity so your Generals propose to you blind obedience for the Badge of a Jesuit that is by cooperating with them to make them powerful and great Lords and your selves invincible and terrible to all that oppose you For this end you exalt the Popes Infallibility that you may get your Opponents condemned in Rome and then cry them down for Hereticks For this reason you teach the Pope to have all Authority in the Church and other Bishops to be but his Deputies so joyning with your Brother-Presbyters in really destroying the Hierarchy that when you by Grace or surreption have purloyn'd a Command from that Court you may treat all that resist you as Schismaticks and Rebels to the Church Yet if we believe Mr. White acknowledged an able man they are both damnable Heresies and destructive of Faith and Church and many others also of our most learned dislike them though their courage c. reaches not to brand them so severely In this complication of Interests then and not in your glorious Vow consists the dependence you have so specially on the Pope in a matter not of Religion but of Temporal profit and greatness 9. My Ninth Doubt is about the comparison you make between your selves and others telling us how you are by special Vow excluded from all Benefices and Dignities by which the Pope may win the affection of other Church-men Concerning which I first inquire whether this be roundly true I doubt you 'd be loth to reject all the Abbeys and Benefices annexed to your Colledges to verifie this Vow as you have set it down in your Paper and therefore the effect of your Vow is only that private men may not be alienated from your Order with hope of quiet lives in such Benefices and not the contempt of the Power and Honour following it as is sufficiently testified by another Vow of yours which is that if any of yours for special reasons be made Bishop he shall be bound to be subject to the Provincial or Rector of the place of his Residence and to take their advice in the government of his Church which you extend as far as to Cardinals to a capacity of which Eminent Dignity notwithstanding your special Vow your Dispensations easily reach So that your Vow is no Religious one of despising Honours but a politick abuse mask'd under the veil of Religion that the abler men of your Order may not be separated from it and so the Body may remain the stronger and your General more potent to resist the Pope himself Neither does this any way diminish but increase your dependence on the Pope both because 't is by him your Houses are furnisht with Benefices and those never to return to the Popes Donation as because you oblige your Friends by procuring others for them you being at his elbow to suggest this or that friend on whom all his Benefices may be conferred by which means you get the endearment due to the Pope from those Friends to the increase of your own power and riches and your selves still find out new pretended necessities to beg more So that this Holy Vow of yours no ways makes you less subject to the Pope but to suck his paps the harder as those know who have seen what passed in France and Flanders these late years especially under the Archduke Leopold 10. Yet have I another Doubt concerning this Vow of yours viz. Whether it does not make you as refractory to Kings and Princes as to the Pope For to speak truth whatever the Right is in other Countries in England where the Canons and Concordates with the Pope have been out of use a hundred years and by consequence have no force even in your own Doctors opinions and therefore things are to be governed by Nature and Reason at least in