devoureth Widows houses Nay he 'l rob the Spittle and starve his very Parents to enrich the Corban and advance his Society In short what served others to make them religious would not serve the Pharisee He was all for Majorem Dei gloriam for that which would most visibly set out the honour and glory of God in the World and therefore he did enlarge his Phylacteries and make them broader and bigger than other Men He multiplied his holy waters and sprinklings counting it more necessary to sprinkle himself than if he were a-thirst to drink and live Nay if any thing would set him higher in the esteem of the vulgar than other Men he would be sure to be most punctual thereat witness his tithing of Mint and Cummin which as the learned Hammond observes was under a dispute even amongst the very Lawyers and Casuists themselves whether it ought to be paid or no. Thus great thus universal was his Hypocrisie and no wonder therefore if the Pharisee be no sooner named but Hypocrisie be clapt upon him or that the Holy Jesus should not denounce a Woe against him without calling him Hypocrite and shewing him the reason of that Woe The second thing for which they stand charged is 2. Their preposterous Zeal for they would compass Sea and Land to make one Proselyte Run into the Indies seek out the remotest corners of the World renounce their Friends and Families endure all the hardships and dangers that the merciless Seas or the more merciless Nations could expose them unto and all for the gaining perhaps but of one single Convert Nay they were so far from either balking or starting at the employ that they would beg the mission and strive who should be the first and most forward in it Now though this action was altogether praise-worthy and to be accepted of even when it reached but to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the Proselyte within the Gate to the Person that had his habitation among the Jews whether he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a stranger by birth and religion only or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by birth religion and affection too yet it was never so highly esteemed of nor the Party never seemed so much to merit as when he left his native Country to do it Such an one was magni nominis ever to be honoured with a red Letter in the Calendar and to be seated in the Resurrection of the Just next to Hillel and Schamai And this certainly if well designed had been a most pious excellent and glorious Work One of the Apostles of the Holy Jesus telleth us that he who effects it shall save a Soul alive and hide a multitude of sins But then as it fell out it was not so much to gain them to God and the truth as to themselves and their Party not so much to make them Converts as Pharisees not to bring them off from a false to a true as from a false to a false from an Heathenish Idolatrous to as heathenishly superstitious and more wicked religion Which in the third place sets forth 3. Their rancour and their poison for as they proselyted so they ever made those whom they proselyted twice more Children of the Devil than before infinitely more rebellious to the Government they lived under and much more opposite to the coming and design of the blessed Jesus in purifying and reforming the depraved World As Jews they were never good the whole Religion of them was prone to be stubborn rebellious antichristian but when proselyted they ever grew worse their temper more sowre their behaviour more ungovernable their designs more wicked and bloudy And hence when they attempted a Persecution upon the Apostles it 's said Acts 13. 50. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they animated or inflamed the worshipping the proselyted Women against them as those who were ever the most zealous and forward in the cause not altogether because they were Women and of that Sex usually the most zealous but because newly proselyted and thereby made a new Sect. And in sooth so they would but keep up their zeal and therewith the Traditions they were taught the Pharisees never minded what their lives or practices were nor how much they engaged themselves for hell or hellish designs No Pereant illi in ignorantiâ superstitione impietate modo permaneant in Judaismo let them for ever perish in their ignorance superstition impiety yea Go unto the Devil whose Children they are provided whilst they are in this World they will but adhere unto their Proselytism and keep close unto the Pharisee his Faction and Traditions The sum of all that we have been labouring for in short is this 1. That the Jewish Church was at this time in a very degenerate and corrupted condition over-run with many ill Doctrines and Superstitious practices guided not by the Eternal verities of Divine revelation but by the Traditions and dotages of the self-designing Pharisee 2. That the one Order of the Hypocritical Pharisees were the only cause and the main promoters of this corruption and decay in Religion 3. That there was no way so ready or so seisable to purge out its corruptions and to bring on a Reformation and thereby to settle the Church on a lasting and peaceable foundation as to root out the Pharisees and put a stop to their proselyting Zeal And here I should end were the Jewish the only Church troubled with this sort of Men But alas we shall find the Church of Christ now in the world even in these our days every way to be as much pestered with them And in the first place 1. Let the Jesuite come unto the Scrutiny that Man of piety and design the fittest Zealot to be an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and to act a Part in this Tragedy For who seeing Ignatius and his Followers returning from the Holy Land bare-foot and bare-legg'd with their Crucifixes in their Hands their Bible and Breviaries under their Arms their Rosaries about their Necks most pitifully clad and as pitifully fed disciplining themselves as they go and mumbling over their Offices their Pater nosters and Ave Maries at every Door they come to would not believe that the Pharisees were again revived or that there was not a new spawn another Generation of those old Vipers going out into the World especially if he considers 1. The conformity of their Principles to the Pharisees 2. How adapted and fitted they be to reduce those Principles or worse if need require into action Consider we 1. Their Principles the main and chief whereof is to ruine and extirpate the Reformation with us the best for the introducing their own the worst of religions Religion it is that they aim at the religion of the place and Kingdom that troubles them A religion consonant to God's Scripture to the ancient Writings of the Fathers to all the Records and Monuments of holy Church in the best and purest Ages thereof In Doctrine orthodox in Worship pure in Discipline regular
the aid and assistance of the Holy Ghost The King became a Defender of it the Parliament a Supporter the Clergy a Contriver and most willing Abettor no Man but thought himself and his Posterity blessed by it Nay it hath made us stupor mundi not only happy at home but admired abroad It hath done me good saith the learned Spanhemius to look upon the beautiful and comelyface of your English Church its regular Devotion its decent Order Patriâ—gentis vestrae virtus a priviledge and glory peculiar to your selves alone and not to be found in such lustre in any other Churches of the Reformation But alas it hath been her mishap from her very infancy like her Lord and Master to be crucified between two Thieves the Jesuit on the one hand and the Puritan on the other only whereas one hours Crucifixion of him made one of the two to relent and become a Convert not an hundred years and more hath wrought upon these or caused any one of the Factious to leave off their blaspheming and reviling language My work at present is with the latter only and whosoever shall but consider how in the Churches infancy they would have stifled her how in her younger years they would have supplanted her how in her elder they would have buried her alive how they have murdered the Defender of her Faith sequestred her Ministers turn'd her Senators out of doors impoverished her Patriots decimated and persecuted her Followers yea and at present how they abuse her Friends applaud her Enemies nick name her Proselytes molest her Governors by scandalous Reflections seditious Petitions pernicious Libels Antimonarchical Clubs will find reason enough to believe that there ought to come a Woe upon them as much as ever there did upon the Pharisees for their disturbing the Church of the Jews and hindering the Reformation that our Blessed Saviour was then working among them There is one thing further that I must remark upon them how that to make themselves the only Protestants of the Land the old ones must be laid aside and on a sudden turned into Papists Boast not your selves any more for Queen Elizabeth's Protestants saith the Author of the Plotters doom for you are so far from being of that nature that bate the bare name and you have nothing of her Protestants in you nay I am perswaded it were good for our Church he means the Conventicles of the Puritans if you had not so much as the name neither The Author of Celeusma speaking of the conformable Clergy telleth you plainly that they are Specie duntaxat Protestantes and that they do Supparasitare Pelagio Socino sed imprimis Paepae Papismo And this of late hath been the cry of all or most of the Faction in their pursuit after the conformable Clergy of the Church of England forgetting all the while at leastwise willing that it should be forgotten that our Religion as now established is the very same it was in Queen Elizabeth's days that no alteration hath been made either in our Doctrine Discipline or Worship only our Discipline somewhat weakned whereby such Plotters should have had their doom That it hath ever since those days been asserted maintained and defended by the conformable Clergy and ever most by the most conformable That if at any time Protestantism be defied as the Israelites were by the Goliah of the Philistins the Church of England must find the Champion Others perhaps may wear the Sword but the Pen and the Prison to write and to suffer for it ever did ever must and ever will belong unto them I have been too tedious however let this be observed that the Jesuitical Society and Puritan Faction began together much about the same time and within a Year or two one of the other the one in Geneva and the other in Rome and both to obstruct and baffle the Reformation that then appeared in the World And I must confess that I am much of the same mind with the blessed Martyr our late Arch-Bishop That till the Jesuits are taken from the Church of Rome and the peevish Puritan-Preachers out of the Churches of Great Britain there never can be any Peace in Christendom May Authority therefore to which they are both alike grievous rid us of the one and the other and I doubt not which is the thing I desire to see but Jerusalem will live in Peace Her Walls will be Salvation and her Gates Praise FINIS PRosecution no Persecution Or the Difference between Suffering for Disobedience and Faction and Suffering for Righteousness and Christ's Sake Truly Discussed and Stated By Nath. Bisbie D. D. Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's-Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard
take up Arms against the King those saith a third who conclude that the Parliament being Subjects may not take up Arms against the King and that it is Rebellion to resist him their grounds are sandy and their superstructure false Some tell us that the Supreme power of the Land is originally formally and radically in the Body of the People So that if Kings fail in the performance of their duty the people may supply it at least in some cases may do it of themselves Others that the whole Soveraignty is conditionate fiduciary and meerly in trust from and for the people insomuch that if the trust be violated the power returns unto the people again Others that the King is but one of the three Estates of the Land and that the two Houses of Parliament are co-ordinate with him in the Government and being co-ordinate may act any thing without his consent especially in case of his refusal to co-operate or conform to their desires And lastly Others that Kings are accountable to the people as to their Superiors and upon their male-administration or apostasie from the true Religion of which they also must be Judges are censurable punishable and dethronable by them All which aforementioned Doctrines and Tenents are the avowed Doctrins of our Puritans raised the last Civil Wars murdered our late Sovereign and make as fair steps towards the ruine and overthrow of the present as any Consult of Jesuits in the World are able or likely to do It were endless to recite the number and horridness of these Mens sayings and writings the World it self being scarce able to contain them However this I think I may lay down for a great truth and I am very confident that I fail not in my computation that though the Order of the Jesuits hath spread it self much further into the World than the Faction of the Puritans yet there have been as many Puritans who have openly and boldly asserted the Doctrine of deteriorating opposing deposing Kings as ever there were Jesuits Yea and have had their Writings when time serv'd as publickly authorised by Cranford Calamy Caril the Generals of their Faction as ever the Jesuits had theirs by Franciscus Borgia Claudius Aquaviva Mutius Vitileschi the Generals of their Order Nay I think the Jesuits in reason pardon me if I mistake ought to be concluded the more safe of the two for finding that such like Tenents were a matter of scandal to the respective Governments where they lived there was first a prohibition made anno 1616 afterwards a precept of Obedience anno 1626 by which the whole Order of the Jesuits were obliged under pain of Damnation never to write dispute teach or print any thing concerning that matter And this saith the Author of the account of the Jesuits Life and Doctrine is the Precept which hath stood ever since and never was infringed by any one Jesuit I confess I believe not the Man in his tale Credat Judaeus Apella But this I am sure of that the Faction of the Puritans never gave such seeming satisfaction to the World as these Men have done for being urged by the Oxford Act to give credit to themselves by Oath that they would never take up Arms against the King nor at any time endeavour to alter the Government by Law established in Church or State not one in twenty of them would do it The refusal whereof must undoubtedly be attributed to one or other of these two Reasons either 1. Because the Puritan doth really hold it lawful to take up Arms against the King as once he hath done or 2. Because he looks upon himself in conscience bound to endeavour and work an alteration in the Government and if so then you see the nature of the Man what the Puritan is and what he would have However these things considered we may wonder that this sort of Men should ever dare to expect much less to challenge any thing of favour from the King till they have abjur'd and renounc'd their Anticarolin Principles which as yet they have not and for ought as I can see never will Truly saith Mr. Jenkins that Christi fidelis servus I speak no more than what I have often thought and said The removal of those burdens that were then upon us countervails all the Bloud and Treasure shed and spent in these late Distractions Nor did I as yet ever hear of any Godly man that desired were it possible to purchase their Friends or Mony again at so dear a rate as with the return and re-imposal of those Soul-burthening antichristian Yokes and if any such there be I am sure that desire is no part of their godliness and I profess my self in that to be none of the number Richard Baxter telleth us That he had often search'd into his heart whether he did lawfully engage in the late War against the King or not or did well to encourage so many thousands to it and the issue of all his search as he boasts was this That he cannot yet see that he was mistaken in the main cause nor dares he repent of it nor forbear doing the same if it were to do again in the same state of things Oh seasonable Indemnity but much more need of an open and hearty penitency Wonder we more that ever they should have the face and confidence to mouth it against the Jesuit as they do yea and to count all dastards nay Papists at least popishly affected that run not into the same excess of riot with them since they themselves have adopted and do still continue to prosecute the same if not worse Principles than the Jesuits the worst of Jesuits have done Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes King James who certainly knew the temper of the Men as well as any Man living adviseth his Son and may the Grandchild observe in the words following Take heed my Son to such Puritans very Pests in the Church and Commonwealth breathing nothing but Sedition and Calumny I protest before God that you shall never find with any Highland or Border-thieves greater ingratitude and more lies and vile perjuries than with these Fanatick Spirits wherefore for so he proceeds let not the Principals of them to brook your Land if you like to sit at rest upon the Throne They are secondly which bespeaks them down-right Pharisees 2. No less enemies to the Reformation of Religion among us It hath pleased God through his wonderful Providence to free this Land from the Errors Superstitions Idolatries Usurpations Tyranny of the Church of Rome and in lieu thereof to establish to us a Religion Primitive Apostolical Scriptural A Religion that our Forefathers thought good enough to dye for a Religion that hath all along been valued by their Off-spring as the greatest Legacy that was ever left them and hath been the means ever sith-hence of conveighing thousands and thousands of them into Heaven At the first obtaining thereof it was generally said to be wrought by
more wicked than they were He notwithstanding passed them by innocent as it were in comparison to the other and applied his Woes to the Pharisees only as Men whom he looked upon to be bipedum nequissimos the most faulty pieces of Religion throughout the whole Church of the Jews Nay it is worth our observation that the more fatherly still the more faulty if once professed and arrived unto the degree of being Scribes of being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Publishers and Teachers of the Law and the Traditions thereunto belonging If once missionated and by vertue of that mission they be also ordered to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to range and proselyte others then the Woe comes double and treble upon them Woe Woe Woe unto you Scribes Pharisees Hypocrites for ye compass Sea and Land to make one proselyte and when he is made ye make him two-fold more the child of Hell than your selves In the words we have our blessed Saviour bitterly inveighing and severely reflecting upon the whole Order of the Pharisees especially upon the proselyting Party thereof The only cry'd up Order by the People and almost the only cry'd down Order by our Saviour Please you to see the reason of his severity in these two following Instances 1. They were utter enemies to Caesar and his Government counting all things of Religion though of the remotest concern too Sacred and Spiritual to come under his cognizance Nay our blessed Saviour never seem'd more a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or less their Messiah than when he pleaded for the things of Caesar and appeared in the defence of his Prerogative and Government Josephus who was himself a Pharisee and therefore without question a favourer of the party telleth us That they were much given to combine and complot for the carrying on of Antimonarchical Anticaesarean designs insomuch that being urged by the Emperor to take the Oath of Allegiance as the rest of the Jews had done they peremptorily to the hazard of their lives and fortunes opposed it So insolent and daring and withal so busie and affrontive they were grown in King Herod's days not only disobedient themselves but propagating their Principles of disobedience among their Proselytes and Scholars that as the same Author saith at leastwise Bishop Montague from him he not only pull'd down their Schools and Seminaries spoil'd them of their Nests and Harbor but burned many of them alive trussed up others and banished the rest never looking upon his Government to be secure as long as there were such Ecclesiastical Incendiaries such religious Boutefeaus in it 2. They were no less enemies to Christ and to the Reformation of religion introduced by him Religion 'T was the shine of Paradise the glory of Humane nature the proper Image of God upon Earth until the Incarnation of his Son This the Heathens by their evil Customes and Doctrines had mightily corrupted Moses in a great measure restored and the Jews wonderfully made happy by such a restauration till the Pharisees those monsters of men again depraved it and by their Superstitious Novelties and ill devised Traditions not only evaded but evacuated the Primary Rules and more lasting Constitutions of Divine perfection It were endless to shew how this Order of Men above all others in the Jewish Church had corrupted its purity Our blessed Saviour that great Reformer who was faithful to him that appointed him every where chides them for it You teach saith he for Doctrines the Traditions of Men and again You transgress the Commandment of God by your Traditions and again You make the Commandments of God of none effect by your Traditions And this no question was the reason why they were so angry with so set themselves against and so endeavoured by all manner of ways to entrap and ensnare him Nay rather than fail through the weakness of their own Party they 'l joyn hands and interests with the Sadduces with the Essens yea with the very Herodians themselves whom otherwise they abominated because they were such sticklers for and promoters of the absoluteness and arbitrariness of the Roman Caesarean power Mat. 22. 16. and yet hail Sadducee most welcome Herodian no Man nor Party amiss provided they will but joyn in with them in support of their darling Tradition and obstruct the Holy Jesus in his Reformation These were their Principles but that which aggravates their crime under these Principles is 1. That they of all in the World besides would seem to be the only Men for Religion which sets forth their cursed Hypocrisie Woe unto you Scribes Pharisees Hypocrites 2. That no difficulties whatever could either deter or affright them from propagating such their Principles which shews their preposterous Zeal for they would compass Sea and Land to make one Proselyte 3. That where-ever they propagated the same they always instilled such violence and virulency into the minds of their Proselytes that they ever made them much more wicked far more desperate and daring than themselves and this shews their rancour and their poyson for they made them two-fold more the children of Hell than themselves Begin we 1. With their Hypocrisie which makes the wickedness of their Principles far more wicked than otherwise of themselves they would have been for though none more turbulent to Government nor more opposite to Religion yet none seemed more religious or peaceable Who hath not heard of their pale looks their demure carriage their affected garb their composed gate every way so singular as if they designed to be look'd upon and as the Apostle in another case phraseth it to be made a spectacle to the World to Angels and to Men. Thus attired how do they fast and pray spending no less than a third of their time amongst their Books and their Beads yea and with what alacrity do they run to their Spiritual exercises and Corporal austerities making their Beds upon Flints and Stones upon Bryars Bushes and Thorns to prevent their rest that it be not too long nor too pleasing But now our Saviour who knew the inside of the rotten Sepulchre as well as the outside telleth us That it was all to be seen of Men. Hence they would not pray but in the Streets and with a Saints-bell before them nor give Alms unless a Trumpet call'd unto the Show Nay go unto the Sick-man's house and there you shall have them Visit the Widow and the Orphan and there you shall find them Search the Hospital and the Prison and neither the noisomness of the one nor the fulsomness of the other will keep them away where-ever there is need of a charitable Person the Pharisee will be there and if you will believe him upon no other account than barely for the worth and merit of the action But then watch him and to the Sick-man he is making himself a Legatee to the Orphan a Guardian to the Widow not so much a Confessor as Supervisor Truth it self assures us that under pretence of long prayers he