a manner is to make a kind of Alienation 'T is a fetch of the Benedictine Monks to take up Money for Rent to be paid by them that so they may appear always poor and have pretexts to solicite the liberality of devout People also that they may have Protectors for the greater number of their Creditors is the greater is the number of persons interessed in their conservation Yet there is nothing more unjust than this Custom For there are Monastick Communities that owe more than all their Goods moveable and immoveable are worth The Monks care not though their House be ruin'd nor though they ruine some of their Creditors provided themselves subsist For by passing from one Convent to another they are quitted of all the Debts they have created It greatly concerns the Publick to Prohibit these kind of Contracts that Monasticks may be kept from defrauding any Man for the future and to decree that the Contractor shall pay the Rents Contracted for and they bound to do it both all in common and each of them in particular then that the Notaries be Fined and Declared incapable of bearing any Office Or if insolvent condemned to the Gallies for 101 years Moreover that the Purchasers of such Rents shall for their part pay a Mulct of 3000 Livres to His Majesty and the principal Money be converted to His use Besides it would be very fit to require all Notaries all Creditors of Monasticks and the Monasticks themselves to make Declaration of the Sums and Rents charged upon them bring in the Contracts for the same before Commissioners nominated by the King to be Registred and this within a time expresly limited which being once pass'd no more shall be received and all Contracts not Registred remain null and as if they were cleared This course would be very severe but excellent to reduce the folk of the Cloister to Reason There is an important Observation to be made too namely That all the Contracts which Church men have made are utterly null unless their Creditors can make it appear that the Money they lent did turn to the profit of the Church and that there was an authentick permission to make such Contracts This Doctrine is a point of Law for the Church is ever a Minor and all that it possesseth hath come from the liberality of particular persons without whose consent or at least the Magistrates and such as are capable of it the Ecclesiasticks can make no alterations in the Estates they have received So that the King may not only forbid Contracts for the future but also Declare those to be dissolved which have been made heretofore and discharge the Monasteries of them Debts have been annulled for less reasons often It must likewise be prohibited to Monks and to the Church to purchase any Estate in Land or High-rents upon pain of such Contracts being null and void in Law and the Sellers and Notaries incurring the forementioned penalties Our Lords the Prelates have lately bethought them and resolved to compell such Gentlemen as have Chappels in their Houses where the Sacrifice of the Mass hath been at any time performed to profane the said Chappels or endow them with Land for the maintenance of a Priest This would be a means to gain the Church more than Two hundred thousand Livres of Rent at one blow wherefore it will be fit to Ordain that this enterprize of the Bishops do not take effect except in case of Chapels built hereafter and built for other persons CHAP. V. 1. Of the Hugonots and whether it be for the good of the State to put them out of France 2. Politick means to extirpate their Heresie 3. Of their ancient Confession of Faith A King cannot have a more Illustrious Object of his Cares and Application than the preserving of that Religion which he hath received from his Ancestors in the States he governs because diversity of Belief of Divine Service and of Ceremony doth divide his Subjects and breeds Animosities among them Whence arise Contentions War and in the end an universal defiance Unity of belief on the contrary knits Men together and 't is seldom seen but that Fellow-subjects who call upon GOD in one and the same Temple and offer at the same Altars do also fight with the same Arms or under the same Banners If this Maxim be generally true in Christian Politicks and the Religion we profess the only one as it is that we can savingly embrace the Princes are obliged to maintain it with all their Might and employ that Soveraign Power for the Glory of the true GOD which they hold of his Goodness The Pagans whose particular conduct was so prudent and just and who have left us so many Examples of wisdom and virtue made it their principle not to suffer in their Republicks any novelty that thwarted the common and popular belief and they adher'd so peremptorily unto it that they would not so much as permit any man to undeceive them of their Errors The Books of Numa Pompilius which had been found near his Grave and contained the ancient Religion of Rome the Senate caused to be burnt because the Praetor Rutilius who had been commission'd to read them affirmed upon Oath That the Contents of e'm tended to subvert the Religion which the People observed at that time They refus'd even to open their eyes unto the light of truth though known to them when they apprehended it would be novel to the people They rather chose to stick to Fables which length of years had consecrated among them and the multitude was through custom addicted to Thus too the Athenians thought they did an act of necessary Justice in condemning Socrates to death for having taken on him to persuade the people that there was but one only GOD. They knew however that in truth this Philosopher was the Wonder of his time the Honour of the City and of all Greece the discerning men amongst them were convinc'd of the solidity of this Doctrine and the Sect of the Stoicks made profession of it so that it must be confess'd the fall of Gentilism and subversion of Idols is an effect of the hand of GOD who alone can work miracles of Grace and Omnipotence The Kings His Majesties Predecessors have set themselves with unwearied diligence to preserve the Catholick Religion inviolable They have never failed to be Protectors of the Apostolick See and the Church They expelled the Arrians they turned their Arms and exposed their lives against the Albigenses they vanquish'd e'm they destroy'd e'm they punish'd the Poor men of Lions In fine they have provided that Christianity receive no harm in any places unto which their Authority extended The last Age produced a new Monster to oppose the Church France saw him born in her bosom and unhappily bred him up with several complices of his Impiety and Revolt History will tell Posterity how much Blood was shed during the course of well nigh Fourscore years to quell this dangerous
Sect and the world well know that the Zeal there was to reduce Hereticks to their duty did take up the Reigns of Six of our Kings the glory of cutting off the last head of this Hydra being reserved for his present Majesty But it is expedient to see what weapons must be used for an execution so long expected There is no cause to doubt but that upon the Principles of Christianity and Maxims of Policy its necessary to reduce all the Kings Subjects to one and the same Belief And though they that make Profession of the pretended Reformed Religion be now without Arms without Strong-holds without Treasure without an Head and without Allies yet they are not out of case to be feared They still retain a remembrance of their boldness and by-pass'd Rebellions they look back on the Towns they once seized and out of which they could not be driven but by force of Arms as if they were their proper Inheritance and had been unjustly pluck'd out of their hands they bear in their hearts the same aversion for Order and Discipline that they ever had and their minds are always inclining to revolt and to Confusion and Anarchy It disquiets them not to think who shall head them they have Soldiers of their own number whom they can advance to be Captains by giving them Authority to command e'm They persuade themselves that if they were in Arms they should want neither Money nor Friends They believe that the Glory of the King attracts as much Envy on him as Admiration and that his Virtue raiseth in his Neighbours no less Anger than Terrour In short there is ground to think that he will have more than an Hundred Thousand Men of his Enemies in the heart of his State while there are Huguenots in France they too perhaps do but wait an occasion to make their Musters Thus they are perpetual Obstacles to the Designs that might be formed and though weak may nothwithstanding be dreaded 'T is true the honest men of their Communion do well know that they cannot be in a calmer repose than they now enjoy by the Grace of the King and under the security of his Edicts but in these matters the multitude carries it These are a Torrent that by its Rapidity overturns Rocks which seems unmoveable It will be said that the good treatment which the Huguenots receive doth preserve the friendship of the German Princes for France and if favourable Justice should be no longer done them the King would lose the most potent and most considerable of his Allies This discourse is but a found and void of all substance of reason for beside that the Princes of Germany are not of the Religion of our Hereticks They need not the Kings Protection for maintaining the Huguenots in their pretended liberty of Conscience but the French Arms securing them against the power of Austria and principally of the Emperor who hath divers pretensions upon them they cannot recede from the Alliance they have made with his Majesty nor will they do it though the last man of the Huguenots was brought to the Scaffold nay forasmuch as the Kings Forces are so useful to all those Protestants it will would be their interest not at all to Arm themselves for the Huguenots preservation but far otherwise even to promote their expulsion out of France and the reason is because if this party were in a condition to raise stirs the King would have his hands full of work to repress them and so his Forces being dissipated the Emperor might take his time to enlarge his Domination the thing that Charles the Fifth did when Francis the First was not in a possibility to succour the Princes It being therefore certain that the Liberty of Germany hath its support and prop in the Arms of the King they are not sollicitous there for the affairs of the Huguenots in France and since the Protestants of the Empire are knit to his Majesty by other engagements than those of Religion they will continue the same Deportment and his Majesty on his part will always have the same reasons to succour them though the time should come that he should have no more Huguenots in his Kingdom No succour neither may they hope for from England that 's a State too weak to make any trial of strength against France all the English there are must pass the Sea and the Isle be disfurnish'd of Soldiers and Provisions yet this all would be nothing to purpose mean time their affairs would lie expos'd to the Levity and Lunacy of the people Holland and Swedeland are of like consideration and they both have other Interests to Negotiate with the King than those of the Huguenots Denmark is defective in power The Calvinists mount unto a strain of Policy above ordinary when they would have us believe That whatever is not of the Roman Communion is of the Opinion of Charenton the Lutherans of Germany notwithstanding sympathize with them less than with us Thus the King hath nothing to be afraid of from the pretended Allies of the Huguenots Yet these men as I have already said are to be feared and they would be seen stoutly to bestir themselves if some extraordinary Commotion should happen in France as a Civil War or some great Invasion by Foreign Enemies in such a Juncture they would do as they did in the War of Paris they took up Arms and respectively protested they were for the Kings Service but if the Peace had not been soon made they would not have forborn to think themselves necessary and to make all the Propositions that they could imagine advantageous to their party They would have re-demanded their places of Security they would have press'd for a restoring of their Temples for an augmentation of their pretended Priviledges and for a free exercise of their Religion and according to their good old custom have uttered Complaints and Menaces But if by ill chance a Victorious Army of Strangers whether Catholicks or Religionaries should enter the Kingdom the King must resolve to see the Hereticks declare against him or else content them in all their pretensions which would prove an engaging of his State in like Calamities as our Fathers in their time saw It ought to be ordained that they shall exactly follow their ancient Confession of Faith which was permitted them in France and that such as vary from it shall be no longer reckon'd in the number of those of the Protestant Reformed Religion who have Liberty of Conscience given them These Huguenots have no ground at all to plead the Edict of Nantes so loudly and bravingly as they do they extorted it by violence and with Sword in hand yet was it but an Interim an Order taken until they should inform themselves of the truth which they have had time enough to do But did they not violate it themselves by the War of Languedock that other of Sevennes and again by that of Rochelle nay they call'd the Enemies of
this case is only a Bugg and vain pretence laid hold on by the Court of Rome for promoting their Temporal Power and making their Creatures in every corner That the shiftings of the Monks and their rambles from one end of France to the other serve only to debauch them with an universal acquaintance All these Observations are true and judicious But the fear that my Lord Marquess shews of offending the Court of Rome or at least the Complement he had made That it is the Glory of a King to Honour the Holy See hinders him from sounding the bottom of the Evil and from presenting the necessary remedy For it may be said of the wholsome Rules that he prescribes for reducing the Clergy to their Duty and for preventing of Fraud in matters of Benefices that this comes to no more than the paring a Man's Nails when his Skull is broken and ought to be trepann'd The great Honour and the great Interest of the King indeed would be to think of a way how he may roundly shake off this infamous and tyrannical Yoke of the Roman Court which my Lord Marquess calls the Holy See And deliver himself from this buzzard Superstition which rides even our very Statesmen viz. That there can be no Religion Catholick but in submitting to the Spiritual Jurisdiction of the Holy See Is it because the Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ His Majesty has a number of Bishops within His Realm who if they understand and do their duty are the Vicars of Jesus Christ So that we need not travail over the Alps to seek one Instead then of providing a French Secretary of Conscience who may make a Bank in the Court of Rome by which means we might know what Money passes from France to Italy which is the advice of Mouns the Marquess He should rather break the Bank in France and give order that no more Money pass out of France into Italy for this Bank is a continual Pump which draws away the fairest Cash of France which fattens a stranger with our Kingdoms Treasure which carries much away but returns nothing I know all these Tributes and Respects are paid to the Pope because he is suppos'd to be the Head of the Church and his Flatterers tell us That the Church can no more subsist without the Pope than the Body without the Head But that great Chancellor of the University of Paris John Gerson was not of this Opinion for he writ a Book expresly De auferribilitate Papa ab Ecclesia That is to say to prove that this same head might very well be quite taken away and the Church yet be never the worse nor take any harm The Cardinals have sometimes continued more than two years before they could agree about their Choice of a Pope During all which time the Body of the Church was without a Head The Churches of France and Germany did not at all feel the want of it and matters went still on there as they were wont Which puts me in mind of the Man of Wood that being mounted on Horse-back and coming under a Tree a bough struck off his head to the ground yet the heart of Oak kept the Saddle and trotted on with the company nothing dismaid for that the head was not essential to the rest of the body It is too soft an expression to call the Pope an unprofitable Head of the Church he is absolutely pernicious to it I pass by the Spirituals suiting my self herein with the humour of Mouns the Marquess who considers the Catholick Religion little farther than as it makes for the interest of France But what greater mischief can the Pope do to the Church than to render the Power of the Church suspected to Sovereign Princes as a pure politick device to invade their Rights grind their Subjects and form even an Empire within their Empire The Marquess endeavours with great reason to make the King jealous of the Popes Temporal Monarchy over his Subjects He might with as good reason have mov'd him to be jealous of that Spiritual Monarchy which is in effect purely Temporal For he has well observ'd That the name of Religion is a false pretence us'd by the Court of Rome to advance his Temporal Power And that the Popes having begun with Letters of Recommendation to the Chapters to have an Eye on such an ones mirit to be chosen Bishop Have after in process of time turn'd these Letters Recommendatory to Bulls and Decrres to dispose of the Bishopricks of France at their pleasure which is a Tyranical invasion of the Rights of the King and of those of the Church Glaber who liv'd in the times of Hugh Capet relates lib. 3. cap. 4. how Pope John sent a Cardinal into France to Found and Consecrate a Monastery within the Diocess of Tours and that the Prelates of France and Hugh Archbishop of Tours opposed him and said roundly That the Bishop of Rome having a Diocess to himself ought not to meddle with the affairs of another Diocess nor send his Commands to their Bishops who are his fellow Bishops and Colleagues The Doctors of the Sorbon in their Rescriptum publish'd at the time of the Appeal concerning the abuse about the Breviary of Anjou by the Bishop of Eâ—gers and his Injunction to the Church of the Trinity to use that of Rheims amongst other Propositions declare That the other Bishops have the power of Government and Ordination within their Diocess as fully as the Bishop of Rome has within his Therefore in the time of St. Cyprian and even in St. Angustin's days the Popes did write Ad Coepiscopos Galliae Collegas Now Collegue imports equality of Power And if the Bishops of Rome have not any power over the Bishops of France they can much less pretend to any over our Kings Pope Leo VI. promised Lotharius dist 10. c. 9. can 10. to obey his Edicts both at present and for the future Pope Pelagius to the like effect to Childebert The Holy Scriptures says he command us to obey Kings and to be subject to them The Popes were always humble Subjects of the Roman Emperors so long as that Empire continued And 't is but the other day that they got free from the Emperors of Germany Onuphrius de varia Creatione Pontif l. 4. testifies That even then when they were look'd upon as the Successors of St. Peter their Authority reached no farther but only to maintain and defend the truth of the Doctrines of Faith And for the rest were wholly subject to the Emperors who ordered all things according to their wills and were wont to create the Popes It is a notable Observation the Marquess has made That the Tables were put into the hands of Moses and not into the hands of Aaron and that it is the part of Secular Princes that the People be instructed in the Laws of God He was entrusted with the first Table as well as with the second to teach us that the
more considerable We shall likewise save the Treasure that is spent unprofitably in the Embassies to Rome and in courting the good Graces of the Cardinals at the Elections of Popes and in the Reception of Legates and Nuncio's by all which France does nought else but prosess and encrease her Slavery without the return of the least advantage For what-ever Compliments what-ever Expence France may make yet the Catholick King is the Minion of Rome and the Subjects of Spain are the Chapmen that but most of their Wares and that have most blind Devotion for the Holy See And in truth seeing that the Politicks of France by the Marquess and Monfieur Silhon and before them Cardinal D'Ossat have testified their little satisfaction with Rome and publish'd her Cheats in so far that as we know that Rome does not at all love us in like manner Rome well knows that we care not for Her and I cannot understand to what end serve all our Civilities to the Court of Rome but to puff them up the more and provoke the Gentlemen to laughter who without doubt receive a wonderful pleasure in seeing their professed Enemies come to kiss their feet 'T is true that so long as France suffers Rome to dispose of many Benefices we must always have occasion to deal with them and as the Pope to Preserve his Credit amuses the Princes with com-promises and treaties which he draws out at length deporting himself as the Judge of Differences whereas he creates more than he decides So very often Princes contribute to his Inclination by their delays and in setting before his Council-board Affairs that they have no intention should be concluded And whatever their Inclination be at the bottom he is courted and caress'd as the Arbiter which pleases him extremely And why should it not please him to have at his Court the Ambassadors of the Empire of France of Spain of Poland of Portugal and other Princes that bring him Authority by their difference and bring gain to his Court and his Citizens by their Liberalities and by their Expences suitable to the Dignity of their Masters The great Men and the Sages of Council to His Majesty may when they please consider what good comes to our Kings by their keeping the Pope in this humour of his being their Judge and in letting him enjoy his pretended Rights in France And whether it is not better and a shorter way for France to do its own business without him and to take from him what does not at all belong to him in our Kingdom that we may have no more to do with him The King has been pleas'd to declare That he desir'd to re-unite his Subjects in their Religion This so Christian and Royal Design cannot be executed so long as the Pope shall have any Power in France for this Re-union cannot be made unless the Parties mutually yield some matters either in the Doctrine or in the Discipline 't is certain that the Pope will never consent at least not to be own'd the Vicar of Jesus Christ that has all the Power which Jesus Christ had upon Earth and that on the other hand the Protestants who have quite another Opinion of him and such an one as all know though they make it not an Article of their Faith they can never submit to his Authority But if that France were not govern'd in Spirituals save by the King and his Bishops an half of the way to this great Work were already over it being most certain that most of the Points in difference are not maintain'd by the Theologians vow'd to the Popes Service farther than as they serve his Interests REFLECTIONS UPON THE Fifth Chapter OF THE Politicks of France Which Treats of the HUGUENOTS I Have Treated my Lord the Marquess of C. with all the Respect that was possible for me in my Reflections upon his Chapter of the Clergy I could not do more to comply with him and serve him than by approving his Judgment and confirming it with Authorities adding only what he durst not venture and may be had a mind to say Upon his Chapter of the Huguenots I shall keep my self within the same Respect But I would hope from his Ingenuity that after I have taken some pains in commending and defending the judgment he has made on the Roman Clergy he in recompence would give me the liberty to oppose that which he has given upon those he calls Huguenots and to complain of the Treatment he would have dealt to them But because I take great delight in according with him as far as is possible I embrace the advice he gives at the entrance That a King cannot have a more noble Object of his care than to preserve in his States the Religion he has receiv'd from his Ancestors For though this Proposition be not universally true I will understand it in his Senle supposing that he means the True Christian Religion And 't is that His Majesty he receiv'd of His Ancestors the which I presume he will not limit to two or three Descents of his next Predecessors but as he has drawn from three Stocks the lawful Succession of our last Kings and affirms That they are Branches sprung from the same root he cannot take it ill that we go back to the First and Second Race to find the Religion that His Majesty has receiv'd of his Ancestors Therefore as the Noble Marquess in his Second Chapter speaking of the pretended Exemptions of the Clergy appeals for that matter to the old Kings and Emperors who own'd no such thing and says That the Clergy cannot take it amiss if His Majesty reduce things to their Primitive state In like manner the Marquess cannot take it amiss that Religion be reduc'd to its Primitive state at least to the state it was left in at the time when our Kings were Emperors Now I have shew'd in the foregoing Chapter that the Emperor Charlemaign one of His Majesties Ancestors Convok'd a Synod in which the Worship of Images was condemned and that he himself made a Book against the Second Council of Nice and against Images which we have preserv'd to this day and that under Lewis the Mild his Son another Synod was held at Paris against Images all the Acts of which we have entire This Doctrine is a principal Point of the Religion that our Kings receiv'd from their Ancestors and which we profess And as much may be said in point of the Holy Sacrament of which so much noise is made at this day that we willingly refer our selves to what was believ'd in the times of His Majesties Ancestors I should stray from my Subject should I enter upon Controversie the Marquess obliges me to stand upon another Guard employing his Eloquence in treating us as Rebels and Enemies of the State I am far from justifying the evil Actions of our Party But since we are to deal with Men of such a spirit that display the Evil and suppress the Good
and that it is to sail against Wind and Tide But you are wise enough to see and consider the posture of our Neighbours and from whence you may hope for succor and whether amongst you the Virtue and the good Agreement and the Quality of your Chiefs is augmented or diminish'd Certainly this is not the time when the troubling of that Pool will bring us a Cure And it is plain that if any thing can help us amidst so much weakness it must be the zeal of Religon the which in our Fathers time did support us when we had less Strength and more Virtue But in this cause you will find that Zeal very cool because the most part of our People believes that this Evil might have been prevented without making a breach in the Conscience Assure your selves there will always be Divisions amongst us when we shall stir upon civil accounts and not directly for the Cause of the Gospel Against all this 't is Objected That our Enemies have resolv'd our ruin That they undermine us by little and little and that we had better begin presently than attend longer 'T is very true he must want common Sense that doubts of their ill-will Mean time when I reflect on our several Losses as that of Letoure of Privas and of Bearn I find that our selves have contributed thereto and we are not at all to wonder if our Enemies are not much in pain to set us right and if they joyn with us to undo us But herein it does not follow that we should throw the Helve after the Hatchet and set fire to our own House because others are resolv'd to burn it or undertake to remedy particular Evils by means weak for that end but strong and effectual for the general ruin God who so often has diverted the Counsels taken for our destruction has not lost his Power neither has he chang'd his Will We shall find that He is always the same if we have the Grace to wait His assistance and do not cast our selves headlong through our impatience and dash upon impossibilities Take this for certain that though our Enemies seek our ruin they will never attempt it openly and will lay hold on some other pretence more plausible than that of Religion which we never ought to give them If we contain our selves in the Obedience that Subjects owe to their Soveraign we shall see that whilst our Enemies hope in vain that we shall make our selves Criminals by some Disobedience God will cut them out some other work and furnish us with occasious to testifie to his Majesty that we are a Body profitable to his State and thereby put him in mind of the signal Services our Churches have paid to the late King of Glorious Memory But if we are so unfortunate that whilst we keep to our Duty the Calamnies of our Enemies prevail at the least we shall have this satisfaction that we have been just on our side and that we have testified that we love the peace of the State Notwithstanding all this Sirs you can and you ought to give order for the security of your Persons For His Majesty and His Council having said often That if you will separate He will leave to our Churches the enjoyment of Peace and of the benefit of his Edicts it is not reasonable that your separation should be made with danger to your Persons And when you shall require that you may separate with safety I make no doubt but you will easily obtain your desires provided that you insist upon what is possible and such things as the misery of the Times and the present necessity may admit It remains that whilst you are together you advise what ought to be done in case you may be opprest notwithstanding your separation It concerns your Prudence to give order and is not my part to suggest If in proposing these things to you I have slipt beyond the bounds of discretion impute it if you please to my zeal for the good and the preservation of the Church And if this my advice be rejected as unworthy your consideration I shall have this comfort that I have discharg'd my Conscience and retiring into a strange Country I shall there finish the few days that remain for me to live lamenting the ruin of the Church and the destruction of the Temple for the building of which I have labour'd with more Courage and Fidelity than with Success The Lord turn his Wrath from us guide your Assembly and preserve your Persons I am c. When this Letter was read in the Assembly which did not at all approve it some arose immediately went from the Assembly and never return'd more And all found in the end that the Advertisements of this Holy Person were Prophesies It appears then that notwithstanding the great Temptations of Fear and Despair that mov'd this Assembly to resist the King their resistance was disavow'd by the best and the greatest Party of the Reform'd Churches of France and that they were exhorted to obey the King by their Divines who in matters of Conscience are the representative Body of the Church when they are Solemnly Assembl'd Now this was the Sense of the National Synod of which this eminent Person came from being the President 'T is then wrongfully that the Noble Marquess taxes all our Party with Rebellion when as our Theologians declar'd themselves so strongly against it the most of those that held these Places of Security open'd their Gates to the King and more than three Fourths of his Subjects of the Reform'd Religion kept in their Obedience I cannot omit that in the greatest heat of those who resisted there yet remained many glances of Loyaly and Love for their King I shall observe two At the Siege of Montaubon the most obstinately defended of all the other Sieges the King and his Court passed before the Walls from whence they were shooting most furiously but when the Besieged beheld his Majesty they left off shooting and cry'd out with a great force Long live the King The instance of Rochel is more remarkable and it is very memorable The Rochellers besieg'd implored the assistance of England which was offer'd them but the Duke of Buckingham came late so that the Rochellers after they had eaten the Horses were now eating their Saddles In this great extremity the Duke told their Deputies that if they would deliver the Town to the King of England they should be assisted effectually The Deputies refus'd and the Rochellers resolv'd to undergo all the rigours that their King provok'd would exercise upon them rather than deliver the Town to a stranger This just King had notice thereof and treated them the more mildly at the Surrender overcoming like a Christian evil with good The Noble Marquess does the quite contrary for he studies to overcome good with evil displaying our Faults with all the aggravation and concealing our Services He says That the spirit of the Huguenots is always ready for
revolts for Confusion and Anarchy That there will be more than an hundred thousand men of the Kings Enemies in the bowels of his Kingdom so long as there shall be Huguenots in France and that perhaps they wait only an occasion to rise up in Arms. He pretends even to know their hearts saying That they have in their hearts the same hatred they had which are words flung out with more animosity than reason For 't is but ill Logick that they are all Rebels because about a six part of their number took up Arms in their defence to keep some Places of safety and that because they have sin'd they never have repented If all they who have been engag'd in the Troubles of the State within these last forty years are to be thought the Kings Enemies for ever His Majesty would find few Persons in his Kingdom whom he might trust and now forty years are past since the War for those Places of safety was ended When the Body is in a Fever the good humors are stir'd as well as the bad and all settle again when the Disease is over The same is in the Body of a State it is subject to hot fits that enflame both good and bad but all grow cool and quiet in time by the wisdom of the Sovereign and by the repentance of those that are honest good men To upbraid them as Rebells and Enemies that took up Arms against their duty and laid them down again forty years ago this is to violate the Laws of Amnesty without which no State could subsist Kings being the Lieutenants of God ought to deal with their Subjects as God does with his He forgives and forgets offences and makes them faithful that were disobedient through his Benefits The Protestants of Languedoc stay'd not for the Kings Benefits till they testifi'd their Fidelity and their Oblivion of what they had suffer'd in the reduction of the Places that they had held than when their wounds were yet bleeding This was when the Duke of Montmorency in Longuedoc where he was Governor made a Party against the King hoping to find the Protestants who are in great numbers in that Province ready for an Insurrection from the resentment of their late Sufferings But he found the quite contrary for they all joyn'd as one man with the Kings Forces and did him excellent Service in a battel where the Duke was defeated and taken and a Bishop with him The old Marshall De la Force who had scap'd the Massacre of St. Barth olomew by hiding himself under the Carkasses of his Brothers whose Throats were cut was one of the Principal Commanders in this Action That Marquess confesses That in the Wars at Paris they put themselves in Arms and with great respect protested that they were at the Kings Service and their Actions would have justify'd their Protestations if His Majesty had had occasion for their Service I will not loose time and pains in making Reflections upon the fourteen ways he proposes to torment us and make us weary of our Religion of our Country and our Lives Ways enough are found out without his proposing And now because the King of late years has had much to do with the Court of Rome it has been a part of the Policy of France whilst they affront the Pope at the same time to treat us with some extraordinary Severity to prevent the suspicion of Heresie We humble our selves under the powerfull hand of God and under that of our Sovereign confessing that we are justly chastis'd for our sins For the rest we know in whom we have trusted and shelter our selves under the Hand that strikes us assuring our selves that it will protect us and that we shall find Jesus Christ our Redeemer and his Spirit our Comforter both in this Life and in that which is to come As the Marquess is very exact in giving Instructions to ruine us he does the same towards the end of his Book for England counting it a Nation that is good for nothing but to be ruin'd We cannot take the advantage of these Instructions given against us to defend our selves against them for we are a Body meerly passive expos'd and submitted to all that God and the King will do with us But for the English when he has disoblig'd them by the most odious Character that his Malice could furnish his Eloquence withall He obliges them in publishing all those ways that must be taken to destroy them for it is likely that being told of them they will look to themselves Mean time his Readers will say of him that they who tell aforehand of their cunning are not very cunning Because that the noble Marquess terms us Rebels and Enemies of the State after the humble confession of our Faults which I have neither cloak'd nor dissembl'd I will take the boldness to compare them with those of some of the Gentlemen of the Roman Clergy especially of the Jesuits and their Disciples and that they that are not pre-possest with passion may judge whether to them rather or to us belongs the title Of Enemies of the State Let us consider the Actions and the Doctrine of the one and the other For the Actions the horrible attempts against the Sacred Persons of our Kings by Ecclesiasticks and Scholars of the Jesuits and all the Enormities of the League to destroy our Kings our Laws and our Monarchy and to transfer it to a stranger carry away without dispute the prize of Villany from those who being possest with a fear ill-grounded have with Arms defended the Places that were lent to them by Edict for the security of their Religion of their Goods and of their Lives Add hereto that they had their hearts big with the sense of their incomparable Service to the Crown and believ'd they well deserv'd what these endeavour'd to keep And as for the Doctrine these never read Lectures of Rebellion and Parricide And the resistance some of the Party made against the King was condemn'd by their Divines whose writings are full of Lessons of Obedience and of Fidelity to their Sovereigns Whereas those of the Jesuits and their Disciples teach the people to cast off and kill their King so often as it may please the Pope to Excommucate him France has felt the Effects of this Doctrine during the long Wars of the League and it was the Books and the Sermons that made the Sword be drawn and that sharpen'd the Daggers for the Murder of our Kings whilst the Protestants expos'd their Lives for their Preservation Now I am content to let pass what is past provided the same may be done to us Let us fix upon the present Whom ought you to esteem the Enemies of the State those who subject the Crown of our Kings absolutely to the Papal Mitre and who acknowledge another Sovereign than the King or they who own him their only Sovereign and maintain that his Crown depends not save on God alone What in Conscience is
Yet this Arrest innovateth nothing but is in all respects conform to the prescript and pursuant to the use of Charles the VIII his Pragmatique Sanction Kings and Emperors never practis'd otherwise in such cases Nor can it be deny'd but that Religion coming among others under a Political consideration and Kings being Protectors of the Church of its Doctrine and of its Canons it 's a part of their Office to notifie to men the Laws of GOD. The Tables were consigned to the hands of Moses not to the hands of Aaron and in the Temple of GOD the Law of GOD was often heard by the People from the Mouth of their Kings 'T is upon this account that Melchisedec was both King and Priest and 't is from this intention that the Emperors confirmed the first Synods that They sometimes gave judgments contrary to Sydonical decisions and that other Christian Princes have had liberty to receive or not receive Councils though Legitimate and Universal Nothing is more consentaneous to perfect equity than that the Gentlemen of the Clergy be obliged to contribute to the publick charges They receive vast sums from the State and what they pay to the King out of 'em amouts not to a sixth part of what they duly ought to pay But to reduce them gently to reason approaches must be made by degrees and in ways that may be to them unperceivable First they may be calmly told of the right of Mortmain which being part of the ancient inheritance of the Crown cannot be alienated They may ever and anon be put in mind that Residence is of Divine Right that it is unbecoming a Prelate or an Ecclesiastick to keep a great Table to have a multitude of Pages Horses Dogs intimation may be made them that the King intends to restore the ancient Law of Fiefs by which all sorts of persons concerned are obliged to set forth at any time a certain number of Soldiers equipped and paid at their charge In fine they may be required to make a new valuation of ordinary Rents For what pretext will they have to complain or be discontented Can they find any fault at all in it if His Majesty doth put things in their Primitive State which is the foundation of all publick Order and Discipline Other insinuative means may be set on work which shall make no shew at first yet may prove in the sequel of incredible advantage to the King's Affairs While I speak here of the Clergy I pretend not to speak of any but Bishops Canons Parish-Priests and Chappellans I know well that taking the word Clerus in its ancient latitude it may be said to comprehend all Christians but I extend it not so much as to Monasticks who in truth were at their rise so far from having particular and conventual Churches as now they have that they were reckoned Laicks that is of the People and had their places separate from the Priests Whatever care Kings hitherto could possibly take to hinder frauds in Beneficiary matters they have not been able to find means effectual for it Their prudence hath been still surmounted by the pravity of men which never wanteh artifice and expedients in occasions that concern their profit However these frauds are of such a quality and so important in reference to the salvation of all Christians that the charitable sagacity of the Laws ought to be indefatigably exercised about them neither Pains nor Authority should be spared in a design whose accomplishment is so necessary And indeed what mischief doth not follow for example when a wicked man by intrusion gets possession of some Benefice with Cure of Souls all his Sacerdotal Functions are so many Sacriledges for he is a suspended person ipso facto all the Absolutions he gives are null the Fruits of the Benefice cannot be his because he is not the lawful Guardian of it and so his appropriating them to his use is a continued Larceny for which he is indispensibly bound to make restitution But be it a Bishop that commits this act of intrusion and all the Consecrations of Priests which he shall solemnize are null whence will result a nullity of all the Absolutions those pretended Priests shall give What a concatenation of Crimes what a dreadful series of Evils Simonies Confidences and other bad means which are used to finger Benefices do tend to the same Consequences Sure the cure of this Malady Mortal to so many thousands of Souls is an atchievement worthy of a King I am of Opinion then that to cut up the root of all these disorders the King might create a Secretary in his Council of Conscience and when this Officer is in possession of his charge a Declaration of His Majesties should come forth by which to obviate the great abuses that have crept int-Beneficiary matters it should be ordained that all the Benefices in the Kingdom be Registred by the said Secretary of that Council and no dispatch there made until the Deeds upon which a Benefice is claimed have been seen and signed and placed in the Register by the same Secretary upon pain of the nullity of all that may have been petition'd for and granted Cognizance of all causes arising in consequence of this Declaration must be given to the Grand Council and this addition of Jurisdiction would facilitate the verification of it This Declaration would produce several advantages One is that there could be no more fraud used in order to demissions or to resignations and the Bankers of the Court of Rome would no longer have means to promote the cheats of pretenders to Benefices Another is that the King would exactly know all that the Church does possess in France which is a matter of extreme necessity both for the regulating of the Tenths and also for other considerations A third advantage would be that in process of time this Secretary of Conscience might make a Bank in the Roman Court which is to the King of unspeakable consequence for by this means all the Money that goes into Italy out of France would be known and upon such knowledge it would be more easie for him to take his measures with the Pope and Colledge of Cardinals A fourth advantage is that the King by degrees might become Master of all the Benefices of the Kingdom in the same manner as the Pope is Master of the Bishopricks and Abbies which would augment the Royal Authority That I may explain my self I will resume the thing from its original In the first Age of Christianity the first Bishopricks were conferred without any Bulls from the Pope at all Afterward He bethought Him to send or write unto the Chapters who then chose the Bishops and recommended to them to respect the merit of such or such a one when they should proceed to the Election I think that Alexander the III. was the first Inventer of these kind of Letters and they were called Bulls because they were seal'd up with the Pope's Seal Bulla being Latin
for a Seal At the beginning these Letters which the Popes thus sent were but simple Letters of favour and recommendation but it hapning that the Chapters reverenced them and that here and there at least one who had obtained them was chosen all pretenders to Bishopricks came to believe that it was necessary to obtain them Thus what was at first but as hath been said a recommendation became at length a point of right and duty Such was its Rise Now this being certain there may be use made of the example and thus when a considerable Benefice should be vacant the King might order that a Letter be written to the Patron and some Person recommended to his Nomination There is no cause to doubt but the Patron will Nominate whom His Majesty hath thus recommended so that insensibly it will grow a Custom to take the King's recommendations as otherwhile persons did those of the Popes and as the Bulls became at length necessary for Bishopricks and Abbies so the King's Letters shall become necessary for all sorts of Benefices and He render Himself Master of all Church-men The King in this will have sufficient reason because He being Protector of Religion which is the prime Pillar of every State it is His interest to know whether they that shall be provided of Benefices be Orthodox and of good Life lest they spread some bad Doctrine among the people for Heresies and Scandals do cause division in the Common-wealth as well as Schisms in the Church Besides it concerns the tranquillity of the State that Curates who have the direction of Consciences be well-inclin'd for the good of the Kingdom and ready to keep particulr Persons in their duty To descend now unto the case of the Monastick Religious and find out a way for rendring them useful to the State to take them off from that laziness and loathsome beggery in which they live as also reduce them to such a number as may be proportionate to other ranks of men in the Kingdom It is to be noted that there are three sorts of Monasticks The first is made up of the Orders of S. Augustin S. Benedict S. Bernard and Premonstrey These are they that possess the bulkie riches of the Church I mean the Abbies and Priories The second sort comprehends the Carthusians the Minimes the Coelestins the Feuillans and some others who possess Goods with propriety and beg not but by Toleration The third kind is that of the meer Mendicants who subsist by Alms as do the Jacobins the Cordeliers the Carmelites and their branches that is the Reform'd as they term 'em who are issued from them These notwithstanding their Vow of Monastick Poverty yet are not destitute of some foundations but they plead for themselves that the Pope is Proprietor of the Goods they do but take the Profits which certainly is a vain and frivolous subtilty The Female Religious being comprised under these three kinds there is no need to make of them a separate Article There are too to many Monks It s an abuse so prejudicial to the Kingdom that the King can no longer dissemble it it is time to take it seriously and effectually in hand For Monks live in single state they raise no Families get no Children and so are barren grounds that bring forth no fruit to the Crown Beside the blind obedience by which they are tyed to the pleasure of the Pope doth form a foreign Monarchy in the very bowels of France and into it they train along the credulous people which is a thing of very great consequence This Politie is founded on the abusive and pernicious Maxims of Rome which too are purely Political For that the obedience which Monasticks give the Pope is Religious there is no colour to pretend nor is there a Christian but sees what his duty binds him to in this case and is altogether subject to his Holiness in Doctrinals without need of making particular vows to oblige him The name of Religion in the matter is but a phantasm and a false pretext which the Court of Rome assumeth to augment its Temporal Power and to have its creatures in all quarters By consequence the abuses ought to be retrenched as was done by Charlemagne in his time and sundry other great Kings But for the effecting of this I should not at all advise that the attempt be openly made For that would be to draw upon the undertakers the importune clamours of all the Monks and their Zealots nay to draw Rome upon their backs which might cost them some trouble In fine it would be to draw on them the People who are ever fond of Novelties that surprise them or are prejudicial to them and always averse to those which they have foreseen and are profitable for them 'T is therefore by-ways that must be taken The first which seems to me fit to be pitcht upon would be to require of the Monastick Communities that they dispatch Missions unto America and the Indies to convert the Salvages and administer the Holy Sacraments to Christians The Monks who are commonly imprudent will strain to set forth the greatest number of their fraternity they possibly may in hope to make considerable Establishments thus there will be forwardness enough to embarque The present juncture is advantageous for this design For they are charged with more Persons than they are able to maintain Charity being evidently cooled toward them A second means may be to debar them the conversation of Women It is scandalous to see Religious Men receive visits from them in Churches and there in presence of the Holy Sacrament spend whole Afternoons with them For remedy it might be ordained that they should have Parlours where Women might go to consult them The thing is a point of deceney and Parlours the Carthusian Friars and all Nuns generally have The third means might be that the Fathers of such as enter into Religion should pay an Annual Pension to the Order by way of Alms during their Sons life which is the practice in Spain This Pension some will say causeth in Spain an huge multiplication of Monks But 't is not the Pension that fills the Cloisters in that Country 't is the licence the Monks have to do what they please In France they are not upon such Terms A fourth means is to oblige the Monasticks to abide in their Convents and not go abroad but very rarely and for urgent affairs so do the Carthusians A fifth to embroil the Monks with the Bishops for which they are sufficiently disposed A sixth to prohibit that Children of Sixteen when as yet they know not what they do bind not themselves by Vows which engage them for the whole remainder of their lives but remit that Ceremony till their 22d year of Age. The seventh means would be to suppress that Congregation as they call it among Monastick persons as for instance there are the Congregations of S. Maur and command that the Religious who make profession in
the State unto their Succour and took a course to bring Fire and Sword into all parts of the Kingdom Shortly in matter of Government that which is good at one time is frequently not so at another all things must be accommodated to the general rule of Policy which is that the good of States be incessantly procured When the Edict of Pacification was accorded there was provision made for the welfare of France if that welfare does now require that the Edict be revoked there is no remedy revoked it must be or neglected From all this which I have said it follows that the King hath most just cause to secure himself from the Professors of the Protestant Reformed Religion and put them into such a state as he may have nothing to apprehend from their particular Perhaps it will be said that 't is expedient there be Huguenots in France because they oblige the Church-men to study and to live with the greater circumspection and a more exact observance of the rules of their Profession But this consideration is not worth the considering The Church of GOD will never be supported by these humane means He is in the midst of it and governs it Himself by His Holy Spirit which animateth and filleth it At whatever time there shall be no more Huguenots in France there will be fewer bad and a greater number of good men which the King should particularly desire since States are always sustained by people that love Virtue c. It passeth therefore for certain that it is fit the King do disable the Religionaties as to their doing any harm and as to their giving cause of suspicion It remaineth to examine what way may most readily and most commodiously lead unto this end I would not advise that these People of the other Religion should be compell'd to depart out of France as the Moors were out of Spain which proved in the sequel so prejudicial to the whole Country 'T would be a piece of inhumanity to drive the Huguenots in that manner they are Christians though separated from the Body of the Church besides this course would deprive the State of not a few good Families and put the unhappy numbers of e'm out of all hope of Conversion and Salvation so that the King in this concern should do well as seems to me to imitate the Church the common parent of all Christians who in the Remedies She prepareth ever mingleth mildness and Mercy with Justice and Compassion with Correction The first means then which the King might employ should be to provide that the Huguenots might frequent the coversation of the Catholicks with more familiarity than they do For by this coversation they would in time be undeceiv'd of the Opinion with which they are pre-possess'd that we hate them they would put off the Aversion they have for us they would know our Deportment and be informed of our Doctrine in the points that offend them because they understand not the Mysteries of them which would induce them to confess as St. Augustin did on the like occasion That the Church does not teach things as they once thought it did Nothing is to my Understanding or can be more effectual for the Conversion of the Hereticks than this frequent Conversation it is not possible but that at length the spirit of Men should yield unto impression the plumage of the Eagle 't is said consumes that of other Birds Light dissipates Darkness Truth triumphs over Falshood The second means should be to confer a recompence of Honour upon Converts and to make a Stock for this purpose which might never fail I should think it would be none of the best course to exclude the Huguenots from all Employments they must enter into lesser Offices though not at all into the greater The reason is because if they be put off from all kind of publick business they will accustom themselves to tarry at home idle and their ambition will be extinguish'd in such sort as perhaps they will make it a point of Religion to do nothing whereas being taken to ordinary Offices they will habituate themselves to a living among Catholicks and their Ambition will awaken when they shall compare themselves with their Superiours The third means I offer is to select some particular Men and create them such business referring to Religion as may constrain them to attend the Council and keep following the Court. Business of that kind may be started to Gentlemen upon the Exercise they have in their Houses There is not one of them but is obnoxious to a Process in that case and the Bishops will with joy be the Prosecutors Besides the King's Procureur or Attorney General is concern'd to know whether Marriages Baptisms and Burials be solemniz'd with due accurateness in these private houses and whether good and faithful Registers of them be kept or no Great defects herein being easily supposeable the same will be just matter of complaint against the Owners as negligent in observing the concession made them of having Exercise in their Castles The like may be done if others contrary to the Edict be admitted to these Preachings beside the Domesticks A Fourth means would be to oblige the Religionists to put again in due state the ancient Chappels of their Houses which they have demolish'd or prophan'd the pursuance whereof ought to be by the diligence of each Bishop in his Diocess There must not be made a common affair of it to all the Huguenots in general but divers particulars only be fix'd upon And the thing it self is as reasonable as any For they had no right to destroy Temples that had been all along destin'd to Divine Service according to the Religion of the King receiv'd by all the Kingdom and also profess'd by our Progenitors The Fifth means is that when an Affair of such quality as I mention'd comes before the Council the Deputies which the Huguenots have at Court in the name of them all be not permitted to intervene in it There are 3 Reasons for the putting by of these interventions The First is that the Huguenots cannot constitute a Body in France nor assemble without the Kings express permission The Second that Private and Particular affairs ought not to be set up in the rank of those that are general and publick The Third that the King will do Justice without their intervention The Deputation should not be all at once abrogated out-right but no regard must be had to what the Deputies represent in the name of all the party The sixth means should be that the King do take effectual order the Huguenots may no longer have their dwellings nor their Exercise in places not Royal at least such as have any Lords of the Protestant Reformed Religion for Proprietors As for Example Vitrey in Bretannie belongs to Monsieur the Prince de Tarante who is of that Religion and it belongs to him by a Demise made him of it by Monsieur de la Tremouille
and Equipage for the Horses of the Train The King should have for the security of his State several Fortified Places in his Kingdom 'T is an ill piece of Policy to neglect them and good heed had need be taken that he that may chance to win a Battel and become Master of the Field do not at the same time become Master of the Cities also It is known what Revolutions England hath suffer'd by it And on the contrary Flanders clearly shews what a Countrey thick set with Fortresses is Yet Excess being every where vicious-I would observe a mediocrity here But above all there must be left no Fortifications in Towns or Castles which belong to particular Lords except the King places in them other Governors than the Proprietors These kind of Places embolden Persons of Quality that possess them to Declare themselves and make Parties in a time of Civil War what pass'd at Tailebourg in the last Troubles is an example fully authorizing what I have propos'd I will say more of strong Places and Garisons in the Chapter of the Education of Children It is not sufficient to have such strong places and them well furnished with Garisons and brave Soldiers unless there be given them Captains fit to Command them and to be their Governors In each place then there must be four sorts of Officers The Governor the King's Lieutenant the Governor's Lieutenant and the Major These all having their Commissions from His Majesty it is expedient that as far as is possible their bearing Office be limited to a certain time to the end that the continuing of 'em longer may be in nature of a recompence for their Services And they thus attending with the greater diligence to their Duty I should also wish that being continued in employment they should change place As for example That a person who hath been the King's Lieutenant three years at Dunkirk should go serve as Lieutenant-Governor at Peronne or elsewhere Not that such a Change were fit to pass upon all the Officers of a place at the same time But let their Commissions last three Years and every Year one be changed that they may serve together one Year only It is meet to after the manner of the Turks that their Commissions expired they be kept a Year without employment to see whether there be any complaint against them These alterations would work two effects equally advantagious to the King's Service The First is that every one would stick to his Duty The Second that the King always having such kind of Employments to give there would be more persons to hope for them which would much more strongly engage them to well-doing The same usage should be introduc'd if it be possible in reference to Governors the King's Lieutenants There is a concluding observation to be made namely that it being the Custom for Governors to have some Companies of Carabines which they call their Guards they give them Cassocks of their own Livery I would have this Order changed and that the King should every year send each Governor a Troop of Horse to serve about him for a Guard they having the King's Cassocks as a Badge of their Commission and their Officers carrying the Staff in presence of their Governor during their year of service This would be a means to augment the Authority of the King and not diminish that of the Governors As to Armies it cannot be precisely said of what number of Men they should consist nor whether they ought to be strongest in Horse or in Foot This wholly depends upon the enterprizes that are made upon the quality of the Country and nature of the Enemy I should advise that a Great King do keep Troops on foot even during Peace nothing is so necessary to a State as old Soldiers Augustus after his Victories did not cashier the Forty Roman Legions which prov'd to be the safety of the Empire Constantine on the contrary disbanded them and thence came in the issue the dissolution of the Power of the Romans Augustus however and the other Caesars committed a great fault in keeping the Pretorians in a Body for the Grandeur of their Persons and History tells us what lamentable changes they made in the succession of the Emperors The Turks have fallen into like disasters by following the like usage I should therefore judge it expedient to divide the Troops into several Quarters and keep them in far distant Garisons The ancient Kings of Aegypt had a great many Soldiers perpetually in Pay and were always apprehensive of their Instructions but found a way to secure themselves from all such Seditions of their Armies Dividing them into Bodies according to the diversity of Nations they gave them different Ensigns as for instance to some a Crocodile to others a Dog to a third sort a Cat and so the rest Now the Aegyptians being hugely Superstitious they were easily induced to believe that their Tutelary Deities were included in the figure of those Beasts which were given them for Ensigns and that they had the same Antipathies among them in Heaven which those Beasts that represented them had to one another upon Earth Thus under a Veil of Religion those People were possess'd with an aversion for each other like those Animals which they had been ordered to carry in their Banners yet all were close united and perfectly at accord for the common defence of the State so nothing could be executed against the intentions of the Prince because as soon as any should begin to stir the rest would immediately have opposed them Upon this example the King might divide all his Troops by Provinces and though there should be no engaging of Religion in the case yet much advantage would without fail be drawn from thence For the Nations would strive to out-vie one another with more zeal and ardor than the Regiments now do These Regiments themselves might have names given them from the Arms of their Provinces as that of the Bretons might be called the Regiment of the Ermine that of the Normans the Regiment of the Leopards c. Jutius Caesar raised a new Legion among the Gauls and gave it the name of the Lark But what I say in this particular is but the giving my Opinion For I am not of the mind that the order of the Militia should be changed or Regiments disbanded which consist of the best and most War-like Troops that are in the World 'T is ordinarily a great question of what Soldiers an Army should be composed We have Subjects and Forreigners The Subjects are Gentlemen and Plebeians The Plebeians are Citizens and Rusticks On the other hand of Forreigners some are the Auxiliary Troops of Allies which serve at the cost of their own Princes as when the King sent succors into Germany and unto the Hollanders Others are Troops that serve at the cost of the State which employs them The Ancients termed them Mercinaries Such at this time are the Suissers and not a
few Germans All these different sorts of Soldiers may be used as necessity and the conjuncture of Affairs requires The Romans did so It is true by their Treaties of Alliance they always obliged their Allies to send them a certain number of Soldiers but these were not incorporated with their Legions and it is clear that Subjects are ever best of Subjects Gentlemen have ordinarily more courage than others Of Plebeians those of the Country are to be preferred before the Inhabitants of Cities because Peasants are more accustomed to Labour and Hardship than Townsmen are Auxiliary Troops serve but for a time and often when some continuation of service is demanded of them they impose hard conditions Mercenaries will have Money and care not if a State be ruin'd so themselves are paid In fine Strangers may on the suddain change Interests and Party so of Friends becoming Enemies and that in occasions of greatest importance Mercenaries above all do serve without affection and seldom stand it out in Fight unto the utmost They push on a Victory indeed but scarce ever win a Battel In short Strangers should be as little made use of as possible and scarce for any other cause but that Enemies might be deprived of their Aid When Strangers only are taken into Service the Subjects grow less War-like and the most considerable of them despise War as is done in Spain and extreamly ill done The Carthaginians were ruined principally by the fault they committed in employing Numidian Troops and other Strangers and not sending out their own Citizens in their Armies I will not here speak of the Art of War 't is a matter that deserves a Chapter apart Yet I will say cursorily that the Rules of it change as Time and Seasons do We neither attack Places nor defend them in the very manner that the Ancients did There is also a great deal of difference between their way of fighting and ours so that they had not the Arms which we now use All of precept for the leading of an Army that faileth not nor changeth is that Discipline be exercised wherein Commanders should never be remiss The only School of War is War it self and twenty Years experience will better make a great Captain than an hundred Years Reading Not but that we have examples of General Command given to persons who never were in Armies afore There are elevated Spirits to whom nothing is impossible but the instances are rare and 't is too too hazardous a course to rely upon them For a Captain must have not only spirit and courage but also credit with his Soldiers which cannot be gotten but by service In fine it is necessary for a great State to keep War on foot and Men of Quality must be employed in it to the end there may always be a stock of good Soldiers and a breed of Generals These two things give a Nation marvellous advantages and esteem among Foreigners Though France now be a most powerful Monarchy by means of its Extent of its Scituation the Fruitfulness of the Soil the Number of its Inhabitants and though greatest States have not always most strength as biggest Men are not always stoutest yet were it to be wish'd that the King did add unto his Kingdom First all the Low Countrys to the Rhyne This Conquest would re-settle Him in possession of the ancient demain of His Predecessors giving France gain its primitive limits It would make him Master of the Northern Seas and by consequence Arbitrator between the Crowns of Sweden and Denmark Poland c. Conquest must be aspired to out of a thirst of Empire being an unjust thing if we believe Aristotle for I would not determine but that the right of War were a very lawful right consonant to what I have said in the beginning of this Chapter but the desire of Conquest should principally be for the doing of good to all Men which is the end why GOD gave them Laws The more Subjects and Power a just Prince hath the better will it be for the World Secondly It were convenient that the King had Strasbourg to keep all Germany quiet In the third place He need have the Franche County to lay a restraint upon the Suisses least dividing themselves between the Empire and France or serving Spain in a War there they strengthen his Enemies In the fourth place Milan is necessary in respect of Italy to give the lesser Sovereigns and Republiques protection and ballance the Power which the King of Spain hath usurp'd there In the fifth place Genoa and all its Territory pertains to the King nor would the Genoese have revolted had it not been for the bad counsel given to Francis the First to discontent Doria Genoa would make the King Master of the Mediteranean Sea beside those two Acquisitions would keep the Duke of Savoy lock'd up within French Territories So he would never depart from the King's Service being entirely His dependant We must re-enter the Isle of Elba and into Portolongone and Piombino on the continent to drive the Spaniards out of Italy Here our nearness would keep the Duke of Florence the Dukes of Parma of Modena and of Mantua and even the State of the Pope in a submission for France Corsica would not stand out after the reduction of Genoa and then Sardinia would be no difficult Conquest This would strongly favour any stirs on the account of Liberty or Discontent that might be raised in the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples nor would it be an hard matter to raise them in time On the Coast of Bayonne there would be need of Fuentaravia and those parts of the Kingdom of Navarr which the Spaniards have in possession might be justly re-demanded The King might also carry His Arms into Catalonia we have ancient pretensions there and the Conquests of it would be no less easily atchieved than it was in the time of the last War Majorca and Minorca would follow without trouble Thus the King would be absolute Umpire of the Mediterranean and of all the fortune of the Spaniards If it should happen one day that the Queen or Her Descendants should have an Hereditary Right there the King would be in a condition to do Himself reason in these matters The means of making these Conquests severally cannot be shewed without particular discourses Mean time what I have said is not in truth to be done in a day it would be an enterprise of many years Yet there is nothing of meer fancy it it I propose no Conquest to be made but what hath really been made except that of the Isles of the Mediterranean which our Kings never minded for that before Charles the Eighth they never were in case to strengthen themselves at Sea Bretagnie was separted from the Kingdom the Wars of Italy took up every Reign unto Henry the Second Then follow'd the affairs of Religion which put a stop to all the designs that might have been formed in this behalf Here one thing
3 Months would utterly ruin him He may be induc'd to hope that he shall be reinstated in the Principality of Geneva If War be made in Italy the Italians must not have time given them to look about them As they are the Wisest so when inur'd to War they are the bravest upon Earth In one word they are the Masters of the Universe The Swisses are Mercenaries who will alway serve the King for his Money As for matter of the English they have not any Friends themselves be a sort of People without Faith without Religion without Honesty without any Justice at all of the greatest levity that can be Cruel Impatient Gluttonous Proud Audacious Covetous fit for Handy strokes and a sudden execution but unable to carry on a War with judgment Their Country is good enough for sustenance of Life but not rich enough to afford them means for issuing forth and making any Conquest accordingly they never conquered any thing but Ireland whose Inhabitants are weak and ill Soldiers On the contrary the Romans conquer'd them then the Danes and the Normans in such a manner too that their present Kings are the Heirs of a Conqueror They hate one another and are in continual Division either about Religion or about the Government A War of France for three or four years upon them would totally ruin them So it seems reasonable that we should make no Peace with them but upon conditions of greatest advantage for us unless the King think meet to defer the execution of this Project to another time or that His Majesty press'd with the love He hath for His own People do incline to prefer their ease before so fair hopes One had need be a Monarch to know what it is to love Subjects as be a Father to know how Children are loved In fine if we had a mind to ruin the English we need but oblige them to keep an Army on foot and there is no fear that they should make any invasion upon France that would be their undoubted ruin if they be not call'd in by some Rebels Now if they have an Army they will infallibly make War upon one another and so ruin themselves You must put them upon making great expences and for this end raise a jealousie in them for the Isles of Jersey and Guernsey of Wight and Man for the Cinque-Ports and Ireland and by that means oblige them to keep strong Garisons in all those places this will create a belief in the people that the King formeth great Projects against their pretended Liberty and while He is in Arms His Subjects will hate Him They must be wrought to distrusts of one another by writing Letters in Cypher to some particular persons and causing them to be intercepted For being suspicious and imprudent they will soon be perswaded that the Letters were seriously written Some Forces should be landed in Ireland and in other parts The Irish may be induced to revolt as having a mortal hatred for the English The Scots also will not neglect to set themselves at liberty Factions must be rais'd and the Sects favoured against one another especially the Catholicks among whom the Benedictine Monks in particular should be secretly promis'd on the King of England's behalf wherein it will be easie to deceive them that they shall be restored to all the Estates which they once possessed in the Island according to the Monasticon there Printed Upon this the Monks will move Heaven and Earth and the Catholicks declare themselves The rumor which hath already gone abroad that the King of England is a Catholick must be fortifi'd and so all will fall into utter confusion and the English Monarchy be in case to be divided On the other hand our League with the Hollanders should be renew'd and they put into a belief that we will give them all the Trade still because they have a through Knowledge of it and are proper for it whereas the French have no inclination that way and Nature cannot be forced They must be told that now they are come to the happy time for advancing their affairs and ruining their Competitors in the Sovereignty of the Northen Seas Beside these particulars if the King give Belle-Isle or L'Isle Dieu or the Isle of Ree to the Knights of Malta as I have said before these Knights will make irreconcilable War upon the English redemand the Commanderies of their Order and by their courses and Piracies oblige them to keep great Fleets at Sea which will ruine them by ruining the profit of their Trade Mean time the King shall increase His Strength at Sea and then finding His Enemies weakned consummate their Depression and Subversion It is not difficult to make defence against any enterprises of the Emperor for He cannot make War upon France though He would such a War would be too costly for Him and and to make any progress in it He must needs bring into the Field excessive great Armies But if He armed Him so potently the Princes of Germany would grow jealous of Him and make Levies to oppose Him and to hinder His passage through their Territories beside His Hereditary Countrys would be disfurnish'd of Men and so expos'd to the inroads of the Turks so that there is no cause to apprehend any thing on the part of the Emperor On the contrary He hath intentions to give the King content because He may receive great succors from Him in Wars with the Turk as happen'd of late Years The Princes of Germany whether Catholicks or Protestants have an equal interest to keep themselves in the King's Protection for the reasons I noted afore in the Chapter of the Huguenots so that they will always oppose the Emperors growing greater on the side of France as it may be they would oppose the designs of the King if He should carry His Arms too far up into Germany 'T is the interest of lesser States that the Kings their Neighbours be equal in Power that the one may maintain them against the others To conclude the King hath no Allies whom He should so highly esteem as the Germans there is not a braver Nation a Nation more open more honest Their Original is also ours They have no Vices are Just and Faithfull there is among them an inexhaustible Seminary of good Soldiers their generosity put Alexander the Great into admiration for 'em and wrought affection and confidence in 'em in the first Caesars who by committinâ— their Persons to the virtue of these People entrusted them with the quiet of the Universe The Hollanders will never attempt any thing against France but keep themselves in our Alliance as much as possibly they may They are Rich and interessed as Merchants commonly are If the King had relinquish'd them theâ—… State would have sunk which yet by the rules of Policy cannot last long Democracieâ— being subject to changes It would be expedient that the King do interpose in their Affairs and some division be raised among
care of the Service of God belongs as much to the Authority of the Prince as that of Justice and Civil Government Those Expressions of the Marquess That Secular Princes are the Protectors of the Church of its Doctrine and of its Canons are intended by him in a more liberal and ingenious sense than they meant from whom he takes them For they are the ordinary terms of those who make the King subject to the Pope and who own not the King for the Sovereign of the Church but only for its Protector and to execute the Commands of his Holiness and for that his Canons be observed This is the Stile of my Lord Bishop of Montauban Peter Bertier in his Remonstrance made to the King in the City of Rheims June 8th 1654. where after he had term'd his Sovereign Power a true resemblance of the Deity he sinks it again not only below the Pope but even below the Bishops who are the Kings subjects saying That the Bishops are the Head to govern and the Mouth of the Church to speak but that the King is its arm and its right hand to execute its Decrees and Ordinances This Scholar of the Jesuits speaks like his Masters for all the Jesuits harp on the same string which Becanus in Pref. ad Reg. Jac. Kings are only to execute the Popes Commands What is the duty of Kings says he in relation to the Church and to Religion I will tell you in one word they ought to guard and defendit not as Lords but as Servants not as Judges but as Executioners And why I pray has not the King the same Sovereignty in France that the Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemaigne enjoy'd under whom the Canons of the Synods were none other than counsel and advice till these Emperors had examin'd and authoriz'd them Did not these Sovereigns altogether call and dissolve those Synods of Bishops at pleasure and wherefore shall our Kings be rob'd of that Power Our great King who surpasses all his Predecessors in Glory and Magnanimity shall he suffer a stranger Bishop to snatch from his Crown this essential Right of governing the Church of his Kingdom and He of a King become a Serjeant to put in execution the Commands of that Bishop and those of the Bishops his Subjects The world is well chang'd since Pope Adrian in his Letters inserted in the second Council of Nice express'd himself to the Emperor Constantine to this effect We beseech your Clemency with ardour of Spirit and as though we were present we cast our selves at your knees and lie at your feet I with my Brethren Then it was that Popes kissed the Feet of Emperors whereas now Emperors kiss the Popes Toe In the Year 679. the Pope Agathon pray'd the Emperor Constantine to discharge the Tribute which the Bishops of Rome pay'd Ordinarily to the Emperor for their Conservation Very far from compelling the Emperors the day of their Conservation to lay a sum of Money at the Popes feet for Tribute as a token of subjection which afterwards the Emperors of Germany have been oblig'd to do Gregory the First gave a good Example for our Popes at this day how they should demean themselves towards the Emperor for he speaks thus to the Emperor l. 3. Ep. 6. I am the unworthy Servant of your pity And in the same Epistle Whilst I speak thus before my Masters what am I other than Dust and a Worm And l. 2. Ep. 61. I am subject to your Commands I might bring many Examples how anciently the Christian Emperors and the Kings of Italy created and depos'd the Popes commanding them and deposing them at their pleasure Not to go farther than our France there we may see what Power our Kings of the first Line exercis'd in the Government of the Church The History of Gregory of Tours may furnish us with many examples l. 4. c. 5. King Glotharius speaks thus to the Inhabitants of Tours Have not I commanded that the Priest Cato be made a Bishop Why are my Commands slighted and Chap. 18. Pascentius is made Bishop of Paris ex jussu Regis Chariberti by the Command of King Heribert The same King being provok'd because Emerius had been turn'd out of the Bishoprick of Xaintes caused him to be beaten who came to signifie to him that deposition and made him be drawn upon a Cart loaden with Thorns into banishment and restor'd Emerius to his place from whence he had been cast out l. 6. c. 27. Felix Bishop of Xaintes being deceas'd Nonnichius Consobrinus rege ordinante successit His Cousin Nonnichius succeeded him by the King's Order C. 39. King Guntram created Sulpitius Bishop of Bourges rejecting the Presents offered him for promoting another and saying It is not our Custom to sell the Priesthood for the price of Money l. 8. c. 22. are these words Then the King commanded that Gundegesil be made a Bishop which was done accordingly And C. 39. Evantius Bishop of Vienna died and in his place was substituted Vitus a Priest the King chusing him In all these passages we find no mention of the Pope nor of Annates nor of Letters of Investiture For in those days the Bishops of Rome meddl'd not at all with the Election of the Bishops of France Above all is memorable the Francique Synod to be found in the Third Tome of the Councils of the Edition of Cologne Pag. 39. Where Carloman who stiles himself Duke and Prince of the French thus speaks By the advice of my Priests and of the chief of the Realm we have appointed Bishops for the Towns and have set over them Boniface Archbishop Pope Adrian the First by a Council made this Law to pass That Charlemain should have the Right and Power to choose the Pope and to govern the Roman See Which Constitution is inserted in the Roman Decretal The Council of Mayence held under Charlemain an 813. dist 63. Can. Hadrians begins thus To Charles August Rector of the True Religion and Defendor of the Holy Church of God And the Second Council of Mayence under Lewis the Debonnaire to Lewis the most Soveraign Rector of the True Religion At this day these Titles would be counted wicked Now for all that Charlemain and Lewis the Debonnaire have advanc'd the Pope out of measure yet his Authority even in Spirituals was no better than precarious and suject to those Kings that were Emperors For proof of this Hincmar relates l. 55. c. 20. That the Emperor Charlemain did convoke a general Synod in France whereby the worshipping of Images was condemn'd and the Second Council of Nice which defended them was rejected as a false Synod thô the Pope had approv'd it And thô at this Synod convoked by Charlemain the Authority of the Pope was admitted For the History of those times teaches us That Charlemain who had advanced the Pope made use of the Authority given him to his own advantage even against the Pope himself when he had a
the Collation of a number of Benefices and think we are well helpt up in that the King the Magistrates and the Sorbonne will own no other Superior to the King but God for what concerns Temporals But I pray to what end is all this briskness in our Kings in our Parliaments and in the Sorbon against the Usurpations of the Pope in Temporals but to yield him the Spirituals and to confirm his pretensions even in Temporals Grant him the Spiritual Power and he will be Master of the Temporal without contradiction and he shall bring under his Jurisdiction all secular Causes under the colour of a Sacrament of an Oath of Charitable Uses or of matters of Conscience The Concords of our Kings with Rome and their pragmatick Sanctions about the Collations of Benefices what have they come to Is not this to come in for a share with the Robbers who had seiz'd the Royalties and by solemn Articles to make them a Title which they had no pretence to before their Invasions And what other do our Kings in acknowledging the Spiritual Power of the Pope but own themselves his Subjects in Temporals for the one hooks in the other of necessity The experience of six ages has prov'd this truth 'T is the voluntary Subjection of Emperors and Kings to the Spiritual Power of the Pope that has given him the liberty to Excommunicate them for this belongs to the Spiritual Jurisdiction And the very same Jurisdiction has authoris'd him to exempt their Subjects from the Oath of Fidelity for the keeping of an Oath is a duty of Religion so that if the Pope be obey'd by a discontented and factious People you see an Emperor or King is depos'd by the Spiritual Jurisdiction and the Pope may spare the other Power that he pretends to over the Temporalties of Kings seeing that his Spiritual power all alone is sufficient to ruine the poor Prince And if that the Christian Princes that are of his Communion own him for the Vicar of Jesus Christ let the Kings understand it in what sense they please he will make them know when-ever their weakness shall give him an opportunity that he takes himself for the Vicar of the Secular Power of Jesus Christ as well as of the Spiritual And that to him as to Christ whom he represents all Power is given in Heaven and on Earth This is what the last Council of Lateran attributes to him and applies to him that Prophesie of Psalm 72. particular to Jesus Christ All Kings shall be prostrate before him and all Nations shall serve him The Kings that prostrate themselves the most humbly before him are those he throws at his Feet Witness the Treatment he gave our good King Henry the Third who Ador'd him and yet he Thundered upon him and persecuted him even to death and beyond death For after he was Assassinated in pursuance of his Excommunication and Deposition by his Creatures of the League and particularly of the House of Guise that he favour'd He would not at all suffer any Obits or Services to be made for him at Rome as if he had a mind to have him Damn'd after he had caus'd him to be Murder'd Particularly he extoll'd in a Publick Harangue the execrable Parricide Jacob Clement and compares his Fact to the Mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God The design of this persecution drawn out so at length against the King the Princes of the Blood and against all the Kingdom is to be seen in the Memoirs of the Advocate David intercepted at Lions An. 1577. as he was upon his return from Rome where he had been Secretary to the Bishop of Paris the King's Ambassador with the Pope This Bishop of Paris a Creature of the Duke of Guise being at Rome An. 1576. instead of serving the Interests of the King his Master who had sent him to make an excuse by reason of the necessity of the King's Affairs for the Peace he had made with the Duke Alenzon his Brother and with the Princes of the Blood that were Protestants He apply'd himself wholly to the Interests of the Duke of Guise and the Pope who had then complotted together their devilish design of the League For the Pope whose custom it is to build his Greatness upon the weakness of Kings and the troubles of their States seeing the Royal-House declining despis'd and drawing to an end and France harassed with Civil Wars was easily wrought upon to favour the House of Guise which aspir'd manifestly to the Crown by the exclusion of the Princes of the Blood So upon the whole matter the Duke of Guise a Prince well made and of high undertaking powerful in Friends lov'd and ador'd by the People promised to give him all the Soveraignty in France which he counts himself debarr'd of by the pragmatick Sanctions and by the Liberties of the Gallicane-Church Then during the stay of this Ambassador at Rome An. 1576. an Agreement was drawn between the Pope and Duke of Guise whereby the Pope Declares That Hugh Capet had seiz'd the Crown of France which of Right belong'd to the House of Charlemaign That he and his Race had render'd the French refractory and disobedient to the Holy See by that damnable Error which they call the Liberties of the Gallicane-Church which is none other says he but the Doctrine of the Valdenses Albigenses the Poor of Lyons Lutherans and Calvinists That it is this Error which makes the Arms of the Kings of France in defence of the Holy Church unfortunate and that they never will prosper so long as the Crown shall continue in this Line In order thereunto an opportunity was now offer'd by reason of the present Divisions to labour in good earnest the Restoration of the Crown to the true Successors of Charlemaign who had always constantly obey'd the Commands of the Holy See And who had in effect shew'd themselves the lawful Heirs of the Apostolick Benediction upon that Crown though depriv'd of their Inheritance by fraud and violence That 't is plain the Race of the Capets are wholly deliver'd over to a reprobate Sense some being possess'd with a spirit of Mopishness Stupid and of no Valour Others rejected by God and Men for their Heresie proscribed and shut out from the Communion of the Holy Church Whereas the Branches of Charlemaign are fresh and flourishing Lovers of Virtue vigorous of Body and in Mind for the execution of high and laudable Enterprizes He goes on and Prophesies for them that as War bad been the means whereby they lost their Degree so Peace shall do them the service to restore them to their ancient Heritage of the Kingdom with the good Will the Consent and the Choice of all the People Afterwards follows a Lesson of the Conclave for the execution of this Design well worthy to be read For it is the whole plot and project of the League which was exactly observ'd all along even to the very last Act with the States
no longer now any ambitious Prince within the Kingdom to rob him of his Peoples Affection or that may dare to make any Alliance with the Pope to tumble him from his Throne and share the Crown We have this good fortune that we may set out to the life the ill aspect of Rome upon our Kings and that dangerous vigilance over France without any danger of abating the Courage of our Great King but on the contrary were his truly Royal Courage capable of an increase it would yet swell the higher from the consideration of the Evils that Rome has done and will yet do to France if he do not heartily oppose the Usurpations she exercises with impunity in all the parts of his Kingdom The honest French men that have the Honour to be near his Person might represent to Him the danger of this Doctrine maintain'd by the Popelings of His Kingdom That Jesus Christ committed to St. Peter as well the earthly as the heavenly Empire which are the very words of Pope Nicolas Therefore Cardinal Bellarmine Ch. 27. against Barclay holds absolutely That the Pope may dispose of all the Temporals of the World I affirm says he with confidence That our Lord Jesus Christ the time he was Mortal might dispose of all Temporal things and deprive the Kings and the Princes of their Kingdoms and Dominions and that without doubt he has left the same Power to his Vicar to be employ'd when he shall judge it necessary for the good of Souls The Pope Pius V. displays this Power with great Ostentation in his Bull against Queen Elizabeth of England wherein after that he calls Himself Servant of Servants he declares That God has establisht the Bishop of Rome Prince over all Nations and Kingdoms to take destroy disperse consume plant and build and in the Power hereof he does Anathemize degrade and depose this Queen absolves all her Subjects from the Oath of Fidelity that they had made her and forbids them absolutely to give her Obedience Gregory XIV set out such another Bull against our Great Henry declaring him uncapable of the Crown and exposing His Kingdom to prey But both this and the other Bull were torn and cast into the fire by the hands of the Hangman Observe that the Pope exerciseth this Power over the Temporalties of Kings for the good of Souls and as a Spiritual Prince So that our French Statesmen may cease to have their Eyes wilfully seal'd up by that distinction of Spiritual power which they allow him and Temporal power that they deny him For that it is by virtue of the Spiritual Power that he exerciseth the Temporal See what Cardinal Bellarmin says De pont Rom. l. 5. c. 5. The Pope may change the Kingdoms take them from one and give them to another as a Sovereign Spiritual Prince when it shall be necessary for the good of Souls And of this necessity he shall be the only Judge as the Sovereign Spiritual Prince For 't is thus the Cardinal argues Apol. pro Garnet p. 84. If the Church that is to say the Pope had not the power to dispose of Temporal things she would not be perfect and would want the Power that is necessary for the attaining her end for says he the wicked might entertain Hereticks and go scot-free and so Religion be turn'd upside down This reason charges imperfection on the Church in the Apostles time for that had no power over the Temporals These horrible Principles so strongly maintain'd by the Court of Rome were of fresh memory found so prejudicial both to the safety of our Kings and to the Peace of France that those of the third State an 1615. were mov'd to propose to the General States an Article containing the means to dispossess the people of that Opinion that the King might be depos'd by the Pope and that by the killing of Kings one might gain the Crown of Martyrdom Cardinal Du Perron in the name of the Clergy oppos'd this Article and employ'd all the strength of his Eloquence and Learning in two fair Speeches the one before the Nobility the other before the third State to perswade them that our Kings may be depos'd by the Pope offering himself to suffer Martyrdom in defence of this Truth The Lords of the Nobility to their great shame joyn'd with the Clergy for the putting their Kings Crown under the Miter of the Pope much degenerating from the vertue of their Ancestors those French Banons by whose advice Philip the August declar'd to the Cardinal D'Anagnia the Popes Legat that threatned him that it did not at all belong to the Church of Rome to pronounce Sentence against the King of France But the third State held firm to their Article that maintain'd the Dignity of their King and the safety of his Person and could never be won by promises nor affrighted by threatnings to depart from it shewing themselves in this more noble than the Nobility It is no wonder in this case that the third State shew'd more affection to their King than the Clergy seeing that the Clerks hold That they are not the King's Subjects for in effect they acknowledge another Sovereign out of the Kingdom And who can think it strange if they labour to heighten that Monarchy of which they make a Party But that the Nobility the Kings right arm that they should be so base to strike their Head and lay it at the feet of an Italian Bishop this is that which after Ages will reflect upon with astonishment and indignation and which Historians shall blush to relate and be vex'd that they cannot let pass in silence So the Nobility being joyn'd with the Clergy the Article of the third State was censur'd and rejected Whereupon the Pope writ Triumphant Letters to the Clergy and the Nobility who had been faithful to Him in this Cause glorying in His Victory and exalting the Magnanimity of these generoâ—s Nobles But in truth the Deputies of these generous Nobles deserv'd to have been degraded from their Nobility and they of the third State to have receiv'd their Titles The minority of the late King and the easiness of the Queen-Mother render'd them expos'd to these Injuries and apt to be circumvented insomuch that this Harangue made to the third State was printed with the Priviledge of the King and the Pope gain'd his point The false dealing of the Cardinal who made this Speech is remarkable namely that he had a long time followed King Henry the Great even then when he was of a contrary Religion and depos'd by the Pope and that a little before in an assembly held at the Jacobins in Paris he had resisted the Popes Nuncio who would that this Doctrine of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope might be held for an Article of Faith But in these two Harangues the Cardinal made a kind of a Recantation and pronounc'd himself his own condemnation Ungrateful wretch to have thus abus'd the tender Age of the Son of his King
that insult over us for Actions forc'd by the despair of a few and protested against by the greater Party and that will not acknowledge the signal Services we have done for the Crown which ought never to have been forgotten so long as the Race of Henry the Great shall Sit upon the Throne I think my self oblig'd to represent truly what is most considerable in their condition and in their actions since the last return of the Purity of the Gospel into France I say the last return because that it has been and has flourisht there two or three hundred years before and the Professors remain'd there skulking and yet in great numbers after long and cruel Persecutions For we dissemble not but own that this Holy Doctrine came to us and was planted by the remains of those poor Valdenses and Albigenses the destruction of whom is rank'd by the noble Marquess amongst the good Works of the first Rates The Character that Reinerius their cruel Inquisitor gave them is very remarkable and may satisfie those who ask where was our Religion before Luther c. 4. Contra Valdenses This says he of all Sects is the most pernicious for three Reasons First because of its long duration for some say that it has continu'd since the time of Pope Sylvester others hold that it began even in the Apostles time Secondly because of all Sects this is the most general there scarce being any Country where this Sect has not taken root In the Third place by reason that all contrary to other Sects that become abominable by the enormity of their Blasphemies against God these People seem very Godly for they live justly before Men have a sound belief in all things and of God and of all the Articles contain'd in the Apostles Creed only this They Blaspheme against Rome An admirable Testimony from the Pen of a Mortal Enemy that deserves to be Writ in Letters of Gold Let us joyn hereunto that of good King Lewis XII the Father of the People He was much importun'd by those of the Clergy who pray'd him to root out the Inhabitants of the Cabrieres and of Merindol in Provence that were of this Profession and some remainders of the Albigenses But this just King afore he would grant that bloody Request would see their Confession of Faith which having read He swore they were better Christians than he and his People and preserv'd them from the rage of their Enemies But these Enemies obtain'd what they desir'd of King Francis the First and made an horrible slaughter of those poor Christians If these Albigenses be Hereticks because they Blaspheme against Rome Is not the Marquess one and all the Men of Politicks in France who declaim so openly and so generously against the Pope's Usurpations that makes of Religion a pretence thereby to invade the Rights of the King and make himself Universal Monarch of all the World These Gentlemen would abate much of the hatred they bear us would they be pleas'd to consider that the Pope and Roman Clergy hate us for a Cause that is common to us both For it is not upon the account of any Controversies about the Holy Sacrament the Invocation of Saints and the Prayers for the Dead but it is because we oppose boldly the Usurpations of Rome it is because we Blaspheme against Rome as the Albigenses in Reinerius's days That we are call'd as he calls us A pernicious Sect. This is the great Heresie for which we have been made Objects of the Publick hatred and for which the Devotion of the People is made to consist in a bloody Zeal to burn us and Massacre us In the Year 1520. the Light of the Gospel shin'd throughout all the parts of France And the Queen of Navarre Sister of King Francis I. who was enlighten'd therewith was a great Rampire against the fury of the Roman Clergy that labour'd to extinguish this Holy Light by Persecution However she could not hinder but that much cruelty was exercised But after her decease the Persecution grew hot again and continued during the Reign of Francis I. and Henry II. For the space of Forty years those that were converted maintain'd their Holy Profession by a constancy in their Sufferings in imitation of the Christians of the Primitive Church Notwithstanding this Vigor many of the Princes and of the best Families of France as the Princes of the Blood of the House of Bourbon embrac'd the Reform'd Religion Under the Reign of Francis II. the Princes of the Blood debarr'd of their Rights by those of the House of Guise the Queens Uncles form'd the design at Ambois to banish those from the King's Person that held them at distance This attempt failing was call'd a Crime of High Treason and charg'd on them of the Reform'd Religion though Renaudy the chief of the Plot was a Roman Catholick and this Party was compos'd of Noblemen and Gentry of both the Perswasions Whoso understands the Priviledges of the Princes of the Blood in France will never accuse these Undertakers of the Rebellion Thuanus testifies in their Favour Hist l. 24. That not one of them was prov'd to have attempted against the King or against the Queen but only against Strangers that Govern'd all at Court in a Tyrannical way For then the House of Guise was still lookt upon as a Stranger in France Francis II. being dead his Successor Charles IX being a Minor the Princes of the Blood had more Right than afore to be admitted to the management of Publick Affairs at least joyntly with the Queen-Mother But when they saw themselves excluded and their Persons in danger they Levy'd Forces for their Preservation When the King came of Age the Princes seeing Him much incens'd against them and that He was of a dangerous and implacable Nature they retir'd and stood upon their Guard The several Affronts they receiv'd and the frequent Massacres occasion'd two or three little Wars To rid himself of them all at one blow the King set his Sister for a bait to draw in and to destroy the whole Party of the Princes giving her in Marriage to the Prince of Navarre who was afterwards our Henry the Great He and his Cousin Germain the Prince of Conde were imprison'd and the Principals of their Party slain in their Beds having Danc'd at a Ball the Evening before Never were Dancers at such a Wedding Pope Gregory XII had a hand in this execrable Action his Predecessor Pius V. refused to consent to this Marriage because said he the Prince of Navarre is an Heretick But when the Cardinal of Lorrain told his Successor Gregory XII that this Marriage was a trap to catch the Hereticks he then dispatcht the Dispensation and encourag'd the Design The Prince of Navarre having sav'd himself at Rochel was immediately assisted by a great Party that had escap'd the Massacre and the War broke out afresh Thereupon was form'd that Faction of the League to destroy the Princes of the Blood under
the colour of Religion and particularly to destroy the King Henry III. as appear'd afterwards During these long Troubles what refuge found the King of Navarre whom God reserv'd for the Crown of France but amongst these of the Reform'd Religion These were they that aided that defended and even nourisht him in his long and cruel Adversities And after in the end when the League had pull'd off the Mask and had driven the King from Paris and besieg'd him at Tours came not they to his Relief under their brave Chieftain and did they not deliver him from the utmost danger though he had sent his Armies against them to extirpate them I would gladly ask the Noble Marquess Where were then the honest French and where were the Rebels Would he find the honest French amongst the fiery Zealots and Bigots of the League Who have shed so much Blood to beat down this dangerous Sect as he is pleas'd to brand us With your good leave Noble Marquess which of the two is this dangerous Sect that which teaches that the Persons of Kings are inviolable and that exposes their Lives to defend those Kings that had persecuted them or that which holds That a King Excommunicated by the Pope may be justly kill'd by any body and which out of zeal for Religion plunge their Bloody Hands into the Bowels of their Soveraign as St. Jacob Clement did and as John Castrel and Peter Barâ—iere attempted and as Ravaillac perform'd Where is the Huguenot that ever offer'd any thing of this Nature during all the Persecutions of their Party Or where is the Minister that ever broacht such Doctrine to his Flock to kill their King which your Spiritual Fathers have so often done I would also ask the Marquess Where he finds that term of near fourscorce years spent in quelling this dengerous Sect which is the title he is pleased to give us Would he take in to these 80 years the 38 after the death of Francis II. till the Peace of Amiens in which time the Reformed Party were the constant and the only support of the Great Henry for near 30 years Will he venture to say That those Arms which defended the hope of after Ages and the fortune of France were unjust Let him also say if he please Whether by the zeal that has been to reduce the Hereticks to their duty he means that Butchery of the St. Bartholomews and the Massacres in every Town of France at that time and before which are reductions of a strange nature And because he may Object That their defence of the Princes of the Blood was only a pretence for the Huguenots taking up Arms and their unjust resistance against their Sovereign It will suffice to answer That their Arms were necessary for the Preservation of that Great Prince whom God reserv'd for the blessing of France and that when He came to the Crown they were judg'd worthy of a Reward I would beseech also all indifferent persons to consider them simply as men that are neither Angels nor Devils and to tell us if they think it strange that men the Relicks of Fires and Slaughters which were the only arguments employ'd for their Conversion for so many years take the course at length that Nature teaches them to defend themselves against force with force This to take it at the worst is all the Rebellion can be objected against them in all that past Age till the quiet settlement of Henry the Great But the good Providence of God has well clear'd them from the necessity of that excuse having set them out an Employment so just and so fortunate for their Arms that all who love and who shall for future Ages love the Prosperity of France and the Greatness of the Royal Family will have perpetual reason to bless the timely succour of this Party and to praise God who rais'd them for the everlasting good of the Kingdom Let us come to their condition after that Henry the Great was establish'd on His Throne The King being turn'd Roman Catholick and seeing his Party of the Reformed Religion discontent and in trouble as expos'd afresh to what they had afore tried gave them Places of Security for about twenty years This was the Ground-work of all their Miseries and I am much inclin'd to believe that this was procur'd for them by those who projected their ruine For their Enemies might well think that a King that understands his Interest would not long sufler in the heart of his Kingdom places assign'd for Protection against Himself in effect and to make resistance in case he kept not all his promises That these Places would be retreats for all discontented Persons and Incendiaries that would trouble the State That Strangers seeing in France a Party strengthen'd with Garisons and holding themselves in perpetual defiance would never leave bidding them to cock up and fomenting their discontents That this thorn in the foot of France would always hinder it from advancing and after all that this would be a kind of dangerous Discipline in a State to accustom Subjects to represent their Grievances with Sword in Hand On the other hand they might well fore-see that the Reform'd being seiz'd of these places would not quit them at the end of the term assign'd imagining that the enjoyment of their Religion of their Goods and of their Lives depended all on their keeping of these Places and that by their refusal they would oblige the King to win them by force which would make them Criminals odious and objects of the Justice and Vegeance of an incens'd Master And even so it happen'd For their term for holding these places being expir'd the King demands them again and having at their instant request prolong'd their term for three or four years at length wisely resolv'd to force them this gave occasion for the Assembly of Rochel where most imprudently and contrary to their duty to God and the King they resolv'd to hold the Places by force a resolution of despair ill-grounded For though the King shew'd himself favourable to his Subjects of the Religion after he had taken these Places by his Arms he would have been yet more favourable to them had they render'd the Places humbly and peaceably at his demand When the Assembly of Rochel began was held the National Synod of Alaix in which the famous Du Moulin was President In that Country where many of these Places of Security were he apply'd himself seriously to consider the posture of the Affairs of his Party to sound their Inclinations and to give them good counsel And he found that the greatest and the best part was dispos'd to render their Places to the King and did not at all approve of the proceedings of the Assembly of Rochel of which matter he thought himself oblig'd to inform that Assembly and having return'd home he writ them an excellent Letter a Copy whereof I have procur'd which is as follows SIRS I Write not to you to pour my
the true ground of the great hatred that is born us is it not for that if we are to be believ'd there would not in France be any French-man that is not the Kings Subject Causes Beneficial and Matrimonial would not be carried to Rome nor the Kingdom be Tributary under the shadow of Annates and the like Impositions And on this Subject the Testimony of Cardinal Perron for us in his Harangue to the Third State is very considerable wheâ— he says The Doctrine of the Deposition of Kings by the Pope has been held in France until Calvin Whereby he tacitely acknowledges That our Kings had been ill serv'd before and that those he calls Hereticks having brought to light the Holy Scripture have made the Right of Kings be known which had been kept supprest Shall they be said Friends of the State who owning themselves Subjects of a Stranger Soveraign dare endeavour to make themselves Masters of all the Temporal Jurisdiction of which the Marquess complains loudly and with good cause and of the great resistance they have made to maintain themselves in an Usurpation so unreasonable In this kind those of the Church of the Reform'd Religion could never be accus'd in the Towns where we have had some Power Our Religion is hated because it combats the Pride the Avarice and the Usur pations of the Court of Rome and their Substitutes in the Kingdom and because we have shewn to the World that sordid Bank of spiritual Graces they have planted in the Church and how they have drawn to themselves a Third of the Lands of France for fear of Purgatory from silly People mop'd with a blind Devotion and from Robbers and Extortioners who have thought to make Peace with God by letting these share in the booty 'T is an advice very suitable to the Politicks of France to examine well the Controversies that are most gainful to the Clergy as this of Purgatory concerning which an old Poet said the Truth in his way of Drollery But if it be so That no more Souls shall go To old Purgatory Then the Pope will gain nought by the Story It would be wisely done to examine what necessity there is for so many Begging-Fryers that suck out the Blood and Marrow of devout People and for so many Markets of Pardons in honour of a number of Saints of a new Edition and for what design are made so many Controversies And whether it would not be a great Treasure for the Kings Subjects to Teach them to work out their Salvation and put their Consciences in quiet at a cheaper rate God justly provok'd by the great Sins of France gives us not yet the Grace of that Gospel-Truth St. John Ch. 8. Know the Truth and the Truth will set you free And though it shines out so clear to let us see the Usurpation of the Popes upon the Temporals of the King and upon the Spirituals of the Church yet see we not clearly enough to discover all the mystery of Iniquity and to resolve to shake off the Yoak For this great design no other War need be made by the Pope but only take from him all Jurisdiction in France all Annates and all evocation of Causes to Rome This would hardly produce any other stirrs but the complaints and murmuring of them that are loosers And the condition truly Royal that the King at present is in will sufficiently secure Him from Insurrections at home and Invasions from abroad Or should any happen behold more than an hundred thousand Huguenots that the Noble Marquess has sound him in the heart of his State whom he is pleas'd to call His Enemies but who on all occasions and on this especially would do His Majesty a hearty and faithful Service The two main Interests of France being to weaken the House of Austria the Princes of which enclose him on both sides and to throw off the yoake of Rome which holds a Monarchy within the French Monarchy 't is easie to judge that amongst the Kings Subjects the Protestants are absolutely the most proper to serve him on both these occasions I know that amongst the Roman Catholicks as well Ecclesiasticks as Seculars there are excellent Instruments to serve the King in both these Interests But there is need of great caution to well assure him by reason of the multitude of Jesuits Scholars with whom these Fathers have Industriously fill'd all Professions of the State and Church and it is for no other end that they have so many Colledges They who have been too good Scholars of these Masters are contrary to both these Interests being so great Catholicks that they espouse the Interest of the Catholick King to advance that of his Holiness But to find amongst the Protestants trusty Instruments for both these accounts he need not try them they are fitted and form'd by their Education for these two Uses so necessary to France The Marquess assures His Majesty with good reason of the friendship of the Protestant Princes of Germany which they would never testifie so freely as in serving him to ruin the Power of the Pope who savours that of the House of Austria For thereby they would kill two Birds with one Stone Not to mention our other Neighbours who have broken with Rome and being disquieted by its secret practises will be ready to contribute to its destruction Who shall well consider the Scheme of the Affairs of Christendem shall judge that all things invite His Majesty to shut out the Jurisdiction of Rome beyond the Mountains Right Honour Profit Liberty Facility his Duty to his Crown to his Subjects and to his Royal Posterity and that many Aids smile upon him both within and out of his Kingdom for so fair and so just an Enterprize This is the warm desire of the honest French-men And none there are who better deserve that Title than they who with the most Indignation resent that their Kings should kiss the Feet of that Prelate who ought of Right to kiss their Feet for having receiv'd his Principalities from Kings of France and who in recompence of their good Deeds have plotted and plot continually their ruin When the King shall have deliver'd Himself and his People from this strange yoak he will find the enmity amongst his Subjects for matter of Religon greatly diminisht and the way open to a re-union And were the difficulties about the Doctrine overcome the Protestants would not stick much at the Discipline God who is the Father of Kings and the King of Glory protect and strengthen our Great King to accomplsh the Designs that turn to the general good of His Church to the greatness and to the respect of his Sacred Person and to the Peace and Prosperity of His State FINIS
be wondred at if Men whom Fortune brings forth and breeds up in so excellent a Climate be capable of handsomly contriving and successfully executing the haughtiest Enterprizes In fine it s an unspeakable satisfaction to a Man that sets himself to Treat of the Politicks of France that he may know the French of all the People upon Earth are the most susceptible of Learning of Policy and of Government For if one consider the Situation of the Country he may be assured that the Constellations of Heaven are eminently favourable to it The Experience and Skill of the Ancients do inform us that the Situation of Regions is the prime cause of the temperature of the Men in 'em as it is of the quality of the Plants and Fruits which they produce The Laws of this State being so Judicious as they are do argue the Wisdom of those that enacted them and of the People that accepted them whereof the long duration of the Monarchy is a second proof On the other hand the great Acts of the French do speak their Valour They serve in our Age for examples to all Nations in matter of execution and not only so but are as eminent likewise for their Counsels And they have choice of the best Generals on Earth to lead Armies as well as of the best Soldiers That heat and impetuosity which is taken to be visible in all their attempts is an effect of their high Courage and the confidence they shew with somewhat less of restraint and respect than prudence could wish can be imputed to nothing but their fearlesness In fine the Emperor Charles the Fifth declared with very much judgment That the French seem'd to be Fools but were really wise Now since we know what France is let us examine what may most conduce to the well-governing of it to the conserving it in Plenty and in Reputation in what it may be augmented and how its interests with the neighboring States ought to be secured In a word let us see what way may be taken to maintain the parts that compose it in so regular an harmony that they may all incessantly contribute to the weal of the Monarchy CHAP. IV. 1. Of the Clergy 2. Vseful means to obstruct Frauds in Beneficiary cases 3. Of the Monastick Religious of each Seu. OUr Ancestors have ever been great observers of Religion Long before the coming of JESUS CHRIST the Druids were their Priests and had an entire direction not only of affairs relating to the service of their false Gods but of those too which concern'd distributive Justice even in the general Assemblies held by all the Gauls whether for confirmation of Peace or for reconciliation of disagreeing parties who might embroil the Republiques or whether the making of some common National enterprises was in question still there was no resolution formed but by their advice No wonder then if since the Truth of the Gospel appeared and made known the holiness of Christianity the Prelates have conserv'd so many Prerogatives and Considerations They have been called to the Royal Counsels they have assisted at the decision of the most important affairs they have every where hold the first rank much hath been attributed to their Judgments and the respect had for their Character and Dignity hath gotten them great and signal priviledges which have exempted them from contributing to the burthens of the State though at the same time wealth was heap'd upon them by Alms and Foundations But as Church-men after the mode of the Court of Rome use to convert whatever is freely granted them into a point of Religion in such manner that by little and little they engage the tender Consciences of the faithful in vain scruples and possesses them with a superstitious fear of offending they have not been wanting to assert and maintain that these exemptions and privileges were not liberally given them that Kings did but settle them in possession of an advantage which was by Divine Right inseperable from their Profession that they while Men of War fought for the Glory and Liberty of their Country sufficiently did their part in lifting up as as was anciently done their eyes and hands to GOD to impetrate His powerful Protection that their Arms were Prayers Oblations and Penitence which they never forbore to use for the publick safety that from the Caves and Deserts whither they retired they sent up Meterials to the highest Heavens which formed into Thunder there might fall back upon and beat down the enemies of the French name In fine That if Gentlemen gave their blood and the People their sweat and labours for the welfare of the Kingdom they Day and Night did pour out Tears at the feet of Altars to disarm the wrath of GOD. Upon such reasonings as these the Ecclesiasticks have founded their pretences for possessing those goods of which publick and private Piety had made them Proprietors without concerning themselves for what success the general affairs of the State might have But this is not all they have tried by divers reiterated attempts to make themselves Masters of all the Temporal Jurisdiction and draw Civil causes unto their Tribunal nor have they forgotten any pretext which they thought might promote this dangerous enterprise sometimes they have pleaded That the Church alone having right to judge of the Validity of Marriages as being a Sacrament all that depended on 'em ought to be handled before Ecclesiastick Judges Sometimes again That Christians binding themselves in their Contracts by an Oath the cognisance appertain'd to them Such Kings as perceived that these attempts did tend to the overthrow of their Authority withstood them with a right Kingly vigour But what difficulties were there not of necessity to be overcome for a full attainment of their end and what resistance did not the Church-men make to maintain themselves in so unreasonable an Usurpation Our History affords us examples of it which I cannot call to mind without grief and wonder Their obstinacy hath gone so very far that they have forced our Kings to grant them Declarations upon unequitable and disadvantageous conditions and so capitulate with them both for the Tenths and Acknowledgments of the Lands which they possess as also for the Rights of Mortmain and Indemnity I cannot tell by what name I should call these proceedings Our Sirs of the Clergy could not doubt but that being born Subjects of the Crown nothing could release them of this duty and that the privileges which they have or rather which they have invaded being founded upon the holiness of their Character could not extend to these Temporal Goods which always are the States Yet the old error is so potent and their imagination so strongly prepossess'd for these Immunities that they can scarce acknowledge the Kings Sovereignty to this day What clamour did they not raise about the Arrest of the last Commission of Oyer in Auvergne with what fervour did they charge their Deputies to remonstrate to His Majesty concerning it