tence, but also upon the verdict of a few learned doctors; and, discoursing pro and con of the most convenient way of doing it, at last determines poisoning to be the most orthodox and catholic. And if we look into the histories of these last six hundred years, we shall find their practice hath made a bloody comment on their doctrines: for in those days when excommunications from Rome were so terrible, and all things shrunk at the flash of those thunders, it was the ordinary recreation of those insolent prelates to play at football with the crowns of princes, and trample on the necks of emperors; as the Fredericks, the Henries, the Lodovici, Bavari, found by woful experience, who were abandoned of their subjects, their kindred, their allies, their own children; were trodden under foot, deposed from their empires, defamed as heretics, and chased like rascals.

These goodly mirrors, one would think, were sufficient to warn all Christian princes to shake off the yoke that for so many ages hath galled the necks of their ancestors. But if, after so many woful examples, there should remain any doubt of the tyrannie cruelties of Rome, let us remember that pair of royal sacrifices, the two last Henries of France, both barbarously murdered by the pope's executioners: the first by the hand of a friar, whose villainy was commended by pope Sixtus the Fifth, in an oration to his cardinals, wherein he compares the fact with the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, (Orat. Sixt, V. printed at Paris, 1589.) and the friar's virtue and courage, and fervent love to God, to that of Judith, and Eleazar in the Maccabees. Blessed God! what wickedness will these men stick at, the head of whose religion canonizeth regicide and Christians' murder

a meritorious virtue! And why should the papists be ashamed to own the powder treason, which (though it may compare with the blackest intrigues of hell, and was foul enough to bring the Devil himself into disgrace) yet was warranted by the principles of their bloody religion? But it is the old maxim of the Roman politics, never to own an unsuccessful villainy; and, without doubt, had not the Parisian massacre taken effect, in which thirty thousand protestants were slaughtered in one night, the papists would have as loudly disclaimed that, as now they do the powder treason: but it being successful, the news of it at Rome, as their own Thuanus tells us, (Hist. lib. liii.) was welcomed with public festivals, and bonfires, and triumphs; the pope himself congratulating the inhuman cruelty of the French king, commending the faith of those bloody wretches whose hands were imbrued in the slaughter, and distributing his paternal blessings among them: and without all controversy, had Faux and Catesby been but as successful as they, their faith had been as much praised, and their persons as much blessed; and the fifth of November had been as high a festival in the Roman calendar, as it is now in the English. Thus if you trace the Romish religion in all her late progresses, you will find that her way hath led all along through a wilderness of confusion and a red sea of blood: and though now she exerciseth less cruelties in the world than formerly, yet her will is the same, her principles the same, her documents of cutting throats the same, though, blessed be God, her power and interest is abated. For nowadays princes are grown too stout to kiss his holiness's toe, to hold his stirrup, and run like lackeys at his heels: those golden days are gone,

and he, that was wont to command, is fain to entreat his own children: and, as an ingenuous author hath observed, whilst princes can stand upon their own legs, they may go their own pace, as fast and as slow as they please; but should any misfortune throw them upon all four, we shall soon see his holiness get up and ride them what pace he pleases; and being bestrid by such a furious Jehu, to be sure they will want neither whip nor spur to make them as swift to shed blood as ever. For thus, at present, the French king may allow his Huguenots what liberty he pleases, and his holiness is fain to sit still and be silent, being kept in awe by that puissant monarch, whose cannon-bullets are grown too strong for his thunderbolts. But the case was otherwise with Charles the Ninth, who, being weakened by faction, and impoverished by civil broils, was in a manner necessitated to that infamous butchery at Paris, to appease the pope, and prevent the excommunication he threatened him, unless he speedily destroyed the Huguenots with fire and sword. And indeed the pope is bound, both by their councils and canons, to destroy heretics if he can; and, which is all one, to excommunicate their favourers: for this is decreed in the fourth Lateran council, that heretics should be excommunicated, and then delivered up to the lash of the secular powers: but if the prince or secular power, being required or admonished by the church, do not endeavour to their utmost to exterminate and destroy these heretics, he shall be presently excommunicated by the metropolitan or archbishop; and if within a year he doth not amend, his obstinacy shall be signified to the pope, ut ex tunc ipse vassallos ab ejus fidelitate denuntiet ab

solutos, &c." that from that time the pope may de"nounce his subjects absolved from their allegiance "to him," (Conc. Lat. iv. c. 3.) And Gregory the Thir teenth, in that famous bull of his, entitled, Litera processus lectæ die Coena Domini, excommunicates all Hussites, Wiclivites, Zuinglians, Calvinists, Huguenots, and other heretics, together with their concealers and favourers; and in general all those which defend them, (Collect. divers. Constitut.pars iii. p. 72.) So that, according to this bull, a child cannot conceal his parents, nor a prince rescue his subjects, from the pope's bloodhounds, under the penalty of excommunication. And pope Julius the Third, in another bull, hath determined, "That if any man examine "the doctrines of the pope by the rule of God's "word, and, seeing it is different, chance to contra"dict it, he shall be rooted out with fire and sword." (De Vita Ignat. lib. iii. cap. 21. p. 335.) Was not this a precious vicar, do you think, thus to doom men to slaughter for not believing his own unreasonable dictates before the infallible oracles of God himself? And yet those bulls of the popes, with the rest of the Decretals, Extravagants, and Clementines, are all inserted in the body of the canon-law of the church of Rome, and so are made as good and current popery as ever was coined in the council of Trent.

And now, after all this, methinks it is impossible we should be so besotted as to trust the cruel courtesies of Rome, whose religion breathes nothing but blood and slaughter. The cry indeed of the Roman factors among us is nothing but toleration and liberty of conscience; and since the laws have proscribed them for their treasonous practices, and for swearing

themselves vassals to the pope, whose countermands (if they are faithful to their own principles) must evacuate all their obligations to their natural prince, what tragical exclamations do they make against persecution! as if they meant to have the monopoly of it, that nobody might persecute but themselves; and though in the popish dominions they are fell and rabid as so many Libyan tigers, yet no sooner do they set foot upon the English shores, but, as if there were an enchantment in the soil, the wolves turn sheep immediately, or at least disguise themselves in sheep's clothing. But if ever these sweet and merciful gentlemen get into the saddle again, we shall soon find them in another note; and persecution would be zeal again, and racks and gibbets catholic arguments; and there will be no way to illuminate the understandings of us heretics like the light of a flaming fagot. For how can we expect it should be otherwise, when we reflect upon what is past, when the Marian days are yet within our prospect? And it is not half an age ago since Ireland swam in protestant blood, which was spilt by the instigation of some of these fawning hypocrites, who now declaim forsooth for liberty of conscience, and defy persecution and all its works. But this pretence, it is evident, is only a copy of their countenances; and without all controversy, the bottom of their design is only to persuade us to let them grow till they are strong enough to cut our throats: for it is the subtilty of these harpies never to shew their talons till they have their prey within their reach. But if what they pretend were real, why do they not allow what they plead for, and indulge that liberty to dissenters abroad, which they here crave for themselves? Why do they not as much exclaim against the Spanish in