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husbandman, where she was holding forth to him, for Gouch was her disciple, were carried prisoners to Ipswich; and afterwards, being brought to the assizes at Bury, Alice Driver, upon her examination, compared Queen Mary then reigning, to Jezabel, for which her ears were cut off. And, upon her examination by Doctor Spencer, chancellor to the Bishop of Norwich, and others, she told them, They were not able to resist the spirit of God, which was in her; and when they spoke of the blessed sacrament, and insisted upon the authority of the church, she demanded, Where they found the word church written in the scriptures, and said positively, she never read, nor heard, of any such sacrament there. For which, with other fanatical opinions, obstinately defended by her, and Gouch her mate, they were both burnt at Ipswich, in November, 1558.

John Tewksbury, a leather-seller of London, being infected with reading Tyndal's seditious books, especially, that intituled, the Wicked Mammon, which contained little else, but an odious invective against the bishops and prelates of the church, grew to be so obstinate in his opinions, that he was examined in open consistory, before Tunstal Bishop of London, upon divers articles: As,

1. That the devil holds our hearts so hard, that it is impossible to consent to God's law.

2. That every one is lord of whatsoever another man hath. 3. That the Jews, of good intent and zeal, put Christ to death. 4. That Christ, with all his works, did not deserve heaven.

5. We are damned by nature, as a toad is a toad by nature, &c. Though he then maintained these with other errors, yet, the next session, he submitted himself; and in May, 1529, abjured his opinions; but, soon after, he returned to his vomit and was burnt in Smithfield, in December next following.

Thomas Hawks, serving-man of Essex, a notorious anabaptist, was convened before Bonner, Bishop of London, his ordinary, as for other errors, so chiefly, for not permitting his young child to be baptised; he obstinately defended his child to be in no danger, if it should die without baptism: I say, saith he, as St. Peter saith, 1 Pet. iii. Not the washing of water purgeth the filthiness of the flesh, but a good conscience consenting unto God.' For which obstinacy, he was burnt at Coxhall in Essex, in the year 1555, and second of queen Mary.

Richard Woodman, of Warbleton in Sussex, ironmonger, being examined by Dr. Christopherson, Bishop of Chichester, and other doctors, upon divers articles; Woodman affirmed positive. ly, that he, forsooth, was sure, he had the Spirit of God, and can prove by places enough, saith he, that Paul had the Spirit of God, as I myself and all God's elect have. No arguments, nor reason, could reclaim him from his errors, so that he was burnt at Lewes, in June, 1557.

In the year 1575, and seventeenth of queen Elisabeth's reign, the third of April, twenty-seven hereticks were condemned by the

Bishop of London and his assistants, for holding with the old catharites, and new anabaptists.

1. That Christ took not flesh of the substance of the blessed Virgin Mary.

2. That infants of the faithful ought not to be baptised.

3. That it was not lawful for a christian to take an oath,

4. And that no christian may be a magistrate, or bear the sword, and the like.

Whereof four only did recant, and bore faggots at Paul's Cross, in sign of burning, if they had persevered obstinately in the same opinions.

The twelfth of June the same year, five persons were condemned in St. Paul's Church by the bishops and clergy, for being of the sect of the Family of Love,' who escaped death by recanting that heresy at Paul's Cross, and detesting the author thereof, Henry Nicholas, and all his errors.

The seventeenth of September, 1583, and in the twenty-sixth year of the said queen, John Lewis, who named himself Abdoit, an obstinate Arian heretick, for denying the Godhead of Christ, and holding other detestable heresies, was burnt at Norwich. And, in the year 1589, and thirty-first of the said queen, one Francis Kett, a Master of Arts, born at Wymondham in Norfolk, was condemned by Edmund, Bishop of Norwich, for holding divers detestable opinions against Christ our Saviour, and was burnt near the city of Norwich.

The sixteenth of July, 1591, and thirty-third of Elisabeth, Edmund Coppinger and Henry Arthington, says Stow, repaired to one Walker's house near Broken-wharf, London; where, conferring with one of their sect, called William Hacket, of Oundle, in Northamptonshire, they offered to anoint him King; but Hacket, taking Coppinger by the hand, said, You shall not need to anoint me, for I have been already anointed in heaven by the Holy Ghost himself.' Then Coppinger asked him, What his pleasure was to be done?' 'Go your way both,' said he, and tell them in the city, that Christ Jesus is come with his fan in his hand, to judge the carth; and, if any man ask where he is, tell him, he lies at Walker's house; and, if they will not believe it, let them come and kill me, if they can, for, as truly as Christ Jesus is in heaven, so truly is he come to judge the world.' Coppinger said it should be done forthwith, thereupon went forward, and Arthington fol. lowed: But, before he could get down stairs, they had begun below in the house to proclaim news from heaven of exceeding great mercy, that Christ Jesus was come, &c. They both cried, Repent, England, repent,' as they passed along the streets; and being arrived in Cheapside, with a great concourse of people following them, they got up into an empty cart, where they read out of a paper, How Hacket represented Christ by partaking a part of his glorified body by his principal Spirit, and by the office of severing the good from the bad with the fan in his hand, and of establishing the gospel in Europe; telling the people also where he re

mained, that they were two prophets, the one of mercy, the other of judgment, sent, and extraordinarily called by God to assist him in this great work, and were witnesses of these things,' &c.

But Hacket, being apprehended, was brought to the sessions'. house in the Old-Bailey, where, for his said mad pranks, for irreverent speeches against her majesty, and for maliciously thrusting an iron instrument into the queen's picture, he had judgment, and, on the twenty-eighth of July, he was drawn from Newgate to Cheapside, all the way crying out, sometimes Jehovah, Messias, Jehovah, Messias; at other times, saying, 'Look, look how the heavens open wide, and the Son of God comes down to deliver me.' When he came under the gibbet, near the Cross in Cheapside, he was exhorted to ask God and the queen forgiveness; but, instead thereof, he fell to cursing her, and began a most blasphemous and execrable prayer against the Divine Majesty of God. They had much ado to get him up the ladder, where he was hanged, and after bowelled and quartered.

The next day, being the twenty-ninth of July, Coppinger, having wilfully abstained from sustenance, as was said, died in Bridewell, and Arthington was long reserved in the Compter of Woodstreet, in hope of his repentance.

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This Arthington, during his imprisonment, wrote a book, intituled, The Seduction of Henry Arthington by Hacket, in the year 1592,' and dedicated it to the Lords of her Majesty's Council; in which he discourses of two Spirits that he had, the first from the time of his being a protestant, to the death of Hacket; the second from that time forward. His first Spirit he assured himself to be of the Holy Ghost, for that it was founded in the hatred of papists and papistry, whom he held for traitors; it moved him to follow sermons, and particular fasts and exercises; and, besides, he felt himself possessed, to use his own words, with a burning heat within him, and his love and affection greatly placed towards the preaching ministry, &c.

Thus he describeth his first Spirit, which induced him by little and little to join with Hacket and Coppinger, and at last, to believe the one to be Christ, the other a prophet, as you have heard.

Of his other Spirit he discourseth thus, I certainly knew myself to be reserved for salvation in Christ; yea, I did expostulate with God's merciful Majesty, after my fall with Hacket, whether I was a reprobate or no, and presently the Holy Ghost did assure my heart, that I was no reprobate, but that my case, in effect, was much like St. Paul's, &c. I was assured of my Spirit by these tokens following: 1. By experience of God's providence in still preserving me. 2. For that God hath sent his Spirit into my heart to cry, Abba Father. 3. For that God doth still increase my faith. 4. In that I knew my faith to be founded in the fruits of God's Spirit, &c. This last Spirit he knew to be of God, the other of Satan;

which before he thought to be as much of God as this; and, in truth, he had as much assurance of the one as the other, but only by the mad persuasion of his own frantick brain. You may read more of these three grand Sectaries in an old book, intituled, Conspiracy of pretended Reformation.

Many other examples might be collected out of our historians of this fanatick spirit in former times, which never, till our late horrid rebellion, and anarchical confusion in government, was permitted to grow to so great a head. And from the consideration of these, which have, for the most part, been gathered out of Mr. Fox's Acts and Monuments, we may justly charge that author with a great double injury: The first and principal, in canonising a great, number of apparent fanaticks and sectaries into the list of protestant saints and martyrs; it being evident to every impartial reader, even by Mr. Fox's own relations, that a very notable part of his sufferers were such; and, if the records of those times were extant, and the examinations of those ancienter fanaticks freely perused, without question a far greater number of such mad saints might be discovered amongst them: Which I am so much the more inclined to believe on the authority of a learned writer, who lived very near those days, and thus expresses their character: They were drunk, says he, with the pride of heresy, and put out of their right senses by the frenzy thereof. Which is just the periphrasis of a fanatick.

The other injury, which I find this author guilty of, is, his immoderate reviling, and sometimes falsly accusing both Queen Mary, and the papists of those days, of greater severities and persecutions than they were really guilty of, though in some cases they certainly were too cruel and rigorous; yet it was no more than what Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, her predecessors, did before her, and what Queen Elisabeth, her successor, did after her.

For proof of this, I find one Greenwood, or Grimwood, of Hitcham, in the county of Suffolk, accused by Mr. Fox to be a perjured papist, and a great persecutor of his martyrs, and therefore had great plagues inflicted on him, and, being in health, his bowels fell out of his body by the terrible judgment of God. Now, for an evident conviction of this falshood, one Parson Prick, not long after the first edition of Fox's Acts and Monuments, and in the twenty-seventh year of queen Elisabeth, took occasion to revile the papists in a sermon, as the custom was, and, in particular, told this story of Greenwood in the pulpit, and cited his author as infallible. But so it happened, that Mr. Greenwood, who was a good protestant, was present at that very sermon, and never was so plagued, but soon after brought his action on the case against Mr. Prick, for calling him perjured person, to which the defendant pleaded not guilty, and, this matter being disclosed upon the evidence, Wray, Chief Justice, delivered the law to the jury, in favour of Mr. Prick, that, it being delivered but as a story (such it seems are too many of Mr. Fox's), and not with any ma lice or intention to slander any, he was not guilty of the words

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maliciously, and so was not found guilty:' And Judge Popham affirmed it to be good in law.

The exact particulars of this case you may find amongst the records of Westminster-hall of that year; and, in a case of like nature betwixt Brook and Montague, 3 Jac. it was cited by Sir Edward Coke, then attorney general, and is briefly printed in the second part of Judge Croke's Reports, published by the learned Sir Harbottle Grimston, Bart. Speaker of the late Parliament.

THE FARALLEL.

Ancient. Thomas Lord Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and Lord-Keeper of the Great Seal (son of a blacksmith of Putney, who was in his latter days a brewer) was first a servant to Cardinal Wolsey, and afterwards a principal Minister of State to king Henry the Eighth; and, among other great offices which he had, he was vicar-general over all the spirituality, though a layman, and sat divers times in the convocation among the bishops; by means whereof, and of his great power, and propension to schism and heresy, he ransacked, dissolved, and subverted many ab. bies and religious houses, and, if he had lived, had a heart in. clined to act greater mischiefs, both in church and state; but, on the nineteenth of July, 1540, he was arraigned and condemned of heresy and treason, and, on the twenty-ninth of the same month, was beheaded at Towerhill.

Hugh Latimer, son of a hus. bandman in Leicestershire, pretended to the office of the ministry, affected a drollish way of holding forth in the pulpit, was a great enemy to bishops and

Modern.

Oliver Cromwell had, indeed, some advantage over his name. sake Lord in the quality of his birth, but none in that of his profession, he being a brother too of the jolly brewhouse, though he far surpassed the other in the mystery of iniquity. In the late rebellion, raised against king Charles the First, of blesssd memory, he began to set up a new trade, and was at first captain of a troop of sectaries; afterwards, by unheard of policy, became general, and, the better to serve his own am bitious ends, on the thirtieth of January, 1648, did most bar. barously murder that good king at his own palace-gate; then made himself Protector of an Utopian Commonwealth, and, on the third of September, 1658, died full of murders, wicked. nesses, and treasons: His body lay inhumed at Westminster, till the thirtieth of January, 1660, when it was, by order of parliament, hanged at Tyburn, with Bradshaw and Ireton his accomplices; and, finally, bu ried under that gallows.

Hugh Peters, of like mean extraction, usurped the office of the ministry; was used by Oli ver, as a fit instrument in the pulpit, to encourage rebels in their evil ways; had a great

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