pointment of the apostle, and by the principles of Christianity, to be obeyed and submitted to in things wherein the fundamental laws of the government give them the power, tho' they were Jews or Gentiles. If I should tell you by what texts in scripture the Popes claim the powers before-mentioned, it would stir up your laughter, and prove too light for so serious a matter; yet, because possibly you may never have heard so much of this subject before, I shall instance in a few; they tell you, therefore, that the jurisdiction they pretend over the church, and the power of pardoning sins comes from Christ, to St. Peter, and from him to them. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth', &c. From these two texts, ridiculously applied, comes this great tree, which hath, with its branches, overspread the whole earth, and killed all the good and wholesome plants growing upon it: The first text will never by any man of sense be understood to say more than that the 'preachings, sufferings, and ministry of Peter was like to be a great foundation and pillar of the doctrine of Christ: The other text, as also another spoken by our Saviour and his apostles, "Whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose sins ye retain they are retained,' are, by all primitive fathers, interpreted in this manner, 'Wheresoever you shall effectually preach the gospel, you shall carry with you grace and remission of sins to them which shall follow your instructions: But the people, who shall not have these joyful tidings communicated by you to them, shall remain in darkness and in their sins. But if any will contest, that, by some of of these last texts, that evangelical excommunication, which was afterwards brought into the Church by the apostles, was here presignified by our great master, how unlike were those censures, to those now thundered out, as he calls it, by the Pope. These were for edification and not destruction, to afflict the flesh for the salvation of the soul; that apostolical ordinance was pronounced for some notorious scandal or apostasy from the faith, and first decrced by the Church, that is, the whole congregation present, and then denounced by the pastor, and reached only to debar such person from partaking of the communion of fellowship of that Church, till repentance should re-admit him, but was followed by no other prosecution or chastisement, as is now practised*. But suppose all these texts had been as they would have them, how does this make for the successors of St. Peter, or the rest? Or, how can this prove the bishops of Rome to have right to such succession? But I make haste from this subject, and shall urge but one text more, which is, the spiritual man judgeth all men, but is himself judged of none;' from whence it is inferred by the Canonists, that, first, the Pope is the spiritual man;' and then, that he is to be judge of all the world;' and last, that he is never to be liable to any judgment himself;' whereas it is obvious to the meanest understanding, that St. Paul, in this text, means to distinguish between a person inspired with the spirit of God, and one remaining in the state of nature; which latter, he says, cannot judge of those heavenly gifts and graces, as he explains himself,

In the Church of Rome.

when he says, 'The natural man cannot discern the things of the spirit, because they are foolishness unto him.'

To take my leave of this matter wholly out of the way of my studies, I beg of you Zenobio, and of Guilio, and the rest of our society, to read over, carefully, the New Testament, and then to see what ground there is for purgatory, by which all the wealth and greatness hath accrued to these men; what colour for their idolatrous worship of saints and their images, and particularly for speaking in their hymns and prayers to a piece of wood, the cross I mean, salve lignum, &c. And then fac nos dignos beneficiorum Christi, as you may read in that office*; what colour, or rather what excuse for that horrid, unchristian, and barbarous engine, called the Inquisition, brought in by the command and authority of the Pope, the inventor of which Peter, a Dominican friar, having been slain among the Albigenses, as he well deserved, is now canonised for a saint, and stiled San Pietro Martine?

In the dreadful prisons of this inquisition, many faithful and pious. Christians, to say nothing of honest moral Moors, or Mahometans, are tormented and famished, or, if they outlive their sufferings, burnt publickly to death, and that only for differing in religion from the Pope, without having any crime or the least misdemeanor proved or alledged against them; and this is inflicted upon these poor creatures, by those who profess to believe the scripture; which tells us, that 'faith is the gift of God,' without whose special illumination no man can obtain it; and therefore is not in reason or humanity to be punished for wanting it? And Christ himself hath so clearly decided that point in bidding us let thetares and wheat grow together till the harvest,' that I shall never make any difficulty to call him Antichrist, who shall use the least persecution whatsoever, against any differing in matters of faith from himself, whether the person, so dissenting, be Heretick, Jew, Gentile, or Mahometan.

Next, I beseech you to observe in reading that holy book, though Christian fasts are doubtless of divine right, what ground there is for enjoining fish to be eaten, at least flesh to be abstained from one third part of the year,' by which they put the poor to great hardship, who not having purses to buy wholsome fish, are subjected to all the miseries and diseases incident to a bad and unhealthful diet; whilst the rich, and chiefly themselves and their cardinals, exceed Lucullus in their luxury of oysters, turbats, tender crabs, and carps, brought some hundreds of miles to feed their gluttony, upon these penitential days of abstinence from beef and pork. It may be it will lie in the way of those who observe this, to enquire what St. Paul means, when he says, "That in the latter days some shall depart from the faith, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving;' but all these things, and many other abuses brought in by these perverters of Christianity, will, I hope, ere long be enquired into by some of the disciples of that bold friart, who, the very same year in which I prophesied that the scourge of the Church was not far off, began to thunder against their indulgences; and since, hath ques

3

The adoration of the cross on Good Friday.
Martin Luther, who was an Augustine Friar.

1517

tioned many tenets long received and imposed upon the world. I shall conclude this discourse, after I have said a word of the most hellish of all the innovations brought in by the Popes, which is, the clergy; these are a sort of men, under pretence of ministring to the people in holy things, set a-part and separated from the rest of mankind, from whom they have a very distinct and a very opposite interest by a human ceremony, called by a divine name, viz. Ordination; these, wherever they are found, with the whole body of the Monks and Friars, who are called the regular clergy, 'make a band which may be called the Janizaries of the Papacy; these have been the causes of all the solecisms and immoralities in government, and of all the impieties and abominations in religion; and by consequence, of all the disorder, villany, and corruption we suffer under in this detestable age; these men, by the Bishop of Rome's help, 'have crept into all the governments of Christendom, where there is any mixture of monarchy, and made themselves a third estate; that is, have by their temporalities, which are almost a third part of all the land in Europe, given them by the blind zeal, or rather folly of the northern people, who over-ran this part of the world, stepped into the throne, and what they cannot perform by these secular helps, and by the dependency their vassals have upon them, they fail not to claim and to usurp by the power they pretend to have from God and his vicegerent at Rome. They* exempt themselves, their lands, and goods, from all secular jurisdiction, that is, from all courts of justice and magistracy, and will be judges in their own causes, as in matters of tythe, &c. and not content with this, will appoint courts of their own to decide sovereignty in testamentary matters and many other causes, and take upon them to be the sole punishers of many great crimes, as witchcraft, sorcery, adultery, and all uncleanness. To say nothing of the forementioned judicatory of the inquisition; in these last cases, they turn the offenders over to be punished (when they have given sentence) by the secular arm (so they call the magistrate) who is blindly to execute their decrees under pain of hellfire; as if Christian princes and governors were appointed only by God to be their bravo's or hangmen. They give protection and sanctuary to all execrable offenderst, even to murderers themselves, whom God commanded to be indispensably punished with death. If they come within. their Churches, cloysters, or any other place, which they will please to call holy ground; and if the ordinary justice, nay, the sovereign power, do proceed against such offender, they thunder out their excommunication; that is, cut off from the body of Christ not the prince only, but the whole nation and people, shutting the church doors, and commanding divine offices to cease, and sometimes even authorising the people to rise up in arms, and constrain their governors to a submission, as happened to this poor city in the time of our ancestors; when, for but forbidding the servant of a poor Carmelite friar who had vowed poverty, and should have kept none to go armed, and punishing his disobedience with imprisonment, our whole senate, with their Gonfalonier, were constrained to go to Avignon for absolution; and, in case of refusal, had been mas

In the Church of Rome.

In Popish states, whoever flees to a convent, church, or other place set apart for religiou exercises, is protected from justice.

sacred by the people. It would almost astonish a wise man to imagine how these folks should acquire an empire so destructive to Christian religion, and so pernicious to the interests of men; but it will not seem so miraculous to them who shall seriously consider, that the clergy hath been for more than this thousand years upon the catch, and a formed united corporation against the purity of religion and interest of mankind, and have not only wrested the holy scriptures to their own advantage, which they have kept from the, laity in unknown languages, and by prohibiting the reading thereof; but made use likewise, first, of the blind devotion and ignorance of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, &c. and since, of the ambition and avarice of Christian princes, stirring them up, one against another, and sending them upon foolish errands to the Holy Land to lose their lives and to leave their dominions, in the mean time, exposed to themselves and their complices; they have, besides, kept learning and knowledge among themselves, stifling the light of the gospel, crying down moral virtues as splendid sins, defacing human policy, destroying the purity of the Christian faith and profession, and all that was virtuous, prudent, regular, and orderly upon earth, so that whoever would do good and good men service, get himself immortal honour in this life, and eternal glory in the next, would restore the good policy (I had almost said with my author, Livy, the sanctity too) of the heathens, with all their valour and other glorious endowments; I say, whoever would do this, must make himself powerful enough to extirpate this cursed and apostate race out of the world.

6

I hope I shall not be thought impious any longer upon this point, I mean for vindicating Christian religion from the assaults of these men, who having the confidence to believe, or, at least, profess themselves the only instruments which God hath chosen, or can choose, to teach and reform the world, though they have neither moral virtues nor natural parts equal to other men, for the most part, have by this pretence prevailed so far upon the common sort of people, and upon some too of a better quality, that they are persuaded their salvation, or eternal damnation, depends upon believing or not believing of what they say. I would not be understood to dissuade any from honouring the true apostolick teachers,' when they shall be re-established among us, or 'from allowing them' (even of right, and not of alms or courtesy) 'such emoluments as may enable them cheerfully to perform the duties of their charge, to provide for their children, and even to use hospitality,' as they are commanded by St. Paul. But this 'I will prophesy' before I conclude, That 'if princes shall perform this business by halves, and leave any root of this clergy, or priestcraft, as it now is, in the ground; then I say, I must foretel, that the magistrates will find themselves deceived in their expectation; and that the least fibre of this plant will over-run again the whole vineyard of the Lord,' and turn to a diffusive papacy in every diocess, perhaps in every parish: 'So that God in his mercy inspire them to cut out the core of the ulcer, and the bag of this imposture, that it may never rankle or fester any more, nor break out hereafter to diffuse new corruption and putrefaction through the body of Christ, which is his

To recover Jerusalem from the Turk.

+ Of Popery.

Holy Church, to viciate and infect the good order and true policy of government.'

I come now to the last branch of my charge, which is, 'That I teach princes villany, and how to enslave and oppress their subjects.' If any man will read over my book of the prince with impartiality and ordinary charity, he will easily perceive, that it is not my intention therein to recommend that government, or those men there described to the world; much less to teach men to trample upon good men, and all that is sacred and venerable upon earth, laws, religion, honesty, and what not. If I have been a little too punctual in describing these monsters, and drawn them to the life in all their lineaments and colours, I hope mankind will know them the better, to avoid them, my treatise being both a satyre against them, and a true character of them.

"Whoever, in his empire, is tied to no other rules than those of his own will and lust, must either be a saint or else a very devil incarnate; or, if he be neither of these, both his life and his reign are like to be very short; for whosoever takes upon him so execrable an employment, as to rule men against the laws of nature and reason, must turn all topsy turvy, and never stick at any thing;' for, if he once halt, he will fall and never rise again, &c. And so I bid you farewell. (1 April, 1537.)

THE HISTORY OF THE MOST UNFORTUNATE PRINCE,
KING EDWARD THE SECOND;

With choice Political Observations on him and his unhappy Favourites,
GAVESTON AND SPENCER:

Containing several rare passages of those times, not found in other historians; found among the papers of, and supposed to be writ by, the Right Honourable Henry Viscount Faulkland, sometime Lord Deputy of Ireland.

Henry Cary, Viscount Faulkland, (among whose papers the following history was found) was born at Aldnam, in Hertfordshire; his extraordinary parts, being a most accomplished gentleman, and a compleat courtier, got him such an esteem with King James the First, that he thought him a person fitly qualified to be Lord Deputy of Ireland (the government of which place required, at that time, a man of more than ordinary abilities) which trust he very well discharged. Being recalled into England, he lived honourable here, until, by an unfortunate accident, he broke his leg in Theobald's Park; of which, soon after, he died. He was a person of great gallantry, the ornament and support of his country, which he served with no less faithfulness and prudence abroad, than honour and justice at home, being an excellent statesman. During his stay at the University of Oxford, his chamber was the rendesvouz of all the eminent wits, divines, philosophers, lawyers, historians, and politicians of that time; for whose conversation he became eminent in all those qualifications.

The subject of the following history (supposed to be written by the above-mentioned nobleman) is the unhappy lives, and untimely deaths, of that unfortunate English King, Edward the Second, and his two Favourites, Gaveston and Spencer;