DEO & ECCLESIAE D. D.  
THE ANATOMY OF ANANIAS: OR, God's Censure against Sacri ledge. WITH A BRIEF scholy UPON Psalm. 83. concerning the same subject.  
By ROGER GOSTWYKE Bachelor of Divi nitie, and Minister of Sampford Courtnie in the County of Devonsh.  
¶ Negligere quid de se suaque causa [fiat] praesertim cum id eiusmodisit, ut in eo Dei maiestas violetur, hominum est dissolutorum & ad iniuriam divini nominis securè atque impiè conniventium.  jewel. apol. 
PRINTED BY CANTRELL LEG, Printer to the University of Cambridge.  
1616.   

❧ TO THE MOST Rev. Father in God, GEORGE, by Divine providence Archbishop of CANTERBURY; Primate and Metropolitan of all England: All saving graces. ⁂  
PLEASETH IT YOUR GRACE: There have been two arch-enemies that have ever molested the Church in her periods of peace; the Heretic, and the Atheist. The first in matters of verity, obducing a cloud, and spreading a curtain of ignorance and error, before the eyes of God's people: the latter in things of piety, withdrawing the cloud, and opening the vail of majesty and honour, to every vulgar both hand and eye. Concerning the first, as requiring more of the head, I leave to those learned pens and selected soldiers, whom God hath endowed with greater measure of understanding to fight his battles. But for the second, that ask more of the heart, I presumed, with the poor widow in the Gospel, to cast my mite into the donaries of God, to the use of the godly. A subject I am well assured as necessary, as distasteful for these times: For whether it be that gain hath obturated men's ears, or guilt hath obdurated their hearts, I find abroad men much recalcitrant to this doctrine: yet how needful it is to be touched, I report me to Christian hearts. But who am I, that I should irritare crabrones; whose impudency notwithstanding, or ignorance, or importunity, for so did such vermin signify in hyeroglophicall learning, if they prove obstreperous, I most humbly crave your Grace to protect me, if not from their buzzing, yet from their stinging. Whose height, being placed in the Zenith of this hemisphere, albeit they cannot reach with hands of injury; yet I fear me, they will not forbear to bark at with hearts of envy. To your Grace therefore, in the behalf of all this Church, I offer this simple Treatise: for whose vigilancy and indefatigableness, as we thank the Lord; so we pray him for your long continuance, and happy sitting.  
Your Grace's most humble servitor, 
 R. G.   

Ad Lectorem.  
MIra legis quicunque legis portenta nefandi  
Criminis, ut poenas sacrilega acta luant.  
Vera legis quicunque legis tormenta nocentum:  
Vt delinquentes ira superna premat.  
Saepe fit ut sacrum cumuletur sanguine furtum  
Saepe fit ut poenas culpa det illa novas.  
Quis non à domino proprium qui curat honorem  
Cogitet haec fieri, nec repetendo tremat?  
Discite mortales quid sit temerare sacrata  
Discite raptrices hinc cohibere manus.   

Ad Authorem.  
AVse loqui commune nefas, furtumque Promothei,  
Rapturas templis & prohibere manus.  
Huic operi haud magnas ausim promittere laudes  
Da veniam furtis, classicus author eris.  
Tu tamen invisum nè cesses prodere furem,  
Qui & noceat scriptis sunt quia sacra tuis.  
Laesa tamen nullos non sunt habitura legentes,  
Si quis Sacrilegos oderit illa leget.  G. T.  

ANte aras tutos prodit tua pagina fures  
Prodit & ingenium, iudiciumque tuum.  
Illi crimen habent, multisque habuere per annos,  
Accusato●em non habuere prius.  
At quia non illis, quia non tibi parcere nosti,  
invitus laudes accipe & invidiam.  M. C.  

QVàm facile & tutum est arras hinc fallere disces,  
Non tamen hic artem sed scelus esse puta.  
Hoc solum suadere pij movere libelli  
Noscere ut incipias non spoliare Deum.  Idem.  

DVm loqueris quantum scelus est subducere sacris,  
Quotque modis fieri praeda, quibusque solet.  
Obstupui commune nefas, mirumque putavi,  
Esse aliquid templis quod superesse solet.  
At tu sancta Lavernatuos compesce clientes  
Aut tu Iane tuas claud timore fores.  M. G.  

ROdere Mome time, Dijs est sacer iste libellus,  
Et Scriptor sacer est, rodere Mome time,  I. A.  

The method and disposition.  
 Explitation in the Logical resolution.   Cap. 1. Part.    sin: gen. what: sacrilege and blasphemy. 2.  The Theological tractaction of the partic. reprehension of the man, or Compellation. 3.  matter, or Ennumeration. 4.   aggravation.  5.  censure, or curse of Excommunication. 6.  whole Clergy, Papists appropriations. Cap. 1. Part. 2▪ Puritans disclamations. 2.  Laierie, Great men's usurpations. 3.  Application destructive against sacrilege in Townesmens' exemptions. 4.  part Parishioners compilations. 5.  Patrons stipulations. 6.  Instructive for the uses, Information of fear and care. Cap. 1. Part. 3. Deploration of good men. 2.  Exhortation, general, to all men. 3.    special, to the Parliament. 4.     Consolation to the Clergy. 5.     Conclusion of the cause and cure. 6.    

Deo & Ecclesiae. D. D. THE ANATOMY OF Ananias and Sapphiraes' Sacrilege.  ACTS. 5. 1. 

Ver. 1.  BUT there was a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, that sold a possession,  

2  And kept back part of the price, and brought a certain [small] portion, and laid it down at the Apostles feet, his wife also being privy thereunto.  

3  Then said Peter, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart, that thou shouldest lie to the holy Ghost, and keep back part of the price of the possession?  

4  While it remained, was it not in thy power, and when it was sold, was it not thine own? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto man, but to God.  

5  When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and gave up the Ghost, and great fear came upon all them that heard these things.  

CHAP. I.  
The explication, first in the Logical resolution.  
THE white horse that went out at the opening of the first seal, 
a Revel. 6. 1.  whose rider had a bow and a crown, and made victorious Conquests, may seem to be that suadae medulla, the power of the Spirit in the lips of the Apostles, that so soon and suddenly won such worlds of souls to the obedience of the Gospel; whose confluence and concourse was not more conspicuous for the company, then prodigious for the unanimity: where Plato's idea of perfect community, was really performed; and his excellent model of true unanimity was actually established. For here indeed was Cor unum & anima una: for saith S. Luke, 
b Cap. 4 38.  The multitude of believers were of one heart and mind, in so much as there was none that lacked: for such as were possessors of lands and houses sold them, and laid down the prices at the Apostles feet, and distribution was made according as every one did need. So did other: so did joses a Levite, and for that cause was happily of the Apostles surnamed Barnabas, or the son of consolation, for comforting the hearts of the Church, who as yet were but barely provided for, persecution being feared without, and penury felt within her doors. But as he and other did beautify the religion with their devotion, so there want not that blemish the same with their deep dissimulation. Therefore S. Luke to illustrate the fact of the one, opposeth ex diametro, the fault of the other, as Chrysostome observeth; to the end, the dissimulation of Ananias may give a lustre to the sincerity of joses, and show the world, that there is a consolation in Christ, 
c Phillip 〈◊〉  a comfort of love, a fellowship of the Spirit, and bowels of mercy, though profane men neither praise it, nor practise it. This the occasion.  
Now here is set down a wicked combination of a man and his wife, in a matter of Dedication, by themselves done to God and his Church, how to delude and frustrate both: which counterfeit carriage, the great and holy Apostle, doth both descry and discover, first to their conviction, secondly to their confusion. Where first we may read the sin, and then the censure. The sin is Sacrilege, that is, compilation or cozenage of things now consecrated to God and holy uses. The censure is Excommunication, or distriction of the spiritual sword, and that in the heaviest of all heavy curses. The sin is set down first barely by Luke, by way of historical narration; the censure inflicted by Peter, by Apostolical jurisdiction; the history is couched in the two first verses, and comprise the efficients, material, and formal causes. Ananias and his wife sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, and brought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a certain quillet or quiddity, a thing of nothing in comparison of the main, a niggardly share; whereas they had promised the whole, as Barnabas had done before, and they made show to imitate.  

verse 3.  The censure follows; first, in reprehension; secondly, in castigation. The reproof contains, 1. an accusation, v. 3. 2. a confutation. The accusation is in the appellation of the offender, Ananias; and enumeration of the parts of the offence, which are three; 1. The author by whose suggestion, Why hath Satan filled thine heart? where is also touched part of the form of the offence. 2. The object against whom the sin was committed, including also the other part of the form; That thou shouldst lie to the holy Ghost. 3. The subject wherein the matter of the sin consisted, And keep back part of the price of the possession.  

vers. 4.  The Confutation follows, and that is of three secret objections, answerable to the heads of the accusation, but inverting the order, as the manner of Scripture is to do: to the last first.  
Object. 1. A man may do with his own what he will; but this was mine: ergo. To this the Apostle answereth by letting pass the mayor, as being impertinent, and denying the minor, with distinguishing upon the time: first for time of possession▪ granting it, when it remained (unsold) remained it not to thee? namely, the land: secondly, and for time of alienation yielding it, and when it was sold, was it not in thine own power? namely the price: thirdly, but for time of dedication, denying it strongly by interrogation, and passing it over by a crypsis of method, as if all law and logic, all rule and reason, did disavow it: for thou hadst no more right to the money now given, then to the land now sold.  
Object. 2. As to the author, he might say, if it were an offence, yet was it not mine but Satan's, as yourself avouch. To this he answers with a non sequitur, though Satan's by temptation, yet yours also by approbation: he might have as one noteth, suadendi astu●iam, not cogendi potentiam, he might suggest, he could not enforce: he was the founder, the wooer, the father; thy heart was the worker, the spouse, the mother: why hast thou conceived this thing in thy heart?  
Object. 3. Well then, though a fault, and in some sort my fault also, yet no such great fault as needed so sharp and public reproof; at the worst, being but to a few simple men, that could challenge nothing of a free donation, and might have received other satisfaction. Answ. Yes, your sin is not so much to men, who are but the Assigns to whom the benefit of your donation should have acrued, as unto God who is the donor; who by such fraud is frustrated, and by your dodging dishonoured: not only the father that foundeth his Church in his Son, and the Son that collecteth it by his Spirit, but the holy Spirit that sequestreth it by his power, sanctifieth it with his grace, beautifieth it with his gifts, combineth it with his love, preserveth it by his providence, and honoureth it with his truth: Thou hast not lied unto man, but unto God: even God the holy Ghost.  

vers. 5.  This is the reprehension, the Castigation follows: when Ananias found himself first thus deprehended in the darkness of his own deceit, like the fish Sepia, that misteth herself in her own mud, and reprehended for the blackness of his sin, by the wisdom of the Spirit, and piercing words of the Apostle: and lastly, confuted in the simple Labyrinth of his own Logic, it remains that he is confounded by the inward remorse of his covetous conscience; and as at the hearing of his own funeral sermon, falls down dead in the place, by the fulmination of the fearfullest anathema, anathema maran-atha, a temporal consternation of the body, cut off from the grace of life, and eternal malediction of the soul, deprived of the life of grace, an exemplary vengeance to other, a fearful judgement to himself, by a sad, a sudden, and unrepentant death: not so much in form of words, as in the effect of deeds; When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and gave up the ghost.  
Lastly, the use of this curse annexed, what effect it should and did produce to other: trepidation and fear, illustrated by the extent or quantity, both of the affection, and the subject, or auditors; Great fear came upon all them that heard these things. And thus much for the Context and analysis, or logical resolution.   

CHAP. II.  
The Theological tractation. First, of his sin in general, how great it was, and what.  
COncerning his sin, that it should be proportionate to his punishment, all do not agree; the most avouch that it was Sacrilege, none say it was less, but some say more, as namely that sin unto death, the sin against the holy Ghost. I think it was both. First, that his sin was Sacrilege, it is 
First, Sacrilege.  too apparent to be gainsaid, as I am of opinion, although the learned Fulke upon the Rhemish notes 
Fulke in locum.  seemeth to deny it, as I take, in heat of dispute. For the detaining or detracting of any thing dedicated to holy use, though dedicated but by mental intention, hath been defined to be sacrilege, by such as have defined that sin; and so the stream of ancient and modern Divines doth run generally that way: as thus, S. Augustine, 
a De verbis Apost.  Ideo cito mortuus est Ananias, ut paterit quam magnum peccatum esset, quod oblatum est iterum retrahere: Ananias died suddenly, to show how heinous a sin it is, to revoke anything that is offered or dedicated to God. Chrysostome, 
b in locum.  Vides quid hoc crimen imputatur, eo quòd pecunias suas accepit quas consecrârat: thou seest how he is charged with a crime for taking away his moneys which he had consecrated or hallowed. And a little after, Sacrilegium enim valde grave & magno contemptu plenum: for sacrilege is a very grievous sin, and full of great contempt. S. Ambrose, 
c ser ●. 9  Dum ex co quod promiserat partem su●trahit, sacrilegij simul accusatur & fraudis: for defaulting a moiety of that which he had promised to God, he is charged with sacrilege and fraud. So the old. Calvin, 
d in locum  Sacrilega fraudatio quod partem eius subducit quod sacrum esse profitebatur: it was sacrilegious juggling to diminish that which he professed holy. Aretius, 
e in locum.  Furtum fuisset in re propria, fraud retinere quod simulat publicare: it had been stealth or ordinary theft in his proper and private goods, fraudulently to hold back what he made show to make common: Ergo, this was sacrilege. Beza, 
f in annot.  Cum totum pretium deo consecrasset, post per sacrilegium partem separabat: having vowed the whole, he subtracts a part to his own use. So the new.  
Now to define Sacrilege, historians use the word diversly: for noting this sin to be both heinous and odious, therefore they call all heinous and hateful sins by the name: as sorcery, murder, violation of parents, trucidation of Princes, and whatsoever engendereth public detestation and slander.  
But indeed the word in proper signification hath respect to God, whether by derogation of his glory, or violation of his law, or opposition of his truth, or usurpation of his titles, or profanation of his Temples, or vilification of his service, or diminution of his revenues and things dedicated to his honour. The Etymologists of both Tongues, derive it from stealing 
g ●om. ●. 〈◊〉. , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and sacrilegus do import.  
Therefore, 1. the heathen defined it from robbing of the heathen temples: 2. the Christian Civilians from Christian Churches: 3. our common lawyers, set out the force of the word, by the felonious intent, rather than the subdolous manner, whether of secret lurching, or open purloining: 4. Divines both school and reform, quicquid fit ad irreverentiam sacrae rei: as 
h 2. 2. q. 99 〈◊〉 ●.  Th. Aquinas: Zanchius, 
i lib. 3. de ex●e●cult.  Violatio sacrorum: Vrsinus, 
k Catech.  ablatio rei sacrae: derogation of holiness, abuse, or lurching things deputed to holy uses. Therefore Innocentius, more by way of allusion, then true notation, says that sacrilegium is sacriledium, any such abuse whereby God or his religion is prejudiced and depraved.  
Whosoever therefore taketh away, or alienateth to other persons or uses, goods or things (chattels our Lawyers call them) of the Church, that have been given to maintain God's Church and service, the Canonists say doth incurre ipso facto, crimen laesae Maiestatis, that is, sacrilege or treason to the highest Majesty: and as high treason to the King is the highest degree of a subjects enormity, so in proportion is sacrilege to God: but in Ananias this is joined with a higher, whereby his sin is out of measure sinful.  

Secondly, the sin against the holy Ghost.  This seems to me also to be very plain: first, by the literal oneration of S. Peter in the third verse, lying to the holy Ghost: where the very nomination of that person of the Trinity, who guided and governed as present and precedent, this whole business, doth insinuate no less. For who doth work the miracles, but the holy Ghost? who doth reveal the Donors most intimate intentions, but the holy Ghost? who doth kill with the word of his mouth 
d  the incorrigible sinner, but the holy Ghost? who doth so powerfully congregate so many thousands by 
e  the mouth of ideot-fishers, but the holy Ghost? who doth segregate this goat from the blessed flock, for infecting further, but the holy Ghost? therefore the holy Ghost particularly is, and peremptorily affirms himself to be aimed at in this business of holiness: therefore the sin against that person, is that sin, the sin of the holy Ghost. And hereunto the holy Fathers also accord: as Hesychius, 
m lib. 1. c. 10. in Leuit.  quoted by Doct. Fulke upon the place, on the Rhemish Testament: Dominus dicit omne pec●at●●e hominibus dimittitur, blasphemia au●em in spiritum sanctum non dimittetur: hoc Petrus ipso opere ostendit, quia Ananias & Sapphyra spiritui sancto ●ecutiti sunt, ait ●d eos, quare, etc. The Lord saith, Every sin shall be forgiven unto men, but blasphemy against the holy Ghost shall not be forgiven: this did Peter really declare, because Ananias and Sapphire lied to the holy Ghost, he saith unto them, Why hath Satan blinded or filled thine heart? and thus he. And Doct. Fulke himself 
n ●n them. test.  is of the same opinion, as it were denying Ananias sin to be sacrilege, because the Seminaries said it, and avouching it to be this sin.  
The same also doth Aretius affirm, alleging another interpretation of those words, (why hast thou lied to the holy Ghost: mentiens spiritum sanctum; i fingens se habere spiritum sanctum: belying the holy Ghost, that is, saying that he had the holy Ghost,) but rejecting it, and cleaving to that construction, contra spiritum sanctum, against the holy Ghost, that it was the sin of the holy Ghost. And that which puts it out of question, M. Calvin 
o in locum. , in saying Ananias sin was sacrilege, proves it thus that we now speak of: for as it hath been observed by learnedst writers, That sin is no one single sin, but aggregativum 
Gers. par. 2. compend. theol. de 7. vit. cap.  quid, a collection of many great sins: 1. an advised sinfulness: 2. a resolute wilfulness: 3. an obstinate maliciousness: 4. an uninersail wickedness, or general apostasy: all which, or the most with some addition Calvin observes in this sin, and they are not hard to be found all have: for Thomas saith, there 
Aquin. de nature divin. lib. 2. c. 7.  are six species or spices of it: 2. against God, 1. in forbidding, 2. in remitting sin against both which this sinner doth offend, 1. against his justice forbidding, by presumption: 2. against his mercy pardoning, by desperation. 2. Against himself, 1. dolours de commisso: 2. propositum de noli committendo: grief for that which is past, and purpose for that which is to come: against both these also is this sin; 1. obstinate and malicious persisting in sin, 2. final impenitency and purpose not to leave sin. 2. Also unto other, 1. amor boni, 2. agnitio veri; the love of all that is good, and the embracing of all that is true: in stead whereof this sin hath, 1. impugnationem veritatis agnitae, 2. invidentiam gr●tiae supernae: 1. wilful resisting of known truth, 2. envious hindering the heavenly grace: all which are not obscure in Ananias. As for example, 1. He knew that God did know his doubling, yet is not afraid saith Calvin to practise the same. 2. Whereas S. Peter did preach the heinousness of his sin unto him, he had a heart that could not repent, and therefore unfaithful to lay hold on the mercy of Christ. 3. He was so far from repenting, that he grew harder, purposing to die, and dying in his purpose of non repentance. 5. He loved his goods more than goodness or good men. 6. Resolved that no man should be saved by his help. These things in brief may serve to show, that the sin of Ananias was both Sacrilege, and more: which yet shall be more fully declared in an other 
Cap. 4.  place, where we shall more particularly unfold the several properties of his sin. So much in general of his sin.   

CHAP. III.  
In particular. 1. Reprehension of the man by compellation or personal rousing.  
ALthough that these delinquents had seen and heard enough in the sermons of the Apostles, and exercises of the Congregation, to have instructed them in the power and justice of God, and have called them away from halting between covetousness and godliness; yet such is the foolishness of sin, and blindness of sinners, till God cometh home close unto them, that they will never believe that God either sees or dislikes them: and therefore the holy Spirit takes such a course in this place, as is fittest to rouse up a sinner, sitting in his chair, and sleeping his nap upon his couch or cushion of security, as his conscience may be soon convinced, and his state easiest recovered: and that is by singling him out particularly, by his name and nature, that he cannot shift the notice that is taken of him. It is small question but he knew his own name, which in him, as in all other in those times, was significant: 1. humbled, 2. afflicted, 3. answered by God; so saith Aretius doth Ananias import. 1. His ambitious desire of credit, being loath to be at the cost, was to be humbled. 2. His evil heart and worse eye, envying the Apostles any maintenance, or the Converts any sustenance, was to be afflicted. 3. His corrupt and cankered manners was to receive such answer from God as they most deserved. This because he himself would not remember, his love to money having razed his own name, like an other Cervinus out of his mind, the holy Ghost doth rub his memory of, reducing all these notions unto his remembrance, by striking this string, and sounding that name to his understanding. The officers of the Inquisition, when they suspect a party, and cannot probably convince his concealing, they will suddenly pronounce his surmised name, and observe how he is affected at that sound; by which stratagem they have come to the cognizance of notable disguisers, which they might have despaired any other way to have won. Which course God seemeth oft-times to take with men, not that any can so halt before him, as to go unknown, but because by so particular a course he would bring them both to know themselves, and also to know that he doth know them▪ so did he to the protoplast, 
a Gen. 3. 9  Adam, where art thou? and his eldest son Cain, 
b Gen. 4. 9  where is thy brother Abel? and the mother of Ishmael, 
c Gen. 16. 8.  Hagar Sara's maid what dost thou here?  
The reason hereof David seemeth to touch, 
d Psalm. 10. 13.  Sinners do flatter themselves in their wickedness, till their abominable sin be found out: and ever since Adam was driven to his shifts in paradise, he will find some figleaf to cover his nakedness, and with that siely, hide his head in a crowd, saying, in populo magno non agnoscar, the throng shall hide me: and is there knowledge in the most highest? Therefore doth God go very particularly to work, as in the lot of 
e jon. 1. ●.  jonas, and jonathan 
f 1. Sam. 14. 86. , to mind the offender: for example, There is 
g Josh. 7. ●6.  a sin committed, for which the army is overthrown, and no man will confess the fact; it must be found that God may be reconciled, the camp freed, and the party punished: the ordinary course as in those cases, must be by way of lot, where the hand of God is immediate index & judex. The lots are cast into the lap, and the tribe of judah is taken; here Achan, unquiet before, begins to startle now, yet hope of impunity hardens him so, as he will confess nothing: a second draft of the family of Zarites, frees the rest of judah, as the lottery of judah had secured the other tribes: now the man begins to change countenance, and purposes somedeal to save all labour, and confess of himself: but because he lingers, the third draft finds the house of Zabdi, than he falls to quake and tremble, so that all men that saw him, might read his fault in his face: and while he is astonished between passion and purpose, he hears himself to be named, when lo, he falls down and sinks under his sorrow; and if it were to begin again, he would stay the search, and yield himself prisoner. Why did he not that sooner? If we would judge ourselves, 
h 1. Cor. 11. 32.  we should not be judged: now when we are judged, we are chastised of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. And thus doth Peter in this place, not only to point at, but to paint out a double dealer: who had he any spark of grace, had prevented judgement, and cut off by timely confession, so fearful a condemnation. But nothing would serve to wring his unhappy purchase out of his fingers; so hunger of booty, and hope of impunity, betray most men: who were we well assured, we should one day be called to personal account, we would never for so miserable pleasance, buy at so dear a rate so certain repentance. Sins are debts, and debts are as sons, who grow so well, that they will cry after us, and own us by our name, if we stay them not within, or stop not their mouth without. As the staff and the ring did challenge 
i Gen. 38. 13.  juda, so we shall be bewrayed by the same token, if in time we take not up the matter, with a lamb or a kid of the fold, by the hand of our friend the good Adullamite: and so much of the Apostrophe, or Compellation.   

CHAP. IU.  
Reprehension of the matter, or enumeration of the parts of the offence, which are 1. the author, 2. object, and 3. subject.  
ALthough in the 2. Chapter I laid down his sin in some generality, by way of explication, yet now order leadeth us by the hand of the text, to unfold the branches somewhat more particularly, by way of demonstration, not as hunting out the heinousness thereof in any one arm or division thereof, but showing the form and materials in the whole jointly together. The first part therefore is the author, and prime mover, which is here by the Apostle said to be Satan.  

1. The author, Satan.  Now although the Prince of darkness doth work in all the children of disobedience, and the devil hath his hand in every sin, yet it is not usual to name or mention him, but in some very notorious and greatly outrageous; as in that of judas 
a joh. 13. 17. , that the Devil entered into him: and of Elymas 
b Act. 13. 10. , that he was the child of the Devil: and of Antichrist 
c 2. Thes. 2. 9 , that his coming is with the effectual working of the Devil: and in the Ecclesiastical history, when the horrible heretic Cerinthus 
d Euseb.  greeted Saint john the Apostle and Evangelist, with non nosti nos? know you not me? received this answer, novi te primogenitum diaboli, yes, I know you to be the devils eldest son. So that as the Poets in inextricable exigencies, do bring down jupiter upon the stage, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, by a devise or engine: so doth God in matters that pass the ordinary pitch, bring in Satan to show the transcendency of the salt.  
We are then to know, for the fountain of sin, that there are cogitationes immissaes, Satan's iaculations, and cogitationes ascendentes, human ebullitions: this of Ananias is mixed of both, as appears in the next words, where repeating the same matter he altars the phrase, saying, why hast thou conceived this thing in thy heart? so that both Satan did fill his heart, and his heart conceived it; Satan by enticing, moving, persuading; he by consenting, yielding, obeying: Satan by casting in his fiery darts of temptation, he by blowing these coals of destruction. By the envy of the devil (saith Syracides) 
e W●s 2. 14.  sin entered into the world: yet out of the heart (saith our Saviour) 
f Mat. 15. 19  arise evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, etc.  
Wherefore, as Satan entered into judas, 
g August.  non tam ut tentaret, quam ut possideret, not so much to tempt him, as to possess him: non ut alienum, sed ut proprium, not as a stranger, but as his peculiar: nec tam ut possideret, quam ut transformaret, not so much to possess him, as transform him: whereupon our Saviour 
h joh. 6. 70.  said, have not I chosen you twelve, and one is a devil? so he tempted, possessed, transformed Ananias, with an extraordinary temptation, a sovereign domination, an universal transmutation: so that as judas was a traitor before he did betray, (as our Saviour insinuates) quod 
i joh. 23. 27.  facis, (in the present tense) fac citò; for being so wholly set upon it, with head, and heart, and hand, that had his heads been as many as Cerberus, or the whore of Babylon; and his hands as many as Briareus, or any King of whom it is said, An niscis multas regibus esse manus? he would have set them all on work; so full he was up to the top, non ●am facit peccatum, sed est peccatum 
k August. : it was too small a predication to say he did sin; for he was converted into sin, he was nothing but sin. And yet this was but one half of his sin, that he left no place for God, no place for goodness, Satan had taken up all the rooms in his heart, as interpreters do observe. And all this is but his stamp of one side, whose man he was, and whom he entertained. Come to the other side, whom he (I will not say) kept out, but drove out, his sin against the holy Ghost; the second part of the sin.  

●. Object, against whom.  Although lying be sometime set for dissembling in the holy book: as where David saith, 
l Psal. 18. 44.  his enemies shall lie unto him, speaking both of the type, himself or his son, and the Messias, to note the hypocrisy and false-heartednes of his vanquished subjects: and again of the like, 
m Psal. 81. 15.  they should have been found liars unto him, that is, they should humble themselves with false obedience and forged submission: yet as we have noted, Cap. 2. very learned Expositors, besides the advantage of the letter, have taken it for that irremissible blafphemie, that is directed against the third person in Trinity, not of ignorance, or of infirmity, as to the son, and the Father; but of malice to the fountain and author of holiness; which as the schoolmen say, 
n Thomas.  Id●ò colorem non habet excusationis, quod quantum in se est, directè impugnativum est medici & remedij, per quod fit remissio peccati: it hath no colour of excuse, because as much as in it is, it doth directly oppose both the Physician, and the Physic, whereby remission is wrought. Bellarmine, 
o de poen. l. 2. cap. 1.  Directè resistit & repudiat gratiam Dei, it plainly resisteth and refuseth God's mercy: such is the sin.  
Now if we look when or wherein this sin by him was committed, we find nothing but this fact, for which he was tainted or touched; then this very sin, quatenus, he promised such goods to the author of holiness, to be a help and means to propagate holiness, as it concerned the person cui, was blasphemy, being frustrated and falsified in the effect: as it considered the thing in quo, the detension of that which was so devoted, was sacrilege: which is the third branch of his sin, now coming in order to be touched, or the circa quod.  

3. Subject wherein.  Wherein we must now no more set our eye upon the party, to whom the origination and procuration of holiness doth pertain (the last thing which we considered) but the materials of holiness, or the things sanctified and separate for holy service themselves; of the felonious diminishing whereof Ananiis here charged, as we saw before: and it is severally set down in the next words, by a disjunctive conjunction, thus, and keep back part of the price of the possession.  
Wherein beside his impious legier-de-maine, that Ficta oblatione Deum & Ecclesiam fallere vovit, saith Calvin, by a false show of a bountiful heart, he went about to gull both God and his Church; we observe his fowl profanation of a fair constitution, for it was now a voluntary grant or a customary practice, received for law in that little commonwealth, that such as had should improve their love to the highest link; when he like jonas worm doth blast the honour of God, the use of goods, his own devotion, and others sustentation, with one cast of hypocrisy.  
I will not mention his foolish ambition, that for a small air of human applause, he could be content to forfeit his reward in heaven: nor his Paganish incredulity, that thought God either would not in so many coufluences of Proselytes, or could not in so great encumbrances of opposites, maintain his Church; and therefore thought to have more hold of his hand, than he had of his tongue.  
These be the parts of his sin severally laid open in themselves, and yet in such reciprocal aspect and position one to another, that they touch and take essence and efficacy one from another: for the fullness of Satan argues, his total and final apostasy from God; and his sin against the holy Ghost, confirms his sacrilege to the holy Church; and lastly, his envying and spoiling the holy Church, proveth his complete devillishnesse. Of which particulars before we collect the total sum, let us gather such uses of these points as lie scattered in our way, that both our path may be the smother, and our provision for the rest of our passage the better.  
First, than we here observe the truth of those words of Solomon, 
p Pro. 22. 15. Sin is folly.  That folly is bound up in the heart of the child: that is, that we are all both naturally and habitually addicted to all kind of sins, as having Satan to our father, and an irreligious and corrupt fountain for our mother. And this folly is no other, but in which sense those two words are equipollent, being termini convertibiles: only the difference is this; the one hath relation to the head, as principium laesum; the other to the hand, as organum corruptum; and therefore we are no less endangered by ill thoughts, then prejudiced by ill deeds. Men commonly think that thought is free, and so it is in some sense, in civility, because the Magistrate takes no notice of them, unless manifested with outward proofs; not in divinity to think what we list in regard of God: for he is scrutator 
q Heb. 4. 13.  cordium, a trier of the hearts and reins; and evil thoughts eat out the heart of religion: therefore Solomon 
r Eccl. 10, 20.  counsels, not to curse the King so much as in thought: and Peter 
s Act. 8. 12.  bids Simon Magus, pray that his thought might be forgiven him: for the very thoughts 
t Prou. 15. 26.  of the wicked, are abomination to the Lord: the transgression of the evil angels was but in thought, and oftenne Laws, there is one to reform the cogitations.  
Secondly, Abyssus abyssum vocat, saith the Prophet, one depth calleth another; which is no less true of the inundation of sin, then of the seas: for by custom of sin, and delighting in a tenor of disguising, we bring ourselves to that pass, that all the balm in Gilead will not cure us: too much dallying 
Sozom.  with sin, brings to the deadly sin. julian did banish grace so long, donec omnino gratia spoliabitur when we begin with impiety, and go on with hypocrisy, we commonly end with apostasy. Samson played so long with Dalila mock-holiday, that in the end his locks were shaven in good earnest. The loss of greatest 
justin.  pieces comes by the least breach unespied, or unrepaired. Ninus victories were not only gainful for the present, but useful for the future, sequentium etiam causae, the means of more; so is it in sin, it hath not only lapsum, but reatum; besides the illness of the fall, it leaves a proneness to fall further: therefore rightly and observantly called by the Apostle, deceitfulness of sin: for besides the harm that is in view, there is more danger in that which is concealed.  
Sins are sores, first but vicious humours, than they grow to angry tumors, and after they turn to burning ulcers, within a while to eating cankers, and last of all to incurable tortures, not only morbus, but mors animae, as Bernard saith. Therefore let us not 
Esay. 5. 18.  draw sin with cords of vanity, nor transgression with cartropes. Cables or cartropes were first threads, than cords, last cables: so is the twisting of sin: 1. against knowledge: 2. against conscience: 3. against the strongest, not motions only, but reclamations also of God's Spirit. Malice against any men is heinous, against holy men dangerous, against God and holiness damnable. Let that always be our prayer, 
Psal. 19 ult.  Keep us, O Lord, from presumptuous sins, so shall we be innocent from much offence, from this offence. And so much of the enumeration of the several branches of his sin.   

CHAP. V.  
The aggravation of the sin of Sacrilege.  
NOW then to sum up all that hath been said: for as much as Satan is here mentioned in this matter, and that as no idle spectator, but a busy actor, and so busy as not to send any small troops, or lend little help, but to replenish with the fullness of his iniquity the whole heart of this peccant party; it is given us to understand, that Sacrilege is no small defection, or transgression, but an entire desertion of God's spirit, and solid interest of Satan in the child of perdition: for as, de quo vis ligno non fit Mercurius, every log will not make a Mercurial; so de quo vis luto non fit Sacrilegus, every mould will not serve for Sacrilege. We may well set down, that this is a foul, a fearful, a fundamental sin, not razing the skin of Christ's scalp, like the jews crown of thorns, but renting the sides of Christianity, like the soldiers spear, as we read in the Gospel. For which cause the Canonists were wont to allot 
Burchard.  seven years penance unto it, as Ivo, Burchardus, Gratian, and the rest agree; where so many days sufficed other sins.  
Whereas this sin is so gloriously attended, not only with a devil, but so great a devil, as the sin that is irremissible, the sin unto death, the blasphemy of the holy Ghost; we have a fair aim to descry the sinfulness of Sacrilege by the old rule, that teacheth, noscitur exsocio qui non dignoscitur exse, 
Eccl. 9  a man's gate, his countenance, his company, will soon show what he is.  
Now here he goes hand in hand with a hea●ie sin, and if they should contest for priority, hath here the precedence, as carrying the denomination: therefore of force we must confess that it is very 
Rom. 1. 22.  heinous. In Paul he marcheth in equipage with a high sin, the sin of idolatry; and of Idolatry 
Drus.  the jews have a Proverb, Idololatra totam legem abnegat, the idolater disannuls the whole Law: the like then must Sacrilege, being of the same size and latitude, renounce the whole law: not only 
jam. 2. 20.  as S. james saith, he that offends in one commandment is guilty of all, but because all the second table depends upon the first, and all the commandments upon the foremost; and therefore resemble Hypocrates twins, laugh and weep, live and die, stand and fall, with equal sympathy.  

Blat. 10. de leg.  For first the divine Plato, in those excellent books concerning laws, having in the former touched the violation of sacred persons, coming in the tenth to speak in excellent method of sacred things, averreth expressly thus much of the sacrileger, that he must needs persuade himself one of these three things, 1. that there is no God at all, 2. or if there be, yet that he is nothing so just and terrible to his oppugners as the world is made believe, 3. or at the least, that he is very facile and flexible to be reappeased, when by sacrilegers he is abused: every of which do raze the foundation of all religion.  
So that these men aim at no lower level than God himself, and are therefore those presumptuous giants, that by antiquity were said to mutiny against heaven; because as they know no goodness, so they would acknowledge no God: and being enforced to that necessity, envy him all service and servants. And therefore it is well observed of an heathen writer, Soli sacrilegi pugnant contra Deum, it is no 
Q. Cur. lib. 7.  other than your sacrileger that wars with God, and make rampires against his Majesty. Thus than Plato hath sound concluded all sacrilegers to be very Atheists: for albeit they do not totidem verbis, in direct 
Psal. 14. 1  terms, deny there is a God with David's fool, and those abjects of the forlorn hope; yet do they the same indirectly, and by necessary consequence, when they deify a false, or idolize the true God: which is by denying his essential attributes, and divine properties. As, 1. of holiness, with such as do think him like themselves; that is, a God that delighteth 
Psal. 50. 20. Psa. 5. 4. Deut. 28. 4.  in wickedness▪ 2. of justice, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart. 3. of power, like the Aramites, that said he was a God of the 
1. King. 20. 28.  hills, and not of the valleys. 4. of providence, saying, he doth neither good nor evil.  

Lib. 2. de vit. exter. cult. ●. 3.  But M. Zanchius saith, that sacrilege is species irreligionis, a spice of atheism; jumping with Aquinas, that saith it is oppositum religioni, crossing religion: and S. Augustine, that saith it is directè contra deum, opposite to God in point blank; whose reasons are most reasonable, because it can proceed from nothing but open contempt of holiness, and plain impiety: for else why do men lay thievish fingers upon things consecrated to religion, but because they care not for religion: or whereto tends the spoil of holy things, but to the overthrow of holiness? for men know this, God cannot be served without men, nor men be maintained without means: therefore the substracting such means, is the disappointing such service: therefore Zanchius reduceth Sacrilege to the second commandment, where God's service is established and provided.  
Because it is here set out in his own colours, it is not amiss to take a taste of the fulsomeness of it. The donations of former times that were given to God, 
Luk. 21. 5.  were called anathemata, either for their sequestration from profane use, or suspension on the walls and pillars of holy Temples. Now what the Latins called anathemata, from the Greek, the Hebrews called cherem: 1. for their consecration: 2. for their execration: the one in their use and end; the other in their nature and effect: of all which the Lord to Moses gave 
〈◊〉 ●3. 1●.  this caveat, Let none of the cursed thing cleave to thine hand: because in that case, the spoil in war, or any such thing as the Lord reserved to himself, did always 
〈…〉.  so prove: as is expressed in josuah, Keep yourselves from the cursed thing, lest it make you accursed and 
〈◊〉.  trouble you: as fell out to Achan in the valley of Anchor, or of trouble.  
Therefore the censers of the rebellious Levites, being once consecrated, when they perished, were 
Num. 1●. 38.  commanded to be preserved, not for any, or profane uses, but to make a covering of the Altar. But 
Prou. 20. 25.  to devour such holy utensils or donation, Solomon pronounceth to be a curse, or snare, or destruction, (as several translations do read it) that is, to appropriate them to private uses.  

I●r. 2 ●.  The like Metaphor doth jeremy use to show their nature, Israel was as a hallowed thing unto the Lord, all that touch him shall offend: evil shall come to them saith the Lord: nothing the vengeance on their enemies, to be no less than Sacrilegers. Paul compared it as we 
Rom. 2. ●2.  saw with idolatry, which destroyeth the whole law: and Samuel with idolatry and witchcraft; as the 
1▪ Sam. 15. 23.  contrary obedience with the holiest sacrifice: God 
Mat. 3.  himself, with other theft, where the circumstances of the person augment the gradation, Will any people rob their idols, which are their gods? Solomon with the 
Prou. 2●. 24.  heinousest theft among men, He that stealeth from his father and mother, and says it is no sin, the same is a compinion of the destroyer.  

Prou. 6. 3●.  Wherefore to conclude; 1. if in ordinary theft, he that steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, if he be taken shall restore seven fold, or give all the substance of his house. 2. if the flying book of God's 
Zac. 5. 〈◊〉.  vengeance shall enter into the house of the thief, (which book was 20 cubits long, and 10. broad,) that is, a terrible curse, though but to his substance. 3. if he that steals from his father, shall be destroyed. 4. if idolaters and witches must not live. Or to gather the argument more narrow, 5. if that man that 
●. ●am. 2. 25.  sins against another is to be judged of the judge, and make so large satisfaction: what rule of proportion will serve sufficiently for our computation, for a man that shall sin against the Lord, who shallplead for him? what shall be done unto him? We may be sure that if Cain be revenged seven times, and Lamec 77. how many millions, how many myriads of millions, shall he be revenged that sins against God, that took vengeance of Cain and Lamec both? for finiti ad i●finitum nulla est proportio. And so much shall serve for the aggravation of this sin.   

CHAP. VI  
The Censure, or Excommunication.  
HItherto we have seen his sin, which we may truly pronounce to have been a sin of sins: now follows his punishment, and that well proportionate, a curse of curses: anathema even maranatha, the most high, the most heavy, the most horrible of all degrees of ecclesiastical censure: for that it was an ecclesiastical censure, the whole series or order of the causes do evince. 1. the efficients both principal and instrumental: 2. the form of spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction: 3. the matter, execration or extirpation: 4. the end, that other may fear.  
Now then for our better understanding both of his sin, and of his suffering, the learned Drusius 
Drus. quest. 〈◊〉 1. qu. 9  doth teach us, that among the jews where this fell out, there were three sorts or several degrees of Church censure, apparent enough in both Testaments. 1. Called niddui of nadah, a word that signifies, expellere or elongare, to expel or drive far away: this we have in Esay, Hear ye the word of the Lord, all ye that tremble at his word: your brethren that hated you, and cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the Lord be glorified, (that was the form as we see in achan's story) 
Ios. 7. 30.  but he will appear to your glory, and they shall be ashamed. And this is that which in the new Testament is called, casting out of the Synagogue, as the pharisees served the blind man whom Christ had healed, having 
joh. 9 35.  made a Canon, that whosoever should confess jesus to be Christ, should be excommunicate, or cast out of the Church.  

charam.  2. The second was Cherem, of the root that signifies occidere or excidere, to kill or cut off: this we find 
Deut. 7. 2.  in Moses, where God speaking of the cursed nations, whom his people were to exterminate, and possess their places, says thus, as the vulgar translation doth well deliver it, anathematizando anathematizabis eos; the English, if not so significantly, yet as effectually, thou shalt utterly destroy, or root them out. And this S. Paul had respect unto, when he said, I would to God 
Gal. 5. 12.  they were cut off that trouble you; and where be would have the incestuous Corinthian committed to Satan. 
1. Cor. 5. 5.   
3. The last was that which the jews call Sammatha, or Sammatizatio of Shamam, that signifies desolare, & ad stuporem vastare: & atta, tu, q. d. let such a curse fall upon thee, as is ultima execratio or maledictio, the uttermost execration or accursedness. Or as some think, of shem for hashem, which is the name of God, and atha, venit, or to come, to express the everlasting curse ●il the coming of the Lord: which Paul elsewhere alludeth to. This word we find in jeremy 
Lam. 5. 18.  his lamentations, Zion is laid desolate. which lamentable estate of the Church, in that book is fully 
1. Cor. 16. ●2.  deplored, jer. 12. 11. This S. Paul as I said before did express in that imprecation or denunciation of a most zealous heart, Who so loves not (that is, hateth and persecuteth) the Lord jesus, let him be anathema maranatha, everlastingly accursed, q. d. till the coming of the Lord to judgement, and a day after. And these were the Church censures.  
Now are we to examine, for as much as it is undeniable but this of Ananias is such, which of all these three it is, that is here inflicted. First, of a certain not the first, for that was but a deprivation of the spiritual estate for a time, concerning the company and comforts of the Church, with condition annexed of reconciliation and repentance: now this here was corporal, as well as spiritual and eternal; with a bar against repentance, therefore not that.  
Secondly, nor the second, which as some think either was not corporal, such as the civil sword could inflict; but a permission or emancipation only to the power and regiment of Satan, who hath his kingdom out of the Church, to whom such sinners were delivered over, to the end that the flesh (that is, 
●. Cor. 5. 5.  the old man) might be mortified, and the new renewed: or as Augustine speaketh, ut moriatur error, vivat homo, that the sin might be killed, and the sinner saved. Or if a corporal also, as we must confess of Achan, the Canaanites, and other, upon whom that curse was corporally executed on earth upon their bodies, which was pronounced and enacted in heaven; yet but corporal, having time and means of grace offered for repentance. Therefore it must be the last, partaking of both, but exceeding both so far as extreme doth go beyond partial, and eternal sutmounts temporal. 1. a temporal and extemporal cutting off the body from the grace of life, and a spiritual and eternal cutting off the soul from the life of grace: the sorest, severest, extremest vengeance, that can be afflicted on a man in this world; forsaking and forsaken of God. A sudden and unrepentant dissolution of body and soul; a present and immediate manumission from God and grace, to the place and torments of the damned, a just guerdon for him that gave himself over to the full sway of the Prince of death, to mock that God of heaven, defeat his spouse on earth, & blaspheme the spirit of sanctification. I tremble to think; that any child of man, specially a child of the Church, an auditor of the Apostles, a professor of Christ, a benefactor of the Church, no apparent professed enemy or atheist, or persecutor, or apostata, should be liable to so execrable a sentence to be excommunicated, anathematized, sammatized for grudging a few pence or pounds to God and his Church. But leaving secret judgements unto God, we must needs acknowledge, that God seeth not as man seeth, for that which man's eye could not perceive, the eyes of God that pierce the heart, did see in his carriage a mal●tio us, and obstinate, a presumptuous and desperate, hypocritical persecutor, and envious Apostata: the essential marks of a certain, reprobate, and forlorn sinner. If any yet beside the exigence of the fault, will needs require more reason for so great severity, for their further satisfaction may lift off their eyes from looking upon S. Peter, as if he either of his own 
Act. 3.  power, or his private humour had slain the party, and remember it was the holy spirit, that in defect of temporal magistracy, (not yet Christian) did moderate the whole matter: whose wisdom so far as we either may or can look into, might commend these reasons: 1. the Church was to be kept in awe and fear of God: 2. as in a new established polity or government, as there must be examples of reward for the righteous, so also of punishments for delinquents: 3. that under the colour of religion and new conversion, one should not defeat or defraud another: 4. it was requisite, that the authority of the Church should be wrought among them without, and they prepared by such exemplary justice to like, and love her government. These and such like, which Calvin and expositors do allege, may serve to stop any curious mouth, that will have God to give account of his judgements.  
Here then are we taught first of all, of the wonderful effect, and supereminent power of the word of God, in the mouth of his holy Apostles, and faithful ministers, not only and always serving in cases of edification, but sometimes also for destruction; albeit that very destruction also of his enemies, tends to the edification of his children. And these are those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, works of power, mentioned by 
1. Cor. 12. 10  the Apostle; and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the sword of the 
Eph. 6. 20.  spirit, to hack and hew the ungodly in pieces; and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, weapons not carnal, but mighty in operation: and as David cherev pipijoth, two mouthed 
Psal. 149.  or edged sword: with this did Moses strike Corah and his complices: God himself Nadab and Abihu, Er and Onan, jezabel and Athalia; josua Achan, and them of Canaan; Elizeus the 42. children; and this did Peter draw out here against Ananias and Sapphira. Whereby we see the Church censures are no bruta fulmina, little children's potguns, beadles and boltles artilleries; but tearing and roaring Cannons; nor left to the swaying of Peter alone, much less to that man of Rome, to brandish not so much against sins as Sovereigns: but left in trust to all the true Ministers of the Gospel.  
Neither is it without need, that there should be such rods and swords in the Church of God, for such as are so audaciously insolent, bad by self impiety, but much worse by our impunity. To the end therefore that the wicked may be corrected, the exorbitant revoked, the timorous affrighted, the sound secured, and the judgements of God that hang over our heads and the land averted, let Moses and Aaron, the Cherubios of the Lord that are set to keep the way to the forbidden tree, wave their fiery blade against all blasphemous disturbers, pertinacious resisters, impious atheists, perfidious heretics, wayward schismatics, erroneous idolaters, and encroaching sacrilegers.  
It is true we have a sword, and that doth not just in the scabbard; but as Petrus de Aliaco did sometime complain in the Council of Constance, it is subject to much abuses, vulgarity, partiality, triuiali●ie, which make it almost a wooden dagger; Gladius (saith he) qui in primitiva ecclesia veneranda raritate erat formidabilis, iam propter abusum contrarium contemptibilis factus est: the Ecclesiastical sword which in the Primitive Church was seldom used and greatly reverenced, is now become by daily distriction of small account, and little esteem.  

〈◊〉 4▪ sect. dist 18.  The like complaint doth Scotus make, so as we may truly say with the Poet, 
— at te genitor, cum fulminatorques  
Nequicquam horremus, coecique in nubibus ignes  
Terrificant animos, & inania murmura miscent.   
Now concerning the usurped propriety, which the Bishop of Rome doth claim to himself, as Peter's successor, that is, the sole temporal and spiritual monarch, whose iron must bear down all swords, whose keys must open all locks, whose led must blunt all steel, and crosier put down all sceptres, (albeit between these two propositions, Peter for sacrilege stroke Ananias dead, and the present Paulus 5. may excommunicate King james of great Britain for non conformity, there be many gulfs to fill and casmaes to make up) I leave to be further confuted, by the learned pens that at this time fight the Lords battles, against that man of sin. Sure I am of one thing; this is not Peter petra, rock of salvation; but Nero's Tarpeius, the breakneck of destruction; nor eloquium Dei, but laqueus diaboli; nor ignis spiritus, but 
jam. 3. 15.  ignis fatuus.  
I come to some other point more near our matter, and observe the wisdom and omniscience of the mighty Spirit, discerning the hearts, and piercing the reins of the most reserved hypocrites: for albeit here are many things of more than ordinary practice, the immediate gubernation of the Church in general at this time, and this action in particular, the immediate revelation of this part in proper, and the immediate emancipation of the party to his place of perdition; yet this no way hinders the information of our knowledge, concerning his nature and power, that all things are naked to his eyes, and that there 
Heb. 4. 1●  is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: and confirms those doctrines of the Prophets, I the Lord 
jer. 17. 9  search the heart, and try the reins: and of the Apostles, Thou that knowest the hearts of all men, show whom thou 
Act▪ 1. 24.  hast chosen. Such a God is it that we serve, that can discern himself, and disclose to other the secretest malefactors: jonas in the shrouds, Nathaniel under the figtree, jeroboams wife under her mask, the Assyrians plotting in his privy chamber, the juggling of Gehezi, the blanching of jehoram, the bloodiness of Hazael, the blending of David, the idolising of the jews. For which the heathen in their hieroglyphics deciphered jupiter by an eye and an eagle; to insinuate that such a nature beseemed the highest majesty, as was not deceivable by any obscurity.  
The consideration of which point may serve to disrobe us of all Adam's fig-leaves, and bereave us of all hope of impunity, in our secretest villainies, and most enveloped treacheries. Erasmus brings in a pair of amorous pigeons, looking for some very retired room where they might renew their lewd acquaintance, but never could so be covered in any corner, that the eyes of God should not descry them. Therefore in that description of him in the vision, 
Reu. 1. 14.  his eyes are said to be as a flaming fire, that is, eyes for observing, sire for revenging: according to the Poet, 
Eurip.  〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. This one persuasion if well concocted, would strangle our wicked projects, much better than those simple supposals of the heathen, of 
Sen. epist.  Cato or Scipio's over-seeing what we do.  
Lastly, observe we in this censure, the exact retribution, and geometrical proportion, which God 
3. Exact. justice. Nyss.  observeth in his judgements. Those (saith Gregory Nyssene) are the purest stones and finest crystals, that do most truly represent the faces of the inspectors; yielding back to merry visages, merry reflections, but to sad and sour looks the like again: such are God's doings, which represent to us our just deservings: so that it is easy to read our own deeds, in his very dooms. As for example:  

Gen ●.  The old world was plagued with inundations of waters, because of their great inundations of sins: 
Gen. 29.  the five cities were consumed with sulphurous flames of fire against nature, because they boiled with sulphurous flames of lust against nature. Pharaoh that 
Exod. 7.  had been as a staff of protection to the people of God; so soon as he turned serpent to hiss and sting his benefactors to death, is shown himself in a real emblem, by the staff in the hand of Moses: and his unnatural subjects had their waters turned into blood, for defiling their rivers with the innocent blood of the Israelites children; and in the end were drowned in the red sea, for drowning others children in their Nilus.  

1. Sam. 15.  Saul no sooner rejected the word of the Lord, in the spoil of the Amalakites, but he heard himself rejected from being King: and as the sword of that Agag whom he so spared had made many women childless, so was his mother also by the hand of Samuel made childless herself among other women. Adonibesec that had cut off the thumbs and toes of 70. 
●0●1.  Kings, and set them to pick crumbs under his table, was by joshua served with that same sauce, in the end himself.  
This sea of examples hath no bottom. David's adultery was repaid him by his son; joabs blood, ahab's field, Dives alms, and a number more.  
Heraclius the Emperor following incestuous lust, 
Paul. Diac.  had such distension in that part of nature, that he could not let his urine but in his own face. Brunechildis a wicked Queen of France, that joyed in nothing but the discord of her children, was in the end taken, after she had made away 10. Princes, and infinite other, and was torn in pieces with wild horses.  

Cran.  Boleslaus King of Cracow who put Staniflaus his Bishop to a cruel death, for his honest admonitions, and carved his flesh among his dogs: being driven out of his Kingdom, and wandering in Hungary, was torn in pieces of his own dogs. But to insist in 
Blo●d.  this very sin: Leo Emperor of Constantinople, taking a rich Coronet out of a Church, set with diamonds and other very rich stones, and setting it on his own head, had instantly his head so pearled with boils, and crowned with carbuncles, that for extremity of torment he instantly died.  

Magdebur.  There was one Addo Archbishop of Mentz, that having a number of very poor people in his country that craved his relief, he caused them all to be collected into a barn under a colour of alms, & so set it on fire; and when with their extreme yelling and howling they had with their noise pierced unto him where he sat in his Palace, he used this sarcasme while they were dying, that he heard the mice cry: for this bloody Paganism, God sent such armies of rats and mice upon him, that he built a tower in the midst of the Rhine to save himself from them, but all would not serve; for mighty shoals of them took the water, and destroyed him most miserably, where he trusted for security.  
So to say no more, Ananias meddles with the execrable thing, as Achan had done before, and is thereby himself made execrable: and this is that retaliation 
Exod. 21. 24.  which Moses mentioneth, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. I end this point with a speech of Augustine, fitting both Ananias and us: Dum altenum rapis, à diabolo raperis; & dum alienum detines, à diabolo detineris; retines aurum, & perdis animam: iniustum lucrum, sed justum damnum; lucrum in arca, sed damnum in conscientia pereat ergo mund● lucrum, per quod fit animae tuae damnum: While thou preiest upon another, the devil preieth upon thee; and while thou withholdest that which pertaineth to another, he layeth hold upon thee; he takes thy soul, while thou takest away thy neighbour's silver: thy lucre is unjust, but thy loss is most just; the lucre is in thy coffer, but thy loss in thy conscience; defy therefore such gain of this world, whereby thou losest thy soul in the other.  
And so I come more particularly to note the severity of God against sacrilege: for in the extermination 
The vengeance of God against Sacrilegers.  of these two, we are plainly given to understand, what guerdon they are ever to expect, that violate the sacred revenues of God; a fearful expectation of extremest vengeance both of body and soul: a consideration able to strike us through with horror and amazement, if our hearts were not harder than the neither millstone. If any shall doubt of that I say, and mock at my words, as speaking for our own particular, and pleading for our own profit; let him turn back a few leaves, and consider the true reasons hereof; both in the second chapter, where in general we did explicate his sin, and in the fourth chap. where in particular, we handled the members and branches of his sacrilege.  
Wherefore I proceed and say, that there was never any rob-God, that embarked themselves in this impiety, but he ran a course of endless infamy, and utmost extremity.  

Gen. 4. 14.  To begin with the very beginning, Cain the General of this damned crew, if his world of misery was not solely for this, yet I dare avouch it was from this, that he lived a projected runagate, and died a rejected reprobate: of whom the fathers observe this, that he offended if not in the quantity of his oblation, yet in the quality thereof; declaring by the coarseness of that he offered, the abjectness of his esteem of him to whom he offered, the refuse of his crop, and linings of his corn. Which impiety of his unto his Creator, was first punished with unnatural inhumanity to his brother; and that again with obdurate impenitency unto God, till altogether they brewed him a loathsome extraction of a hateful life, and a desperate procuration of a cursed death.  

Ios. 7. 16.  The fact of Achan is so observantly set down, that I may well pass it in the Catalogue of these Caitiffs, and see some other.  

●. Sam. 4. 12.  The sin of Hophni and Phineas, consisteth of triplicities; 1. it was sacrilege, 2. heinous sacrilege, 3. blasphemous sacrilege: 1. Sacrilege: for not contented with the priests portions, they usurped also upon the Lord's part, which was to be burnt to him in sacrifice. 2. Heinous; for the sin of the young men is said to have been great before the Lord. 3. Blasphemous; they were not only rake-hellish extortioners, but abominable miscreants, causing the sacrifices of the Lord to be abhorred. Such was their sin. Their punishment also had triplicities: 1. Fearful comminations; there came a man of God to expostulate with Elie, and to denunciate his cruel judgement. 2. Dismal exterminations; the Ark taken of the uncircumcised, the sons slain in battle in their priestly pontificals, the father breaks his neck at the news, the wife dies in abortive deliverance, the Priesthood removed to an other family, and their issue deprived both of honour and honest means of life. 3. Odious commemorations in after ages, to deter both Priests and people from their predecessors profaneness. God alludes to them, Go to my place at Silo, and see what I did to it for the wickedness 
jer. 7 10.  of my people Israel: and because you have done the same works, I will do to this house as I did to Silo, and cast you out of my sight as I cast them. Note how extirpation 
Nota bene.  still is the reward of Sacrilege. I pass over Saul, as 
1. Sam. 15. 34.  I did Achan; the same sin, (the devoted thing) the like cutting off, if not of life present, yet of God's favour which is true life, by utter dereliction, and final extirpation of life and lineage, when God saw time.  

D●n. 4. 30.  Nebuchadnezar, because when the Lord was angry with his own people, and had made him the rod of his wrath, he went beyond his commission, defiling himself with sacred compilations, was metamorphosed for a time, as Sedulius hath described him; 
Sedul.  
Nam quod ab humana vecors pietate recessit,  
Agrestes pecorum consors fuit ille per herbas,  
Aulica depasto mutans convivia faeno.  
Pronus ab amne bibit, septenaque tempora lustrans  
Omnibus hirsutus syluis & montibus errans.   
with which punishment God seemed contented for his time: but when God came again in visitation, and found his grandchild carowzing and profaning those very bowls and sacred utensils, in the midst of his courtiers and concubines, and breaking jests upon Cyrus and his army that then had surrounded his city with a straight siege, in all security and confidence, and scoffing among, at the feebleness of the jews God, that could not keep that much and massy plate, he saw his fate portrayed before his face upon the wall, how that he was numbered, balanced, and rejected, which that instant was accomplished: his city surprised, his life bereaved, his Empire that had been above a thousand years entailed to his ancestors, in a moment translated, not to another family only, but to an other country.  
Now let them that entail their sacrilege unto their posterity, as they do their substance, remarkablely consider but this example, and see if such prescription may prevail any more with God, then to hasten and accelerate their father's judgements on them and theirs for ever.  

joh. 12. 6.  I hasten to judas, who lest he should lack any damned sin, was also a Sacrileger: for saith the Gospel, he was a thief, and kept the bag. which Saint Augustine doth thus illustrate: judas fur sacrilegus, non qualiscunque fur, sed fur loculorum, sed dominicorum, loculorum sed divinorum: judas was a sacrilegious thief, no common thief I tell you, but a thief that stole money; nor common money, but his master's money, even God's money. Well then, did he improve it? he bought a halter to hang himself withal: now he 
Act. 1 1●.  was accursed that hanged on a tree; for first in token of fearful malediction, such an one seemed rejected of both elements, both resting places, both receptacles, heaven and earth: secondly, he burst in sunder in the midst, as if his impure spirit was not deighned to be let out at the door that other men's do, because he had kissed with those lips his Master's mouth. Lastly, he went to his own place; as if sacrilegious persons had a peculiar in hell, exempted from the common pit, where according to their transcendent impieties, they should receive transcendent penalties. What Antiochus did and suffered 
1. Mac. 5. ●1.  in this kind, presuming to rush into the holy Temple of all the world, and taking away the holy vessels with polluted hands, plucking down the holy donatives, that had been dedicated by other Kings, to the augmentation of the honour of that place, and carrying thence the sacred treasure, 1800. talents, we may read in the sacred volume: but God smote him with 
9 5.  an incurable and invisible plague, convulsions in his belly, imposthumations in his bowels, till he concluded a hateful life, with an abhorred death.  

Theod. 4. 〈◊〉.  The Ecclesiastical story mentioneth julian, Uncle and steward to the Apostata, with Felix his companion, like impurest spaniels pissing against the Communion Table, and giving the bastinado to the Minister that did reprove them, and scorning at Christ, that the son of Marie should be served in silver plate, and carrying the Church treasure into the emperors Exchequer, with a number more of contemptuous profanations, at the last were thus rewarded: the one had his mouth converted into a jakes, that way avoiding the superfluities of nature; the other the same way evaporating his soul together with all his blood.  
I might here allege Cesar the Dictator, of whom the Poet thus in a true Epithet,  

Lucan. lib. 3. — Tristi spoliavit templaruina: and Marcus Crassus, who going to the Parthian war, first at Rome rob the sacred treasury; and for that cause of his own Tribunes, was omnibus diris devotus, cursed with bell, book, and candle, as the Papists call it. Then 
jos▪ antiq. 14.  taking jerusalem in his way, took out of the holy Temple 10000 talents at one time, beside a great beam of gold, weighing 300. pound, which Eliazarus the treasurer, upon Crassus' oath to redeem the rest, delivered unto him. In that voyage he was occisione occisus, he and his army slain every mother's son, and by that loss his country fell into most miserable slavery.  

Magdeburg. Cent.  Arnulfus successor to Carolus Crassus in the Western Empire, at the beginning was very fortunate; but once coming to enjoy peace, and falling to rob and rifle the Churches, his former felicity did utterly abandon him, and God punished his greedy hunger, with the lousy evil, of which in great despair, within a short time he ended his life.  
I might annex hereunto along bead-role of the heathen indignities both of the Grecians, as Euemerus, Messenius, Hippo, Diagoras, Sosius, Epicurus, and Dionysius: and Latins, as Q. Scipio, L. Crassus, Fulvius Flaccus, Plemmenius, Pyrrhus Bremus, and other, that dishallowed their own deities, and came to great miseries: for although they were but very devils, or mere idols, usurping the honours of the true God, and therefore may be said to be but worthily served, having neither merit to deserve, nor might to revenge those gross indignities: yet I say not, it was they that inflicted those executions upon their dishonourers, but our God, as Lactantius hath noted; 
Lac. diu. just. lib. 2. 4.  not because they abused his corrivals, and those that were not Gods, (for illumined Princes have used them far worse:) but partly for contemning the things, which themselves in erroneous judgement, did esteem for Gods; and partly for profaning those well intended donations, which in intention of devourer minds, were meant to the true God: and so becoming first impious robbers, and then scurrilous deriders, (which were not sufferable) of those gods which themselves professed, and the good things which other had hallowed. And this doth mightily confute the audacious pillages of our profane people: for if they were so revenged that wronged the false gods: how much sorer punishment do we deserve, that worshipping the true, yet practise so high contempt, so contrary to the principles of our true religion.  
Examples in this kind are infinite, but I reserve the rest for another place, where we shall be occasioned to see further of this matter: these for the present shall suffice to set forth the horror of this crime, and the heaviness of the curses that God for the most part useth to inflict upon those people, that lay unhallowed hands upon his houses, or such chattels, as are sacred to holy service.  
And so much for the first part of this Treatise, which stood in Explication of the sin, and Censure of Ananias. I hasten to the second in Application.    

THE SECOND PART of this Treatise, which stands in confutation of sundry Sacrilegers.  

CHAP. I.  
Against Papal alienation of holy demeans, allotted to holy Worship.  
PLato and those virtuous Sages, the first founders of all Philosophy, where ever they observed either weakness or wickedness in other men, were wont to call themselves home to private scrutiny, and say, Num & ego sum talis? am I such? Christians then, whose learning and Philosophy is much more high and happy, and requireth more heart than head, more doing then knowing, must much more call themselves to account, whether as their books are better, so their hearts are cleaner than other men.  

2. Tim. 3. 16.  Now for as much as all scripture being divinely inspired, is profitable for doctrine and reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness, it is necessary, as we have laid down the doctrine, that we now proceed to the disclosing of error, that we may encounter such offenders as are eminently faulty that way. The first and cheise whereof are they of the Church of Rome, the very heads whereof, the Popes themselves, have done most harm to the Church of God: First by taking and making away much or most of that, which the devotion of Christians had bequeathed to God; then set on their champions, I mean their Chaplains, to maintain with reason, that which they had done without reason.  
Thus have the heirs and successors of S. Peter, as they call themselves, made havoc of the patrimony of S. Peter, like young striplings newly come to their lands make good pennyworths of that they never purchased; and then their Friars like hungry parasites, must reckon up their discommodities of Tithes, as if it were the churchmen's best husbandry to have nothing. And this hath been perpetrated many ways; I will reckon but four: 1. Lavish profusions: 2. Lewd incorporations: 3. Heathenish alienations: 4. Sacrilegious compilations. It would ask much time, and waste much paper, to prosecute all these points as they do deserve: I will touch but the chief heads, and make my assertion good.  

1. Popish profusions.  1. For their sumptuous prodigality, and immodest and immoderate abuse of church goods, all stories are full, and they that saw day at a little hole, have said more then enough, which yet was nothing 
Hierom.  to that which followed. S. Hierome in his 2. Epist. ad Nepotianum, saith thus, Nonnulli sunt ditiores monachi, quam fuerant saeculares, & clerici possident opes sub Christo paupere, quas locuplete diabolo non habuerant; etc.  

Bern.  Bern. ad Cler. in Synod. Remmensi: How should not men follow the vanities and fooleries of this world, be proud and haughty, idle and apish, when they see such pride and surquedry in the very Churchmen? De patrimonio crucis Christi, non paratis codices in ecclesijs, sedpascitis pellices in thalamis: with the patrimony of the cross of Christ, you do not purchase books in the Church, but pamper baggages in your chambers. Hence is your bravery of courtesans, gesture of stage players, apparel like Princes, & plus nitent calcaria quam altaria, your spurs shine brighter than your altars: hence are your tables so neat, your presses so full: so goes on, hoc non est ornare sponsam, sed spoliare; instituere, sedprostituere; pascere gregem, sed mactare: this is not to adorn the spouse, but to undo her; to instruct her with holy, but infect her with whorish conditions; nor to feed the flock, but to kill it.  

See Edgar's oration to the Clergy. Fox. 220 pag.  More did that good man speak to Eugenius himself of their pomp and pride, to Gulielmus Abbas of their luxurious and lavish diet: and not only he but other also, 

Mant.  Sanctus ager scurris, venerabilis ara Cynedis  
Seruit, honorate divum Ganymedibus aedes.  but I leave this kennel.  

2. Popish incorporations.  2. To the end the spring might never be dry that fed their prodigality, they devised the gulf of incorporations, and cisterns of additions, driving away the oxen that laboured, and eating up the while; their fodder, by keeping the fattest both tithes and glebe in their own hands, and starving up the poor mass-priests, and impoverishing the Churches to maintain but four or five, where so many decades should be maintained. By which devise the silly starvelings, to get some husks to staunch their hungry stomaches, taught observation of days, pompatical funerals, costly commemorations, to build Churches, set up chapels, erect altars, keep wakes, mumble masses, say collects, make offerings, hear confessions, purchase redemptions, and a number more of like superstitions: for live they must, and means they had none left, but such as they could raise by making themselves necessary.  

3. Poplsh pillage.  As for their compilations, where shall I begin, or where shall I make an end? Boniface the 7. being driven out of Rome for his simoniacal intrusion, robbed S. Peter's of all the wealth and jewels it had, and went to Constantinople, where so soon as he could stamp his purchase, a mighty mass, he returns to Rome, and bribe's the chief men, oppresses his opposites, 
Platina.  and puts out the eyes of john the Decan Card. and recovers his chair again. Behold, saith Platina, a high Priest, a holy father, a Vicar of Christ, robs the holy Church: and he that should have punished other sacrilegers, is himself the greatest.  
Gregory the 7. to appease the Romans for setting up Rodulfus against Henry the fourth, divided among them 100000. pound in gold, which he had corraded out of diverse Churches. Clemens the 6. residing at Avignon, gave leave to them that kept Naples against the Duke of Anjou, to sell the Church plate to pay the soldiers. Vrbanus the 6. to assist Charles King of Hungary, whom he had crowned King of Sicil, robbed all the Churches of Rome of their Chalices, images, and metal, to turn into money for the army. For the expedition of Charles 5. against the Turk, it was granted in the Conclave at Rome, that all the Clergy should pay five tenths; whereby many religious houses were hardly driven, many beneficed men forsook their livings, many Churches sold their plate, and many Colleges pawned their lands; yet went the L. Cardinal's free, that had many fat benefices, as those that were to support the glory of the sea of Rome.  

Clemang●●.  What heaps, what masses of money have gone to the Pope's chamber by annal, vacations, preventions, commendations, dispensations for age, for order, for irregularity, for deformity? Expectative graces, devolutions, future vacations, privileges, exemptions not to visit at all, or to visit by proxy, transactions, permutations, mandates, expeditions, creations, new foundations, immutations, permutations, reductions of religious into secular, reductions of secular into religious, procurations, perceptions of profits in absence, legittimations, non obstantes, indulgences, revocations, restitutions, tolerations for keeping concubines, persolutions for not keeping concubines, rescripts, and a thousand other chimeras of names without moment of nature, and all to be mere nets to catch money, devised in the kitchen?  

Not● be●●.  Which I would have all those well to consider, which think all the geese of Rome to be swans, and whatsoever bears the Pope's stamp to be perfect silver, persuading us back again to the Babylonian bondage, not knowing (God wot) what they desire; not a Saul, but a Sisera, with nine hundred chariots of iron, to bruise and crush both body and soul in sunder.  

4. Popish appropriations.  4. Lastly, the appropriating the Tithes and church revennews to upstart orders of superstitious, or more truly sacrilegious hypocrites, until all was taken away from the true owners, and a miserable pittance left to such as performed divine service, hardly able to hold life and soul together; as if all religion had been weary of the Church, and taken up her lodging 
Doc. Ridlie.  in a cloister: as my learned and worthy Master hath showed, in his view of both laws, most learnedly.  
For at what time that learning was almost clean extinguished, partly by the inundation of barbarous Colonies, who plucked down churches faster than ever their fathers built them: partly by the distraction of upstart heresies, amazing the eyes of most men, with the flourish of formal hypocrisy; then came Friar Benedict, the founder of regulars, with his discontented devotion, like a new Saint lately dropped out of heaven, envying himself and his followers, not only the delights of life, but the necessaries of meat, drink, apparel, propriety of any thing; and flie-blowed the world with the herds of hornets, Praemonstratensis, Cluniacenses, Templarians, hospitalers, Cystertians, joannites, and the rest. So that all the world, especially Popes and Princes, were wholly ravished with the wonderment of their singularity, and vied each with other, who should most demerit their devotions, some enriching them with lands, other enfranchizing them with privileges, all zealing them to the uttermost of their power.  
Among many other ill advised prerogatives, there were two superlatives, very pernicious to the Church of God. 1. The appropriation of presentative benefices. 2. The exemptions of Abbey lands from paying tithes: I will but touch the first. When that hedge of appropriating was once by these wild boars broke down, than all the beasts of the forest ran through, and made it wider. Then Charles Martell father to King Pepin of France, under colour to end the barbarous wars, wressed all the Tithes into his hands of that country, protesting to restore them again to the owners, at the end of those wars; but perfidiously broke his oath, and divided that booty amongst his launceknights, that had served him in 
Balcu●.  war: whereupon there was devised a tale, that Eucherius saw in a vision Martellus soul in hell; and his grave being opened, nothing was found but a monstrous serpent in room of his body: for he had deprived Eucherius of his Bishopric of Amiens before; and also this was but only to the end, that Pepin should restore the tithes again which his father had taken away. But Martellus learned that lesson of the Popes themselves; and they when themselves had done it de facto, made their Friars maintain it de iure: as first Alexander of Hales, and Aquinas his scholar, the first that maintained that Tithes were de iure ecclesiastico, not divino: which Popish conceit hath been by divers learnedly confuted; as D. Ridlie, D. Carlton, D. Downham, etc.  

Cran. 1. 2.  Another reason of alienations (for then were men's wits set on work to devise colours) was the stiffness of some vanquished countries; as Freezeland by Carolus Mag. which could never be brought to pay the Conqueror any tribute, being free people: but as for Tithes, because other Christians paid them, they would not much refuse.  
Another cause alleged by the same author was this, that the Pope and Bishops mistrusting that Princes would not otherwise defend their rights and revennews, were content to share with them the endowments of the Church under colour of a fee or pension; choosing of the two, rather an inconvenience, than a mischief; who thereupon passed them away unto their servitors.  
And that this is true, appears by an oration of Frederick 1. in an Imperial diet, to this effect: 
Id. 6. 52. Sax.  As to you my Lords of the Clergy, the Pope and you think much, that lay men should hold any Tithes, or any thing that hath been given to the Church, not remembering that in your need, you have been beholding to our arms: in regard of which pious services, we were requited again with such things as these, you having enough beside: Thus the Emperor.  

Aventine. 4.  Others, as the Bishops of Bavaria, gave all they had of Church living and vessel to the people of Hungary to redeem their lives and liberties: for necessity had no law.  
Among other in England, William the Conqueror upon his victory over Harald, appropriated 3. parish Churches to the Abbey of Battle, which he built in memory of the same where he had fought: and William Rufus 20. parishes of the new forest, to the Church of Sarum: and many other, many like matters.  
And all this we may thank the Pope for; who in this country alone, as M. Cambden hath observed, 
M. Cambden.  of 9284. parishes, impropriated 3845. that is, almost the one half: so that they need not charge our religion with that scurrilous proverb, that Pater noster built up Churches, but Our father pulled them down again. For 1. it was no Protestants that did alienate at all: 2. no Protestants that did procure the suppression of religious houses in the time of Henry 8. but the proud Cardinal himself: 3. not Protestants only that inhabit those houses at this day: lastly, not Protestants that have defended this fact in their writings to the world: and therefore we may retort their Latin with their own learning, Pater noster, & ave Marie, have been the rankest thieves in Christendom.  
From these comes that distinction to some of ours, de iure divino, & humano, that tithes partake of all the three of Moses laws; 1. Moral, for a competency: Ceremonial, for a mystery: judaical, for that policy: decepti & decip●entes, taking error up first upon credit, and after retaling it out to their petty chapmen.  
Now then let us a little consider this Popish argument, whereupon they have grounded all this fact 
Of Tithes.  of Alienation, whether it will endure the Test or no.  
Thus then both Hales and Aquinas have reasoned; 
The Papists algum.  the first as the Irrefragable, the second as the Angelical D. Whatsoever is not of divine right, but positive by the Church, that is no sacrilege to alter or to alienate: but Tithes are not of divine right, but merely of the Church: ergo.  

●ib 2. § 79. of Eccl. pol.  1. Concerning the Mayor, our learned Hooker and many other, have answered thus: The obligation wherewith the Church of Christ hath now bound herself, by vow and consecration, to pay tithes, having many ages since dedicated them unto God as a free will offering, makes them so firm, that it is not in the power of any now to retract them, or vnhallow them again; ergo, the Mayor is mainly false.  

That they are diui● 〈◊〉.  2. But to the Minor it hath been showed, that tithes stand upon the same ground that the Sabbath doth, being both in their number before the Law, and by Moses only repeated, as many other things that were commanded, before they were prescribed. The morality or naturality of which was this, that God out of all the fruits of the earth, and cattle fit for man's use, should have a tenth; first, as an acknowledgement of his Universal government: secondly, for the contentment of his servitors and attendants. The Ceremony or Leviticallitie (favelle verbo) to be annexed to the Priests and Ministers during the standing of the Tabernacle; but alterable and altered from the jewish Synagogue to the Christian service. Ob. But what evidence out of the New Testament, what footing in the Apostolical writings? Ans. First, it needed no director re-establishment, and expresser naming then the sabbath; therefore idle to ask it. Then if it did need, yield we so much reverence unto 
Proved by th' new testament  the Fathers, that as they came nearer those prime and purest times, so they saw more in their illumined learning, than we of dimmer sight and abortive births.  

Mat. 22. 2●.  1. Then S. Augustine hath grounded Tithes upon that of our Saviour, Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is Gods. Hom. 48. serm. quadrag.  

Mat. 23 23.  2. Origen upon those words, These things ought ye to have done, and left not the other undone. Hom. 11. in Numb.  

Act. 6 2.  3. Chrysost. there, as Zanch. hath delivered, It is not fit, that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables: therefore look out men among yourselves, namely for the collection of Tithes, etc. de redempt. precept. 4.  
4. Other, in Paul, If we have sown spiritual things to 
1. Cor. 9 9  you, is it much if we reap your carnal? as M. Sclater hath touched.  

Gal. 6. 6.  5. Luther there, Let him that is instructed in the word, make his instructor partaker of all his goods.  

Heb. 7. 8.  6. Some there on this, Here men that die receive Tithes; but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth: as Bede, of which Carlton.  
Which foundations for Tithes, if yet they shall seem not sufficient direct, I doubt whether such questionists will not yet doubt, whether snow be white. 
Reasons, why they ●re not mentioned in Scripture.  But it is oft required, why did not Christ or his Apostles name Tithes, and put the matter out of controversy? let me first retort this argument, as he did, who when his adversary had said, Si satis est negare, quis erit nocens? replied, Si satis est accusare, quis erit innocens? but I will show why.  
First, very many matters, that touch the foundation pass unmentioned, but not unmeant; the consubstantiality of the Son, which the Arrians did oppose; particular faith, which the Papists; pedobaptisme, which the Anabaptists; and the Sabbath, which the Antisabbatarians do object, are not named, of which it is heresy to doubt or deny; therefore the reason is rotten, to say they are not named, therefore are not.  
Secondly, the Synagogue was yet standing, whereto by divine prescriptions Tithes were tied; which though by the death of Christ, she received her death's wound, yet then was not dead; & when dead, not presently buried, but with reverence and honour, as the Fathers say, to be put into the grave; so that till after her funerals, there was no paying of legacies.  
Thirdly, the state of the new Church was such as yet had neither peace nor prince, so that this was no time to put in her claim, but to expect till God should stir her up some foster Fathers, to order her right.  
Fourthly and lastly, for fear of scandal: for as Christ did forbear a time to tell of his passion; and at his death, I have many other things to say unto 
〈◊〉 1●. 16.  you, quae non potestis portare modò, which you are not able to bear as now: so did the Apostles somewhile conceal the point of the resurrection, till the world was better acquainted with their doctrine. The like reason was of this, lest they might be thought as out of covetousness to provide for themselves: which modesty as it was in them commendable, so it hath been in us prejudicial; the world serving their own turn upon our ingenuity; thinking we need nothing because we say nothing. And this may be sufficient for the silence of the new Scriptures.  
What a cloud of witnesses, both of the Fathers, Counsels, heathen, schoolmen, late writers, all writers, D. Carlton, and other have collected, I omit to touch, lest I should actum agere, or put my sickle in others harvest.  
I will add a few reasons, that joined to their authorities, may make it plain, after I have named the writers that are direct in this point. 1. For Fathers:  


1. Fathers.  1. Origen in Numb. 11.  
2. Cypr. Epist. 66.  
3. Chrys. hom. 4●. in Mat.  
4. Ambr. serm. 40.  
5. Hierom. in Mat. 3. 8.  
6. August. hom. 48.   


2. Counsels.  1. Malisconens. cap. 5.  
2. Cabitonens. cap. 18.  
3. Mognatin. cap. 38.  
4. Rotomag. cap. 10.  
5. Triburtin. cap. 13.  
6. Anglican. cap. 17.   


3. Schoolmen.  1. Hug. de san. vie. par. 12. c. 4.  
2. Aqu. 2. ●. q. 87. ar. ●.  
3. Carthus. in Mat. 22.  
4. Rabanus in Mat. 23.  
5. Bed. in scintille.  
6. Pererius in Gen. 14.   


4. New Divines.  1. Brent. in Leuit. 27. 30.  
2. junius in parall. 3. 7.  
3. Gual. in Matth. 23. & Luc. hom. 28.  
4. Nansea hom. 75. de temp.  
5. Zanch. de oper. redemp. lib. 5. c. 18.  
6. Hospinian de orig. decimar.   


5. Heathen.  1. Plutarch. in Lucul.  
2. Diodor. Si●ulus. 5. 2.  
3. Pausanias' lib. 5.  
4. Herodotus in Clio.  
5. Plin. de Sabae. & Ethiop.  
6. Purchas of the Turks and Alarbes in Africa: beside Zenophon, Festus, etc. And now to the reasons.   

6. Reasons.  1. To the end that neither the giver may brag, nor the receiver blush (saith one,) that is, the people should not upbraid the Minister with their bounty, nor the Minister be ashamed to take his duty, therefore in old time, they were to do both in the Temple; therefore where tithes are not paid in kind, the Minister must soothe his Masters, or he shall be sure to sigh for his means. So▪ Philo and Thephylact.  
2. The Apostle commands, and the world expecteth, that the Minister be given to hospitality, although S. Paul's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, differs much from that keeping good houses which men expect of their Minister, which cannot be done by them that live upon a dry stipend: and therefore tithes in kind are the most convenient for the Minister.  
3. Tithes of all other kind of maintenance, (as our men are enforced to confess, that think they are but of human constitution) are the most natural, convenient, wise, safe, indifferent of all other: therefore rightest way to maintain the Minister: except we will say, that God hath not provided so meetly for those that preach the Gospel, as might be done.  
4. The first intendments of appointing Tithes (in all the judgements of reverent antiquity) by God to the old Priesthood, was to serve for an acknowledgement of his Universal power and right of the creatures, granted to their comfort. In which regard, the learned Calvin calls tithes, proprium Dei ius, & regium vectigal, his peculiar right, and regal tribute: now the equity of this remains in the Church, no less then in the Synagogue: Ergo.  
5. The Ministers, as they are in their callings the means of God's blessing subordinate to Christ, and types of his dealing to all the people; so it is equal they have equal share, in the mercies and judgements of God, that they may both ways sympathise with their people, and serve their turn with their sensible prayers: which is not done in a set stipend; neither singing at the harvest, nor weeping in times of dearth; neither winning nor losing, how ever the world goeth.  
6. And lastly, for the parishioners own particular; he cannot have so comfortable a fruition of the creatures of God; nor satisfy his conscience any way so sound, as by sacrificing a portion of his corn and increase unto his God, and communicating with his Minister in all his goods. These I take it may serve in this matter, to prove that Tithes are due. I meddle not exprofesso, with that question, my purpose is only to show that these things being holy (whether by divine ordination, or human constitution,) they should be inviolable, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and should not have been prostituted by the unholy fathers, as they have been. In which case I can say no 
Aelian.  other, but that the devil hath done like Anytus, one of the 30. tyrants, that usurped upon the State at Athens; who finding Socrates to stand in his way, and hinder his conclusions, devised this means to be rid of him: he hires the idle-headed Poet Aristophanes, to traduce the good man openly upon the stage, both to work him that way some open disgrace, and to sound the people's liking of his worse entreating. The matter sorted so well to the tyrant's mind, that the Poet for gain, and the people for game, gave way to the cup of hemlock, and Socrates death.  
The enemy of our salvation doth bear the like spleen to the ministers of the Gospel, through whose sides he seeks to wound, and work out true religion, as men that indeed do mar his markets. The Pope in the devils pageant hath acted the Poet, to scandalise their profession, by withdrawing their sustentation; persuading the world, that high poverty is the way to high perfection, and that a frieze gown is habit enough for holy professors, (wherein I wonder so holy a father doth not go before, or at least accompany us in the way to holiness) and to possess nothing, the only way to happiness.  
Therefore let them that have any portion of God's spirit, any spark of grace, any conscience of well-doing, any care of God-seruing, stop their ears at this Siren of sin, the charms of profit: remember but whose brat it is, out of what scullery it came, and let them if they can, if they dare approve it.  
Mark but how he hath in all times wrought upon this advantage, see whether he be not indeed of that wolvish kind that first gave Rome suck. Observe what he hath done through Christendom, by that he hath done by a few countries.  

Cleman.  Clemangis saith, that he had out of France from Cathedral Churches and Abbeys, not accounting Bishoprics, or other inferior callings, 697. thousand 750. franks of yearly revenue. Whereunto if other did proportion themselves, his incomes were little less than 6. or 7. millions by the year.  

Vespergen.  Germany paid him yearly 300000. florins, and Charles Duke of Anjou for the Kingdom of Sicily 40000. ducats.  

Mat. Pa.  To leave other, Wallo, Otho, Steven his legates here, conveyed out of England mighty masses, and banks of treasure; & when they had taxed all above ground, they extorted a good sum also for the corn under ground. Peter Rubeus at one time carried more money out of the land, than he left behind him: Martin when there was no more money to be had, took the very horses out of the stables: and it was proved in a Parliament, that in the space of 44. years, that is, from the beginning of Hen. 7. to the time that Hen. 8. did clean expel him, he received for Bulls alone of Bishops, ten hundred and 60. thousand pounds.  
No marvel then though he grew rich, and all the world poor: for he rightly resembled Gedeons' fleece, who was wet and moist when all other were dry, and shall again be dry, when all the world is wet. For john 22. left behind him 25. thousand 
Antoninus.  thousand crowns, or 250. tons of gold. Calixtus 3. 150000. florins, in a false bottom under his chamber. Sixtus 5. 5. millions of his own corrading. Well fare their hearts; all sacrilegers that ever were, were but bunglers to the Popes. For as a poor pirate sometime 
A●lian.  answered Alexander the great; I scour the Aegean, but you the Ocean, I rob a poor merchant or two, but you make purchase of all the world: so are other offenders in this kind, to their holiness: by which means, he hath been the most bloody persecutor that ever infested the Church. For as it was said of Dioclesian, that he was no body to julian: for Dioclesian did but tollere presbyteros; but julian sustulit presbyterium: for the hand of the one was but against the professors, but the other aimed at the profession, taking away their saleries, not meddling with their safeties: so that it was hard for Christianity, when they had no means left to teach and instruct the comers on, which while it was had, sanguis martyrum was semen Christianorun, the blood of Martyrs caused more Christians. But of the Pope enough; and so much of the first sort of offenders in sacrilege.   

CHAP. II.  
Against Puritans Cavillations at the means and matters sacred to God's service.  
I Come next to encounter another enemy of this doctrine, clean opposite to the Papists upon the other hand: The Puritan or Separatist, who are according to their own definition, refined protestants, but to others, Gospelers out of their wits; men drunken with their own wine, but with difference, some more soberly besotted, other more franticly intoxicated.  
These misliked the maintenance of Ministers by Tithes, as either Papal, or at least judaical: but your stipends and contributions, under the nature of pure alms, that is just for their tooth: and I wish them the cold reversion of a cast alms-house for their labour. And no marvel, for I have known some that have thrived better, and have been feathered warmer, upon brethren's benevolence, (being able to purchase lands, let out money to use, by railing at the State, & barking against Bishops, and lying by the heels in humour) than many of their betters could ever do upon ordinary provisions, or extraordinary promotions. No marvel than they mislike the maintenance: their way is better: and before they misliked the Church means, they fell out of love with the Church itself, the edifices, ornaments, ceremonies, sacraments, and whatsoever is not purum putum.  
These men I say are sacrilegers: for first they have defiled our holy sacraries, with their Bedlam Rhetoric, more foully than ever they were with Babylonish relics: terming them Temples of Baal, sties of Antichrist, cages of unclean birds, etc. Nay, some have commenced to such a degree of holy frenzy, that they have abhorred the very tongue wherein superstition hath talked, as the language of the beast, (than happily true, when themselves do speak it.) But I leave the persons, and come to the point, only adding thus much: as Sampsons' foxes were sundered 
Judge 17▪ 4.  in the head, but combined by the tail; so the Puritan and Papist, though their devices differ, their ends are one, to subvert religion; not professedly as do the Turks, yet by consequence and necessary 
●. H▪ Spelman.  inference, most subtilely. For as a learned Gentleman hath lately written; Tithes have been Gods ancient demean, and nobler part of his inheritance, founded primarily on the law of nature, as that principle which teacheth to honour God; (we being in justice, bounty, and gratuity, bound to acknowledge his bounty and Sovereignty:) But glebe land, and houses (howsoever now used in the nature of movables) are his fixed inheritance, and seats of his mansion, not so ancient, yet now as proper, given by devout men, grounded on the warrant of the Levitical cities, as it were a holy portion of lan● for his Ministers to dwell on.  
For Vrbanus the sixth, Bishop of Rome, in anno 222. did first alter that Communion of the Primitive 
Act. ●. 34.  Church, that we read of in the Acts: who thought it expedient in those purest times, for the perpetual relief of the Church, not to sell the lands, as they did in the Apostles times (as this fact of Anantas showeth) but to keep them themselves; because of the casualty in pecuniary contributions.  

〈◊〉 Temp.  And although Abbey lands were given to superstitious uses, yet both Civilians & Canonists agree, that long custom may prescribe in this case, though the beginning had been erroneous. And as we shall see elsewhere, in donations to superstitious uses, their supper may be mended, but their stitious continued. As for Abbey lands, I wish King Henry 8. had not taken away the subject of the question, there is an other reason and question of them. But Bishop's lands were given upon the first planting of the Churches; and if such Temporalties of Bishops, and those which they called matrices Ecclesiae: much more tithes of Gods own institution, or at the least given by the common consent of the Christian world. All which endowments, not we, but the ancient Fathers (as 
Hom▪ 18 in Act.  Augustine, Cyprian, Chrysostom, and the rest,) call patrimonium Christi, dotem Sponsae, Christi sacram possessionem, and praedia sancta.  
Therefore let us not correct magnificat, and in presumptuous novelty, condemn and contemn all antiquity. The word Church, or as our Northern Briton calls it, Kyrck, is but the corruption of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, to say, the Lords house: which so long as the world was inflamed with the sacred fire of devotion, every hand and heart desired to sanctify itself, to adorn, and endow. But now since that was quenched, and the sacred fire of rapine and sacrilege hath been kindled; men leave to be zealous, and learn to be sacrilegious, becoming execrable by touching execrables.  
As for those lights of God's Church, whose learning we love, and names reverence; I speak of Calvin & the rest, whose authority is urged against us; who for the profanation, fell out with the Consecration of these things; like the Athenian that came to Aristides, 
Arist. Pol.  to have him write Aristides name to banish him by the law of Ostracism; yet it was not for any crime that either had committed, but that for want of means, and leisure from other employments, they were no better acquainted with the parties: yet Calvin misliked of tithes, only because they were obtruded sacerdo●ali iure, not if they had been maintained ministeriali iure: being well assured that reverent man would be little pleased were he living, to hear his name opposed against the Church, that spent all his time and means in the behalf of the Church: no more than he was with his zealous Auditor, that so extolled his sermons, that if S. Paul and S. Calvin were to preach in one hour, he would leave S. Paul to hear S. Calvin.  
For you, I wish you better advised, lest God observe by whom he is impeached: your meaning may be good, but hast of your way hath out-galloped your good intent; and precipitancy in judging, hath forestalled your judgement. For I beseech you look back into your preposterous courses, and tell me what manner of propositions these be: Tithes, Prelacies, Churches, demeans, & dignities are all Antichristian, the marks of the beast, the garments of the whore, the sties of the devil. Lentardus 600. years since, made himself away in very deep desperation, having taught that these things were idle and superfluous: and many among you, having been drawn away from the mother Church, after your whistels and oaten pipes, finding hollowness in your holiness, have done little better: whereby many of your Doctors have been murderers of God's people, and if not violatores, invaders yourselves of God's inheritance, yet ye have been traditores, betrayers of it to other, and traitors to your Master. For as in the trade of pursing, there are setters, and there are actors; so it cannot be denied, that if you did not commit the robberies yourselves, yet you plotted the matches, and were partakers of the purchase.  
For who were they that egged on the Herodians to beg our revenues, and set on the soldiers to cast a chance for Christ's coat again? were they not some men in your coats, that put up bills and petitions to the Parliament house, to pluck down Churches, to erect Chapels, to ruin many to rear one? Who were they that would have made the world believe, that Bishops were Antichristian callings, and elders were the worthy governors? that so not in every Diocese, but in every parish, for a Bishop you might erect a superintendant in name, a Pope in truth? Who was it that called the Vultures to the spoil, & the beasts unto the prey, with an Edomites voice, crying, Down with them, down with them even to the ground; and a Moabites tongue, Up Moab to the spoil? by which means both the Canaanite is still in the land, and the Edomite hath devoured all: and all the cost bestowed on God's house is counted Popery, and all the means that cometh not of Alms is held tyranny: So that shortly we shall not be so holy as horses; for they may be stabled in Churches: but we shall not have our ceremonies so well as in stables; but either in hovels, or under hedges, the Ministers having no more respect than grooms & ostlers; and the land no religion at all, or so many as there are Churches, by means of every new fanglednes. 
2. Pet. 2. 3.  But what saith Peter? They who through covetousness make merchandise of the word of God, their judgement lingereth not, and their damnation sleepeth not: and our Saviour, Who so breaks the least of these commandments, and teach men so to do, shall be called the least in the Kingdom of heaven. And so much of the second sort.   

CHAP. III.  
Against laymen's usurpations of holy demeans, with answer to their cavils.  
NOw come I to Lay-men, who have invested themselves with Tithes and Church possessions, some under colour of pious offices, most without colour, making them or taking them for things of mere appropriation; like the frozen Serpent, so long harboured by the farmer's fire, till it had recovered life, and then driving his kind host out of his own house. Many of whose court-rowls, if they were well suruaied, would be found as women's accoutrements, which is mundus, indeed a world of trinkets; but in that world, the woman is minimapars sui: so if every bird had her own feather, and every Church her true tithe, many of them would not have the tithe of that they hold. Such is the age wherein we live, wherein nothing is accounted ill that can be gained: the names of sins for the most part (as this of Sacrilege) containing more horror than the sins themselves, as I could instance in many. The sin of Usury, that was of old so odious to God and man, the usual theme of children's declamations, is now grown so well reconciled, that no trade is more compendious, warrantable, universal; as if the venomous teeth were either fallen out with age, or the vicious quality were so well corrected, that all borrowers were enriched by it. But as one hath well said, if the teeth are rebated for biting, yet the gums are hard in nipping: so that it may be truly said of this, as is spoken of the great Turk, The grass will never grow more where the Grand Seniors horse hath set his foot: sieldome hath any state recovered, that hath been beholden unto the Usurer: Yet call a demure professor, by the name of usurer, though Noverint universi, all the world doth know it, he will have an action against you. Now what is the reason of this, but that he cannot endure to hear, what he can be content to be? the word contains some kind of malignity, the money hath none, but like the Tole-monie which the Emperor Vespasian raised of his subjects urine, bonusest odor lucri ex re qualibet. I might in like manner go through the whole Cyclopadie of sin, thieving, whoring, swearing, drinking, and stabbing: the same is the case of sacrilege, the word is harsh, the name infamous, but the thing of a better aspect, and the profit of good acceptance.  
In which regard many of our great Magnificos have acted us Hercules furens, who coming into Venus' Temple, and there finding a golden Adonis, put that in his pocket with this pretty quip, At tu nihil sacries: Your mastership is no deity: so whatsoever these men could finger in Church or churchyard, so long as it is neither Saint nor shrine, they hold for good purchase, and have been content to pocket many such wrongs.  
Yet the King of Ammon shaved but half the beards of David's Ambassadors (for they might be too long) and clipped but half their clothes (they might be too heavy) but our shavers, because they would be sure to leave no superfluous excrement, have taken away also the necessary tegument; so that in some sense we may (though with our shame) be challenged by the Papists, that Pater noster built up Churches, but Our Father hath plucked them down again.  
Our devout predecessors out of their ignorance, did but abuse the materials of holiness; but our modern demure professors, out of our much learning, have quite taken them away. Many joined in the work of the reformation, without true meaning to reformation, more studying for gold then serving of God, and more thirsting for the goods of the Church, than any good to the Church: so that we may write of our reformators, as a Frenchman did of the last civil broils of their pacificators, 
Vulcanum aut folles, aut ars ignota fefellit  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dum vult cudere, cudit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
All sat not well with Vulcan sure, his hammer, or his head:  
Reformers he did mean to make, but hath deformers bred.  For as S. August. said of some heretics, to establish their own devices, misinterpreting the Scriptures, de medicamentis sibi vulnera faciunt, make themselves sores of the very salves: we may truly say to have fallen out in this case, that the medicine hath proved worse than was the malady: the one failing but in the manner, but we in the very matter; as is touched elsewhere. Therefore as foolish and il-aduised 
Plut.  people, flying the invasion of thieves or wild beasts, fall into whirlpools, or break-neck places: so while these undertakers had their eye another way, flying from superstition, have engulfed themselves in irreligion; either overlooking, or at least over-leaping true religion between them both. For whereas the first donors showed humanity in the efficient, impelling, or moving cause; our goodly correctors have failed in the final: for where men of more devotion than instruction took superstition for religion, which was the minor; these men of more greediness than godliness, have taken destruction for edification, which is the mayor: and so the last error hath been worse than the first. Wherein they seem little to have differed from the soldiers, that cast a chance for Christ's coat: saving that those suffered Christ to have his life in it; these have not only parted his garments among them while he is alive, but so much as in them lies, pushed at his life, to possess them securely, embezeling the maintenance that should propagate his Kingdom.  

Abuse objected.  But it hath been much and oft objected, that the Ecclesiastical livings were foully abused in former times; and therefore it was thought good by the State they should be suppressed. I grant the abuse: but what? is abuse become a warrant for abolishment? what Logic is this? or what law for poor Churchmen? The Philosopher would deny though wine is abused, that the vine should be rooted out: the like would the scholar do for books; the Statesmen for arms; the Lawmakers for sceptres; the Divines for Scriptures. All which things if they may have leave to stand, and to rectify their abuse, shall the Church yet forfeit all, if her revenues shall be abused?  
But say that Abbeys and Monasteries were abused; and let it not be the fault so much of the men, as of the matters themselves; what have our Cathedral and rural Churches deserved? Admit that Babylon must go down; but why must Bethelem bear her company? May I not as truly complain herein, as sometime Athanasius did; Esto, peccaverit Athanasius, at quid alij Episcopi fecerunt, aut quem Arsenium occiderunt? Suppose that Athanasius indeed were guilty, yet what have other Bishops done; have other Bishops killed Arsenius also? So though Abbeys had deserved their doom, what can be pretended against Bishoprics, Deaneries, Dignities, Cathedrals, and Colleges, and poor country Parsonages? all are not tainted with the same imputations, yet all have been exposed to the same maledictions.  
Which had they been spared, and Gods houses pellmell not so invaded, the wills of the dead had been better fulfilled, the infantry of learning otherwise provided, the honour of God more carefully furthered, their dying consciences better comforted, and their own successions and estates more firmly established. Now desolation is written upon many of their doors, and extirpation hath seized on their families, while Zim and Limb dance in their parlours, Ochim and Ostraches' screech in their palaces; the fathers for the most part dying either comfortless, or childless; the sons living either graceless, or landless: the father's sustaining the infamy of robbers, the sons enduring the misery of beggars: both fathers & sons like jonas whale, sick in their states and stomachs, until they had regorged the fat morsels which their hungry stomachs had too hastily swallowed. Nay, tell me if yourselves have not observed, that many of such demeans have proved like Sejanus horse, that never had owner, but either he broke his neck, or blessed him with some other misfortune. Avery remarkable judgement of God, to infuse a malignity into the very lands, that no man should thrive that holds them, no man should escape some egregious mischief that hath them. I will say nothing of the Suppressors themselves, of whom a very great man of this Kingdom hath written, 
L. Cook.  that eadem temporis periodo, it hath been fatal to some mighty Monarches at the same term of time, to have their successors exterminate that invaded the holy possessions, 
De malè quaesitis non gaudet tertius haeres.   
There was a far better precedent shown unto the world some 300. years since, against such kind of 
Stat. Eduar. 2.  Alienations, by a statute made by Edward 2. by disposing the goods of the Templars, (who for their great impiety of their disordered order, was then extinguished) to the hospitaller-Knights of S. john in jerusalem; with this proviso, Ne in pios usus erogata, contra donatorum voluntatem in alios usus distrah●rentur; to say, that the lands so given to pious uses, should not against the Donors' intention, be distracted, and turned to other profane purposes. Which equal dealing might also in this case have been practised, if men had equally propounded to themselves their aim, the glory of God, and not their own gain.  

Other objections.  But there are many things slanderously devised, and injuriously enforced against us, to legitimate their own sacrilegious dealing, and justify our deserved suffering: their high deserts, our great unworthiness; the disproportion of the things themselves, and the incongruity in other countries.  
Of all which in general I may say, as sometime 
Hierom.  Hierome did, Ingemui fateor, minus nobis inesse voluntatis ad propugnandam veritatem, quam inest illis invidentiae ad inculcandum mendacium: it grieved me I confess, to see that we have less will to aver our true propositions, than our enemies have malice to enforce their false conclusions.  

Great men's great deserts.  1. First, therefore as to their deserts; let me say as Alexander did, to silence Ephestion contending against Craterus: At quantae opes, aut quod tuum facinus, si quis tibi demat Alexandrum tuum? and I pray sir, what may your mighty means or merits be, if we except your Sovereign's favour? To be clothed in scarlet, and fare deliciously every day, is cause enough to cry, heu quanta patimur! oh our pains! oh our services! But supposing that the services were as big as their ambitions can feign them; and as many as their parasites could strain them; yet not like the merits of Zopyrus to his Master, that to win him Babylon, did endure the ampulation of his ears, and mutilation of his members: But though they had won their King another Monarchy, yet must they still fall short of the Clergy; and howsoever, yet not to be rewarded out of the Church, but the Exchequer.  
But alas, that men cannot raise the walls of their own worthiness, but upon the rubbish of others ruins. We envy not their honours, nor seek to supplant their fortunes: let them despise us as supercisiously as they please, yet when they have done, our calling shall be both honourable with God, and noble in itself, and meritorious to the world, howsoever our persons shall be esteemed; both for birth & breeding not inferior to many of our maligners. But to omit these titles not ours, why should not Pallas and Apollo have as fair charters to invest their clients with earnests of honour, as any of the other deities? Why should not the arts and learned studies, privilege as much as the Hall or Burse? why should not the Queen of learning Divinity, raise her followers as high as an other petty Lady about the town? Therefore let no man, that hath nothing to allege but his father's conveyances, upbraid our callings and degrees of schools, with superannuated cavillations: for even our inferior Graduates have paid more, and deserved better for those their titles of approbation, than they that mock them, and only know thus much in themselves, that they know nothing worth knowledge. Chrysostome as is well known, writeth a tract of set purpose, beside many other places of his works, to prove that a Bishop is not only equal, but superior unto a King: which if it be a strain too high, yet it is clear, that the most eminent Princes that ever were, thought it their glory, to annex the illumination of Priests to the sublimations of their Sovereignties. And those greatest Prophets, Esay and Daniel, that were of the blood royal, thought it no disparagement to serve the Church: Bartholomew among the Apostles, Ambrose, Chrysostome, Petronius, Metrophanes, Eusebius, Emissenus, Victorinus, Cassianus, and a number more of the famous Bishops, were very nobly descended. But what speak I of such, or of yesterday? are not the 
●. Sam. 8. 18.  sons of David the most noble Princes of the blood? 
1. Ch●o. 18. 17.  yet elsewhere termed sacerdotes, priests? not that they were so in propriety of speech, but because that title deciphered the truest honour and best nobility among the ancient Worthies. And what is that title and emblem, of not only honour but also use, of that calling, which not a Prophet of Israel to magnify his own calling, but a King of Israel styleth▪ Elisha 
2 King. 1 12.  by, My father, my father, the Chariots of Israel, and horsemen of the same: a predication incompetent to the greatest Monarch.  
But whether do I digress in my just complaint, which I end with the Princely Prophet, Have mercy 
Psa. 123. ult.  on us O Lord, for we are utterly contemned, our soul is even filled in herself with the scornful reproof of the mighty, and with the deceitfulness of the proud.  
To return then to the point, men must not rob Peter to pay Paul, or more truly rob both Peter and Paul, to pay a Centurion, or gratify a minion. The Church and commonwealth are two distinct bodies, having each their offices, their charges, their pensions: concerning which our Saviour hath set down, date Caesari quae sunt Caesaris, & Deo quae Dei sunt.  
As to the validity of Prince's gift in this case, who am I to decide such questions? and yet learned men have been of this mind, that howsoever in their own individual persons, they may by their Unction be enabled to possess such lands; yet may they not transfer the same from themselves to any other, not in like sort qualified: as things that are alterius fori & eminentioris sceptri, matters belonging to a higher Court, and subject to a greater cognisance. Therefore the learned Kickerman, is so bold as to 
Syst. Prolix. 1. 2●.  bind the hands of Princes in this case, saying, they may not transfer things sacred and dedicated to holy uses, no not in case they had been abused to superstition and profanation. And therefore holy Bishops, as Ambrose, and Bernardus of Halbertade in Germany, chose rather to die, then to part with their Churches, and Church livings. We read how stoutly that 
Madgebur.  Father did contest with a mighty Emperor; We yield (saith he) unto the Emperor all that is his due: is it his tribute that he doth demand? his tribute we deny not: is it the Church he doth require? we may not betray the Church unto him: God's Church is none of Caesar's charge, he may not have to do therewith, etc.  
But God of heaven be blessed, we need no such Apology for the King's person, who are most bound to God for his majesties most Royal and religious heart, that hath been so far from taking away, that he hath laboured earnestly and zealously to restore back again whatsoever is essential to the Church; but as for other we say no other, but those words of 
Act. 19 15.  a homely author: Paul we know, and jesus we know, and Caesar we know; vos autem qui estis? but who are you, that so defraud jesus, and Paul, and Caesar also? And so much to them that plead their deserts to Church-livings.  

The Clergies unworthiness.  2. I come to a second, Church-mens unworthiness: Bishops do not preach, and dignified men do no good; conclude, therefore laymen may, nay must have 
In Cyropaed.  their lands. Zenophon did whip young Cyrus for a better argument, because he gave the greater coat to the greater boy; not because he had right unto it, but because it fitted him better: and the lesser coat to the lesser boy; the Prince therein offending in distributive justice, a point of Ethics only. But were Zenophon now alive to judge of this fact, he would I fear me, hang up them that should commit such solecisms against Ethics, politics, logic, and divinity: Bishops do not preach; therefore Barons must have their Bishoprics: why? do Barons preach? church men do no good, therefore churls must have the Tithes: why? do church robbers so much good? Blush impiety: doth he care for preaching that plucks down the Church? or he mind goodness, that is enemy to godliness? what is this but to strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel? to devour the Church, and cough at the chair? although I rest assured it is not the dew of heaven (preaching,) that you look after; but the fat of the earth, the pottage and portion of Esau. Moses gave a dispensation to quinquagenarians, to cease from the ordinary services 
Leu. 4. 2.  of the Temple, to commence to places of regiment: and will you tie the grey hairs of age and reverence, to an everlasting apprenticeship of study and speech? like your mill-horse at home to his wont task? shall your servitor, and horse of service, and the very mill-horse which I named, have immunity and cessation of years and labour; and must your spiritual Pastor and Father, your Priest and Prophet, run round in an everlasting circle, damned to this destiny by your inequal doom; and climb up into the pulpit, till he can no longer come down, but tumble down with age and feebleness, to be the miserable laughing stock of the profane fry? nay, are there not more and more honourable, and no less necessary services for old men, then are of young? Oh teach not thy son, thy servant so evil a lesson to curse thee in thy age. The youngest infant in the chimney corner, is often made the rod of God's wrath, to revenge the unreverend carriage of a wicked Cham, to an aged Noah. But Bishops do preach, witness the most commendable and indefatigable pains of many of those prelates, that are most eminent in the land; whom neither this my answer can honour, nor your imputation slander. I say no more, Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis Tempus eget.—  
The rest do no good, you say, they keep no houses▪ is all goodness in housekeeping? then much of the nobiltie and gentry of this land, do very little good: yet Churchmen keep houses; not for you perhaps, that would live at free cost, yet for their poor neighbours: howbeit perchance neither all, nor for all, nor always: for quis ad haec sufficiens? but those that do not what they may, aetatem habent, I leave to their own apologies. Wherefore this eavill of our unworthiness, I hold but the idle evaporation of godless brains, that hold other men, especially our calling, worthy of nothing; themselves worthy of all: but they are not our judges, neither is it reasonable, that our enemies should be both our accusers, and witnesses, and judges, and excutioners also. God did never licence any Lay-men so far, when 
●sa. 56. 10.  the Priests were at the very worst, dumb Dogs, idol 
Mat. 8. 16.  Shepherds, drowsy watchmen, blind guides, to withhold their dues: and good Kings have ordained, that no man under colour omitted by the Minister, 
Hen. 8.  shall detain his Tithes, etc. and so did the old Canons, Nonnulli vitam clericorum quasi abominabilem 
Conc. Constan.  detestantes, decimas subtrahere non verentur, etc. But as thou shalt answer for thy fraud so shall they for their faults. To conclude, their unworthiness is questionable, but this is out of question that many worthy men are unworthily wronged, while envy and avarice sit as judges of their worth.  

The nimi●ti● of Tithes.  3. An other objection is, the muchnes or measure of such demeans, the lands too great, the Tithes too large: and all that fall beside their mouth too much. But in the mean time, their apish vanities, epicure like superfluities, fuliginous fooleries, sacrilegious robberies, Fimbrian-like injuries, Tarquinian like surquedries, Esavish profanities, and julianish apostasies are not too much. But to the point, which aims at some reason, but lined with much malice. Some of the Pope's clawback's, to daub up the faults of those holy Fathers, (as I have showed elsewhere) maintained, that Tithes were grounded upon all the 3. Laws of Moses: moral for the equity, ceremonial for the affinity, judicial for the policy; because the jews were 10. Tribes, whereunto 2. other were added to make amends for some men's bad payment: all untrue. But if the Priests were then 
M. robart's.  the tenth part of the people, where was that proportion before that Law? But it hath been further proved, that the levites were not the 10. nor 12. nor 20. part of that people, nor the 40. but at least the sixtieth: yet let us observe their portion and proportion. The learned D. Downeham hath collected, 
De Dig. min.  that the Priest's income, being brought home to them without labour or charge, with their 48. cities, was more to them (being as the honourable Sir Water Raleigh hath proved not much bigger than Wales,) then all the Bishoprics, benefices, College lands, and all other Ecclesiastical endowments and profits in this land, though the Popes of Rome, nor any other had never alienated any, as now they have done one half. And this was not only among the jews, but from the first preaching of the Gospel: so soon as the sceptre turned Christian, 
Euseb.  all Tithes were instantly restored, all lands and donations that under the persecutions had been taken away, all Images, treasure, and furniture of heathen temples: yearly sums amounting to a great quantity out of the Exchequer itself: all the goods of such as died intestate, all new erections of well disposed people: and to knit up all in one word, the same to be hereditary, as under Moses.  
And thus stood the affairs of the Church, till Antichrist confounded things sacred and profane; and Cymmeriall darkness dispossessed the world, as of illumination, so of true devotion; only some small good meaning did sometimes undo themselves, to endow the Church, wherein it became so superlatively prodigal, that it hath been hidebound ever since. And now are we arrived at those times, where the children carry it out much faster than ever their Fathers brought it in: where our insatiable churchhownds, do not as Cerberus did with Sibylla's enchanted sop, 
— tria guttera pandens  
Corripuit, rursusque immania terga resoluit  
Fusus himi—  snatch it greedily, swallow it hungerly, and lay him down again to sleep quietly: but like Erisychthon, another whelp of the same litter, who for sacrilegious famine was feigned to be inspired of hunger; as Hor. says,— Ingluvies, tempestas, barathrumque (not macelli, but) sacelli. 
— quodque nubibus esse  
quodque satis poterat populo, non sufficit uni.  Like Salomon's horseleech that ever cries, give, give: 
Pro. 30. 14.  Omniscient in espying, omnipotent in consuming: whom God will one day repay in like kind, punishing their sin of greediness, with the greediness 
Ephe. 4. 18.  of sinning.  

Other countries.  4. An other main objection is laid hold upon, either by gentlemen that have travailed, or Ministers that relish a little too much of the Geneva fashion, that other Countries do not maintain their Ministers by Tithes, but contributions, poor salaries, such as the policy of men, or the iniquity of times have left unto them. But we are here to dispute, not the facto, but de iure; not what is, but what should be done: Vivendum legibus non exemplis: it is not the deeds of men, but the doctrine of God that should be our guide: for the same Countries allow of tolerations, shall I say? or commixtions rather of all kind of religions.  
But whatsoever other do either upon error or necessity, non fuit sic à principio, the syncerest times and primest Churches have better precedents.  
For many have enthralled theit livings and liberties together, to the importunities of their troubles, or abitrement of their Kings: as the French to Carolus 
Gaguin. lib. 6. Auen. 4. lib.  Martellus, saith Gaguine; and the Churches of Saxony, saith Aventine, who to redeem their lives, 
Cent. 10. 1.  gave all the Church— demeans unto the Turk, though they were redeemed by Arnulphus Duke of Bavoir.  
And some have thought, that what the Bishops in that case have done, is good against themselves; but it is to childish to change the most natural and wise order of the world, for an idol of a travelers brain: seeing it can neither be bettered, nor paralled with the like: some in inequality must be confessed, which might be redressed, which is accidental, no deformity that is substantial. And so much of Lay men's usurpations, which needed not so much proof, as reproof.   

CHAP. FOUR  
Against the exemptions that some Cities and great Towns do claim in Church duties.  
THere is an other sort of men, that albeit they lurch not the Church lands, nor count them Antichristian, yet enfranchise themselves with a false privilege; that they are as free from the commandment of God in this case, or any other ordinance of man concerning that matter, as from the rescripts of the Sheriff of the out-shiere; to pay nothing for the maintenance of the Minister, more than their own mind shall voluntary condescend unto, or order taken upon their agreement at the Hall, shall make them liable unto. And therefore it seems a thing most absurd, and very unreasonable, that Personal Tithes of Artificers, tradesmen, and Merchants, should be demanded. By which means they sad and dull the hearts of their Ministers, by a covetous and unconscionable prescription, to allow him nothing, but his twopenny offerings at Easter, and a very small quillet not to be accounted of beside. But they must understand, that first at least a personal Tithe is due, which that poor portion no way doth countervail by a thousand part. Secondly, if not in act, yet in equity, some proportionate sum unto that which God, and man hath indifferently set down. And of this assertion I have these reasons, beside those I have set down in general.  
1. It is the dictate of nature, and positive law of 
Why Cities and Towns should pay personal Tithes. Pro. 3. 9 Gen. 14. Gen. 2. Num 31.  God, to honour God with our riches, and the good things of this life as is God's ordinance, and as the holy men of God have done, Abraham, jacob, and all the holy nation, and all our country beside. What charter then or charity, what custom or conscience can be pretended, to free us from that which all the Christian world, nay all the Universal world are bound unto?  
They may object, that one man may serve that turn for a whole City or Town, and for one man their maintenance may be sufficient. First it is not credible or possible, that any one should feed more thousands with a morsel of bread, then ever Christ fed with 7. loaves, and 2. fishes. Besides, what Stentours voice, or Aeolus lungs, or iron sides, may be sufficient to stretch to so many thousands? but that is as gross as all the rest, that he that should take so much pains, should have no more than that slender reward.  
2. Will not God at his general Audit object this unto such; that labourers in the Country, and fishermen in poor Towns of the coast, whom he never honoured with the tenth of their ease, the twentieth of their opportunity, the hundredth part of their happiness, yet return him by Tithe a cowenient portion of their labours, & his blessing: but these that ought to have been many miles before them in godliness, come short of them many leagues in gratefulness. 
Matth. 25. 14.  The parable of the talents is well known and remembered, but not ever practised: and therefore God many times sends us other remembrancers: Pirates at sea, and prowlers at land, to consume our substance, bringing men ofttimes from the wealth and pride of the City, to the want and drudgery of the Country, for such forgetfulness and contempt.  
3. The service under the law was a costly service, where men were to allocate the third part of their estate to the ministration of the Tabernacle, what by sacrifices of all sorts, what by peculiar charges rising on some occasions: but under Popery, this charge was doubled and trebled, where the third part of the land went to the blind and the lame Clergy. From the first we are freed by Christ; from the second by Christian Princes. What? to be exempt as by a Magna Charta, from all suit and service that belongs to God? No: but we are still tied to perform to God an honourable service, that his Gospel may be continued, his prayer perpetuated, his ministers maintained, his houses repaired, his members comforted, his infantry nursed, his servants saved. What pity is it then to see so many sheep without shepherds, so many shepherds without means, that of so many parishes as are many times found in such places, all the wages of single and double halls together, not able to amount to one sufficient stipend of a good Minister; that is to say, where the most householders shall give a matter of two shillings two pence to his Minister by the year, and the best but four shillings four pence, (I speak within compass) under 5. shillings, and yet some of these men by their own esteem, and other men's, worth many thousands; and as they are merchants, may gain many hundreds of pounds that year. And where I may be challenged, that even this in all the Town and City through, may rise to more than a competent living for one man, though I spoke of no more than the parish maintenance, I will put all the Lecturers wages in beside, it will not so be more then enough or competent: when all can accrue hardly to 200. pounds by the year; and that to such a man as I speak of, and they should labour for, yet scarce competent: for why should we not value a godly, learned, well borne man and Minister, in equal rank with the best merchant, when as in such an one the sum would be but beggary, yea no way but in wealth qualified like the other.  
4. And because I have mentioned the Minister's person, let that be another motive, the love we are to show unto them. Now what kindness can this be, to defraud him of his true allowance, and to mince him out such mites, and micas (crumbs as commonly men do, and count him highly beholding to them for that also? I will not say as Tully doth in like case, that it is latr onis beneficium, who think the traveler is much bound unto him for his life, which he might have taken as well as his purse: But this I say, I fear me those men that now in the liberty of the Gospel deny us our own; if any other colour of religion should turn trump, will hardly give us their own.  
5. Another cause why such places should pay personal tithes, or like liberal maintenance, is the securing of their own estates: for this small tribute that we do so return our God, is sepes divitiarum, the fence of our fortunes, and causeth the legittimation of our other goods. For men must imitate the 
〈◊〉 ●7.  Apostle, to cast superfluities overboard, to secure the vessel, and willingly to part with some portion to save the stake: whereas now men are grown like Usurers, not to deal with God almighty himself without sufficient sureties, and bond beside. The charge which they pretend daily to grow upon them for impost, etc. are mere cavillations: for that they fetch up again upon the poor country, and themselves grow rich the while.  
6. Lastly, would they do as the mother City, where they pay not by the hall, but by the rent of the house, the tenth of that, as is I think intended by the statute: they would procure both wealth and wisdom, love and learning, religion and renown, to wreathe them a chaplet, to make them happy, and all their daughters and neighbours by them: where bountiful means allures the best men, and kind usage of all that comes, draws all the learning of the land unto them: for ubi populus ibi questus, ubi cadaver ibi aquilae: whereas now the niggardize that is used in many places, breeds many unkindnesses between the Ministers and people; and the small means the Minister hath to live on, breeds him baseness, baseness contempt, contempt discouragement: and on both sides, all the dislike and unfriendly words and wishes, that may be imagined. By these reasons I am induced to mislike the course that runs common in great places, and to revoke men to the right and prime institution.  

Objections.  But guiltiness is never without gainsaying, and man's nature is stubborn not to yield to the word. Some pretend poverty, and in that case men are to be pitied, not burdened; therefore God requires, according 
2. Cor. 8. 12.  to that we have, not according as we have not, to use liberality, much more gratuity to God and their Minister. Yet it is not equal, that men not having to their minds, should therefore pay nothing, but eat or spend God's part as they do their own. And who in these places is so poor, that he doth not feast once or ofter, in the year, in such sort that the very reversion of their riot, would not be a comfortable refreshing to his minister, if he had it in money.  
But poverty is not always truly pretended: for compare the husbandman with the citizen, in diet, apparel, house, furniture, building expenses; and then tell me which is the poorer? there I am sure the Townsman will have all things excellent, whatsoever it cost, so that he is rich at home, & poor at the 
August.  Church: as one says, Etsi in domibus sunt auro divites, tamen in Ecclesia sunt mendici: for their own occasion they will find money, but for Gods they cannot spare it.  
2. They are subject to many charges, and greater losses, than those of the Country: and is that any cause to deny God his tribute? that is, the Minister his due? I should think that binds them to be more thankful for his favour, mercy, and providence: as 
Numb. 31. 26.  we see in the Israelites, being but a small band, yet vanquished five Kings of Madian: first parted with one half of the prey unto their fellows that went not into the field; and of the other moiety gave a tribute to God, one of 500 and further for God's unexpected deliverance, having not miss one man, offered unto him of their own accord another oblation of the jewels and ornaments of the pillage, to the value of 16750. shekels of gold.  
But we can be content to offer unto God, as many good words as he will, but no money; but then we 
August.  verify the speech of the Father, we do not offer vitulos labiorum, but labia vitulorum, not the calves of the 
〈…〉  lips, but the lips of calves. And as another, we will seek Christ with the wise men, but we will leave our budgets at home, we will not open our treasures to him as they did. David had a quid retribuam? what 
Psal, 116.  shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits that he hath done to me? but we point where is none: quid? retribuam? what? shall I render unto the Lord any thing? ill done.  
3. He would so be too rich, and too well acquainted with our estates. 1. This is to be wiser than God; for he made no such proviso. 2. What hurt if thy Minister knew in general, nay in particular the blessing or cursing of God upon thee? were that any harm to thy soul? thou shalt be sure of one comfort, to have one that will sympathize with thee, and one that will supplicat for thee.  
Lastly, for I will not follow these foxes to any more holes: If ministers would not challenge it of debt, but take it as alms, or contribution, or benevolence, they should far better. This is a burden too heavy to be borne, especially where all commodities are so high rated as they are.  
1. Why should any account that burden over-heavy, which God hath laid upon them? 2. which other bear cheerfully, that are far more unable? 3. that brings so great benefit and blessing with it, to have the light of Goshen, when other sit in the darkness of Egypt? 4. that is a thing so necessary? 5. which our predecessors yielded so willingly unto, to bind themselves and their heirs for ever to perform? 6. Or what comfort is it to impropriate in this manner, that which God and all good men have annexed? Is it dishonour to acknowledge a debt to our better, a duty to our Prince, a tribute to our God? is it dishonest for the Minister that in God's behalf doth require the same? why then should we be angry with him, that tells us what is due, or to rail on them that refute our falsehood? this snarling against the preacher, is but recalcitrating against the word. It is not the man, but the matter, to have our covetousness detected, our oppression checked, our usury reproved, our extortion ransanked: it is Mammon that stings us, not the minister that offends us: but beware what ye shall do in this case; to be pricked in heart for our fault is one thing, but to prick his heart that discovers our sins; is not to stomach him but his sender: to omit a truth or duty upon ignorance, is one thing; but to oppugn the truth out of malice is an other. Sacrilege may go single, but if it be combined with obstinacy, and obstinacy attended with impenitency, where before there was but one devil, now there will be seven; and where there might have been hope of reformation, there godly minds will fear, an end in desperation. And so I leave this point.   

CHAP. V.  
Against Parishioners Compilation of holy duties by fraud and sophistication.  
HItherto we have had to deal with them that play at sweepstake, now I come to the pettielassons of the Church, if I may so call them; such as either by sacrilegious subtractions, or injurious calumniations, or customary compositions, or coloured extortions, cirumvent the Minister, and defalk of his duties.  
For not to move the same question so oft, though Tithes were not of Gods own institution, but of mere human imposition, yet now being consecrated to God, whosoever shall under any pretence diminish the same, let them look how they can wash their unholy hands from Ananias fault.  
The people in many places have taken up the trade of the unjust steward, in steed of 100 to set 
Luk. 1●. 6.  down 50. and to write in their Ministers right, 8. for 80.  
So many customs are extant and compositions, so many privileges and prescriptions, so common supersedeas and prohibitions, that he that seems best provided in that kind, hath his living pared to his hands, much after the manner of a Banburie cheese, whose very parings are more than all the meat. Let a Minister complain hereof, they answer with the jews, We have a Law: but such laws are against 
joh. 19 7.  their Lord, and such customs eat out the heart of all conscience. Such customs the ancient and modern pharisees did use to obtrude: but we answer to both as S. Augustine to the Donatists: Veritate 
De vni●o bap. ●.  manifestata, cedat consuetudo veritati: and again, Nemo sit qui ausit preferre consuetudinem veritati: when the truth is once known, let old customs give place unto it, and let none be so bold as to prefer custom to truth.  

Cypr. contr. Aquar.  And S. Cyprian, Si consuetudini suffragatur veritas, nihil consuetudine debet esse firmius, sin consuetudinem stabiliat impietas, eadem facilitate reijcitur, quae affertur.  
If custom doth rely upon truth, it is reason nothing should infringe it: but if your customs be built upon treachery, they may be as easily refused, as 
Len. ●8 30.  they are tendered. But God hath forbidden his people to do after the fashions of the heathen: and our Saviour (saith Chrysostome) did not allege that he was custom, but truth.  
There are two kind of customs that are not good: 1. Consuetudo peccandi, quae tollit sensum (non reatum) peccati: 2. Vetustas erroris, quae quo magis obtinet, magis gravet. There is a custom of sin, which takes away the custom, but not the guilt of sinning: and there is an antiquity of error, the which the more it is in request, the more it offends.  

Decretals.  But to say all in a word, the Canonists have well confined the valitidie of Customs: Consuetudo non derogat iuri naturali, seu divino: therefore all such customs as are derogatory to the Church, are to be reversed.  
Now what are the customs that are laid in our dish, for the most part, but impious, injurious, unreasonable, absurd, unconscionable, and unnatural?  
1. God's word doth legimate the minister in all 
Gal▪ 66.  the goods of the Auditor. Now all and small, the whole and none, do differ much: mere contradictories cannot stand both together. 2. The law of nature 
1. Cor. 9 9  says, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn: custom of some places doth not only muzzle the teacher's mouth, but cut his throat, leaving him so small a portion, as if it were to diet him for surfeit, not to reward him for service. 3. The law of nations saith, the labourer is worthy of his hire, and Christendom hath determined this portion of wages; but custom saith, we have contrary customs to all the world, late exemptions, other dispensations: and thus in effect we fill up the measure of those ancient hypocrites, transgressing 
Matth. 15. 3.  the commandment of God by our traditions.  
But of this point I will speak no more, but refer the reader to the writings of Ma. Eburne, that 
Eburne.  in 2. or 3. treatises hath taken good pains in this point, and conclude;  
If this plea will not be taken in Westminster-hal, that we had a custom in our parish not to come to service, nor to receive the Sacraments, nor to keep the King's peace: how do we think it will be taken at God's tribunal seat at the dreadful day of justice, to plead the custom was such, where we had abode, to be impious, sacrilegious, profane, unconscionable, and cruel to God, and man; to abridge the Minister of his due, God of his service, our souls of their comfort? therefore be not deceived, God is not 
Gal. 6. 7.  mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap; if to the flesh corruption, if to the spirit life everlasting.  
But beside custom (which then when it took beginning, might have some reason, though time hath now eat out those letters,) there is cozenage also, pretending custom, and it is not so; or detaining that which is most due, by palpable wrong, or coloured forgery: in all which cases the world is very prone to favour themselves; and the best caviller against the Parson, is reputed the best parishioner. Some plead that Tithes are not due, iure divino, and therefore lawful to catch what they can from him: but first as in a case of less consequence, when 
Plut.  once it was strongly avouched the enemy would not give battle on that side; it was replied, but if he do, are we not then undone? so I say here, if they be of divine right, are we not then plain robbers & resisters of God? therefore as he, Stultum est in id periculi remconijcere, ubi si in credendo erraveris, nulla dabitur corrigendi copia: it is a mad venture to put the matter to such a push, where if our judgement be miscarried, we are irrecoverably undone. 2. Though that hath been already proved▪ that Tithes, are due by divine right, yet this cannot excuse them from sacrilege, that with a Si Spy, shall diminish the Minister's portion: for now they are dedicated to holy use: therefore what God hath called holy, let no man dare to profane, or lay thievish fingers upon them. 3. The least● accent that sounds to profit, we affix our marginal note unto it, hoc facit pro nobis. The slightest reasons, the singlest pretences, the falsest syllogisms, the foulest elenches; the simplest shows, are of force omnipotent to carry us that way, favores ampliandi: but the strongest proofs, the soundest arguments, the evidentest demonstrations, the authority of Scriptures, the judgements of the Fathers, the decrees of Councils, the determination of laws, the consent of times, the concurrence of opinions, the clamours of conscience, are utterly void of force, and quite plumbous to draw us to part with monie● odia restringenda.  

Lac. 2. 8.  There was at Rome one Clodia, not all of the best report, who when the ship that brought up Berecynthia the mother of the gods was stroke on ground as it passed up the river, so as no strength of hand, nor help of people could fetch her off, this honest Vestal upon her knees besought the goddess, that if she were innocent of that imputation that was strong upon her, she would be pleased to follow the guidance of her girdle; and so fitting the same unto the pinnace, that which thousands of hands, nor all the strength of Rome could not effect, very gently came off without more ado: The like good luck this cause in hand hath ever had; the deepest disputes of learned schools, which no wit could unwind, like an other Gordius nodus; the rustiest reason of a country farmer, can as easily snap in sunder, as Samson did his withes, or hempen bands.  
But let them learn to eat their own bread, and not say with the strumpet, stolen bread is sweet, for 
Prou. 21. ●.  the bread of deceit will turn to gravel; and the manna that is gathered contrary to commandment, will turn to worms: and the gathering of treasures by a deceitful tongue, is but vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death.  
Remember that protestation, little less than an execration, which the people were solemnly to take at the end of every harvest: When thou hast made an 
Deut. 26. 13.  end of tithing all the tithes of thy increase, and hast given it to the Levite, etc. that they may eat within thy gates, and be filled: then thou shalt say before the Lord thy God, I have brought the hallowed thing out of my house, and have also given it to the Levite, according to thy commandment, which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy commandments, nor forgotten them; I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, nor taken aught thereof for any common use, nor given aught thereof for the dead: but have hearkened unto the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me: look down out of thy holy habitation from heaven, and bless thy people Israel (accordingly.) Now if I should demand what law pertained this unto: if to the Ceremonial, it must prefigure something in or under Christ; if Moral, it stands in force; if merely judicial, yet the equity doth bind perpetually: so every way it bindeth still. And therefore as in trial of the suspected wife, if she were innocent, the potion made her fruitful; if nocent, painful; so is this oath, to true dealers with God and his minister profitable, to unjust detainers▪ damnable. And so I end with them.   

CHAP. VI  
Against the stipulation of Simoniacal Patrons for Tithes or Church preferments.  
THE last offenders that I will encounter, are such Magnificoes and Gentlemen of eminency, whom God or gold hath made Patrons of those places where they have their lands. Which right how it was purchased, I dispute not at this time: only thus much, in the times of superstition those offices or privileges, together with the lands were devolued to the Abbeys; and when the Abbeys were suppressed, they became vulgar aucupium, very common game; and when all those things were set to sale by the drum, then nemo non fecit lignationem, they that had money and appetite caught up these commodities: and so have the patronages of the Church been engrossed into great men's hands, that oft times use them neither as patronages, nor things of the Church: for those poor collations that should be bestowed upon scholars, and were indeed deposita pietatis, the pledges of piety; doctrinae praemia, the rewards of learning; laborantium stipendia, the wages of holy workmen; and sanctorum munera, the gifts of holy men, have quite been put to other employments, not given at all, or given to some old serving men, or kept in the patrons own hand, or sore curtailed in the putting off, or saved for pensions for younger sons, or sold in a market to the best chapmen; that we may truly verify that quip of S. Gregory, boves arant, & asini pascuntur, laborious 
in job. 1.  scholars take the pains, and idle drones eat up the gains.  
For the common sort of Patrons have used us for all the world, as the Jesuits do their novices, whom they promise fair, till they have put themselves and their states into their hands, and then they ever after use them in the nature of younger brethren: so do these new masters handle us, who were once freemen, and had somewhat of our own; but now are turned out of our gowns into a lighter habit, by annexing the Church maintenance to their own inheritance, and then feeding us with pittances, as sitting in the place of prayer: or if they use us any better than words, it is after we have sued our livery, and fined for our match. But as Tully says, Nullae sunt occultiores insidiae quam quae latent in simulatione officij, there is no snare to that which goes under the show of service.  
The first institution of patronage in the Church, as is commonly in other cases, (ex malis moribus, bonae leges) was excellent and necessary: but as the fair streams of jordan fall into the dead sea, so in the current of like conveniences, through the fault or frailty of man's nature, the very best things degenerate: so fell it out here: for as it was said of the Clergy, Religio peperit divitias, sed filia devoravit matrem: so is it true of the laity, the Church did first hatch them, but they have eaten out the belly of the dam.  

Pa●. 2. cap. 14.  Marsil. Patavinus in his defensor pacis, hath set down their original in this manner: Antiquitùs viri sancti, & ministri Euangelici, Christum imitari volentes, contra nullum volverunt contendere judicio, etc. In old time the holy men and sincere ministers of the Gospel, desirous to imitate Christ, would not contest in law with any, etc. Therefore the propriety of such temporals as were appointed for their maintenance, remained in the founder or donor of holy demeans; who being so ordained for the maintenance and defence of the Church's lands, were called the Patrons thereof. For so soon as religion began to grow into some dimensions, and the Church to get some matters of inheritance, envy and avarice began to be too busy about her, so as she had much ado to hold her own, or recover her right: and so fast did the eagles follow her carrion, and the birds of pray stoop for booty, that the decrees of almost 40. Synods and Councils, besides decrees of the first 
Hospin.  Popes, and Statutes of Emperors, were all too little to curb their covetousness, or restrain the harpies from devouring all, while the holy and heavenly minded Clergy, were loath to entangle themselves with secular encumbrances, or giving over their books, follow worldly profits. Whereupon to salve this sore, it was decreed in the Council Melevitanum, that a petition should be drawn and presented to the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, that they would be pleased to appoint the Church certain delegates or Advocates to defend their rights: the like was done at other times: who at the first did not bestow the livings, but only defend their lands. And founders of new erections reserved no other power in themselves, but the bare Advocation and presentment to the place. It were too long and intricate to follow the mutations of the times, while sometime the Donors, sometime the Donees, sometime the Patrons, and lastly the Bishops did manage all the business that way; till in the end devotion had surrendered all right into the hands of new erections, out of their zeal unto the regular order of Friars: and so when the religious houses were put down, these went also with the other lands into the fowler's net; and became every man's purchase, as I said before.  
Now what affinity have the modern with the former patrons? if these be our defenders, who shall defend us from our very defenders? the Abuse is evident, I need not open it; the Presenter and presentee have changed offices; the scholar must present the patron with Church angels, or he shall not be presented 
Bern.  to be an angel of the Church: qui primi debent esse ad subsidium, primi sunt ad sacrilegium: her prime succours, are become her principal suckers; and chiefest pillars, the chiefest powlers. Our song of Venite exultemus, is turned to super flumina Babylonis: Simon Magus hath succeeded Simon Peter: the buyers 
joh. 2.  and sellers, whom Christ whipped out of the temple, are let in again at the postern door.  
Which sin, although in propriety of speech it notes but the buyer, yet now the whole transaction of that market, is commonly so called; because Simon Magus proffered money; not for any infusion of grace upon himself, but for the multiplication of his coin to the best improovement, as divines have noted.  
And herein the Canonists have observed many enormities, as Atheism, idolatry, theft, and murder. 1. For making the Church, non domum oratioonis, sed negotiationis, not a house of prayer, but a hole for prey. 2. For turning God into gold, and making not godliness their gain, but ganie their godliness. 3. For robbing their parishes of the bread of life. 4. Starving the incumbent with unrecoverable penury of body, and perjury of soul, and the whole Parish with him, both of bodily relief, and Ghostly life.  

Clemang.  So that we may renew the old rhyme, of such kind of Clerks, that was once of the Pope, in every man's mouth, Tales regunt Petri navem, & ligandi potentiam: Tales gerunt Petri clavem, Hi nos docent sed indocti, indicat scientiam: Hi nos ducent & nox nocti, Such men S. Peter ship do steer, and power to bind and lose. Such men S. Peter's keys do bear, These teach us, and themselves lack light, her knowledge doth disclose. These lead us, and so night to night, And therefore as I said while ere, the Church is little beholden to such patrons: for these resemble the beautiful gate of the Temple, or fair porches of the pool of Bethesda, where lie a great number of Lazars, expecting the waters next motion, the Churches next promotion: wherein they have fair occasion to demerit both of God and men: for God, who sees not how much he might be glorified, if that care were taken in the choice of a worthy preacher, that aught to be: and as for men, it is equally apparent, what profit would redound to the world for instruction and edification. But in my poor understanding, in the neglect of this so pious service to God, and to his Church, as they are faulty and defective to both them, so no way more preiudicious then to themselves; not only in the account that they shall one day give of that stewardship, but in depriving themselves in the mean time, of a learned friend, a godly associate, and a ghostly advocate: for who is so fit to converse familiarly with a gentle or noble man, than such a minister, who both for his honest birth, and liberal breeding, sweet learning, and wise counseling, may be both an adiuvant for his soul's health, as an ornament to his worldly state. For if it be true, that scientia be vitae sol, and amicitia vitae sal, knowledge the light, and friendship the delight of this life; how dark and unsavoury must his life needs be, that deprives himself in the place where he doth or should live, of a learned counsellor, and friendly comforter.  
But how ever their own occasions may be to be called to higher places in their own persons, yet every noble minded Moses should labour to remove this stone, which the envious Madianites have rolled upon the wells mouth, that the Lords flocks may be seasonably watered; lest that both for the present, the world be pestered with idol-shepheards, that have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, tongues and speak not, of which the Prophet speaketh, 
Psal. 115.  They that make them are like unto them; and in the next age, the world be overgrown with barbarousness, rousnes, to the utter prejudice both of Church and commonwealth.  
All which, as me seems, were not hard to be helped, if either the oath of Simony were equally tendered to Patron and petitioner, or all presentations to Churches were in the hands of Colleges and Universities, where no such corruption, for the multitude of the suffrages were to be feared. Whereupon further conveniences would likewise accrue; both the making room for younger scholars, and ridding the springs of old students, which lie there in great number, some 20, 30, 40. years, to their own grief, and the Church's loss, but to upbraid the world of the times iniquity, and learning's misery. And so much concerning the abuses.    

The second part of the Appli cation, which is Instructive.  

CHAP. I.  
Of the several uses of this doctrine.  
AS they that have been present, at some doleful tragedy, or solemn exequy of some of their dearest friends, executed for causes criminal; especially, if they themselves have been any way accessary to the same, cannot but be much affected, both sleeping affrighted with melancholy visions, and waking astarted with dampish passions, which leave the impressions of very sad remembrance long time after in their minds: so we that here have had not the dismal story related, but the deadly spectacle of Ananias and Sapphiraes' suffering, as if it were even acted before our eyes, near friends of ours, I am assured, associates and copartners in wicked sacrilege; if we be not void of all humanity, it must of force affect us very deeply, and pierce our hearts to the very quick, with a true prognosticate of our end and judgement.  

●. Sam. 2▪ 23.  Therefore like joabs men that followed the chase upon Abners' host, when they came to the place where Asael lay wallowing in his blood, there made a stand, in wonder & pity how so brave a man came to so bloody a death: so let us make a pause at Ananias grave, and in wonder and horror somewhat chew upon the matter, and frame the argument but in this manner to ourselves.  
1. If Ananias, that might otherwise be a good man, at lest one civilly righteous, and outwardly religious enough, favouring good men, and countenancing good matters:  
2. If he that committed this sin but once in all his life, and made no trade of it, nor living in it as in a known sin, either years or months, as we do:  
3. That did it not in so high a measure, nor so heinous manner, by the lump and the load as we do, not mincing one manner only, but mouthing many:  
4. That had no example before his eyes of the wrath of God against that sin, no Ananias and Sapphira struck dead before his face, to fear him from it, at lest so fully:  
5. That had not the means of convincing his conscience by Scriptures or arguments, by examples or evidences, of the foulness of the fact, as we have had so plainly:  
6. That did not profess it in the sight of the sun, nor bolster it up with open conrestations, nor blanche it off with fearful execrations, as many of us have done:  
7. If she that came in but as accessary only, and upon the by, for her husband's sake alone; which human law would either approve, or at least not punish:  
8. Lastly, if they that faulted in a matter of their own donation, whereunto no law did enforce them, no bond compel them, but their own free minds and voluntary promise: If they I say, had so heavy a doom, as not to die the common death of other men, nor to be visited after the visitation of other folk; but that God did show a new work upon them, a strange example, a fearful judgement, to strike them dead, to kill them presently, to slay them suddenly, to deny them repentance, to curse them with an everlasting curse, to sammatize them as hath been showed: then let us make a true commensuration of our own demerits, and bethink ourselves, how we shall escape, that have all things contrary, and opposite in direct angles, in comparison of them.  
1. As in whom there is no goodness at all, not so much as demure carriage to extenuate our sins, or ●lcuate our judgement in the least respect with God or the world.  
2. That do no service all our life long, from the cradle to the grave; but many study how to wrong God and rifle his Church, sorrowing for nothing but that they sin no more.  
3. That offend not only in tanto, but in toto, envying our Ministers half a living, but swallowing ourselves many Churches, in act or in desire the mean while.  
4. That sin not of ignorance, as he might; but of malice: not of infirmity, but of presumption; nor confessing it with repentance, but professing it with obstinance.  
5. That have not one Ananias before our eyes, but many; nor single men, but millions confounded with judgements, and howling out of hell, Discite justitiam moniti, & non tem●ere divos.  
6. That come not to our purpose with single impiety, but with fraud and oppression, with oaths and peierations, as if sacrilege were not sufficient without such millstones to sink us to hell.  
7. That come not in as accessaries only, for others company, but breaking the ice, and showing example as prime and principal, only sorry we sin no more.  
8. That do no good ourselves, none suffer other: but doing ill ourselves, and teaching other: that invade the holy patrimony ourselves, and persuade other; that give nothing ourselves, but rob others.  
These and many more the like considerations, which we may represent unto ourselves, should be so many arguments to dissuade us, so many thunderbolts to fear us, not rattling in our ears only, but battering our conscience also, and tearing our souls with the fearful expectance of deserved vengeance.  
If we should but thus enforce this argument, from their action to our instruction, it could not but startle and amaze a great number, that now lie and die in a main piece of Athcisme, without all sense or remorse; and so go down to hell, before they once know what they do: qui tantum non audit fragorem, 
August.  non dormit sed mortuus est: he that hears not this piece of ordnance, is not asleep, but stark dead; wants not so much sense, as soul; is not a man, but a very monster.  
S. Augustine doth teach us this instruction, saying of the rich glutton, Si sterilitas in ignem mittitur, rapacitas quid meretur? & si qui sua non dedit, semper ardebit; quid recipiet is qui aliena tulit? If unfruitful men shall be cast into hell, what do they that are injurious deserve? and if he shall burn in everlasting flames, that gave nothing of his own, how shall he be saved, that takes away that which is other men's? and if he be so fearfully punished that offends in a little, what hell of hells shall suffice for such as rob and rifle all that is holy? bereaving almighty God of his worship and service, the Church of God of that which is sanctified to religion, the Saints of God of the instruments of salvation? for this sin must be appareled in his own circumstances, things consecrate by holy men, dedicated to almighty God, so peculiar unto his service, sinning with so high a hand, impoverishing our soul's solicitors, in famishing many hundreds of bodily & ghostly provision, defrauding ourselves of the bread of life, and many such like. Well then to come to the particular uses.  

〈◊〉 1.  The first is fear against security: this is taught us out of the fearful judgement that fell upon Ananias, and the prime use that the congregation made of the same what effect it did work, namely to affect and raise some passion in the heart in general. Secondly, what that was in particular, the affection of fear. Thirdly, the measure or extension, great fear. Fourthly, the subject in whom, in those that heard it. And lastly, the universality of the subject, not one, or two, or a few, but all, so many as heard those things.  

Exod. 14. 31.  The like we find in other places: the like impression upon the like occasion when the Israelites saw the great work of the Lord upon the Egyptians; it is noted, that the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord, & his servant Moses: the same is observed of David in the sudden breach of Vzza, David was afraid of 
2. Sam. 6. ●.  the Lord that day, so that he durst not bring home the Ark to his house: many like examples are extant in the holy Pages.  
The reason is this, we never fear God so well, as when we are awaked with his thunders, and roused with his judgements; for every affection must be raised by his proper object; love by his mercies, hope by his promises, trust by his providence, and fear by his judgements.  
Now in his judgements, God is set out unto us as a terrible God, a consuming fire: and therefore a fearful 
Heb. 12. Heb. 10.  thing to fall into his hands: therefore the Apostles admonish us, Paul, to work out our salvation with fear 
Phil. 2. 12.  and trembling, and Peter, for as much as we call him Father, 
1. Pet. 1. 17.  that without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, to pass the time of our pilgrimage here in fear.  

Psal. 90. 11.  But as Moses complaineth, who regardeth the power of his wrath? answering himself in his own 
Esa. 58. 1.  interrogation, as Esay, else where, who hath believed our report? surely none or very few: Luther thus resolves the question, who? none before affliction, either on himself or another: for men have a double curtain drawn between God and them. First, of proud knowledge, or presumption; a knowledge without the feeling, a bare speculation, without answerable affection, that which God doth so oft complain of, 
Esa. ●. Mat. 13. Act. 18. Ro● 11.  eyes without seeing, ears without hearing, hearts without understanding, understanding without practising: such a sense as is between sleeping and waking, such a lukewarmness as is between cold and hot, such a consent as is between choosing and refusing.  
The second is hardness of heart, that when his judgements be thundered we fear not, when his mercies are proclaimed we rejoice not, when exhortations are used we move not, as the wise man 
E●cl. 8. 11.  saith, Because sentence against evil works, is not presently executed, therefore the hearts of the children of men are set to do evil: that which we hear doth little profit us, for still we think (as we heard out of Plato) that God's words are untrue, or his arm is but weak. For the first, he that hath verified all his prophecies and promises hitherto, why should we doubt of the effect of his threats to sin? if all is not performed in our time, yet there is another place to consummate his word, and make good his promises.  
For the second, he that put down both all the monarchs and Magicians of the world, with the production of the lest vermin, the work of his little finger; how should he be impotent or weak in avenging on us, whatsoever we do sin? the burning of the world is but the breath of his nostrils: and if all this be little, he can arm himself with deadly weapons, bows, swords, speeres, armies of creatures, chariots of fire, millions of angels: and if this also be yet but little, he is purtraied moreover as a Giant, and that armed cap-à-pie pe, as a Lion; nay all that is strong, a judge, a General, a Prince, a God.  
Again, if he be weak, who are we, or what is our strength? not such as he needs to come against us with all his power, with crows of iron, or greatest ordnance, but with grasses, straws, hairs, worms; & if they should also be to seek, but to commit us together, & dash us one against another; therefore we are to fear him in himself, much more when he ariseth to rage, when he speaketh, threateneth, striketh.  
The prisoner that is attached for criminal causes, feareth the coming of the judge: the idolater, that is not in his religion secured feareth before his painted timber or stone: the devil that is ascertained of his torment, feareth at the thought of his judge and God: therefore he that feareth not God, making his sword drunken with sinner's blood, is more desperate than the ruffian, more doltish than the idolater, more damnable than the very devil: and this shall serve for the first use.  

Catal. test.  2. Care against impiety: it hath been observed by wise men, that the word Conscientia hath in all times had very hard success, so that it never could be full written together in all his syllables: for in the first nonage of the Church, the primer times, they had Con and Sci, but wanted entia: for as another saith, they had aureos sacerdotes, but lignea vasa, golden chaplains, and wooden chalices, good conscience, and great learning, but small revennewes. The middle times had Con and entia, but wanted Sci; honesty and honour, but little or no learning. These last ages wherein we live, have abundance of the Sci, but have lost both Con and Entia, learning God's plenty, but our good meaning and good means are gone one to seek the other: In which regard our piety is become very proportionable to our charity, cold and comfortless, like the Doctor's recipes, which Demosthenes 
Demost.  speaks of, neither so sufficient to keep alive, nor so deficient to let us die.  
It is an error, I may say an heresy, to think that lost that goes to God. There began judas treason, at quorsum perditio haec? to what purpose is all this waist?  

Philo jud.  Victus sacerdotum largior, argumentum est pietatis publicae: it is a sign religion is going, when we see 
Tertull.  the ministers are well maintained. And another, Pietas est pro pietate sumptum facere: it is a part of religion to spend our goods upon religion. Whereupon 
●n Lu●. 21. 4.  S. Hierom, speaking of the poor widow that increased donaria Dei, the holy treasure with her two mites, as many other holy men and women did, saith thus, Implantes illud quod scriptum est, redemptio animae viri divitiae eius, they fulfilled the saying of the Prophet, a man's riches are the redemption of his soul.  

ser. de eleem.  And S. Cyprian, ut intelligamus haec omnia Deo dari, & cum quisquam haec facit Deum promereri, Christus illa do●● Dei appellat, etc. That we might learn that all these things are given to God, and when any doth thus, doth make God his debtor, Christ termeth them Gods donaries: therefore so long as these stand good, our fear of God, our care of his service, our constancy in his religion stands upright: but if we let them fall, or pluck them down, our commerce doth cease with heaven, we renounce our right in heaven, our portion in the son of God of heaven. And so much briefly of the uses.   

CHAP. II.  
The complaints of sundry learned and godly men for the wrongs to the Church of God.  
NEither is this the complaint of one or two discontented men, as the world is made believe; but many more, both in former time, when things were not altogether so evil: as S. Bernard, serm. 6. on the Psalm, qui habitat: and serm. 33. in Cant. most elegantly and excellently: Vae generationi huic à fermento Phariseorum, quodest hypocrisis, si tamen hypocrisis dici debet, quae amplius latere prae impudentia non quaeris, prae abundantia non valet: serpit hody clades per omne corpus Ecclesiae, & quo latius eo desperatius, eoque periculosius quo interius. Si insurgeret apertus inimicus, mitteretur for as & aresceret: si violentus inimicus, absconderet se ab co, nunc quem eij●●et, aut àquo absconderet se? Omnes amici & omnes inimici, omnes necessarij & omnes adversarij, omnes domestic● & nulli pacifici, omnes proximi & omnes quae sua sunt quaerunt: honorati incedunt de bonis domini, & domino honorem non deferunt Olim praedictum est, & nunc tempus impletionis advenit, Ecce in pace amaritudo mea amarissima: amara prius in niece martyrum, amarior post in conflictu haereticorum, amarissimanunc in moribus domesticorum: non fugere non fugare licet. Et pax est & non pax; pax à paganis, pax▪ ab haereticis, sed non profecto à filijs. Vox plangentis in tempore isto, filios enutrivi & educavi, ipsi autem spreverunt me, spreverunt & maculaverunt me, à turpi vita, à turpi quaestu, à turpi commercio quid restat nisi ut reveletur ille homo peccati, daemonium meridianum? To say thus much;  
Woe be to this generation because of the leaven of the pharisees, which is hypocrisy, at least if that may be called hypocrisy, which for the generality cannot, for the impudency cares not any longer to be concealed. There is at this day a disease spread over the whole body of the Church, and the further the more desperate, the more secret the more dangerous. If it were an open enemy that had risen up against her, he might have been cast out, and have withered: if a violent persecutor, she could have hid herself from him: now whom should she cast out, or from whom be hid? all are friends, but all unfriendly; all of kind, but all unkind; all of a house, yet none at peace; all near neighbours, but nearest to themselves; they adorn themselves with the holy inheritance, yet honour not the holy of holies. It was long since prophesied, and now fulfilled: Behold, in my greatest peace, is my bitterest persecution: bitter it was in the death of my martyrs, more bitter in doing with heretics, but most bitter in the manners of familiars. It is peace, and it is not peace: peace from the Ethnic, peace from the heretic, but not from the hypocrite. I may justly take us that complaint; I have nourished and brought up children, but they have despised me; both despised and despited me, with their faulty life, with their filthy lucre, with their fowl contracts, covetousness, sacrilege, and simony. What remains more, but that that man of sin, the daylight devil should be revealed? Thus far he. The like doth Venerable Bede in his scintillae, to which I refer you. So have very many other: among whom I find one Celsus de 
Ce●s. de Veron.  Verona, his dissuasive to the state of Venice, wherein he doth demonstrate, that ever since they took courses to enrich themselves with the spoils of the Churches, (wherein they were foully tainted, as Paulus iovius 
iovius 12.  doth set down, in one war against the Turks imposing five tenths upon the Clergy, to pay sailors wages: and Rentius their General, spoiled the Churches of their jurisdiction, as at Bergamo, to the very bells, which they cast for Canons and Culverins to serve in the wars: and what could the Turk have done more) that ever since, I say, such their sacrilegious dealing they never prospered, but lost to the Turk, lost to their neighbours, went downward strangely both at home and abroad, and were never able to stand on their legs, as they had done before. But I descend to lower times: for as to the former I may well use the byword, Bernardus non vidit omnia: and as to the latter, Bede in comparison of us, had no cause to betake him to his beads.  
D. Luther of the places and times of reformation, 
In Gal. 6. 6.  says thus; I have often wondered why the Apostle so oft and earnestly exhorteth the Churches to nourish their teachers: for in the time of Popery, I saw all men give frankly to the building and the guilding of their gorgeous temples, to the liberal maintaining of the idolatrous service; so that the Clergy every where possessed the most and best lands of all countries; in so much that I thought it superfluous for God to give any such commandment, for as much as they abounded and superabounded with plenty of all things. I thought it more needful to persuade men to hold their hands, then to give any more: for I observed how by this excessive liberality, the covetousness of the Clergy did but more increase, and the rest of the world grew very poor. But now I see the reason why they did abound in that measure, and we on the contrary suffer so much want. In former time, when nothing else was taught but error and idolatry, they grew so wealthy, that of Peter's patrimony (when himself had neither silver nor gold) the Popes had advanced themselves above Emperors, Cardinals above Kings, Bishops above Princes: but since the time that the Gospel came in, preachers have ever been as poor as ever Christ was. We find then by lamentable experience, how necessary this precept of well maintaining the ministers, is in the world: which Paul both here and elsewhere so insists in, and beats upon. Therefore when I read this exhortation of Paul, I both muse and blush, that so great an Apostle should use so many words about this matter. I would be loath to slander and defame this country, which is nothing in comparison of Corinth, which he so much shamed by begging for the ministers and the Saints. But this I see is the lot of the Gospel, that not only no man is forward to give to scholars and the Clergy, but every man is ready to spoil and take away that which they have. In brief, men seem to degenerate to savage and cruel beasts: for all the while that men did teach and preach unto them the doctrine of devils, they were openhanded even to prodigality to those deceivers; but to those that deal the word of God sincerely, they envy that they have, and think every thing too much.  
By which we perceive how necessary this exhortation is, even to true professors: Satan can abide nothing worse than the light of the Gospel; which when he sees to break forth, he labours tooth and nail to hinder it, both by false spirits, and bloody persecutions, and famishing up the teachers. And because he could not here suppress it by any of the former means, of false doctrine, or opposition, he attempteth it by the latter, by withdrawing the living of Ecclesiastical persons, to cause them by poverty and necessity to forsake their standing; and so the people wanting instructors, to grow wild and wicked. This devise the devil sets forward by wicked magistrates in cities and towns, noblemen and gentlemen in the country, who take away the Church's revenues, whereby the ministers should be maintained, and convert them to profaneness; as the 
Micah. 1. 7.  Prophet Micah complaineth, from the hire of an harlot it came, and to the hire of an harlot it shall return again. Some other he diverteth from the Gospel with too much abundance: for when the word of God is plentifully taught, many fall a loathing and neglecting of it; and few will set their sons to school, or to divinity, but apply them rather to more gainful trades.  
It is not then without need that Paul warns all Auditors, to communicate with their Pastors in all their goods, it being sit and equal to requite spiritual things with temporal. But both Court and country, town and city, doth abuse this doctrine at this day, under colour thereof to enrich themselves.  
In Popery great sums were given unto the Priests for masses, dirges, trentals, and such trash: begging Friars had likewise their shares, besides that which pardons, indulgences, and other Antichristian merchandise carried away: from these and a number more the like extortions, we are freed by the Gospel: but we are so far from thankfulness to God, that of prodigal givers, we are become sacrilegious takers, and grow lame-handed for bestowing any thing upon the religion and Saints of God; which is an infallible token, that men have lost both the word, and saith, and all goodness together: for it is impossible for such as are religious indeed, to see their Pastors live in want and necessity. For as much then as they joy to see their ministers bare and poor, keeping their livings from them, or not paying them so sincerely as they should; it is more than manifest that they are worse than the very heathen. But they shall feel ere long, what will follow upon this in gratitude, by the loss both of temporal and spiritual blessings: for it is impossible but this sin must be both speedily and heavily avenged: and I am persuaded that the Churches of Galatia, Corinth, and the rest were so pestered with false Apostles, for no other cause but the small account they made of their true teachers: for it is a just reward, that they that will not give a penny to God, the author of all blessings and goodness, should give pounds to the devil, the author of all evil, and everlasting misery: and that he that will not serve God with a little to his own eternal renumeration, should serve the devil with much to his utter and inevitable confusion.  
Nevertheless it is not the Apostles meaning that men should give away all that they have, but only such liberal maintenance, that their Ministers may live in honest and decent fashion. And this he prosecuteth further, adding a fearful commination to his former reproof and exhortation, saying, God is not mocked: where he toucheth to the quick the perverseness of men, who proudly and profanely despise their ministers, and make themselves sport with their miseries: as great men for the most part do, that make their Pastors their very abjects and vassals; so that if we had not a godly Prince, we had long ere this been driven out of the Country. For when the Pastors demand their dues, or complain of their wants, the fashion of men is to exclaim, that Priests are covetous, and would have they know not what; no man is able to satisfy their ask: if they were true Gospelers indeed, they should possess nothing, but in great perfection follow their master Christ. Therefore the Apostle grievously threateneth such mockers and blasphemers, so despitefully and inhumanly scorning and insulting on their poor ministers; yet forsooth will seem great gospelers: as if he should say, Beware you despisers, although God defer his punishment for a season, then in his good time he will find you out, and punish▪ you for this profaneness, and hate against his ministers: you deceive not him but yourselves; and your wrong will not pertain to him, but return into your bosom.  
And yet our proud Gentlemen, and Citizens, are little moved with these dreadful threats, who at their death shall well understand, that they have not mocked us but themselves: in the mean time, howsoever superciliously they laugh at our present admonitions, we will speak this to our own comfort, knowing it is better to receive, then to infer wrong: for patience is ever joined with innocence, and God will not suffer us to want, but when the Lions shall lack, we shall have enough. Thus far that great and worthy man of God, D. Luther, whose pen and pains God did so powerfully use and bless in the work of the restoration of the world. Unto whom I will adjoin another great instrument of God's glory and the light of his Church, john Calvin▪ whose name hath terror attending on it in the Kingdom of Popery to this day. Where let me observe one thing very remarkable, that these great Saints, so mighty in▪ word and deed, yet having done what was in men to do, against false doctrine, yet could never put out this inbred irreligion: as if this sin were in the Church, as it is written of the heart in the body, primum vivens & ultimum moriens: or like death, the first and last enemy we should encounter. But what saith M. Calvin, we must needs confess 
in Act 4. 34.  that our bowels are of iron, and our hearts of brass, that are no more touched with the reading of this story, where the faithful give so bountifully that which they had: whereas we at this day cannot be content, to hold our own hands from giving any thing only, but most injuriously take away also that which is given by other: they did simply and honestly dedicate their own; we devise a thousand evil shifts to hook and catch, that which other have bestowed: they laid down theirs at the Apostles feet, we take from thence that which is given to God: there men sold their possessions to give to godly uses, here we buy and purchase all we can: then every one gave somewhat to the Church and the poor, now men are so inhuman, that they envy the poor, the commonest things of this life, the very Elements of nature: this must shame us, and teach us another lesson, etc. so M. Calvin.  
Last of all that famous man of worthy memory 
in Gal. 6. 6.  M. William Perkins, whom I may term in some sort the Father of the Prophets, or at least, a learned man that finished that work of his, (but out of his notes) as I take it, complaineth in this manner; We may hence collect (saith he) the great want of devotion in the most men of these days: for as the cry of the poor in the streets, is an argument of the lack of mercy among us; so the number of the needy and wandering Levites, which offer themselves to serve for a morsel of bread, and a suit of apparel, is a pregnant proof, there is no devotion for the maintenance of religion, especially in those that are so strait laced, in bestowing any thing for the good of God's Ministers, and yet in keeping of hounds and hawks, and worse matters, players, and jesters, yea, fools and flatterers, are lavish and profuse. This hath been the practice of the world, and the condition of the Ministers in all times. 400 false prophets were well and plentifully provided for at jezabels' table, when the true Prophets of God in the mean time were driven to hide their heads, having scarce bread and water to live upon, and that also not without danger of their lives: her practice shall condemn a number of our professors: Nay, our forefather's zeal and forwardness, notwithstanding their great blindness, shall condemn our coldness in this behalf. The very stones and rubbish of the ruined Abbeys, and other religious houses shall rise up against us: for they maintained 30. or 40. idle bellies most of them, which did nothing but nuzzle them in idolatry and ignorance, where now the same place will not maintain one competent Preacher to instruct their souls unto salvation: for we take from the Church faster than they gave it.  
In the old time the saying was, what shall we bring to the Seer or man of God? but now the wicked rob-gods say, come let us take the houses of God for our possessions. The jews were even prodigal in their contributions to the tabernacle, offering more then enough, so as they needed to be inhibited with the sound of the drum and proclamation, (as our forefathers also were by the statute of Mortmain:) this lavish giving to the material temple, shall rise up in judgement against our little giving to the spiritual ministry, the living temple of God; nay our taking away from it, being far better than the Levitical Priesthood: for look by how much God hath diminished the cost of the altar, and the charge of the ceremonious worship of the old Testament, so much more liberally doth he look to have the ministery maintained, and the spiritual worship furthered in the new.  
Lastly, if they that help not to uphold the ministery shall be condemned, what shall become of them that rob the Church of her revenues, and devour the holy things? And thus much of that matter.   

CHAP. III.  
A dissuasive to all men not to meddle with things devoted.  
NOw here I desire all men to consider, how prejudicial it is unto the Gospel, how dishonourable to God, injurious to his servitors, ignominious to our country, and dispendious to our own salvation, to beggar and distress those, that for their work sake, should be had in high esteem and worthy reputation. If a man should by covenant and oath bind himself unto the devil, to do his v●most endeavour and faithfullest service, in oppugning and ruining the kingdom of Christ, he could never devise to attempt it more directly, then by driving & compelling the Ministers of God to such straits and difficulties; that wanting convenient maintenance, they must be forced to give over that function, or never undertake it, flying over-sea to Rome, or Rheims, or Amsterdam for more liberal allowance and means of maintenance: or if not so, betake himself to some base and illiberal trade for better supportation: or last of all, as bad as any, to persist in the calling without encouragement or comfort, exercising the same neither with profit to other, not with content to themselves: so that neither themselves can do any good in it, and other are kept off from it, as not being over-willing to buy misery and contempt at so high a rate. Now what is this but a part of that persecution, which julian sometime raised against the Church, by depriving the Clergy of their preferments, the ministers of their maintenance, and the Preachers of their salaries; by which means he did more hurt to Christianity in one year, than many of his predecessors had done by seeking their blood; in many: for as one hath observed, he did tollere presbyterium, but they presbyteros; so do they that by any coloured forgery, or professed impiety, do wrest or detain from the Clergy their just inheritance: they pluck the sun out of the firmament, bring idol-shepheards into the Church, deprive God's people of instruction, themselves of salvation.  
Therefore in this one piece of service, God seems to have placed life and death, blessing and cursing: that, in the kind and conscionable usage of the men and matters of God: this, in the wronging, and sadding of them.  
Consider some passages of holy scripture to this effect: The Prophet repeating some judgements of God to the people, speaketh thus; I will come near to 
Mal. 3. 5.  you to judgement, and I will be a swift witness against the soothsayer, the false swearer, the adulterer, and those that wrongfully keep back the hirelings wages, and vex the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts: Now what this defrauding is, 
jam. 5. 1.  and who be those labourers is seen in that which followeth, v. 8. Will a man spoil his Gods? yet you have spoiled me, and say, wherein have we spoiled thee? in tithes and offerings: ye are cursed with a curse, for ye have spoiled me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven unto you, and power you out a blessing without measure. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruit of your ground, neither shall your vine be barren in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.  

Pro 3. 9  The like hath Solomon, Honour the Lord with thy riches, and the first fruit of all thine increase; so shall thy barns be filled with abundance, and thy presses shall burst 
Eccle: 35 1.  with new wine. And Salomon's imitator, Who so keepeth the law, bringeth offerings enough, and thou shalt not appear empty before the Lord: for all these things are done because of the commandment: the offering of the righteous maketh the altar fat, and the smell thereof is sweet before the most high. v. 8. Give the Lord his honour with a good and liberal eye, and diminish not the first fruit of thy hands: in all thy gifts show a joyful countenance, and dedicate thy tithes with gladness give unto the most high according as he hath enriched thee, and look what thy hand is able, give with a cheerful eye: for the Lord recompenseth and will give thee seven times as much. Now by the way to explicate this, the learned have observed, that the jews did first pay their first fruits: secondly, thereuma or levatio: and thirdly, a twofold tithe, the greater, & the less. Now the thereuma might not be less than the fourth, fifth, or sixth part: and these they called of a good eye, an indifferent, an evil eye.  
The tithe again (S. Hierom writes) was of four sorts: the 1. to the Levite, the 2. from the Levite to the Priest, the 3. to the Lord at Jerusalem, the 4. to the poor every third year: which being not perceived of some reverend men of late times, bred in them this error, that tithes are judaical, because they were to go to the poor once in three years: which was but one kind of Tithes, not the whole genus of them, as this father hath showed. This for the good and evil eye, which Syracides so beateth upon.  

Ser. de temp. 219.  S. Augustine doth mightily enforce this matter: Deus qui totum dare dignatus est, decimam dignatus est accipere, non sibi sed nobis profuturam: he that vouchsafeth to give us all we have, is pleased yet to keep the tenth himself, not for his profit, but for ours: O homines stulti, quid mali imperat Deus, ut non mercatur audiri? foolish men, what hurt is there in his demand, that he should not be thought worthy to be heard? thou dost not give it, but shalt receive it again with advantage. Sith then by paying thy tithes, thou gainest both heavenly and earthly blessings, why dost thou s●and in thine own light by thy niggarddize and folly? Hear you this, O you profane worldlings; all that you have is his, and will you not let him have his own? he asks no gift at thy hand, but that which may be for thy good; he begs no alms, but asks his honour: the tithes and first fruits are not thine but his, & yet thou holdest them from him. What wouldst thou do if he should give thee but one of ten, and retain the 9 to himself, as he doth by restraining the blessed showers, so that thy harvest is starved with drowt, or nipped with frost: Quidigitur avidè supputas, ideo tibi novem partes detractae sunt, quia tu decimam dare noluisti: why dost thou cast thy reckoning on thy finger's ends? thou losest 9 parts for denying the tenth: haec est enim Dei iustissima consuetudo, si tu decimam dare nolueris, tu ad decimam revoceris: so God useth to deal with them that deny him his tenth, to leave him nothing but the tenth to live on: Dabis impio militi quod non vis dare sacerdoti, thou shalt give to the extortioner, which thou wilt not give to thy Minister. This and much more S. Augustine in the same place.  

Hom. 48.  And again in an other place, bringing in a man pleading his charge of children, he saith thus; quam curam agis filiorum, ut eos obruas lachrymis miserorum? nolo sic provideas, ut magis invideas: sic enim Solomon, qui congregat aliena, relinquit filio dolorem: what care is this thou takest for thy children, to overthrow them with the tears of poor men? I would not have thee so provide for them, that thou shouldst rather seem to envy them: for Solomon says, He that gathereth other men's goods, leaves nothing but grief unto his child. It was said by Christ, Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, & give to God that which is Gods: for therefore our ancestors abounded in all wealth, because they paid their tithes to God, and their tributes to Caesar.  
In all which regards the jews, who of all the world were both the most bountiful, and the most true tithers of all their goods, called that action divitiarum saepem, the fence of all their fortunes: and to that purpose have to this day a proverb amongst them, decima ut dives fias, the only way to thrive well, is to tithe well. For which cause the Canonists also make it a ruled case, that a man not thriving upon his living, if he be such as, hath been noted backward in payment of Church duties, his Landlord is not bound in equity to abate his rent, because it is to be presumed, that his poverty is from the hand of God to punish his ill dealing that way. Which opinion doth reside yet in the jews to this day, and some elder Christians, who are scrupulous or rather almost superstitious in this matter, who paying their duties justly, and fearing to possess any of the Churches demeans most conscionably, will rise up in judgement against many of us, of righter religion and deeper learning: which part of Gods fear being razed out of many of our hearts, makes us to defile our hands with holy pillage, and secretly draw down the judgements of God upon ourselves and our successors, without any knowledge, or are least acknowledgement of the true cause, as Achan that troubled both his own house and all Israel, by such ungrateful injury, and injurious ingratitude to God and his Church.  
I heard it once in some earnest lamented, that the goodly copes, & rich accoutrements of the Church have been a long time sick of a consumption, and kept their chamber, and as it were sometimes to take air, would look out at the windows, like prisoners at a grate, as bewailing their long and undeserved durance: whereunto one more merrily then bitterly did straight reply, that it was no marvel: for fools did first bring them in, and knaves had again carried them out. I censure not the sarcasme, but I think they were not so foolish that endowed the Church with such as then seemed superfluous ornaments; as they faulty, that (with them) have bereft the Church of her necessary habiliments.  

Hier.  Olim orbis ingemuit, videns se factum Arrianum, hody ingemiscit videns se factum Atheum: the time was once, that the world wailed to see herself so suddenly turned Arrian, now she hath cause to cry to see herself turned Atheist. That which our Saviour said was only necessary, we hold the only unnecessary: But God forbid that these should be the blossoms of our religion, to rob God of his honour, his Church of her revenues, our souls of selfecomforts, and heaven of her inhabitants. Yet this is not the worst: for when we complain us of our grievance, we are scoffed at with julians' sarcasms; who when the Christians craved redress of their wrongs; would answer them, Your Master bade you use patience, that when one took your cloak, you should give him your coat also: so are we preached unto. O blasphemy, to insult on our sufferings! O impiety, to trample on our misery! must we be silent while you are sacrilegious? must we be patient while you are impudent? God grant it be not said of this sin as was of the like, that caused his sacrifices 
1. Sam. 3▪ 14.  to be blasphemed, The Lord hath sworn to the house of Eli, that the sin of the house of Eli shall not be purged with sacrifice nor oblation for ever.  
The world at this day finds much fault with the nonresidence of Ministers, & facile est invenire ba●ulum ad caedendum canem: howbeit I will not excuse it altogether, yet this I speak of knowledge, that the cruel encroachments of many parrishioners, enforce some men to be non-resident against their wills, being so daily vexed with the abuses in this kind, that they are enforced to a hard choice, to live among them with daily molestations, or to seek any weak stay to live from them, for their ease to give way to their neighbours importunate compilations: singing to themselves that comfortless carol; 
Sic ego nec sine te, nec tecum vivere possum.  I speak not this in hope to do any good, (yet God knows) I fear the evil is cureless, the malady remediless, not because there is no balm in Gilead, or physician there; but for that, when they would have healed Babylon, she would not be healed: yet I must speak it, if not ad correctionem, yet at lest ad convictionem: we shall shortly bring things to that pass, as sometimes Tully spoke of the commonwealth, not to make it the question qualem ecclesiam sumus habituri, sed an habituri sumus ullam; not what Church we shall have, but whether we shall have a Church or no: nec iam de terminis, sed de totapossessione erit contentio; the suit will not be about the landmarks, but the very lands. We are already come to Fimbrias quarrel, to bite and whine, to stab and complain that the dagger went in but half way: we are driven to crave some small pittances of our own possessions, and cannot be heard; or if we be, we are braved with bounty, and upbraided with benefits: they may indeed be benefitia, but as Tully calls them latronum, thieves benefits, to whom we are therefore beholden that they do not kill us, when they rob us. Most of the lands and manors of old erection are begged for fools, a few Prelacies remain, though not unplucked, yet not wholly devoured; some dignities and Ecclesiastical livings have escaped the common wrack, yet narrowly looked into, and vigilantly viewed, to be scored up for the next seazure: men being overbusy and officious to light candles and sweep corners, as a reverend Prelate not long since complained, not to find and restore the lost 3. pence, but to search and seek the left penny.  
But let them beware it prove not too hot for their handling, like the money of Delphos, or the gold of Tholose, which so many as touched came to disaster destinies. God's part hath ever been like God's ark, which so long as it was in the hands of uncircumcised Philistims, never left plaguing them with sundry vengeances, till the heifers brought it home again to the true possessors: like Eagles feathers, that consume and canker all other among whom they are mingled; like the flesh of the altar, wherein a coal was couched which burned the nest 
Chrysoft.  of the bird that ceazt it: Pauca male parta, multa bene comparata perdiderunt, saith one, a few goods evil got, have wasted a great deal that hath been honestly come by: Nolo quis habeat contra Deum, ne non habeat 
Bern.  & Deum, saith another; some having, hath the devil and all.  
Before the Universal devastation of the holy city, an Angel was heard many days together to vt●er these words, as josephus a Priest hath left recorded, Migremus hinc, migremus hinc, Let us away, let us away; as if God and all his holy Angels would take their leave, when sacrilegers are suffered to harbour in the Temple. Strange hath been the horror wherein such people have been had among the heathen, and fearful torments have been devised for them; as propination of Ophiusa, luxation of the body, precipitation from the rock, inhumation of the corpse, intestation of the goods, detestation of the memory; anathematization of the party among us, imprecation and execration against body and soul: as thus; If any shall take away from the holy Church of God her proper inheritance, or such hereditaments as by my will and Testament I here bequeath, (which I hope no man wilever attempt to do) let his account be without mercy at the dreadful day of judgement, when he shall come to receive his doom at the hands of the judge of heaven and earth, to whom I give and dedicate the same. Whose heart doth not tremble to consider such prayers? wherefore let men be well assured, that the pulling down of jerusalem will cost dearer, than did the rebuilding of jericho, whose foundation Hiel laid in the 
Ios. 6. 16.  death of his elder son, and set up the gates in the blood of his younger. Turno tempus erit cum magno optaverit 
Vir. A●n. 10.  emptum Intactum Pallanta▪  

Psal 6●. 10  It had wont to be song, mons domini, mons pinguis, the mountain of the Lord was fat and cruddy, but now her proud flesh hath been greatly taken down, like Pharaos' fat kine in the last lean years, that it is not seen that ever she had been so foggy: another says, 
Psal. 78. 10.  Mons Zion, mons sanctus, mount Zion is most sacred: the Church as it is most venerable, so it should be most inviolable: and is now the plucking down the service of God, the best service we can do to God?  

Luk 7. 7.  To love the nation, and build a Synogogue, was once both thought and pleaded, as a point of highest merit? and doth all desert now stand in demolishing the same? Our Fathers build not Synagogas, but Basilicas; no simple oratory's but sumptuous palaces, and endowed them with plentiful patrimonies, as depositapietatis, & domicilia divinitatis, the earnests of their piety, and houses of the divinity: and shall we so far degenerate from divinity, piety, and humanity also, as to chalk upon our Church door, quo vitius eò melius, a barn or a stable, a hovel or hogsty will serve the turn as well? Oh far be it from Christians to think it, from religious to do it: the blindest Savage in the desolatest Islands that serves his Zemes the devil for God, is not so impious.  

Plut.  The Athenians could not endure to hear Phideas' any further, when being asked what was the best matter to make Minerva's statue, he said Iuo●ie, as being of longer continuance and lesser cost than any thing else.  

Aelian.  It savoured but of Atheism which Leonides Alexander's master had wont to admonish him of, that he should not be so profuse in sacrificing frankincense unto his gods: for it is noted he was ever so magnificent that way, that he never burned other wood in his temple, nor offered less sacrifices then whole hecatombies, oxen by the hundreds: therefore he would tell him, you shall do well, sir, to be more sparing of your hand, till you have conquered those countries where those precious odours grow, Alexander was not well content with this lesson, but held his peace till he had indeed vanquished the East, and then he sent his master for a token many talents of those excellent perfumes, with this salvation; Because thou shalt know that I have conquered the Arabians, I have sent thee some of the gums for a token, and that the greater quantity, because thou mayst leave to be illiberal and a niggard to the gods.  

Aelian.  It hath been observed, by the very heathen, that never any Barbarian, or of the common sort of Naturalists did deny God or his power, or durst offer to their deities any of those prodigious indignities that we read of; only the fine witted fellows the Grecians, whose learning indeed had made them mad, were the first if not the only that did it: Euemerus, Messenius, Hippo, Diagoras, Epicurus, Dionysius, who played his prizes with all his Gods one after another, shaving the golden beard away of God Aesculapius, because forsooth his father Apollo wore no beard; dimasntling god Apollo of his rob of gold, and giving him another of linsey-wolsey; because the gold was too heavy for summer, & too cold for winter; not only robbing, but deriding whatsoever to them was holy. Though one do much stomach it, 
Tully,  that after all this he should ride at sea so calmly, reign at land so prosperously, and die in his bed so peaceably: yet another doth assure us, that all was not gold 
Val. Max.  that glisteren: Nam sacrilegorum poenas quas vivus effugit, dedecore filij-mortuus exoluit, he had but sour sauce to all his sacrilege: for when he was dead in his grave, he paid for all in the follies and misfortunes of his son, which all his life he had escaped.  
But most memorable was the fact & fortune of Cyrus, who broke up in Babylon the tomb of Semiramis, invited thereunto by an inscription upon the same, in hope of much treasure; which sounded to this effect: What King soever shall want money, if he dig down this grave shall find sufficient. Now this tomb had thus stood many years inviolate, till at last Cyrus coming hither, and reading the writing, he fell to spoil the sacred monument; but having spent much pains to little purpose, still frustrate of his hope, all last upon a stone he encountered another writing to this purpose; Surely hadst thou not been a very insatiable wretch, thou wouldst have never violated the temples of the gods, nor ransacked the graves of the dead to fill thy greedy desire: but go thy way, ere long thou shalt find enough: and so indeed he did: for he was caught in the ambushes that Queen Tamaris had laid for him, beheaded, and cast into a but of blood, with that bitter exprobration, Satiate sanguine quem sitisti.  
The like disaster had Xerxes for breaking up the temple and sepulchre of Belus in hope of gold, where he was disappointed of his hopes, but found something which he would not, a viol half full of oil, wherein were the ashes of that old King, and a scroll annexed, containing this scripture, Whosoever shall break up this monument, and not fill up this viol with oil, let him rest assured there remains for him very heavy fortunes: Whereupon he attempting to fill it, found it a thing impossible, the glass either by magic or miracle, never admitting repletion: whereupon in despair he gave it over, expecting the portended mischiefs so threatened unto him: which fell out in fine accordingly, for warring against the Grecians he received an irrecoverable discomfiture, wherein he lost at the hands of a handful of men, 50 myriads of followers, and running away most basely and dishonourably, was put to death by the hands of his own children.  

Aelian.  An other example most remarkable in human stories, is of one Macareus, a Priest at Mytelene, who first robbed, then killed a man in his vestry, that had entrusted him with some treasure: This Mists shortly after solemnizing the trieterical rites of that region and religion, as he was busy in the midst of his ceremonies surrounding the city, new gone out of the temple, where he had left the fire requisite for his sacrifices, his two young children who had observed their father's fashions, fell to imitate his sacrifice, and one with the blade which was used in the service, playing the Priest, killed his brother in stead of a beast, as he had seen formerly performed: the mother in her house near adjoining to the temple, at the noise of the cry came hastily in, and seeing what was done, in great rage snatching a brand that lay on the fire, struck the survivor dead in the place: These sorrowful accidents soon being spread all over the city, came to the cares of the father, who was still in his pageant and idolatrous pomp: but soon leaving his service, he ran to the place, and finding his wife bewailing her fact, with the torch he yet held in his hand, the unhappy instrument of his holy devotions, he killed her at his foot; for which himself was instantly apprehended, tortured, examined; where between the terrors of torment, and horrors of conscience, he confessed the whole matter from the beginning to the end; for which he presently received condign punishment, being put to death to make up the tragedy.  
But come we nearer home unto ourselves, for as much as far fet examples have but far off respects, and it seems to concern us little, what was done so far from home. I will look no higher than the Conquest, where we shall find Earl Godwin, Earl of Kent, father to Harold, whom the Norman overthrew: how treacherously, how impiously did he invest himself with holy possessions? First, by captious sophistry cozening the Archbishop of Canterbury for his manor of Boseham in Sussex, with this devise putting a trick upon him: He had instructed his followers what he would do, and bade them be ready to bear witness what the Archbishop answered to his subtle sophism, and then he requests my Lord to let him have his boseam; the good Bishop thinking he had asked his blessing, little minding his manor, made answer, My Lord I give you my boseam: and so he wrangled the good man out of his land, overbearing him with the testimony of his treacherous attendants. Then by a worse piece of villainy he possessed himself of a Nunnery at Barkly in Glocestershire, by a kinsman's wicked working, left sick among them, who never left working till he had made the most of the virgins there pregnant, and then begged their house, and turned them out a begging. Many other like exploits did that man, but in the end himself at the King's table was choked with a piece of bread, according to his imprecation: and we know what befell his son, and the whole land, not only slain with most part of the ancient nobility of this land, but the sceptre translated to a foreign Prince. I say no more.  
The next is the same foreign Prince himself, William the Norman, surnamed the Conqueror, who using his victory very hardly, beside other things, to make his new forest dispeopled no small compass of ground, 36. parishes with their towns and Churches, of whom a Bishop of Winchester made those verses,  
Templa adimit divis, fora civibus, arua colonis, etc. But what befell him, to say nothing of his own discomforts upon his death bed; his son and successor surnamed Rufus, in his hunting in the same forest, Rex cervum insequitur, regem-vindicta— says the same Poet, as fast as he pursues his game, vengeance pursueth him, he was by chance shot through by Sir Walter Tyrrel. His next son Richard died of the plague: his eldest son Robert, after many mischiefs and miseries done and suffered, had his eyes put out by his own brother, and died most miserably in durance and prison: and Henry his nephew by Robert, in the same forest also came to Absaloms' end, being hanged in a tree as he chased his dear. So Sacrilege ends for the most part with extirpation, as hath been noted.  
The last I will name, not the least in this catalogue, shall be D. Voisie Bishop of this city of Excester, who from a petty Canon in the Church, rose to the Bishop's mitre; but there sell to that wicked resolution, that the wicked Nero sometime had done, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, when I die, I care not though all the world die with me: for this high Priest forgetting that ever he had been clerk, or not caring whether there should be any after, like politicians newly risen, plucked up the ladder after him, that no more should ascend: for of 13. goodly manors that belonged to the sea, he made so good riddance, that he scarce reserved one for them that should follow: This Bishop at one time relating unto Steven Gardiner then Bishop of Winchester, what provision he had made in the Church for his grave, received this answer, My Lord, what talk you of a Church? a dunghill is fitter for your deserts then a Church, which have so shamefully mangled that goodly sea: you have played the beast and deserve no better place than a beast: & so (I have heard) indeed was served. But this I have been very credibly informed of, that with his holy pillage he purchased many privileges to his native soil of Sutton Colfield in Warwickshire, and enriched many of his kindred, which now they are but little the better for; many of them, or as they say the most, having been weeded out by dishonourable ends.  
These have been the successes of sacriledgers for the most part, God having set a mark upon them, as he did upon Cain▪ that all the world may take notice of them: and as David saith, that the righteous may rejoice 
Psal 5●. ●0.  when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the ungodly, and men shall say, verily there is fruit for the (sacrilegious:) doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth.  
I will end this chapter with an example of another kind, that is of mercy for the rareness of it, and that 
T●●them.  of Dagobertus a King of France, who newly coming to his Crown, lived a most dissolute and debauched life a long time; yet in the end by a great and gracious visitation sent from God, he had a fair coming off again, as had ever any. This man first married two wives at once, besides Mistresses sans ●ombre, some whereof he carried about with him wheresoever he went, other he maintained very sumptuously as queens in many places of the Kingdom; it is not possible to comprise the least part of his lewdness in any mediocrity of words, which when his Bishop Amandus reproved him for, he very unjustly sent him into banishment; whom he had no sooner rid his hands of, but he fell to fouler matters, robbing of Churches, and pulling down religious houses, and turning out the Ecclesiastical persons into the open world to take air. At length when God saw his good time, he sent a very heavy visitation upon him, (I find not what was the particular) that through the good grace of God wrought so holy and wholesome contrition in him, that he vowed to God, if he did recover, to make some amends: which he faithfully performed according to the devotion of those times, erecting churches, building Colleges, founding monasteries, always and openly confessing, that the judgements of God had been sent unto him, principally for his outrages committed that way.  
Among other monuments of his repentance and humiliation, he founded the monastery of Wissenburg in Germany, where he left for a monument of his true conversion, a confession penned with his own hand, to this effect;  
In what manner almighty God hath plagued and restored me again, I have thought good to publish by these presents to all the world, to the end that all men may take notice of my fall and folly, and likewise of my restoration & restitution, but chiefly that so many as shall hear of my doings, may be afraid to make havoc of God's holy Temples, and learn to perform such reverence thereto, as best beseemeth.  
Be it therefore known, that after my Father Lotharius was dead, I took upon me as next heir, the government of the kingdom, but being transported with errors and lightness of youth, I neglected the duty of a good Prince, discharging neither justice nor conscience, but as I was carried by humour and favour. Among many other my excesses, I became a ruiner of God's inheritance, and a demolisher of his worship, which I ought to have set up and maintained, till at last that God in mercy to chasten my rebellion, did dash my pride, and cast me down; and when he had bruised me sufficiently, he received me again to mercy: and this confession I leave against myself here in record, that none may dare in like presumption to violate this holy place, at this present by me devoted to God. Thus far Dagobert: which I have set down the more fully, because there are so few examples of reversion in this kind, as it is in the fable of the Fox, replying to the Lion for not visiting him,  
— quia me vestigia terrent,  
Omnia te advorsum spectantia, nulla retrorsum. And so much shall serve for dissuasion.   

CHAP. IU.  
An humble Obtestation to the Hon. and Wor. Knights and Burgesses of the Parliaament when time may serve to remedy this mischief.  
ANd now most worthy Patriots, let me address my speech to you, that manage the greatest affairs of this kingdom, and that not by way of oneration, but most lowly summission; May it please you seriously to consider this matter with me; and see wherein your service may be honourable to God▪ glorious to yourselves, comfortable to the Church, and profitable to your country. It is no new thing for us to complain, or for you to hear of the mischiefs of church-wormes: for sacrilege doth deserve to hear of his doings, having been often delated, bound over, scourged, branded for incorrigible, and condemned for felony against God and man; but yet he findeth such friends among those of the bench, that he is still reprieved, and either pardoned his fault, or kept unexecuted; by which means he still breaks out again, and I know not whether more efferated by former attatching, or animated by his often dischargings, he ever rampeth more fiercely than before, and threateneth his accusers, to ruin all that is holy. To you therefore doth the poor mangled and menaced Church of this renowned Island, in suppliant manner hold up her hands: from you she looketh, she challengeth, she deserveth supportance. Among you she is assured she hath very many in whom she is more than ordinarily interessed, as who are risen by her fostering, grown great by her favours, and even sly with her feathers: therefore to you she sues, and if she could be understood, she would thus complain, and thus entreat;  
Alas my sons; and are these the rewards you render your mother, for her pains in bearing, and her patience in rearing so noble spirits, and worthy wits, both formerly not without sore travel and interruption; and lastly, for 60. years together without stop or intermission; to think you are not well said with my milk, except you draw my blood also? What means those old dismemberings, these new detractings, envious pryings, odious beggings, sad dispute, savage encroachings upon me and my small endowments? What good will these small remainds of my dowry do you? what pleasure will my undoing breed you? if this little estate that is left, make you rich and me poor, you great and me small, what will be the end of such gains? Is having grown so toothsome to you, that you make no care from whence it cometh? is holy demeans so wholesome a dish, that you will contend who shall do most harm? is temporal riches so necessary for you, that you fear not to make it up with the spoil of spiritual? are your sons so dear unto you, that they must be raised with the ruin of your fathers? Cannot you be indulgent parents, except you be unnatural, impious, sacrilegious children? are you so smally beholden for means unto your father, that you must break in and rob your mother? or is it my connivence at former wrongs, that makes you presume to wrong me more? Grow you weary now of your mother's blessing? do you envy her being? desire her cursing? If it be so, my sons, that you will either sell me at home, or send me abroad, yet give me my dowry that I brought you with me, my peace I have procured you, my plenty wherewith I have crowned you, my treasures that I have caused you, and the millions of good things wherewith I have blessed you. Woe is me, that I am grown so unfavourie to be hated, so ugly to be abhorred, so barren to be rejected, so decrepit to be scorned, and that of mine own cradle. Is a stepmother become so lovely, or an empty house so handsome, that I am driven away for an other to have my room? Alas my sons, I will say what I see, the liquorish look after my poor estate, shows too great to your greedy eyes; the deceitful lustre of a painted beauty bewitcheth your lascivious eyes, as you think to enjoy, as I know to endure her glorious beauty in glorious tyranny; who if she comes in, will not only fetch back all that was mine, but also fetch in all that is yours. Remember this, but whom you dishonour, and whom you please: did not the enemy triumph enough before, while you unripped the seamlesse coat, but you must yield them more content by distressing me their hateful opposite? What mean you to do? remember but to whom you do it, and do your will; to one that upholdeth the sceptre, maintaineth you, secureth all you have: they are my servitors that stead you, my Priests that bless you, my ministers that profit you, who cause your God to be obeyed, your governors honoured, your people informed, your country renowned, and your happiness continued. Who watch for your souls but they? who wake for your safety but they? who avert your imminent judgements but they? who procures your eminent blessings but they? Grieve nor, O grieve not their souls by grudging them their lines: if you once drive them from their station, or discourage them in their function, you shall be ingrateful in grieving them, impious in expelling them, miserable in missing them. If I have not been barren or abortive in my breeding, nor defective in my fostering, nor illiberal in my loving you; be nor ingrate to them, unkind to me, averse from God. If I have interest in your loves, or part in your lives, or portion in your hopes, by the father that begat you, by the womb that bore you, by the breasts that sucled you, by whatsoever of mine hath been dear unto you, I will and command you, I entreat and beseech you, I bind and adjure you, not to suffer your mother any more to be dishonoured, not to let your fathers any more be impoverished, not to suffer your souls any more to be deceived, nor your hands with holy pillage to be defiled, nor your hopes of everlasting bliss to be evacuated: so shall God even your Father bless you, the Son receive you, the holy Spirit comfort you, the holy Angels observe you, my arms embrace you, and all the company of heavenly Saints serve you: so shall the judgements that hang over your head pass by you, the evils that are gone out escape you, the devils that now smite not hurt you, and hell that now gapeth not devour you: so shall your polity stand unconquered, your families be continued, your candlestick unremooved, your God appeased, your souls saved, and all your holy wishes most happily accomplished.  
If the Church the mother of us all could be heard or understood thus to speak, and thus to plead; what could ye answer, what Apology would you make, or excuse pretend to her as affectionate as just complaint? but now not only she, but I am well assured God himself in the greivances of his Ministers doth say the same with a more audible voice, & more real effect: that God I say, whose houses ye have suffered not to be robbed only, but ruined also, his revenues diminished, his Churches demolished, his donations alienated, his holy things usurped, his portions interuerted, and his worship dishallowed.  
All the world till late days, thought the Church the safest sanctuary to repose their treasures in, their wealth, their good works; but now the poorest cottage is far safer than the strongest Cathedral. Then it was thought as great an immunity to the deponent, as honesty and honour to the recipient: now the Orphan is injured, the widow wronged, the father discouraged, the Sanctuary profaned, and the 
●ot●en.  Priest of all other avoided. I read what time the city of Ephesus was beleaguered with a long and dangerous siege, and the inhabitants with doubts of war daunted, the governor gave this advise, to tie the walls and gates of the city with ropes and cables to the Temple of their Goddess; to the end that when all they had were so peculiarly surrendered unto their Deities patronage, it should not only be impious, but sacrilegious to the enemy to attempt that which was now sacred. Oh, what is become of ancient holiness, that have now inverted the method of true security, when we do not annex our chests to Churches, but incorporate the holiest of Churches to our private chests and patrimonies!  

Sigeber.  justinian the second, having a great desire to pluck down a Church in the city of Constantinople that stood in his light, fast joining to the Palace, that in the room thereof he might erect a Terrace for the people to see and receive the Emperor, entreated Callimacus then Patriarch to persuade the people that it was neither displeasing to God, nor offensive to any, to convert Churches to other uses, as those had done that had overthrown the heathen temples, and disposed of them otherwise. To whom the holy Archbishop made this reply, Sir, God forbid, that ever I should use my tongue in persuading men to pull down Churches, who have need to incite them all I can to build more. True it is, this request and this repulse proved fatal to both: for the Emperor bearing spleen to the Patriarch for this, the Patriarch joined with Leontius to depose justinian; and justinian after much hurly burly recovering the diadem, first blinded, then banished the Patriarch. It is too well known with what animosity S. Ambrose resisted Theodosius in like case, which elsewhere remembering, he useth these words: Meministis ipsi, 
office 2. 24.  quoties adversus regales impetus pro viduarum imò omnium depositis certamen subierimus: You remember how often I have been put to my plunges, in the behalf of the Churches, the common bank of the widows and all the word, against the great assaults and impetitions of the Emperor. The like he recordeth of another, whom he calleth Episcopus Vicinensis. Oh that there were the like spirit in our modern Bishops, in your honourable Senators, that when any sacrilegious bill, or mercenary tongue shall rise up to persuade to like dishonourable courses, he may by your learned speaker, or religious members, be quashed, silenced, committed. However you shall please to humour any in like suit, may it please you out of the greatness of your place, and seriousness of your employments to consider your private estates, your houses honour, your Empire's glory, your saviours worship, nequid Ecclesia detrimenti capiat: For further persuasion hereof vouchsafe to hear this wholesome advise, which though for the author ye are to repudiate, yet because it is an Oracle, not to calumniate.  

M. A●●el.  What time Camillus was banished to Capua, and the French under Bremus were possessed of Rome, L. Clarius the Consul was sent by the Senate to Apollo Delphicus, to demand counsel what they might do; where he remained 40. days together in humble supplication before the shrine, without once being heard or vouchsafed answer: and so after 6. weeks expense of time, and loss of much treasure he returned as he came: Then the Senate, thought it good to send the Priests, out of every Temple in Rome two, who arriving there, were presently answered in this manner; Marvel not ye Romans, that I have thus long refused to answer: for foolish people use never to seek to God, till men do sail them; but therefore doth God refuse to counsel such in their extremity, because they never come at them but in extremity. Take this of me, never leave God to fly to men; for it more availeth to hold league with God, then love with all the men alive; be wary how you offend God, for he can damage you more than men can do: God forgets not men, except he be much and oft forgot of them; and therefore suffereth he them to persecute one another, because they all join to persecute him or his: if then if you will look to have him favourable to you in time of war, you must be sure to serve him in the time of peace: and know this, that extreme chastisements, are for extreme sins. These are the Mementoes I send to the Romans: and as to L. Clarius, I vouchsafed to make no answer to so evil a messenger: for take this from me, and if you find my counsel ill, then take no more: In foreign ambassages send alwaeis your most eloquent Orators, in Senate at home put always the wisest men, your wars abroad commit always to the most valiant Commanders, and in the negotiations of god, put always the most innocent Priests: for god will never appease his just ire against unjust actions, but if your solicitors be most holy and righteous. As for the French, they cannot be driven from Rome, till Camillus and all the guiltless citizens that are now in banishment are recalled home: these wars do but warn you of your offences past; for look what evil wicked men do to the good in diverse days, by other as evil they shall be sure to be repaid in one.  
This was the answer which Apollo gave the Flamines that were sent unto him; an answer to say no more, that might have befitted a far better author; but it is not speaking, but doing that saves; wherein we have the start of the wisest Atheist or Devil in the world. Consider, I beseech you of the matter, and apply it if you please.  
To conclude, as they recommended all their State to the wisdom and providence of their Senate, so do we the poor and despised Ministers of this Kingdom, in the behalf of the Church, recommend the care of God and his Gospel to your wisdoms and devotions our Consuls and Senators: not as finding defect in your diligence; but as he, 
Qui monet ut facias quod iam facis, ipse monendo.  
Laudat & hortatu, comprobat acta suo.  And so in all humble duty recommending your consultations to the spirit of wisdom, and the great Counsellor, and your lives and spirits to the God of spirits and life, I end.   

CHAP. V.  
Consolation to my Reverend Fathers and Brethren of the Clergy, against the injuries of the times.  
MY Honoured Lords, Reverend Brethrens, and beloved fellow-labourers in the Gospel of God: Considering the daily and dangerous in justice which the world doth practise upon the Church, I need not tell you that the same doth concern all you, that are the deputies of God in this case, as from God to men in matters of grace and internal benediction, so of men to God for temporal tribute, and thankful retaliation. If then we find our charges ingrate, our Superiors sinistrous, our neighbours injurious, our auditors sacrilegious, not respecting our labours, nor requiting our cares; neither reverencing our persons, nor abstaining from our pensions; what remains for us to be done, but to descend into ourselves, and examine our consciences in the sight of God and his holy Angels, whether it be the guerdon of our sins, or the gauging of our graces, which he looks should be real and eminent in us. And albeit we must truly agnize that such usages are the portion of our cup, and the inheritance of our profession, which our Master hath left unto us; yet it cannot be denied, but we shall find sufficient cause within ourselves, to ascribe the same to our deserts and aberrations.  

Pet. Mart.  It is written in the late histories of the Indian people, that if they find in their Temples and Sacraries of their superstitions, any horrid or abhorred creatures, as owls, or backs, or toads, or serpents, which men account as hateful and ominous, they dispose themselves to all the shows of humility, that their holiest ceremonies can declare, to expiate the anger of their displeased Zemes and furious Deities, which they hold presaged by such impurities. The like I take it are we to do, and make collection of these unclean vermin in the sanctuaries of God, that God is most highly offended with us, and that these impure monsters, and prodigious Harpies do really prognosticate the threats of heaven, as to the whole land in general, so to us of the holy ministery in particular, whose the Temple is, and the signs portended there more peculiar appropriate to our calling.  
Wherefore we shall do well to search and dive into the true reason, and howsoever their creeping in or skulking under some groundsel or threshold, makes them nothing the holier, but helps their damnation as desperate hypocrites, yet the desert is from ourselves: so that as we denounce his judgements to them, so are we to descry his justice to us, so to suffer us to lose our reverence and rights, that are fallen away from his fear, honouring ourselves more than his Son, more respecting our riches then our religion, and more caring for gold then we do for God.  
I beseech you then, right reverend and renowned Fathers and Brethren, give me leave with a light finger, if not to launce this sore, yet not blanche the search: for I take it it is no dead flesh that needs any boisterous rifling, but tender and sensible to iudure the ransacking, nec ut verenda retegam, sed ut in verecunda confutem, as sweet S. Bernard; rather with Sem to awake your drowsiness, then with Cham to display your nakedness.  
First then I fear, it may by some be thought, that your ambition, my Honoured Lords hath excited these Harpies of state, whereby you have laid open your chests to their ravening hands, and your Churches to their irreligious hearts. Or it may be you the Canons and Prebends of the greater Churches, that are either covetous, or umbratilous, or polypragmonous: or you my brethren and fellows in the country, partly schismatical, partly symoniacal, men seditious or scandalous, more frequenting the palace than the pulpit, and more soliciting the hall with suits, than heaven with Saints; that have opened the mouths of these cursing Shemeis, and railing Rabsake●s, and strengthened the hand of sacrilegious achan's, and irreligious Atheists. Or it may be as every one severally, so all combinedly have sinned, and committed something preiudiciously to our persons and patrimonies: As for example;  
When a symonizing Scholar, agrees with a Gehezying Patron; and a judaizing Bishop, to make a diabolizing impropriation: or as Malmburiensis writeth of one half Bishop of Norwich: when there meets in one individual, a Scholar, a Courtier, & a flatterer; a Symoniake, a Bishop, and a Pirate. However it be, I would to God that our simony, and policy, and idleness, and covetousness, and absence, and silence, and baseness and business, which hath drawn this misery upon us with cords, and this mischief with cartropes, were sifted and expiated as it ought, that God might see our humiliation, and the world our satisfaction.  
Therefore we must take this as Gods most just retaliation; forasmuch as we have let go those greater points of holiness, mercy, justice, faith, and faithfulness, it is but meet that we should lose these diminitives of mint, and anise, and cumin: because we give not God his due, other give not ours to us: this being the condition of our obligation, That they shall be honoured that honour him, and they 
1. Sam. 2. 30.  but little esteemed that despise him: and this is that which S. Augustine saith, Our inferiors both men and members, derie us that obedience which we detain in our places from God.  

Magdeb.  The history of the renowned Bishop Amphilochius Bishop of Iconium, is well enough known, and the stratagem he used to the Emperor Theodosius, to show him his error in the matter of the Arrians. The holy Bishop had solicited this Emperor to expel the heretics, that had as then too much favour in the Empire, as some of their fellows have at this day with us; but the Emperor out of his mildness had forborn to do it, as some other do also now; so as by this connivence they had almost marred all▪ whereupon the good Bishop was driven to bethink himself of some remedy, to awake the Emperor out of his dead sleep: for which cause having within a while occasion to come to the Court to visit his highness, he found the young Emperor Arcadius (whom his Father had newly created to govern with him) sitting in state together with the old Emperor. The good Bishop made humble reverence to the Emperor Theodosius, but to Arcadius did none at all. The old Emperor thinking he had done it by oversight, put him in mind to salute Arcadius also: the Bishop replied, it sufficed to honour him, and therefore needed not reverence his son also. The Emperor now growing into choler at so high contempt, bade he should be carried out of the Court: whereupon the Bishop taking the opportunity, told the Emperor to this effect; And do you, sir Emperor, take the dishonour of your son so heinously? then I beseech you consider, how God will take it at your hands, to dishonour his Son. The Emperor pausing somewhat upon his speech, and weighing the justness of the reproof, acknowledged his error, and presently took order to avoid the Arrians out of the Empire.  
Therefore who knows whether God hath bid Shemei curse David, or sends Senacherib to spoil jerusalem: for as Achior speaks unto the great Commander, If there be error in this people, or that they have 
jud. 5. 10.  sinned against their God, then mayest thou go up, and overcome them: and as Zeres speaks, If we have begun 
Esth. 6. 14.  to fall before them, it is to be feared we shall fall more: for they are jews: but if we shall repent us of our sins, and resume our first love, who knows if he will returns 
Io●l 2. 1●.  and leave a blessing behind him, a meat offering and drink offering to the Lord our God: therefore let the Priests and the Ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine inheritance a reproach, that the heathen may rule over us: so shall the Lord be jealous over his people, and restore the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker, the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, even the strong host which he sendeth among us.  
But in case for all this, that God shall think good to verify that on us, which was said of Christ by john, Me oportet minui, illum autem crescere: yet let us show the world our Christian patience, and holy confidence, against their fury and falsehood, that we serve not God for meed, as they object; but in the midst of malice, in the midst of penury, in the midst of infamy, we will follow our leader without forsaking our calling: Malus est miles, qui imperatorem gemens sequitur: he is but white-livered, that follows arms but in fair weather.  
The world hath been persuaded I fear me, too truly of too many, that scholars fly to the ministery, as malefactors do to the Sanctuary, for sinister and oblique respects; for imunitie, or impunity, for ease or honour; as many of them that have had either foolish or deformed, needy or unthrifty children, such they set aside to wear the Ephod; and other do gladly recount, how their ruined estates and forlorn hopes have been wholly supported by the pillars of the Church, which otherwise had sunk in everlasting undoing: so making the Church their ultimum refugium, the shoot-anchor of their fortune, and the bawd of their bankruptnes. Thus measuring others feet by their own last, presume the same of our diversions: now let them by our carriage be confuted, and given to know we had no Cynosura, but Zion, no collimation but conscience, no aim but God's honour. And that if God shall please not only to touch us, but to take all the rest from us, and give Satan sufferance, not only to winnow, but to waste us, yet we will be the same, and serve him still: this may be our comfort, that God dealeth no worse with us; this our hope, he means no more harm unto us; this our harbinger, that he may call us to a harder trial.  
For have we any assurance to far better than our Fathers? any privilege of birthright to sit safer than our brethren? we have not yet resisted unto blood, perhaps we must; therefore let us not love these things too much, lest we leave better things for them▪ let this wean us from the world, and teach unto serve God in all weather.  
As for our enemies and overthwart neighbours, let them not triumph in our tribulations; the fate of Babel, comes in next after the fall of Zion: now the time is, that judgement must begin at Gods own house: 
1. Pet. ●. 17.  and if it first begin at us, what shall the end of them be that obey not the Gospel of God: and if the righteous be scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? wherefore let them that suffer, according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator: for this is God's use, when he hath beaten his children sufficiently, he will cast the rod in the fire: and the Apostle says, It is a manifest 
2. Thess. 1 5.  token of the righteous iudgemen of God, that ye may be accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which also ye suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God, to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, and to you that are troubled, rest with us when the Lord jesus shallbe revealed from heaven, with his mighty Angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the Gospel of our Lord jesus Christ: who shallbe punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his Saints, and to be admired of all that believe in that day.   

CHAP. VI  
The conclusion: where are touched the fountain and remedies of all this evil.  
ANd now I feel my pen weary with the chase of this noisome beast, I will sound a retreat and draw to end: so oft as I enter into the serious consideration of this sin, and the great inconveniences that it hath and daily will derive unto the Church of God in this land, (as I often do) I cannot but think of that word of Abner upon the play of the 
2. Sam. 2. 16.  young men, shall the sword devour sor ever: knowest thou not it will be bitterness in the latter end? for seeing the dead sea, into which things must needs descend, in the farthest fall is nothing but atheism and all manner of impiety, let us a little look upward unto the head, and search whether it may be stopped in the spring, or diverted some other way.  
The true cause then of all this ramping, and reveling against God and his holy Church is first, profanes; and secondly, covetousness; a very contempt of heaven and all true happiness, and a greedy desire to inglutte ourselves with Esau's pottage, the commodities and emoluments of this present life.  
For the first, if ever this land fall back again, by a fearful recidivation into the carnal impieties, and earthly sensualities of the Romish religion, as it is in a fair forwardness unless God prevent it, it will be by the means of our notorious Atheism and fearful Apostasy from the true fear of God, and care of all goodness: for these are at least subordinate one to another, if not identities: for they that will but look into the manners of the modern times, shall well perceive that many that had escaped the Scylla of superstition, are again very dangerously beleaguered in the Charybdis of irreligion; teaching their hearts with Plato's Atheist, either that there is no God at all, or that he is not such for mercy or justice as men are made believe, or at least that men may do (as in too many spiritual courts) buy out their heavy penance with light commutements. To which purpose I call to mind a strange narration of M. Greenham a zealous preacher sometime of our Church, of a certain instable sinner, that at first had been a Papist, till arriving at better reason, he found their fashions to come much short of their gaudy shows: then turned he his tippet, and became Protestant, where he stayed not long, by reason they showed much coldness in their profession: at last he separated, and was a Fami●st. Now whether it was he had not left himself any further choice, or took a better taste of their religion, there he fastened: now the first principle that they sought to instill into him was this, that there was no God. Now whether it was the just dereliction of God to punish his giddiness; or the fatigation of a wandering spirit to purchase quietness; or the correspondence of the maxim suiting well with his wickedness; he drunk in this position very greedily, and thereupon began to frame conclusions; If there be no God, then there is no heaven nor hell to reward men's actions: if neither of these, what madness is this to defraud my soul of certain pleasures for uncertain fantasies. This diabolical collusion rather than conclusion, so far prevailed with him, that like some ignis fatuus, it carried him headlong into all manner of licentious downfalls: first for pleasure, to eating and drinking like another evangelical Epicure; then to mainetain that charge, to robbing & stealing; and last of all, as the reward of such courses, to apprehending and hanging. Now at the place of his death, & the point of the last gasp, he requested a stay, where confessing his whole manner of life, his wallowing in and out of all religions, his beginning in Papisme, his continuing by Protestisme, and his ending in Anabaptisme, he delivered these words; Now do I find at my death, the error of all my life: I was taught, and did believe there was no God: but here I find the contrary, and that he is most just to reward all wretched contemners; and so he ended the Catastrophe. I question not the truth of this story, because I knew the reporter: I will not scholy upon his volubilous expatiation, voluminous gradation, meritorious conclusion. Let us be afraid of these excentrical motions, which the Prophet calleth Spiritum vertiginis, a spiritual giddiness, whereby men wander in the labyrinths 
〈◊〉 sim. 3. 6.  of their own levities', like Paul's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, ever learning, and never come to knowledge; and 
Col. 1. 23.  let us follow the Apostles Cubical station, continuing grounded and established in the faith, not being moved away from the hope of the Gospel.  
For the remedy then of this peccant humour, the counsel of the Philosopher is not amiss, to bend 
Arist. Ethic:  the bough the contrary way: for diseases lightly are cured with their contraries; as fullness, with fasting, malice with mercy, avarice with alms, impiety or contempt of God, with an awful fear of his greatness, a faithful love of his goodness: for he will be honoured either à nobis, or de nobis, by religious adoration, or dangerous dereliction. Therefore if we serve him, he will serve us; but if we shall cast off all his fear, pluck down his houses, mangle his inheritance, hinder his service, discourage, dishonour, disannul his ministers and ministery, ho will leave us to the counsel of our own hands, to make lust our law, and might our moderator, punishing impiety with incredulity, and incredulity with complete misery, as he did our heathen ancestors, whom he gave up into a reprobate mind, to do all 
Rom. 1. 30.  such things as were not convenient, being full of all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness: full of envy, murder, deceit, debate, taking all things in the evil part; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, doers of wrong, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unplacable, unmerciful: God still punishing one sin with another, till we come to that height, as to leave ourselves neither sin to commit, nor place to repent; as all robbe-Gods do.  
2. The second main wellspring of Sacrilege, is that root of all evil, Covetousness:▪ quid non mortalia pectora cogit Auri sacra fames— the world now adays doth build their worth upon nothing but wealth, and their whole reputation upon that false position, tantum sumus (not quantum scimus, but) quantum possidemus: acknowledging no Deity but Pluto, and no God but gain; framing to themselves not heavenly, but hellish felicities: for he that knew them better than we, called riches thorns; now thorns we know, though at the spring they show fair with their green leaves and white blossoms, yet are they but thorns, and he that toucheth them, except he be better armed, shall feel their prickles; 
1. Tim. 6. 9  so do riches: for they that will be rich fall into temptations and snares, and into many foolish and noisome lusts, which drown men in perdition and destruction: for the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some have lusted after, they have erred from the the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.  

sanct.  Take one example, in stead of a Comment upon Paul's text, of Mauritius the Emperor, adopted by Tiberius the second to succeed in the Empire: He at the beginning was an excellent and fortunate Prince, subduing and vanquishing the enemies of the Empire, with great applause and admiration, as the Armenians, Persians, Scythians, Lumbards', and Huns, and many worthy exploits beside, with much praise and commendation: but in the end being mightily transported with filthy avarice, he addicted himself to no other thing but scraping and hoarding of money, and that by any fowl or base means whatsoever: for beside other sordid and dishonourable courses, he fell to defraud his soldiers of their pay that served in his wars, in countries far off, and weather very grievous: by which courses having lost the hearts of his men of war, he received an exceeding great overthrow, whereby a mighty multitude of Christians were taken prisoners of the Barbarians, for whose ransom he would not part with one penny, albeit Caianus offered their redemption dog-cheap, (singulos captivos, singulis nummis, saith my author) which nummus in gold was but 15 s, in silver 1 ⁶ a piece; which rather than he would part with, he suffered the Scythian to cut all their throats. Now see what misery befell this miser.  
There was a certain religious man, that in a prophetical spirit ran through the streets of Canstantinople half naked and mazed, that in the hearing of all the city forespoke that the Emperor should die a most bloody death: whereupon the Emperor having very hardly escaped with his life in a tumult that rose in the town; coming to himself, and revolving in his mind his wretched courses, and how many thousand Christians he had cast away by his horrible niggardize, and barbarous parsimony, he fell to great repentance, craving with all earnestness at the hands of God, all the vengeance that this life is capable of, so that he might be spared everlasting torments: for which cause sending about his messengers and presents to all the Churches through the Empire, and into the wilderness and woods to the holy Monks, he desired to be recommended to God in all their devotions, that he would be pleased to be merciful unto him, and to punish his sins here, and not hereafter. Now while in great humility he sued thus to God, he had a divination or vision sent him in his sleep, to this purpose: He seemed to be brought before the image of his Saviour, which stood over the brazen gate of the palace, with an infinite mul●irude of people round about him, and he in the midst. Then came a voice as it were from Christ, saying, Set me forth Mauritius; which being done, the sergeant and officers of the Assize brought him to the bar, where the judge with his own mouth said thus unto him, Say Mauricius, where wilt thou have me punish thee for thy evil life, upon the earth, or else in hell? to which question he presently answered upon his knees, Most merciful Lord and just avenger, in this world: with that the Lord commanded, that he, and Constantina the Empress, his sons, and all his lineage, should be committed over to Phocas a soldier in the army. Now then so soon as he awoke, he sent with all speed for Philippicus his son in law, whom he had long had in jealousy, as laying wait for his life and crown, and craving pardon for his suspicion, he told him all his vision, and demanded who that Phocas was, who made him answer, that he was a Lieutenant in the army, a debauched young man, and an arrant coward: upon which relation the Emperor concluded, that if he were such, nothing would satisfy him but his blood. Now for the further confirmation of this dream, a blazing star appeared, portending the same event. Again, Magistranus his ambassador to the Churches returned to the Court, that had solicited his cause to the monasteries and ministers abroad, and from them all, returned this answer, That God had accepted of his repentance, and was pleased to save his soul, but for his life and state the sentence would not be reversed. All which things suiting well together, Mauricius gave most humble thanks to God, committing all things to the heavenly providence, and for the accomplishment of his fatal destiny, rested patiently in hourly expectance. Not long after, the soldiers now lying in garrison, I know not whereupon, rose in mutiny, and crowned Phocas so often mentioned, to be Emperor; who presently addressing himself for Constantinople, and by sudden surprisal taking the city, through the negligence of the warders, by the Patriarch and all the people was soon confirmed, some few excepted, who because Mauritius was yet living durst not assent, which Phocas had forgot: so presently he goes to the palace, and searching for Mauritius, he found him fled into a monastery; whence plucking him out, and carrying out to Calcydon, they put him to cruel torments, killing his wife and his five sons before his face: during all whose death and his own danger, he did nothing but pray with great devotion, ever repeating these words, iu●tus es domine, & recta iudiciatua, righteous art thou O Lord, & true are thy judgements: and so most patiently commending his soul to God, he took his death. Thus far the history.  
By which we note the truth of the Scripture, which calls riches deceitful things: for though they present, as I spoke of the hawthorn, a fair lustre to the eye, and promise much happiness to the heart; yet they are like the Apothecary's boxes, which are written upon, Cordials, but are rank poisons: for although poverty is the undoing of many, yet riches are the undoing of far more, as one saith. Wherefore our Saviour directing his speech to the rich, 
Luk. 12. 15.  says thus, videte & cavete ab avaritia; see the effects, beware the danger. The world thinks gold is good 
Deut. 16. 19  for the eyes; and so saith Moses, to make men blind; and the blind, saith Christ, are in danger to fall into the ditch: therefore see and beware; the eye must show, the feet must shun the danger: that is double, 1. for 
1. Tim. 6. 9  this world, Temptations and snares, and foolish and noisome lusts which drown men in perdition and destruction: 2. for the other, whose god is their belly, and glory their 
Phil. 3. 20.  shame, minding earthly things, their end is damnation.  
As the anguish, so is the antidote also double: 1. 
Heb. 13. 5.  contentation: Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with that you have. 2. dependence on his providence: he hath said, I will not fail thee nor forsake thee: so that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.  
Let not any indent with God, or crave a bill of his hand; If I had so much, I would trust to God's providence for the rest: for we must simply surrender ourselves unto him. The readiest way to get the world, is to sacrifice it unto God, as Abraham did his son. Solomon asked but wisdom, and had all other with it: happy if he had also asked grace: But greediness is the portion of them that want godliness; therefore the Caribes and Savages set their heart upon the earth, because they have no further hope in heaven. Doth God care for oxen, saith Paul? nothing like as he doth of his children: why then should his children care for oxen, or the earth more than for him? But here is a brow and wall of brass, ever rebounding, and ever resounding, non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris, which God amend: and so I end.  
Let God be glorified.    

Psalm. 83. Briefly paraphrased and scholied: wherein is declared the Universal Conspiracies of God's enemies, for the utter subversion of the Church: with a prophetical imprecation or prediction of their fall.  
A Song of Asaph] this Asaph was a Levite, of the sons of Cohath, by David made magister chori, to say, Deane of the Chapel, for his excellent skill in music, but more excellent gift and eloquence in Theology, as appears by many Psalms of his making, Psal. 50. and from 73. to 83. as was also his brother Heman, the pen man of some other: for which they were of great account and esteem in Court and Church.  
The notation of his name (for all this Psalm through, he runs upon that figure) doth signify the Congregation, and thereunto fitteth his invention in this place, wherein is descried the estate of the Church and Congregation of God.  
The parts are 3 first the exordium or entrance v▪ 1. then a proposition against the enemies of the Church, 1. against their envy, 2. Blasphemy against God himself: where is an enumeration of their names, and those nations that were of the league, from ver. 2. to 8. Lastly an imprecation or prayer, 1. Touching the Church, that God would deliver it from the force and fury of her enemies, as formerly he had done in like impetitions. Which part is amplified with a reason, because they seek to engross the inheritance of God, which pertaineth not unto them, from 8. to 12. 2. Respecting the enemies, that God would defeat and confound them, as he best knows. 3. Regarding God himself, that he would glorify his glorious name, either in the conversion of them that sin ignorantly, or subversion, that sin maliciously, etc.  

vers. 1.  Keep not thou silence O God, hold not thy peace, and be not still O God. The 70. and vulgar read it, who is like unto thee? but the Hebrew yieldeth not that sense, except the preposition el had been with it. This then is spoken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as men seem to sit still, when they do not succour their friends; so doth God, when he taketh not the defence of the Church upon himself.  
The note: God so long seems to defer his help, while we stand as men amazed at our tribulation, and look not up to him: therefore if we would have God to hear and help us, we must importune him with our prayers, and pierce his ears with our cries. Again, though God seems to defer his help, to exercise our patience and increase our zeal, and to let the wicked run on till their sins be ripe, yet that is but to set an edge to our devotion, and to punish their security the more severely.  

vers. 2.  For lo, thine enemies make a noise, and they that hate thee lift up their head:] Here he setteth down the behaviour of God's enemies like fierce and furious beasts, whose voice in proper, is not sermo but sonus, a murmur of brutishness, no manner of manliness. The note, 1. it is not possible they should be men bearing God's image, or children of the Church, or endued with grace, that seek to ruin God's house and inheritance: but like S. judes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, beasts without reason, corrupting themselves in those things they know by nature. 2. he calls the enemies of the Church the enemies of God, which is no small comfort to the godly, that they are so near allied to him, as to have communes amicos & inimicos, the same friends and enemies, opposites and participants. Such was his covenaut with the Father, and all the sons of faith, to bless and curse those, that bless and curse them.  

vers. 3.  They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, & consulted against thy secret ones,] super populum tuum malignaverunt, saith the vulgar. The note, 1. the grudge and malice of the world, (which is truly Ecclesia malignantium) is not of others desert, but their own envious nature and odious rancour, whose swelling and stinging came from the old serpent, and doth reside in all the brood; which deadly feud will never 
Revel 12. 7.  end, till Michael cast out the Dragon, so that his place may be no more found in heaven.  
2. God will in time assuage the fury of his enemies, the red dragon and his complices that now spit fire, and spew out floods of water against the woman, his Church and spouse.  
3. His hidden or secret ones are such, as dwell under the defence of the most high, and abide under the shadow of the Almighty: who however they seem to lie open to all incursion, yet are indeed safegarded from real harm in his secret pavilion, not only from the strength of hands, but even the strife of tongues of their most virulent ill willers.  

vers. 4.  They have said, Come let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel be no more remembered: These are those soni absoni, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, brutish noises and brabbling resonings above mentioned, of men conspiring to dismantle God's house, and depopulate his inheritance. The note, 1. the cause why the wicked are so enraged against the religion is this, that Satan seeks with incessant malice to raze it out, and therefore exciteth his debauched instruments to war against it: but their attempts are as frivolous, as their intents barbarous, by thinking to overthrow the counsel of God, on which the perpetuity of the Church is grounded. 2. Persecution is not ever against the blood and life of God's Saints, but against the means of life, the provision of the profession: and surely those Neronian humours are less bloody than your julian rancours, who did, nova more expugnare Christianos, devise a new kind of persecution, by withdrawing their salaries and exhibitions.  

verse. ●.  For they have conspired against thee with one consent, and are confederate against thee:] Here are the holy leagues, the strong combinations, the mutual conspiracies of mightest Prince's and people, bending their conjoined forces against the Church. Note 1. what arms, what ensigns, what preparations, what provisions, what conscriptions, what proscriptions doth the Church of Rome at this day raise against the religion, and all to put out their name from under heaven; yet the jews continued a nation, and Israel a people, when Moab and Ammon lay in the dust: therefore let us in like concatenations of our enemies repair to God, and we shall see Antichrist not only disarmed, but dismembered; and hear Rome's both deviction and devastation. True religion shall stand, when Popery, though all the world should underprop it, shall be brought down; Valeat, vincat, regnet veritas. 2. Though they do not in direct words bid battle to God, and set up a flag of defiance against heaven, that rob the Church; yet because through his ministers sides they strike at his Majesty, he makes himself a party: for it is no halting before him.  

ver. 6. 7. 8.  The tabernacle of Edom, and the Ismaelites; of Moab and the Hagaren●; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalec, the Philistims, & the inhabitants of tire: Assur also is joined with them to help the children of Lot.] Here is a full congregation, enough to overrun a world. Note, 1. It is fatal to the Church to have all the world against her: for error and vice is ever more popular than truth and goodness. 2. It is customary, not only to have the foreign enemy on our jack, but also domestic neighbours: no devil to your familiar. 3. He reckons up such enemies as bordered upon lewry, whose names and notations shadow out such enemies as shall ever endanger the Church: as for example, 1. Edom, a red (that is bloody) or earthy enemy. 2. Ishmael, hearing and obeying his own lusts. 3. Moab, of the father the devil. 4. Agarens, strangers in affection and religion. 5. Gebal, the limits of extremity. 6. Ammon, a troubled or troublesome people. 7. Amalec, a liquorish nation. 8. Philistims, drunken in pleasure. 9 tire, besiegers or procurers of trouble. 10. Asshur, an eyeing and envying, a conquering and domineering adversary. 11. The children of Lot, decliners and Apostates. These are the names and natures, as Athanasius & Augustin expound them, of our opposites. And thus much of their malice, and blasphemy: now follows their fortunes and misery.  

ver. 9 10. 11.  Do unto them as unto the Madianits, to Sisera and jabin at the brook of Kison, who perished at Endor, and became as the dung of the earth: make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, make all their Princes like Zebah and Salmana. This is the prophetical prayer, Non votum sedprophetia, non maledictio sed praedictio. The note. 1. God doth most commonly defer his help and deliverance till the exigent and last cast, to the end his help may then be more conspicuous, and his glory more illustrious. 2. His former actions and deliverances remembered and considered, will not a little serve to comfort our affliction, and give hope and strength to our expectation. 3. As the former, so also these paint out our spiritual haters: of whom we read in josua, chap. 4. 7. 8. 1. Midian, shifting or declining of judgement. 2. Sisera, exclusion of joy. 3. jabin, fleshly wisdom. 4. Oreb, a crow for dilation of repentance. 5. Zceb, a wolf for ravenous greediness. 6. Zeba, a sacrifice. 7. Salmana, the shadow of commotion. 8. Kishon, hardness of heart. 9 Endor, the fountain of earthly generation. Such were the men, and such were the places where they fell: but in what manner? they became as the dung of the earth: simus foecundat not propagat, it makes the ground fertile, it is not itself fruitful: the examples of evil men are not evil.  

vers. 12.  Who have said, Come let us take the houses of God into our possessions] Here they declare themselves. Note: 1. Let worldlings pretend what shows they please, they name devotion, but mean devoration: it is not the good of the Church, but the goods of the Church that they seek after. 2. Churches, Colleges, and houses of old dedication are called Gods, not for his residing in temples made with hands in proper sense, but because such places are dedicated to him, consecrated to his service, intended to his ministers, as officinae religionis, instrumenta pietatis, & deposita devotionis. 3. As good husbands esteems their houses and patrimonies, not suffering them to be ruined, or wrested from them, no more will God suffer his enemies to invade his possessions, or usurp his inheritance: and therefore such things ought to be inviolable and inappropriable, to any other or any other end; for which cause let them look upon them that have done the like, who they were, how they fared, where they miscarried; they lined impiously, died desperately, are remembered infamously: foxes in their births, wolves in their life, asses in their death.  

〈◊〉 13. 14. 15.  O my God, make them as a wheel, as the stubble before the wind, as the fire that burneth the wood: and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire, so persecute them with thy tempest, and scare them with thy storm.] Answerable to the old cursed nations, he prayeth here, or prophesieth rather of the end of the sacrilegious brood. Note.  
First, seeing the pride, rage, and rapine of the enemy is so presumptuous, associating themselves so dangerously, conspiring our ruin so mischeivously, assuring themselves of the spoil so confidently, we have no other hope but to have recourse unto our God, by the example of the ancient godly, by our sacred and serious supplications, desiring him to inhibit them as he best can, and shall best please; for that their tumults cannot otherwise be tamed, nor their spirits charmed.  
Secondly, many are the means that God can frustrate his foes by; sometime making them like a wheel, unstable and unconstant, deluding their firmest conclusions with variable resolutions▪ sometime like stubble, causing the matter of temptations to evaporate in fearful transgressions: sometimes like wood, over-copious but ever fruitless: sometime like the mountains, subliming their projections into empty elevations: sometime dispersing with the storms of his indignation, such stubborn humours as will admit no other impressions.  
Thirdly, it is not for nothing that the Spirit doth accumulate so many words to the same purpose, as names of enemies, forms of ruin, similitudes of vengeance; but either to show us the vehemency of the Saints affection, or the certainty and celerity of the adversaries destruction; or else the pertinacy of their opposition; or lastly, the difficulty of the oppresseds consolation.  

vers. 16.  Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, O Lord:] Hitherto of their end to themselves and us: now as it respecteth the glory of God. Note: 1. Many men by stripes and smaller judgements, are sometime drawn to some confused and obscure knowledge of God, so that their consciences are convinced that they have sinned against heaven, to the end that their truculencie, which is increased by impunity, may be confined in some bonds of mediocrity. 2. We must make a difference of men that join in the same sin, Lincus ut hic durescit & hic ut cera liquescit, uno eodemque igni: for some are fearfully hardened, other are wholesomely shamed by one and the same judgement. 3. But how is this, that his very pesecutors do seek his name? did not Saul go to Damascus a lion, and returned to jerusalem a lamb? so are many laid prostrate, as he was, upon their faces for conversion, when other are cast down too, but on their backs for confusion: but such as belong to God's election, sic confunduntur ut placeant, sic pereunt ut permaneant.  

vers. 17.  Let them be confounded and troubled for ever, let them be put to shame and perish: the former use concerned the corrigible sinner, this the indurate and reprobate. Note. 1. All are not made of one metal, nor created to one end; there are vessels of honour, and vessels of dishonour, there are none so desperate but may pertain unto election, none so demure, but may be of the reprobation; therefore Augustine prays, aut convertantur ut redeant, aut confundantur ut percant. 2. Hardness of heart is a fearful sin, and a fearful sign: that is, such as Bernard writes, quod nec compunctione scinditur, nec pietate mollitur, nec movetur precibus, minis non credit, & flagellis duratur, which neither is pricked with sorrow, nor softened with love, nor moved with prayers, grows sturdier with menacings, and harder with chastenings: this is a symptom of final desertion.  

vers. 18.  That they may know that thou whose name is jehovah, art the most high over all the earth.] He endeth with that which is the end of all, God's glory. Note: 1. Though contemners do hate the light, and like the fish called of some Atramentarius, conceal themselves in their own suds; yet God will declare his glory so in them or on them, that they shall, maugre their hearts, confess the same, though they had rather be ignorant of him.  
2. God is known to excel all men, when he setteth forth his wisdom, majesty, and power, so palpably and plainly, that man with all his imaginations, can neither darken nor deny it. Which must serve to beat down all our opposition and reluctation against him, for as much as no policy can alter, no project resist that which he hath decreed; and that is the up holding of his Houses.  
FINIS.