A MAP OF ROME: LIVELY EXHIBITING HER MERCILESS MEEKNESS, and cruel mercies to the Church of God: Preached in five Sermons, on occasion of the Gunpowder Treason, by T. T. and now published by W. I. Minister. 

1. The Romish Furnace.  
2. The Romish Edom.  
3. The Romish Fowler.  
4. The Romish Conception.  
To which is added, 5. The English Gratulation.    APOC. 17.6. 
I saw the Woman drunken with the blood of Saints, and with the blood of the Martyrs of jesus.  
AT LONDON Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, for john Bartlet, and are to be sold at sign of the Talbot in Paternoster Row. 1620.   

TO ALL THAT WISH WELL TO OUR ZION, HEARTILY AND Unfeignedly: Grace be multiplied and peace in our Lord jesus Christ.  
BRethren, beloved in the Lord: You see by the Title, what you may expect in the book following. I hope what it promiseth, shall be indeed performed. I wish it were more complete and accurate for your sakes: as it might have been, if the grave and diligent Author could himself have set it forth: but blessed be God, that his weightier employments do not give him leave or leisure. I am glad I have it for you as it is, through my earnest request to him: whose modesty thought it unworthy the publication, and my pains in writing it.  
Reasons of this my request and pains, I can give you many. First, I think it necessary, that our God, our gracious and loving God, may have the praise of all his mercies (and namely that of this day) still reserved to himself wholly. His works are glorious, and the benefit of them not confined to a scantling of time. Therefore these Gratulations cannot be less seasonable now than they were at the day of Deliverance. Secondly, this I hoped might be a means to restrain our declining times from gazing and doting on that pompous Harlot, the Church of Rome. For when our nation shall see, and consider a fresh, how insatiable she hath always been of blood, and English blood! I cannot think we can be so inconsiderate, as to dream of any toleration, much less any sound reconcilement with so implacable an enemy. Thirdly, I thought it not altogether impossible hereby to stop the slanderous mouths of misse-conceiving persons, scattered abroad through all the Country, yet pleasing themselves in the common error: who seeing in some good men a difference of judgement in some small matters, presently conclude them enemies of the State, etc. For this I will say of the Author, (and I say the truth in Christ, 
Rom●. 1.  I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the holy Ghost:) that having been partaker of his Ministry some hundreds of times, I never heard him more earnest, or more faithful, than in this Argument. And the whole Town of Reding will testify with me of his holiness, lowliness, peaceableness, unweariable painfulness, and other graces beseeming his calling: which no ill-willer could ever yet impeach. Fourthly, and lastly, my intent is hereby to stir up our drowsy and forgetful hearts to due thankfulness for so great a Deliverance. And this (me thinks) is more than necessary. For when I behold the general view of the Land, and the quality of people's manners, the memory of that wonderful day seems unto me quite blotted out: And I know not whom better to resemble ourselves unto, than those of whom the Psalmist speaks, Psalm. 106.11.12.13.14. The waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them left. Then believed they his words: they sang his praise. But they soon forgot his works: they waited not for his counsel: but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the Desert. Do we not so even in our Canaan, a Land flowing with milk and honey? What horrible provocations are there daily and hourly amongst us, in all places, in every corner? Who can complain sufficiently of the grievous tempt and out-braving of God, which our eyes do see? Who would judge by our strange demeanours, that God had ever done any thing for us, either by sea or land, either against water-works or fireworks? Ah sinful nation, laden with iniquity! Do we thus requite the Lord for his loving kindness? Is this his reward for so great favours?  
Harken ye children of Zion, and consider: Though Israel play the harlot, yet let not judah transgress. Though carnal persons, 
Host 4.15.  who have no true sense of the grace of Christ, set themselves out in their colours, and fashions, and Epicurism, and Heathenism, yet let it not be so with them that profess the fear of God. Though others loathe the word, and the means of salvation, yet let not Professors loathe them. Let it never be said, that Professors are proud, earthly, contentious, vain, fantastical, or willingly swerving from the Rule of Piety. 
Exod. 19.5.  You are his peculiar people: and if he lose his honour in you also, he loseth it altogether. Therefore consider you the works of the Lord, and his intent in them. Stir up your hearts, and frame your lives to a real thankfulness. Let your moderation and discretion be quickened by zeal: and let your zeal be bounded by discretion. You shall (perhaps) mee●e with shame, 
Heb. 12.2.  that is, reproaches and ignominies: despise these. You shall meet also with the cross, that is, persecutions and damages: these endure. Here is patience, and magnamity. Let your patient mind be known to all men: yet let it be valorous in the causes of your God: saint not, neither be afraid. You may well take occasion to grow the faster by this Antiperistasis, and unite your forces the more strongly. Are you so spighted and maligned on every side by profane Ismaelites? then let your love toward one another increase the more solidly, and abound toward yourselves mutually in the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel. 
Rom. 15.29.  Live fruitfully and peaceably in the Communion of Saints: here the Lord hath appointed the blessing, and life for evermore. Watch against Satan and his eldest son that Antichrist: pray for the dissolution of their Kingdom: especially see it be utterly defaced in yourselves and yours. Give all diligence to leave an holy seed behind you, which shall praise the Lord in earth, while yourselves praise him in heaven. 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  A disgrace it is to godly Parents to have ungodly children, especially by their own default. Make your houses, houses of God, by setting up, and then establishing his pure worship therein. Cast up your accounts beforehand, and prepare for the coming of Christ in the clouds. Accept my endeavours for your good, and help me with your prayers.  
Reding. Oct. 12. 1619. Your servant in the Gospel of Christ, WILLIAM JEMMAT.   

The Author's Apology.  
CHristian Reader, as I esteemed not the Sermons following sit for so public a ●iew, so neither meant I to purchase to myself so much envy & wrath from the catholics, as these Sermons may (perhaps) bring upon me. But the opportunity of the Publisher, who hath taken pains in them, and of some others desirous of them, drew out at last my consent to their request. If any phrases may seem more warm and earnest, the subject may plead for pardon, which is a fiery and furious Powder-treason: and fire useth to warm and kindle. If any strains or phrases be met with oftener than once, consider these Sermons were preached many years asunder; and every year the same matter in substance was to be renewed among my Auditory. If I might hereby win of some Catholics, but to consider of the grounds of their Religion, which (as they say of Nilus) breedeth almost yearly such monsters, I should be glad to gather that f●ui● of my pains: whose hearts desire for my seduced Countrymen, is (as Paul's for his) that they might be saved in the day of the Lord: to whose grace I heartily commend thee, and desire to be commended by thee.  
THO. TAYLOR.   

THE ROMISH FURNACE.  Daniel 3.22. etc. 
22 Therefore because the King's commandment was straight, that the furnace should be exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men, that brought forth Sadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  
23 And these three men, Sadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, fell down bound in the midst of the hot fiery furnace.  
24 Then Nabuchadnezzar the King was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spoke, and said unto his Counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound, into the midst of the fire? Who answered and said unto the King, It is true, O King.  
25 And he answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.  
NEbuchadnezzar maketh an image of gold, straight enjoineth the worship, prescribeth the nanner of it, with all manner of music to draw and affect the simple and superstitious: Himself beginneth the dance; his Nobles, Princes, Dukes, judges, Counsellors, Officers, Governors, 
Vers. 3.  easily follow the Kings will and example, though in a most wicked decree: 
Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis.  & what way now may we think the multitude went, but after their leaders?  
But certain jews, disordered fellows (against whom in all likelihood the image was purposely erected, that such Chaldeans as Daniel had set over the Province of Babel, 
See chap. 2 49.  might by this means be removed from their places and charges:) are accused to the King, Vers. 12. Sadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are with expedition convented, vers. 13. charged upon pain of present death, to conform to the worship of the Land, vers. 15. But it is not the commandment of the King, nor the consent of Princes, nor severity of Laws, nor threats, nor allurements of Tyrants, that can prevail to draw the Elect from God: they will crave none, nor take any time of deliberation if it were offered in this thing: they boldly protest against that horrible idolatry to the King's face, We will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up, vers. 18.  
Hereupon as against confessed rebels (for so were God's children ever accounted in the world) the sentence of death, without respite or further form of law passeth upon them; that they should be cast into a fiery Furnace, seven times hotter than ever it used to be: not that the King would quickly thereby dispatch them out of their pain, but partly to show his own great indignation conceived against them; and partly to terrify and affright them the more: for Tyrants (if they could) would rather torment the minds of the Saints, than their bodies.  

●ra furor br●uis est.—  But they abiding undaunted at this sentence, the wrath of the King proceedeth into a fury and short madness, precipitating every thing, and with more haste than good speed, executeth his wicked sentence: and lest any favour should be showed them, he commandeth his strong men and warriors to bring them before his eyes, and throw them into the Furnace, that he might feed himself in their destruction: and so they did.  

Division of the Text.  Now of all this proceeding, these verses, and the other following, show the event; which is twofold. First, concerning the enemies of the jews, that the flame licked them in, who were the instruments of this wicked Tyrant: which is set down with the accusation in the first words. 1. Because the King's commandment was straight, they were so intent upon the King's charge, as (in likelihood they forgot their own safety. 2. Because the Furnace was so extraordinary hot, the flame licked them in ere they were aware. The second event is concerning the persons of the jews, and that is their escape and evasion, even in the midst of the Furnace. Wherein three things are to be considered. First, the manner of it; it was miraculous, in that the flame had no power, either upon their bodies, or on their apparel, but only on their bonds: whereby being cast in bound, they were able to walk loose in the midst of the Furnace. Secondly, the means of this escape, a Son of God, whom the Tyrant saw walking in the Furnace with them. Thirdly, the effect of this deliverance, the acknowledgement of the true God, by Nabuchadnezzar, and all his Nobles.  
Wherein we have an express type of our own present estate, and of Gods dealing with us; which when I have in one or two words parallelled, I will come to the several parts.  
The Romish Nabuchadnezzar, 
Affinity between Romish and Babylonish Nabuchadnezzar.  head of that whore of Babel, not sitting over an hundreth seven and twenty Provinces, as this, but challenging the power of both the swords, over all the Princes and Provinces of the earth, hath set up an Idol, in that the whole chaos and vast body of Popery, is as base an idolatry as ever was among the Gentiles: but especially their 
* Moulded first in the Lateran Council under Pope Innocent the third. Popish Priests worse than judas, who valued Ch●ist at thirty pence; for they buy 40. cakes (every one of which is Christ's body) for one halfpenny.  Breaden God in the Mass, (which the Gentiles would be ashamed to fall down before.) He hath sent out his Edicts, that all people, nations, and languages, should worship the image which he hath set up: and whosoever receive not the mark of that Beast in their hands, and in their foreheads, these he excommunicateth, and adjudgeth to fire and faggot, (as witness all the bloody Martyrdoms, and fiery trials in other, and in our own country) his own Kings, Princes, Dukes, and Governors in Italy, Spain, France, and other Popish countries, bow down to this beast. But a few reformed Churches, as England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Belgia, Hel●●tia, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, and Sweveland, do not deliberate in this matter, that they will not do this thing. He also hastily sends out his Bulls of Excommunication, and furiously threatens worse matters, of blood and slaughter, which (by his hands of mischief stretched into all countries) he putteth in execution against Princes and people, who conform not to the worship of his image.  
Plentiful experience hereof we have had in our own country: witness those many and outrageous conspiracies, both in the days of her late Majesty, (blessed in all memory) as also of his Excellent Highness, both before and since his solemn Inauguration. But all these proving no better than paper-shot, 
This was preached Novemb. 5. 1612.  and nothing so terrible and and deadly as he intended: seven years ago he set his Captains on work, for the heating of a Furnace seven times hotter than ever before; yea seventy times seven times hotter than ever Nabuchadnezzar's was. 
Romish cruelty surmounts the Babylon●sh, 3. ways.  For that was prepared only for three persons; but this, for the sudden burning and blowing up of three Kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland: That, by heathens sanguinary and bloody men, without the knowledge of God; but this, by men (howsoever more bloody, yet) professing such a religion as out-boasteth all other for sanctity of life, and works of mercy. That, openly as in a course of justice, where prayer, or strength, or change of mind in the parties, might have prevented the extremity; but this, in the depth of black darkness, against all justice in the fountain, against the living Law, his Majesty himself; against the honourable judges, which are speaking Laws; against all the Records and instruments of justice, which are silent Laws; and against the whole Parliament, the makers of these Laws; and all this in such secret and undermining manner, as any league might as soon be made with hell itself, as with these pioneers, who digged to the bottom of hell for mischief.  
But mark, when all things were thus prepared, and these three flourishing countries (after a sort) a casting into that hellish flame: the self same event, wickedness returning upon the heads of wicked doers: wicked counsels, the worst to the counsellors: sowers of wickedness, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  reapers of destruction. The Agents and instruments of this Romish Tyrant so intent upon the straight commandment of their Master, as forgetting their own danger, were some of them licked into the flame, others eaten up by the gallows, others devoured by the mouth of the sword; all of them made spectacles of confusion, which they most intended; while those, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  whom they had designed as fuel for their flames, had not an hair of their head, no nor of their garments touched. For which unspeakable mercy, the name of our God be evermore praised.  
Now to the several parts.  
Therefore because the commandment of the King was straight, that the furnace should be exceeding hot, etc.  
Hence we note first, 
Idolatry and cruelty always coupled together  what spirit it is that reigneth amongst idolaters, even the same which is here discovered in Nabuchadnezzar, namely, the spirit of malice, rage, and cruelty; which, when things succeed not to their mind, doth breathe out nothing but threatening, slaughter, and blood, against the Saints of God. Pharaoh a notable idolater, who professed that he knew not the Lord, 
Exod. 5.2.  nor would hear his voice, nor let the people go; how began he his reign, but by consulting to keep under the people of God by heavy burdens, and hard taske-ma-masters? But when that succeeded not, but the more they were vexed, the more they increased, he added to the former cruelty a charge, that the Midwives should kill all the males of the Hebrews in the birth. But neither did this prodigious cruelty prove so successful as he desired; for the Midwives feared God, 
Chap. 1.17.  and did not as the King commanded them, but preserved alive the men children. And therefore transported by rage, as one that had lost humanity itself, he makes a more public & general law, charging all his people, 
Vers. 22.  that every manchild that was borne, they should cast into the river, and drown it: With what fury and violence, after he had made them weary of their lives by sundry oppressions, did follow them into the bottom of the sea, thinking belike that God had divided the sea for no other purpose, than for him to pitch his field in, against his people? It is plain, that had not God taken him off, he would never have taken his rod from off the Israelites.  

H●st. 3.6.  Of Haman that idolatrous Tyrant, the text saith, being full of wrath against Mordecai, for not bowing unto him, he thought it too little to lay hands only on Mordecai, but sought to destroy all the jews that were throughout the whole Kingdom of Ahashu●rosh, even the people of Mordecai: and to this purpose procured letters from the King, which he sent by Posts into all the Provinces, to root out, to kill, and to destroy all the jews both young and old, 
Vers. 13.  children and women in one day.  
Manasses was a wretched idolater, who did evil in the sight of the Lord, after the abomination of the Heathen; he built the high places, which his good father Hezekiah had destroyed; he erected altars for Baal, and made a grove, he worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them; he built altars for all the host of heaven, and that in the Court of the house of the Lord: 
2. King. 21.3.  he caused his sons to pass through the fire; he gave himself to witchcraft and sorcery, and used them that had familiar spirits, and were soothsayers. Now if to all this you would add an inseparable note to know a wilful idolater by, you have it in the 16. verse; Moreover Manasses shed innocent blood exceeding much, till he replenished jerusalem from corner to corner.  


See 1. Mach. 1. & josephus de bello jud. lib. 1. cap. 1.  
Nequ● tantae caedes satis fuêre, sed judaeos cogere coepit, ut abrogato more patrio nec infantes suos circumciderent, porcósque super aram immolarent; quibus omnes quidem adversabantur, optimus verò quisque propterea tru●cidabatur.   Antiochus Epiphanes, that monster of men, both for his horrible idolatry, and savage cruelty against the jews, called Epimanes; forced the jews to lay aside the institution of God in circumcising their children; as also in hatred of God to offer swine's flesh upon the altar, and eat swine's flesh in their houses; in stead of God's worship he set up the worship of jupiter Olympius, and this within the Temple of jerusalem. The books of Moses and the Prophets he burned, etc. All which horrible rage against God himself was attended with such barbarous and despiteful wasting, and oppressing of the Church of God, such murder and slaughter of the people of God, as never was since there began to be a nation till that time; as witnesseth Daniel, chap. 12.1. Insomuch as stories report, that jerusalem was left desolate and void of all good men.  
In both which high wickednesses (by the consent of all writers) he was an express type of that great Antichrist which was to come after him, and is now in the world, consuming the Saints of the most High, and working no less misery to the Church of God than he did; as we shall in part anon declare.  
What shall I speak of the tyranny and cruelty of those Heathen Roman Emperors, within the first 300. years after Christ? of whom not only the Apostles themselves suffered violent death; but whosoever made any profession of their doctrine, were most ignominiously tormented, no respect had of sex, nor reverence of age, in so much as the dead bodies of men, and women, and children, old and young together, were cast out and lay naked in the streets like the pavement thereof. And (if we may believe history) in the days of one of those ten Persecutors were ten thousand Christians crucified in one mount, crowned with crowns of thorns, 
Hadrian.  and thrust into the sides with sharp darts, in imitation (or derision rather) of the death and passion of our Lord jesus Christ. And in the last of those ten, in the space of one month were slain under the name of Martyrs, seventeen thousand persons, beside a multitude more, condemned to the metals and mines, with other most cruel slavery. In one word, the histories of those times seem to be written in blood, of which those monsters of nature (in the shape of men) made such effusion, as it seemeth true which was said in those times, that no m●n could step with his foot in all Rome, but he should tread upon a Martyr.  

Rome Christian as cruel as Heathen Rome.  Now to apply this note to our occasion and purpose. This very spirit of cruelty is the spirit of Antichrist, which reigneth in Popery at this day; which one religion exceedeth and outstrippeth all other religions, in barbarous blood-shead and cruelty (not the Turkish excepted.) Long it were to recite, and incredible to believe those horrible slaughters, which might be induced to prove this part: there is neither writer that can be so diligent, or writing so exact, as can make a sufficient relation, of the barbarous butcheries made upon the Saints by these enemies of God and nature. But yet so much as may give a general view, and (as it were) a glimmering light, must be set down for the evincing of this truth, which so gladly they would avoid.  

2. Thes. 2.3.  And first to begin with the Scriptures. Who is it whom the holy Ghost styleth the son of perdition, but the head of this Romish Apostasy? which title is commonly taken passively, for that he is apppointed, destinated, and borne to perdition: in which sense it is (besides this man of sin) only given to judas, 
joh. 17.12.  whom Christ calleth the lost child, because being rejected and destinated unto destruction, he could not be kept by Christ as the rest of the Disciples were. But it is also fitly ascribed unto this man of sin actively, in that he is a destroyer, and an author of destruction unto others, not only by seduction, and infection; but also by persecution, wasting the Church of God with all his might.  
If any man stand in doubt hereof, let him further consider how the King of locusts is called Ab●ddon, and Apollyon, 
Reuel. 9.11.  that is, A Destroyer from his effect. Now it is made as clear as the Sun, from the apt connexion of all the circumstances of the place, that by these locusts are m●ant the Popish Clergy, who are bred of ignorance, heresy, superstition, and error, which is the smoke of the bottomless pit out of which they ascend. 
Trigin●a bellatorum mill●a, qui bellica munera guaviter ●bire possent, nihil interpellato sacrorum cultu. Sabell Enead 9 lib. 6.  Thence come they by infinite numbers, like locusts, insomuch as that one sect of Franciscans offered out of their Order for an expedition against the Turk, thirty thousand strong warriors, which they might well spare without hindrance of their holy Observances. And well might they so do, if that of Polydore Virgil be true, that this one family of Franciscans suddenly filled the whole world, no otherwise then locusts cover the face of the earth. How can it then be other, but that these locusts, with all the other swarms of Abbats, Monks, Friars, 
Pulchra prosecto pulliti●s, & aulae Antichristianae decora familia. Grass. reg. p. 34. B. Vers. 4.  Priests and Jesuits, must needs suddenly destroy & eat up the fruits of the earth? not the grass of God, which hath the greenness and moisture of grace, nor the trees of righteousness, which are the planting of the Lord, (for over such no power is given them:) but only over such as the heavenly Father never planted, and whose names were never written in the book of life.  
But, were this more obscure; whither tend all those Prophecies, and where were they ever accomplished (if not in this man) whereof the Revelation is full? It is said of the second Beast, which rose out of the earth, 
Reuel. 13.11.  and had two horns like a Lamb, but spoke like a Dragon, that he caused so many to be killed as would not receive the image of the beast in their hands, and in their foreheads. This Beast can be no other but the Pope of Rome, who riseth out of the earth, that is, out of most base beginnings, and steppeth or riseth above the earth, and all earthly power. He hath horns like the Lamb, that is, professeth the meekness and innocence of Christ (which the Turk never did:) but speaketh like the Dragon, that is, not with outward force and power, but even by his word and speech exerciseth all the power of the Dragon, that is, of the Emperor: for, not the greatest Emperors or Monarches in all the world can translate and remove Kings and Kingdoms by all the power they can make, which he can by his word alone.  
The same is the Beast that cometh out of the bottomless pit, 
Reuel. 11.7.  and maketh war against the two witnesses, and overcometh and killeth them: By which two witnesses whether we understand the Scriptures in the two Testaments (as some) which are now overcome in Popery, 
AntiChrist an enemy both to Scriptures and Scripture-men.  and their own Traditions made equal, or rather set above them, as triumphing over them; or else we understand the zealous and sincere Professors of the Word of God, who both by their Doctrine and Conversation give witness unto the truth of it; it cometh all to one: for the Beast that dare make war upon, and profess hostility to the Scriptures, will war with, overcome, and kill also the sincere lovers of them, and upright livers after them.  
To conclude this point: that one Prophecy may serve for all, Reuel. 17.6. where is affirmed of the great Whore, with whom the Kings of the earth have committed fornication, etc. that this woman was drunk with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the Martyrs of jesus. By this woman the Jesuits themselves, will they ●ill they, confess is meant their Rome, 
Rib●ra. Bellarm.  but old Rome (say they) such as it was under the Heathen Emperors. But, where are the scarlet coloured Fathers but in the present Rome? In whose forehead is the name mystery written, but in the present Romish Babylon? 
Testantur hoc jac. Brocardus Venetus in Apoc. et monachus quidam Celestin●s.  The Heathenish Emperors proclaimed open war against Christianity, and carried not their enmity in secret, and in a mystery. These with sundry other circumstances in the Text, will (perhaps) draw them one step further one day, and force them to a free confession of the whole truth, when they can no longer withstand it.  
And thus having briefly propounded the Prophecies of this Antichristian cruelty, 
Prophecies of Romish cruelty accomplished to the full.  let us in as few words see it in the accomplishment of them: Which if out of most approved Histories we should enlarge as we might, it would easily appear to be most matchless, and that no Scythian cruelty was ever comparable unto it. But I must keep a measure, and give but a taste of that cup filled and running over with blood, which the Saints of God in all Countries have drunk up to the bottom.  
The Romish History teacheth us, that Romulus laid the foundations of the City of Rome in the blood of his brother Rhemus. And as the foundation was laid by him, so hath the frame been upheld by his bloody brood until this day. Whence were the Emperors, who shed so much Christian blood in the first 300. years after Christ? were they not Roman? Whence hath almost all the blood, 
Pandolph. Colonutius ex Aenea Sylu. hist. Austr. et Nicol. Machiavelli.  that hath been shed upon the earth since that time, issued, but either from the edicts, persuasions, approbations, or encitements of these firebrands of Babylon? Who committeth Kings and Princes together, making them Wolves and tyrants one against another, but this Romish Nabuchadnezzar? Who bloweth up massacres, rebellions, seditions, treasons, in all Countries, but this scarlet whore of Babylon? Who sendeth out cutthroats and villains with pardons, to stab and poison Kings and Potentates of the earth, yea to blow up whole States and Kingdoms with one terrible blow, but the holy Father of Rome? Where is the Lord crucified every day in his Saints, or where are the Saints condemned for heretics, and consumed with fire, but in the furnace which is made so hot by the ministers of this idolatrous Romish Tyrant? What Doctrine beside, Romish is a teacher and maintainer of cruelty, of homicide, of parricide in the highest and most unnatural degree, so as the greatest Rebel or Traitor is Popery itself? Whose Priests, or spiritual guides (who should be men of peace) besides Romish▪ be the nimble and active hands and instruments of all the former mischief, especially their Jesuits, who not only do these things, 
Rom. 1.32.  but as stout patrons defend those that do them?  
If we look at the generality of this cruel●y, it hath been almost without bounds or banks: What Country in all the world have the Papists set foo●e into, but they have left behind them the steps, impressions, and monuments of their tyranny? Manasseh made the streets of jerusalem only run with the blood of the Saints: but there is never a corner in all Europe, which these Idolaters have not washed with streams of the blood of Martyrs, as History showeth. If we consider the multitudes of men, women, and children, on whom this cruelty hath fed, it will appear to be most merciless. I will not say how true that is of some, who say there is not a day in the year which might not be dedicated to an hundreth several Martyrs, whose blood the Romanists have shed: But true it is, that with the cup of death, Babylon hath served thousands and ten thousands at once, and yet her insatiable thirst hath not been satisfied.  

Ex Hermanno Mutio. Innocentius 3. anno. 1212. See this story at large in the book of Martyrs, pag. 868. Out of which book I have picked some choice examples, that our common people having the book by them, may see I belie them not in the things which seem most incredible, Foeminea in pugna victoria nulla est.  One of their Innocent Popes with his Bishops made but one Bonfire of an hundreth Nobles and others in the Country of Alsatia in one day. That merciless Minerius one of the Pope's Captains, dispatched with his bloody designs against the innocent Merindolians, carried himself in the execution more like a devil, feeding on the bowels of men, than a man that had any bowels in him: Who destroying a number of Towns before him, to the number of two and twenty, slew and murdered with all the cruelty that could be devised, the Inhabitants, whether they resisted, or not. The women and maidens were ravished; the women with child, and Infants borne and to be borne were lamentably destroyed: the paps of many women which gave suck, were cut off, and the children looking for suck at their mother's breasts, dead before, died also for hunger. And as a monster that had never come of a woman, he waged war against that silly sex that could least resist him. For when the men of Merindoll fled from his Army, and thought it best to leave behind them (for their better expedition and safety) their tender wives and children, hoping that the enemy would show mercy to such a multitude of destitute and helpless women and children; this enemy of mankind evertaking this silly prey, practised such villainy and cruelty upon five hundred women, at once, besides the children, as hath been unheard of.  
In another of those Towns named Cabriers, which upon composition, and condition, that he would lay down his armour, and use no violence against them, was yielded into his hands, he no sooner entered but falsifying his promise he raged (as Master Fox saith) like a beast▪ He picked out thirty choice men presently, and carried them into a meadow, and caused them to be hewn in pieces by his soldiers: He took forty silly women, (some of them with child) and put them into a Barn full of straw and hay, and caused it to be set on fire at the four corners; whose lamentable outcry when a soldier heard, he in pity opened a door to let them out; but as they were coming out, the Tyrant caused them to be slain and cut in pieces, opening their bellies, that their children fell out, whom they trod under their feet. And, lest he should be unlike to Dioclesian (who set a Church on fire, and burnt in it many thousand Christians:) he sent also a band of Ruffians, not with fire (as in the former instance) but with the sword into the Church, wherein as in a Sanctuary were hid a great number of women, children, and young Infants, who without all respect of place or persons, slew all they found. In this one Town were thus mercilessly murdered above a thousand Protestants.  
In the year 1560. under Pope Pius (or, 
Acts & Mon. pag. 859.  Impius rather) the fourth, were two Towns in the parts of Calabria taken, and condemned at one time, to the number of a thousand and six hundred Protestants: Of them in one day were executed fourscore and eight in this manner: They being all thrust into one house together, as into a sheepfold, the executioner cometh in and taketh one, and blindefoldeth him with a muffler about his eyes, and so leadeth him into a larger place hard by; and commanding him to kneel down, he cutteth his throat, and leaving him half-dead, and taking his Butcher's knife and muffler all of a gore-blood, he cometh again to the rest, and so leading one after another, he dispatcheth them all. A direful and lamentable spectacle to see, insomuch that a Romanist professed in a letter to his friend at Rome, that he could not write it without weeping: Another Preacher, one Simon Florellus writing to an Italian Doctor of Physic in the University of Basill, telleth us what became of the rest. These two Towns (saith he) are utterly destroyed, and eight hundred of the Inhabitants, or (as some write from Rome) no less than a full thousand. And this year were the residue of that godly fellowship martyred.  
But if we read over the whole Turkish History, and all the Records of the Heathen Emperors themselves, we shall not be able to match, no not in the Lion Nero, nor Decius, 
2. Tim. 4.17. Gathered out of janus August Thuanus Precedent of the Parliament of Paris.  nor Dioclesianus, that most wicked fury and rage which ever the sun saw committed by the Papists in the Massacre of France, wherein in the space of three days were ten thousand Protestants not more cruelly then perfidiously slain and murdered: and in the space of thirty days to the number of thirty thousand. The furies of hell were never more furious than these bloodsucking Romanists. What rejoicing was there at Rome for this Massacre, what solemn Processions and Masses were by the Pope and his Cardinals, (for so notable a stratagem) celebrated, what general joy in Rome, appeared in the publishing of a jubilee presently, in shooting off great Ordinance in way of triumph, in gratuit●es and large gifts to those that brought the news of it? insomuch as the History reporteth, that the Cardinal of Lorraine gave him a thousand crowns that first brought him the tidings of it.  
And as these barbarous Butcheries were committed by secret fraud and conspiracy, so have they by open hostility and professed war made waste of God's people, pouring out the blood of Protestants as waters on the earth; and that with such fierce assaults, as they have slain in one battle an hundred thousand, and made their glory of it. How many fewer had tasted of the same cup in England, if their invincible navy in 88 had not been broken by God? and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, how many above that number, if their fireworks had prevailed in 1605. That 5. of November should have been England's dismal, and doom's day, a fearful and terrible day like the day of the Lord, which shall burn like an Oven, 
Mal. 4.1.  wherein our very Sun should have been turned into blood, and the whole land should have been drunk with the blood of the Inhabitants.  
I would pass this point of their insatiable thirst after blood, but that I cannot omit to add a word or two of that infinite effusion of blood, which the Popish Spaniards have made among the poor Indians, under pretence of converting them to the faith: and that confirmed by their own 
* Metellus Sequanus. Bartholomaeus Casas, a Bishop that lived in that Country. This book written in Latin is well worth translating: but these with a number more ins●ances of their hellish cruelty are overacted by M. White in his way to the Church, the 50. digression, where the Reader may further acquaint himself with the Spanish conversion or rather utter subversion of the Indies.  writers, who report, that never since the beginning of the world was there made such an havoc of people as the Spaniards have made there: That of two thousand thousand persons inhabiting one country Hispaniola, in the year 1580. are not left above 500 or an hundred and fifty: That more than ten Realms greater than all Spain, with Arragon and Portugal, and those swarming with multitudes of people, as Emmets on an Emmet hill, are all turned to a Wilderness: That within the space of forty years seven and twenty millions of people are destroyed; in Hispaniola three millions, in another Country five millions in fifteen years, in another five millions, in Perne four millions, in five small Isles five hundred thousand. They have thrown down from the top of a steep mountain 700 men together, and dashed them all to pieces. In three months they famished 7000. children. At one time they massacred 2000 Gentlemen that were the slower of all the Nobility of that Country. And all this with such cruelties as were neu●r heard of before: Which to avoid, the poor men would hang themselves with their wives and children, the women did destroy their conceptions, and in grief and despair dash their own children's brains against the stones, lest they should come into the Spaniards hands. 
The Prince of the I'll Cuba so answered the Friar that came to shrine him at the slake.  Some of them professed, that if the Spaniards went to heaven when they were dead, they would never come there: that they did carry themselves neither like Christians nor men, but like devils: and, that it had been better the Indies had been given to the devils of hell, than to the Spaniards. All which are the words of their own Writers, and confirmeth the point in hand, that the Romish Wolves are never satisfied with blood, nor can be; seeing they must be nourished of that whereof they are engendered.  
Secondly, their cruelty is not only evident in such direful and tragical outrages in all Countries, nor only in that (like rough Esau's) their hand is against every man; but also in their cruel and barbarous manner and mind in effecting their bloody projects. Farnesius, he voweth to ride his horse to the saddle in the blood of the Lutherans. 
Satia te sanguine quem sit isti, & cuius semper insacrabilis fuisti. Thomyris de Cyri capite in v●re sang.  Here nothing but a sea of blood can quench his bloodthirstiness. Minerius being entreated for some poor Merindolians, who had left him their City, houses, and goods, and had escaped only in their shirts to cover their nakedness, sternly answered that he knew what he had to do, and that not one of them should escape his hands, 
Minerius the devil's Proctor, or Factor.  but he would send them to hell to dwell among the devils. Here was a more eager thirst, not only for the blood of their bodies, but of their souls too; the death of these poor Christians was a small thing in his eyes, unless it be accompanied with their damnation.  
Add hereunto the exquisiteness of the torments, and the unnaturalness of the tortures, 
Acts and Mon. pag. 869. See another history of like cruelty, p. 805. ●.  by which they held men in death so long as possibly they could: arguing, that if they could inflict a thousand deaths on them, or could hold them in dying a thousand years, they would. Hence cometh their burning by piecemeal, and that not with fire only, but with fat, Brimstone, Pitch and Tar also dropping on their heads: And thus was that meek and innocent Martyr George Marsh burned, with a barrel of Pitch and Tar dropping upon his head: neither when he was thus tormented and dead, was it thought sufficient; unless the Bishop should solemnly in a Sermon affirm, that he was now a firebrand in hell.  
johannes de Roma a Monk (his name tells us what house he was of) got a Commission to examine the Lutherans; 
Pag. ●60.  and before any conviction he used this torment to force them to accuse themselves: He used to fill Boots with boiling grease, and put them on the legs of whom he suspected or listed; and tying them backward to a Form, with their legs hanging down over a soft fire, so he examined them.  
In the History of the Andrognians we read of one Odul G●met, a man of 60. years of age, 
See the exquisite torments devised, and suffered by Bertrand, p. 817. and by Rich. Atkins, p. 1948.  for whom they devised a strange kind of death and torment, after this manner: When they had taken and fitly bound him, they took a kind of vermin which breedeth in horse-dung, and put them upon his navel, covering them there with a dish, which within short space pierced into his belly, and killed him.  
But what had these men done? Had they killed their Kings, or blown up whole Parliament houses? Surely either their facts were heinous, or the fury of their adversary's ridiculous. As cruelty never wanted cause of putting forth itself, so here were no small causes pretended. The most horrible torments that any Protestant suffered among them, was for casting down an Idol, not able to defend itself, as in the examples of Betrand and Atkins: others put to most cruel death for not acknowledging more Christ's then one, which was the first of those six bloody Articles, whereby it was capital not to profess, that either there were not so many Christ's, or that one Christ should not be according to his body in so many places, as there were several hosts distributed through the world. 
Marriage punished among Papists, whoredom escapeth.  Others were murdered for marrying a wife according to the examples of the Apostles: many for reading the Scriptures: sundry for having them, or some small parts of them in the English tongue, as Robert Silkeb, and one Mistress Smith at Coventry, 
Pag. 887.  only because they had the Lords prayer, the Creed and ten Commandments found about them. Some put to death for selling books of Scriptures, 
Pag. 863.  although it was a branch of their calling: as a godly bookseller in Auinion was burned with two Bibles about his neck, only for selling some Bibles; when at the same time a lewd Ballad-seller was graced in the selling of filthy and ribald Songs and Ballads.  
Add hereunto that lamentable merriment of a rich Merchant in Paris, who for a jest which he broke upon the Friars of S. Francis, lost his life; he in merriment told them, that they w●re a rope about their bodies, because S. Francis should once have been hanged, 
●ag. 831.  but was redeemed by the Pope, on this condition, that all his life after he should wear a rope. But they in earnest got judgement against him, that he should be hanged for it. And when he to save his life recanted his speech, they commended him for it, and made haste to hang him while he was in that good mind. Oh merciless men, to whom judgement without mercy belongeth! 
jam. 2.13.  Are these the principal causes of such savage and pitiless proceedings? Or if they be not, tell us of some greater, whereby poor Christians are chased with such seas of sorrows out of the world.  
Thirdly, the cruelty of these idolatrous Papists bewrayeth itself to be most inhuman, in that it spareth nor, respecteth not, nor pitieth any degree, order, sex, age, or condition of men, whom they take to be their enemies; but as rough Ismaels', their hands are against every man, that is, every sort of men. Duke Medina professeth, that his sword knows no difference between Heretics and Catholics: What no? will you not know your own? no not Catholics? We read in the history of the German Martyrs, 
Acts and Mon. pag 814.  how Alphonsus' Diazius came from Rome to Neoberge, to kill his own brother john Diazius, because he was a Protestant: which most barbarous fact he with another cutthroat so cruelly performed, as hath scarce been heard of since Cain killed his brother Abel for Religion. With what despiteful cruelty have the poor Protestants been compelled to carry Faggots, to burn their faithful and painful Pastors? as two women of S. Germain● were forced to do by jacomell the Inquisitor, and other his Monks. 
Pag. 874.  How unnaturally have they forced (by their adjuration) the Protestants to detect and bring into the danger of their lives, their parents, their children, their brethren and sisters, yea their dear wives and companions who have laid in their own bosoms? 
Pag. 751.  All which in that one examination of Robert Bartlet, plainly appeareth.  
I will add hereunto that, to which no parts of unnatural cruelty can be added: that they have compelled the children to set fire to the burning of their own fathers, against all laws of God and nature itself; as appeareth in the example of William Tilesworth, to the burning of whom his own daughter joan Clerk was forced to set fire: as also of john Scrivener, 
Pag. 710.  whose own children were forced to set fire to their natural father. 
Pag. 766.  And, as if this were but a small thing, yet Popish cruelty can afford us examples without example among the most savage heathens and barbarism itself: This one I cannot omit, testified by Thuanus, and out of his History transcribed by D. Bulkley in his addition to the book of Martyrs: that in the Town of Nun a certain woman being drawn out of a privy place, where she was fled from the rage of Popish Soldiers, was in the sight of her husband shamefully defiled, and then commanded to draw a sword, 
A woman forced to kill her husband by Papists. Acts and Mon. pag. 1951.  was forced by others who ordered her hand, to give her husband a deadly wound, whereof he died. Oh unnatural tyrants of mankind, in whom natural affection is so dried up, as not one drop of it must be retained in those who are knit in the straytest bonds, but, whom God and nature have made one, even these by Popish cruelty must be the executioners one of another.  
Our own vipers, who like so many Nero's wrought hard night and day in the bowels of the earth, to eat out the bowels of their own mother-country, spared neither King, nor Queen, nor Prince, nor Nobles, nor Senate, nor Gentry, nor young nor old, no not their own friends and favourites, whom they would have sent to heaven with one jump for the love they bore them.  

No plea sufficient against the cruelty of Romanists.  Add hereunto, that in the madness of their rage and fury they chased away all pity and respect of silly persons, who in respect either of their impotency of mind, or tender age, might by all laws of nature and nations have laid claim to mercy, if the Ocean of Heathenish (I mean, Popish) cruelty had not broken all banks and bounds. To clear this point, we might be large to set out the unnaturalness of their cruelty against the living and dead, which could not hurt them any way. Most lamentable was that spectacle of the child which sprung out of the womb of a woman burnt at Garnsey, which being saved out of the fire was by the bloody executioners cast in again, 
Acts and Mon. pag. 1864. Fellies child. Davies Boy under 12. years condemned for the 6. articles, p. 1879.  because it was a young heretic, and so baptised in the mother's flames and it own blood. What hurt could that Boy of eight years old do unto them or their religion, which was scourged to death in Bonner's house for religion? What madness was it to apprehend a mad man, as Collins, who seeing the Priest holding his host over his head, and showing it to the people, held up a little dog by the legs over his head; for which he was taken, and immediately condemned to be burned with his dog as Heretics: A woeful mean to bring a mad man into his wits. With how little reason could they demand a reason of one Cowbridge a mad man of his faith, and make the words of a mad man without understanding to be heresy, for which he was burned at Oxford? But ala●! 
Pag. 1035.  where fury & rage hath made men mad, no excuse will serve to move to petty.  
How unnatural is that wrath that sticketh not neither to bury the quick, as Marion at Burges was condemned to be buried alive; nor to unbury, 
Pag. 816.  and violate the graves of the dead? In our own Country, and days of our fathers, how M. Bucer and Phagius were cited out of their graves to appear, or any that would for them, and that at Cambridge, four years after their burial, is manifest: which when the silly ashes could not do, they were digged out & burned on the market-hill. How Wickliff was condemned after his death, 
Pag. 1780.  & his bones burnt 41. years after his burial, appeareth in the History of Master Fox. Richard Hun, who was first apparently hanged and murdered in prison by their wicked hands, 
Pag. 739.  was burnt also after his death. Peter Martyrs wife the Divinity Reader at Oxford, 
Pag. 1785.  was two years after her death digged out of her grave. john Glover was not only excommunicate, 
Pag. 1556.  but struck with the great sentence of Maranatha, after his death. john Tooly was cited by Bonner after he was dead and buried, to appear before him by such a day, and the time of citation limited being expired, and he not appearing, he was excommunicate, & straight charge given, that no man should eat or drink with him, or if any met him he should not bid him God-speede, and if he came to Church in divine service he must be thrust out ● After this excommunication he was condemned and committed to the secular power to be burnt for an Heretic, and so by the Sheriffs the poor dead man was the second time executed.  
Now out of all this I conclude, that the spirit of N●buchadnezz●r is quickened or revived in these Romanists, and, that they are of the number of those whose mercies are cruel. 
Prou. 12.10. Gal. 5.22. Math. 11.29.  Certainly they are not led by the Spirit of God: for the fruits of the Spirit are meekness, gentleness, peace; neither by the spirit of Christ; for he was meek and lowly of spirit. He and his Apostles put none to death. Object. You put Catholics to death, and not for any thing but for maintaining the ancient religion of their fathers. Answer. This is a cunning wile of Satan, to put this imputation from his dear Antichrist upon others: for it cannot be showed, that ever any Romanist suffered death amongst us for his religion, but for rebellion, and denying his allegiance: there being no law in England to put a Papist to death for his conscience. Yet yield that which can never be granted, (without betraying our innocence:) and compare which of our religions be more unmerciful, it must needs fall upon their pate: for M. Fox in the five years of Queen Mary hath reckoned up towards three hundred, and so the truth is, as eye-witnesses will testify: whereas a Writer of theirs hath raked up in fifty years under two hundred, namely 193. Compare the odds.  
I hasten to things that remain; wherein I will be more brief.  
Note here how far the Lord suffers the wicked to bring their purposes, 
Man's extremity, God's opportunity.  even to the point of execution: for, here was the rage of the King unplacable, till the furnace was prepared, and his servants put in, whom the Lord would not deliver till they were in the furnace; and, not in some corner of it, where the fire came not, but in the midst of the flames. This the Lord doth, 1. In respect of the wicked, to glorify himself through them, both in his long patience toward them, forbearing them till there be no remedy, as also in his justice, when they make all cocksure, and glory in their ungodly purposes, then to confound them, and dissipate their counsels, recompensing his leaden feet with brazen hands, 2. In respect of the godly, either to try their patience, and faith, and love of himself, or else to declare his mighty power in their delivery, when all other means are hopeless.  
This may stir us up to the greater thankfulness for the great mercy of this present day: 
Use 1.  for the same was the Lords dealing in that ungodly and devilish plot, as here for the three children: It was brought even to the birth, as the Scripture speaks. Oftentimes the wicked conceive wickedness, and travel to bring forth iniquity: and here the mischief had been conceived the full months, and they (no doubt) gloried in their hopeful birth: but yet our watchful and gracious God caused their Sun to fall at noonday, and stretched out his own right hand to save, when all means failed; that all the glory and praise of it might return to himself.  
Let us learn hereby ever to wait for the Lords deliverance, though he seem to delay: 
Use 2.  if it be not sudden, yet it shall be seasonable; how glorious will it be, if it be in the very flames, even the night before the danger, as was Peter's deliverance, Act. 12. and ours also the very night before the intended execution?  
Note further, how the providence of God guides all events, 
Man purposeth, God disposeth.  and overrules all designments of all his creatures. Nabuchadnezzar purposed to burn the bodies of the Saints: but the Lord disposed, that the wicked should be burnt in their stead. He cannot burn whom he will: He cannot save whom he would. He may command the furnace to be made, and to be made seven times hotter than ordinary; yet can he not command it to burn whom he would, he cannot forbid it to consume whom he would not. This overruling power of God makes fire and water, which (we say) have no pity, more merciful and pitiful than tyrants & wicked men: as flames of fire here more favourable than Nabuchadnezzar, as the sea itself more calm than Pharaoh. Nay more, this providence makes the ungodly meditate a vain thing, 
Psal. 2▪ 1.2.  especially in banding themselves against the Church. Nay more yet, their counsels are not only turned unto folly, the Lord disappointing them, but even to a quite contrary end, for a mischief to themselves, as here, the same fire that they kindle against the children of God, licks up themselves; the same destruction that Pharaoh intended against Israel, overthrew only himself and all his host. Hence David observing this truth, is bold to say, that the wicked digs a pit for others, 
Psal. 7.15.  but falls into it himself: he layeth snares for others, but himself is taken; he whetteth his sword against the innocent, but it shall pierce his own heart. The wicked device of Haman against the jews, was turned upon his own head; 
Hest. 9.25.  both he and his were hanged on the Gallows which he had set up for Mordecay. And the enemies of Daniel are cast into the same den that they prepared for him.  
The self same thing we see experience of in the Popes and Percies barbarous device against the Church: they could make their furnace, but could not kindle the fire: nay some of the actors were marked with their powder, but none against whom it was laid: though they carried it a long time in their resolutions and plots, yet did not they meditate a vain thing? yea did not the Artisans of death perish in their own Art? yes most justly. And so of D. Story's iron Cage, which was turned into an hurdle and halter against himself.  
Let us all therefore (to the praise of God) acknowledge, 
Use.  both what a bootless thing and dangerous it is to be an instrument of malice against the Church. The Pope and holy league (or rather, impure faction) have a long time leagued themselves against the Churches reform: but hath not the Lord still dissolved their most furious practices, and made the end shameful unto themselves? Have they not lost more by their cruel Inquisition at home, than they have gotten? He that hath knowledge of the state of the Low Countries, shall easily see it had been good for them never to have known it. Have not the same persons by horrible stratagems and bloodsheds sought utterly to waste the Church? 
Sanguis Martyrum▪ semen ecclesi●e.  but is not the blood of Martyrs the seed of the Church? have not we reaped the holy doctrine of Christ, 
Foecundi sunt Martyrum ci●eres.  which was sown in the blood and ashes of our Fathers? Was not that most hellish massacre in France a means utterly to have abolished the mention of religion for ever? but have we not great hope, that the Lord will give them to reap in joy for such sorrowful sowing? and in sight, France was never so furnished with Protestants as at this day. Against our own Country did not they brag and bear themselves upon their Invincible Navy of 88 to destroy young and old, Religion and justice on a day? Yet what was the end but this, the Lord broke their ships, and so weakened their strength, as they have halted ever since, never able to gather such forces together again? And of what attempt almost ever so wicked could they blush at, save this most execrable device, 
Hest. 9.26.  for which these days of Purim are instituted as a memorial? for indeed, as never any unfinished was so near the accomplishment, so never any did cast more just reproach upon them, both for the accursed mischief and carriage of it, as also for the sudden shame & confusion wherewith the actors were clothed.  
And, as it is bootless, so is it a dangerous thing to be an instrument against any good man, 
Have nothing to do● against that just man.  come with what humane authority he can come. These servants of Nabuchadnezzar might thi●ke they had warrant enough for their fact, by the King's commandment; but yet the fire licked them in suddenly and irrecoverably. The Prophet Zachary calls the Church (and so the members of it,) an heavi stone: never man lifted at it, but was torn in pieces. The threatening is passed, 
Zach. 12.3.  they shall be covered with shame which war with Zion. A woeful thing it is for any man to hatch mischief against the Church: he carries his own coals, and a sentence of condemnation with him, although he go in with Haman to the King's banquet. See Esa. 33.1. and 41.14.15. and Obad. 18.  
So much for the enemies: Now in the persons delivered, the Text affordeth three notable points, 1. The manner, it was miraculous: 2. The means, a Son of God walking with them: 3. The effect, namely the acknowledgement of the true God by Nabuchadnezzar and all his Nobles. Of all these very briefly.  
I. For the manner: they were cast in bound, and the fire only loosed their bonds, consumed them, and set their bodies free, yea their garments did not so much as savour or smell of the fire. God's children, and the children of the Church, 
God's people, gainers by fiery trials.  by fiery trials get more liberty, and walk more enlarged; they have their chains of sin consumed, and so walk more gloriously in persecutions than ever before, and themselves like gold come out more purified. 
1. Pet. 1.7.  Never were these three more glorious than in the flames.  
We must learn by the Papists furnace to take good, as we have taken no harm: 
Use.  and labour, that our bonds of sin may be more and more loosed, and ourselves walk at more liberty in the ways of God's commandments. Thus wise men take more benefit of foes than of friends.  
II. For the means of their deliverance. Some ascribe it to virginity, as Damascene; some to fasting, as Basill: but the word of God ascribeth it to faith in the Son of God; Heb. 11.34. By faith they quenched the violence of the fire. And so in this place: Nabuchadnezzar saw a fourth like the Son of God; speaking indeed like an Heathen, whose Gods were begotten one of another: not understanding the Son of the eternal Father, but an Angel, vers. 18. Yet hence we may note many good things, as  
First, that the Lord jesus the Son of God, and the protection of his people, by whose only power a true miracle can be wrought, then affords his most gracious presence, when his members are in extremest dangers: as the head most bestirs itself in the exigence of the least member. He took not the quality of fire from this fire, (which did burn wood, and fuel, and the enemy's bodies, and the bolts of daniel's fellows:) but only restrained and repressed it from these subjects. And hence it is, that the Martyrs never find such a cheerful presence of God's Spirit with them, as in the midst of flames: whose consolations swallow up all their fears, and all the horror of those flames. Of this truth if ourselves had not had experience in their hellish conspiracy, we had not been here at this time.  
Secondly, let us ascribe that salvation unto the Son of God, who walked with us in that Furnace. The wicked tyrant could espy a fourth like the Son of God in the furnace: much more let us, and acknowledge, that it was no foresight, wisdom, merit, or humane means whereby we were preserved, but only the Son of God, who by themselves revealed it. And for time to come let us hide ourselves under his wing, which if we do, fire shall cease to burn, and water to drown, rather than we shall perish.  
Thirdly, as this tyrant by this sight of this Son of God in the furnace did acknowledge, that he neither aught to have commanded such an unjust command, nor his Ministers obeyed it; so we wish the Romish N●buchadnezzar would at length come (by such events as have befall ●n him) to acknowledge the Son of God with us, protecting and defending his own religion among us: and that the tyrant would but come to ask that jewish question, Who is this whom the winds and seas obey, as in 88 and what is that fourth, 
Math. 8 ●7.  who would not suffer the fire to burn those, for whom it was prepared, as in 1605? and conclude at last, that it is hard to kick against such pricks. 
Acts 9.5.   
III. For the effect or event of all: It is the acknowledgement and praise of the true God, even among his enemies: much more should this be among us, who profess ourselves friends, and had the sweet of the mercy. Note David's practice on the like occasion, Psal. 7.16.17. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his cruelty, shall fall upon his own pate: I will praise the Lord according to his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord m●st high. Let us also praise the justice of God in defending the good, and revenging the wicked: As he hides not his righteousness, but draws it out for our safety, so let us not hide his salvation, but draw it out for his glory: Let fathers tell their children, and so let it be in everlasting memory, that the Lords grace and the Papists wickedness may never be put out. And let us not only speak of it as a wicked intent, and so force one another to malice them, but drive ourselves forward to such duties, of faith, love, obedience, as beseem those who look for such salvation. 
Psal. 33.1.  Thus it becomes the just to be thankful. To this blessed Son of God, who is always present with his Church in the hottest flames, together with the Father of mercies, and Spirit of all consolation, be all honour and glory, now and evermore. Amen. Amen.  
The end of the first Sermon.   

ROMISH EDOM.  Amos 1.11, 12. 
Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn to it, because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger spoilt him evermore, and his wrath watched him always.  
Therefore will I send a fire upon Teman, and it shall devour the palaces of Bozrah.  
IN these verses is contained the fourth example of God's severe judgement against the neighbour nations of his people Israel: namely upon the Edomites, which dwelled in Arabia, and confined upon the South coast of judea. Wherein we will observe three general points.  
1 A threatening: For three transgressions of Edom, 
Division of the text.  and for four, I will not turn to it.  
2 The equity of it: Because he pursued his brother, etc.  
3. The execution of judgement, vers. 12. Therefore will I send a fire, etc.  
I. First of the threatening: 
Exposition.  For three transgressions of Edom, and for four:] Here is a certain number put for an uncertain: and it may be considered either jointly, and so three ●nd four make seven, 
Numerus septenarius iuxta aliquos est numerus ●●rf●ctus.  and then by this number is understood, first, the multitude and magnitude of their wickednesses, being in ripeness and perfection: secondly, the greatness and heaviness of their punishment, as Levit. 26.21. I will punish you seven times more for your sins. Or severally: and then this is the sense: If after once or twice their provoking of me they had returned, I was ready to return and give them pardon: but now the fourth time provoking me, that is, going on in sin still, and adding obstinacy and impenitency to their sin, I will bear them no longer.  
Here note by the way, that the Lord is not suddenly moved to punish even his enemies. He speaks to a man (saith job) twice and thrice. 
job. 33.14.  But after men a long time have persisted with obstinacy in diverse and grievous sins, then at length he reckoneth for many together: thereby manifesting both his patience in forbearing, and his justice in smiting.  
I will not turn to it.] First, I will not turn myself any more in my love, nor by my Spirit, unto them: I will not offer myself in patience to expect them any more. Secondly, I will not turn them to myself by repentance, but leave them to themselves, to enjoy their sins so many and so enormous, till my swift and severe judgement overtake them.  
Note here, that of all judgements the most severe is to be left and forsaken of God; when he is so far provoked as he will not return. This one threat (I will not turn to it) is an epitome of all misery.  
II. Now of the equity. These Idumeans were stubbornly wicked, and heaped up sin upon sin. But especially they are here threatened because of their cruelty and fierceness against the Church of God, set down in four particulars: 1. In respect of the persons: He pursued his brother. Esau was the natural brother to jacob, yea a twin of the same womb at the same time; so as the Edomites and Israelites were cousin-germans, of two brethren, Esau and jacob: yet as Esau hated his brother extremely, with deadly hatred plotting his death, ever after he got the blessing from him: so was this imbred hatred derived into his posterity against the posterity of jacob, forgetting they were brethren, and of brethren. Therefore it is said, he cast off all pity, and put off all humanity, natural affection and all bowels were laid aside: so is the word, violating even the law of nature. 
N●. ham●n.  2. In respect of the extent of his wrath: it turned to fierceness and cruelty, no spark of compassion left; called fury and rage, Psal. 137.3. while they cried, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. 3. In respect of the effects: which in the text are two: first, sword and slaughter: secondly, spoil and robbery: They spared neither life, nor goods, but as thieves both slew and rifled them. 4. In respect of the time: His anger was evermore, and his wrath always; as a cruel beast having taken his prey will never let it go: so Edom never let Israel go free, no time wasted his wrath, which continued, perpetual, and irreconciliable. Object. There was often truce and peace between them. Answ. No: in war he spoilt, in peace he watched him, saith the text. 
Gal. 4.29.  Thus he that is after the flesh persecutes him that is after the spirit with an endless hatred; the wicked, the elect; the Edomites, the Israelites.  
III. The third general is the execution of judgement: Therefore I will send a fire] God will send. God revengeth his. Fire in Scripture is usually put for a most grievous plague, by sword, or famine, or pestilence. 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  Or we may take it in the letter, fire, that is, extreme slaughter and desolation, eating up the country as fire doth stubble. For fire is a name of efficacy as well as of nature: as Num. 21.28. A fire is gone out of Hesbon, and a flame out of Sihon, that is, the enemy wasting the fields and country, as an outrageous fire. Upon Teman] The Metropolis of Idumea, so called of Teman the son of Eliph●s, the son of Esau, Gen. 36. Palaces of Bozrah.] A city in the borders between Moab and Idumea: sometime ascribed to one people, and sometime to the other, for their vicinity. This notes the extent of the judgement, which shall reach to the uttermost border of Edom, no part shall escape. This judgement is at large described, Obad. 10.11. Thy strong men, O Teman, shall be afraid, because every one of mount Esau shall be cut off by slaughter: for thy cruelty against thy brother jacob, shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.  
So much for the sense of the words: Now to the application.  
Edom is a special type of the kingdom of Antichrist, above all other the enemies here threatened, 
Antichrist resembled by Edom.  who were all more open, less hurtful and hateful. The Hebrews think, that the Romans came of the Idumeans: how true that is, I will not dispute: Sure I am, if they be not of the natural descent, they are of the spiritual (or unnatural) and so like as by the one we may see the express picture of the other: that look as it is said in Gen. 36.8. This Esau is Edom, so we may as truly say, This Romish and Antichristian Esau is Edom. The similitude between them we will consider, 1. In their persons: 2. In their sins: 3. In their judgement.  
First, for their persons they are as like as like may be; in four respects: 
Antichrist and Edom like in their persons, four ways.  1. Esau strove with jacob in the womb: whereof when Rebecca asked the Lord's counsel, the answer was, Two manner of people shall be divided out of thy bowels. Noting a continual fight in the womb of the Church. 
Gen. 25.23.  No marvel, if the Esau of Rome strive now against the Church, seeing even in the womb, before he was borne into the light, he strove to hinder the birth of the Church in the days of the Apostles: for Antichrist worketh already, 2. Thess. 2.7. although the Roman Empire held him then by the heel, and hindered his birth: but not long after he was borne into the world, and the man of sin revealed, vers. 8. 2. Esau was red, and therefore called Edom, betokening his bloody disposition: And the Romish Edom is figured by a woman in scarlet, and a purple whore, whose garments are died in the blood of the Saints; wherewith she also herself is drunken, 〈◊〉. 17.6. 3. Esau was rough, hairy as a beast; which betokened his savage, truculent, and cruel nature: so a right owner of mount Seir. Besides, he was a mighty hunter, as hungry as an hunter, ravenous, insatiable: 
Verse 30. Lagnat.  feed me (saith he) or let me swallow at once thy pottage: so the word signifies: as Camels are fed by casting gobbets into their mouths. The Romish Edom and kingdom of Antichrist is described (Reuel. 13.1.) by an hideous and monstrous beast, which was like a Leopard, most cruel, untamed, and most hurtful to mankind, which (as Basil reports) will most furiously tear in pieces men, yea a paper that hath but the image of a man. This beast of Rome is likest unto the devil, who prosecutes with most deadly hatred the image of God in man. The feet of this beast are like Bears feet, for roughness, and cruelty, and tearing: and his mouth as the mouth of a Lion, for ravening and devouring of Christian men: which the lamentation of the whole Christian world can better express than my words, or all Rhetoric in the world. This was prophesied of Esau in his father's blessing, Gen. 27.40. Thou shalt live by the sword: so did the Idumeans, a savage and cruel people. So do the Romish Idumeans only support themselves by fire and sword, the surest arguments when all other means fail. Intimated also by the ten horns. 4. Esau was a caviller at Jacob's name, and a liar, in that he said he had taken away the blessing and birthright, both which, himself had passed away; and a false perfidious person, who, though he sold the birthright, and passed it away by an oath, yet he made but a scoff at it, and had no purpose to perform it: nay he contrived and hatched the death and murder of his brother, if once the days of his father's mourning would come, so to recover his birthright again. The Romish Edom will not allow the true Church of Christ the name of Christ, but calls the religion by which we worship the God of our fathers, 
Acts 24.14.  heresy. He hath passed away his right to the blessing, by being the head of Apostasy, and complains that we challenge it. He is false and perfidious, no way to be held to any promise, by oaths or vows, but he hath ever a secret trick or reservation, 
N●n obstante.  to play fast or lose at his pleasure. Hence the beast is said to have seven h●ads, that is, fullness of fraud and subtlety, to overreach and abuse the Church of Christ: and, to recover his power again, will plot the death of so many Kings and Kingdoms as stand in his way.  
Thus are they like in respect of their persons.  

●●tichrist and Edom like in their sins.  Secondly, they are as like in respect of their sins: that the Lord may say, For three transgressions of the Romish Edom▪ and for four, I will never return to it in mercy, 
1. Profaneness.  but will send a fire and utter desolation. One transgression is profaneness, as Esau preferring the present profits and pleasures of this world, yea their belly before true religion: 
Quid non regina pecuma donat?  and now all sins are set to sale; any thing lawful for money; they can pardon for money that which God will never pardon, yea and sins before they be committed. 
2. Idolatry.  Another transgression of Romish Edom is idolatry, as base idolatry as ever was in Edom's posterity; which hath quite cut them off from God, who for their spiritual whoredom will never return to them any more. 
3. Merits.  A third transgression, for which God will never return to it, is vain confidence in their own merits, which cuts them from Christ, and quite casts them out of God's favour: 
4. Cruelty.  Gal. 5.4. The fourth, and last transgression is deadly and endless cruelty against the people of God, and the Church of Christ: as the Lord would not return to Edom especially for his extreme cruelty against his brother, in word and deed, never dated, by sword and spoil evermore.  
Now that this is a sin in these Romish Edomites, for which God will never return unto them, let us see in our own glass, and compare Edom's cruelty in the text with our own Champions of Antichrist, and Dukes of the Romish Edom: and we shall see the face, favour, affection of the one in the other: nay we shall see old Edom red, but our late Edomites in scarlet, of a far deeper dye in blood than they.  
They are like one another in that: 
Cruelty of our Edomites and old Edomites compared.  1. Old Edom pursued his brother, to whom all natural bonds did bind him, and to whom he owed homage: New Edom pursued nearer brethren than they. judea was but a neighbour to Idumea (near neighbours indeed, but forty miles from jerusalem, and so in all humanity should have been loving to them:) but these were nearer than neighbours, vipers within our own mother's bowels, bound to our Commonwealth in all bonds of loyalty and subjection, as Edom should have been an homager to judea, being subdued by David, 1. Chron. 18.13. yet against all laws of God, na●u●e, and nations they cry, Down with it, etc. 2. Edom's chief spite was not against any ignoble place, or village, but against jerusalem the city of God, for pleasure a paradise, for spaciousness six miles about, 
josephus.  for multitude of people fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants, for beauty the eye of the world. Add hereunto the Temple, the Sanctuary, Aaron's Rod, Vrim, sacrifices, praises and worship, whereby it became God's delight. Yet old Edom cries, Down with it, down with it even to the ground. The same was the voice and practice of our late Edomites, against our jerusalem the eye of the world, against our Temple, Church, State, and Land; they struck at the heart, and sought to let out the life-blood. 3. Old Edom, when strangers cast lots upon jerusalem, was as one of them, Obad. 11. that is, when Babel made sure of jerusalem, Edom being too weak of himself joined with Babel, and, when the Babylonians entered, Edom was far more cruel than they: for, whereas Babel would have been contented with the city and the spoil, the Edomites would not be contented but with blood: for so saith the Prophet, Thou shouldest not have stood in the cross ways to cut off them that should escape. 
Obad. 14.  Our late Edomites, when the Spaniards or any enemy should cast lots upon England, were as they: and, that nothing but blood would serve them, appeared not only in the bloody terrible blow, but also by standing in the cross ways, ready prepared to the slaughter when the blow should be given. 4. Old Edom spared none, he showed no pity to his brother, but was altogether without natural affection: And these unnatural Edomites were pitiless, not only to such as they made their enemies, but even to their friends, allies, kindred, both in the flesh and in their faith. For one ask the question what should become of the Catholics in the House, etc. Answer was made, they would send them all to heaven in a fiery chariot, and so provide for their ease.  

Young Edomites with us far surpass the old in cruelty: five arguments.  But will you see wherein old Edom was far inferior in cruelty to the late Edomites? All Arts (they say) are grown to perfection of late days: and so is the art of jesuitical rebellion and treason. These Jesuits or Esavites go beyond all their predecessors in their art. As for example. 1. Never was any wickedness acted so cruel, but a man by study could give it a fit name, as the Spanish Inquisition, the Massacre in France, the butchery of the Merindolians, all by Papists. But this was so matchless a cruelty, as no name can fit it: a chaos of confusion, a mass of evil, 
The powder-plot a villainy without name.  a sink, a root of mischief, a contempt of all laws, divine & humane; it was every thing that hath any wickedness in it, perfidiousness, robbery, sacrilege, homicide, parricide, fratricide, regicide, idolatry, paganism; the whole train of iniquity, and divellishnes itself in the Abstract; a Catholic cruelty, a crying, a roaring, yea a thundering sin of fire and brimstone, as his Majesty calls it, in his speech, 1605. 2. Edom's indeed was an unnatural cruelty: but they were heathens, without the true knowledge of God. These late Edomites profess religion, and such a religion as out-boasteth all in sanctity and piety: nay, they were their religious men. Object. Why, but they were but a few unfortunate Gentlemen. Answ. Happy we they were so unfortunate. But these were but the less wheels: Catesby, Faux, Percy, and their fellows were but petty traitors, nimble and active as mischief useth to be; but the Priests and Jesuits were the great wheels, which not seeming to move, moved them. But what should move these? Answ. That ponderous and weighty plummet and Lead, the Pope's Breve. 
The Popes leadden Bull sets all mischief on work.  For the primus motor of all these treasons is the Pope and Popery itself. Faux in his confession said it was merely and only for religion, and for his conscience sake, denying the King to be his Sovereign, as being an heretic: and, for relief of the Catholic cause: and, he had heard Mass and received the Sacrament, for acting the matter and for secrecy. 3. Edom exercised his cruelty by open war, wherein either warning to prepare, or entreaty, or truce, or flight, or delivering the City up, might have satisfied the enemy, and saved their lives. But these Edomites (more cruel than ever any Scythian) digged out of the depth a pit of mischief, yea out of the bottom of hell; no more league could be made with them than with hell itself, or the grave which is inexorable. Old Edom joined with Babylonians, men whose designs might have been prevented: Late Edom joined himself with furies and hellish ghosts in the caves of darkness, digging a new hell of sulphurous fire, with wide mouth to open itself, and devour three Kingdoms at once. Old Edom cried of jerusalem, Down with it, down with to the ground: young Edom would raise it from under ground. 4. Old Edom, although they showed no pity to their brethren, yet they spared Zedekiah the King, and the Prophet jeremiah, and many Nobles lives whom they carried into Babel. Our young Edomites spared neither King, who had never drawn blood of them for their religion, nor Queen, nor Prince, nor Nobles, nor Counsel, nor judges, nor Bishops, nor Gentry, nor young, nor old, no not their own; the stroke of the blow had been like the blow of Duke Medina his sword, of which he professed, his sword knew no difference between Catholics & heretics. 5. Old Edom raised but the material walls of the City and Temple: these dig to blow up the foundation not only of stately Palaces, but of all Churches, and of the whole Commonwealth: especially that foundation laid in Zion, of God's pure worship: And, rather than this true religion shall stand on the foundation, his Majesty defending it, his Nobles guarding it, his Laws strengthening it, the Ministry preaching it, and his Subjects professing it, all shall by one unexpected and terrible blow be utterly and pittilesly destroyed: and, when they had done this, they would like honest men lay it all on the Puritans, whose throats must be all cut for it.  

Use. 1 That religion good, which Antichrist persecutes.  This speaks for our religion, that certainly it is Christ's, seeing Antichrist and his limbs do so rage against it. It was Gods Israel, his son, his Lot, his hallowed thing, which Edom was so cruel against. Therefore we say of Romish Edom as Tertullian said of Nero, That religion must needs be good which Nero so persecuteth, which the Pope so persecuteth.  

Use 2. Bloody religion, wicked religion.  To detect and detest so wicked and bloody a religion, set up by subtlety, held up by violence and cruelty: for it is not from the bad constitution of their persons, but of their doctrine, and refined religion by the fiery wits of late Jesuits and Priests; as I can clear in an hundred several positions of theirs, if there were any doubt. Christ would not have his Disciples call for ●i●e from heaven against that City which received him not, 
Luk. 9.54.55.  as Elias did: Much less may they bring a spark from hell, to blow up three Kingdoms at once.  

Use 3.  To bless our God for delivering us from that intended cruelty, and never forget his wonderful mercy. Oh happy 5. of November, wherein our Sun should have been turned into blood; wherein our name should have been changed into Ichabod; wherein had been set up again the abomination of desolation. 
1. Sam. 4.21.  A day when the great City should have been a Beacon to all the land, and all the 〈◊〉 to the whole world. A day which should have burnt 〈◊〉 an Oven, Mal. 4.1. What had a Bonfire of 200. in one day been to this? The Massacre of France, in which thirty thousand were murdered in one month, had been but a play unto it. Farnesius might now have had his mind fulfilled, and have ridden his horse to the saddle in English blood. But God for his own Name sake turned it into an honourable and glorious day, a day of joy and gladness to all truehearted Englishmen.  
When Esau came with 400. men toward his brother jacob, minding no doubt to perform his long-intended malice, God so ordered the matter, that he was not able to give him an ill word. Why? what was the reason? jacob had all night before wrested with the Angel, and prevailed, and got a blessing from him, which was, Thou hast prevailed with God, thou shalt also prevail with men. 
Gen. 32.28.  The cause why Romish Esau being appointed and all prepared, could not hurt an hair of our heads, was, that some wrestled with God by prayer, and left him not till he had given us the blessed deliverance. The Catholics were devout and earnest to set it forward, so many as they durst trust, and the rest implicitè▪ not knowing their meaning: But their prayers are like their religion, and their religion like that of the devout women, who raised Tragedies against Paul. Well, when jezabel proclaims a Fast, 
Acts 13.50.  let Naboth look to his Vineyard. When Catholics are devout, and busy at their Beads, let us look to ourselves; We need not fear those weapons, but other that are a preparing. It is the wisdom of a prudent Captain that fears an undermining, to undermine and prevent the mischief by a cross train: and so was famous Vi●nna preserved against the Turks. If Papists lay secret undermining trains, to overthrow us, prayer and repentance will be a cross train, that undermines the underminers. If we can prevail with God, we shall be sure to prevail with men.  
Thus far of Edom's sin: Now of Edom's punishment, and the similitude of it with our Edomites.  
Edom's punishment is set down in the Text, 1. By the certainty, 
Antichrist and Edom like in their punishment.  2. By the severity of it: It is certain; For, 1. God will do it, 2. He will not return. And it is severe; 1. He will send a fire, 2. A devouring fire, unresistable, 3. Upon Teman, the Metropolis or mother City, 4. On the Palaces of Bozrah: a fire wasting the whole land.  
In all these we have a lively portraiture of God's just judgement upon the Roman Edomites, which shall not be less certain than severe.  

1. For certainty.  The certainty of the destruction of the Kingdom of Antichrist is manifest:  
I. In that the Lord will do it: for he hath spoken it, Revel. 17.17. The words of God must be fulfilled concerning the destruction of Babylon. Now by Babylon in that Chapter and Prophecy, is not to be understood the Babel of Chaldea, neither do the threats befit that Babel, which was fallen and destroyed before: but the mystical Babel of Rome, which succeedeth and exceedeth that in cruelty. This I will not stand to prove, because we have it plainly confessed both by Bellarmine and Ribera, the learnedst of the Romish Church, that Rome present, is mystical Babel. john (saith Bellarmine) every where in the Apocalyps calleth Rome Babylon; because (saith he) only Rome in john's time had the rule over the Kings of the earth, and secondly, was the City set on seven hills, which agrees to no other City. What therefore I am to speak of Babylon in the Revelation, I shall aptly and properly speak of Rome, by the learnedst of the Papists own confession. And the reason, why the Spirit of God by allusion doth call it Babylon, 
Rome termed Babylon, why?  is by way of similitude; Because as that Eastern and Chaldean Babylon did a long time oppress the Church of the jews, so this Western and Italian Babylon hath kept, under most horrible oppression and thraldom the Church of the Christians.  
This Babylon must be so certainly destroyed as if it were done already: Reuel. 14.8. It is fallen, it is fallen, saith the Angel. True indeed, it is already accomplished in part: it is fallen, 1. In the purity of doctrine, 2. In the estimation which once it had. 3. In authority: but this prophecy notes the certainty of her fall by an outward overthrow. And this Babylon must be certainly destroyed, because God the great judge of the world hath passed sentence against her, which only waits the execution; Reuel. 18.20. Rejoice ye heavens over her, for God hath given your judgement on her. Again, if any means can bring her destruction, she shall be destroyed: If death, sorrow, famine or fire can destroy her, these shall come on one day; and if all these were unable, the strength of God is able to pull her down, Reuel. 18.8. for strong is the Lord, which will condemn her: Now if God set against a man who can rescue him? job. 33.13.14.  
II. The judgement is certain, because, as the Lord would not return to Edom, so neither will he return to Romish Edom: for, 1. He is too far provoked: the sentence is past and therefore irrevokable. 2. This leopard, as she is called, Reuel. 13.2. cannot change her spots. 3. Edom's tears found no repentance, Heb. 12.16.17. no more shall these, nor by any means will God call back his anger.  
The severity of God's wrath against the Kingdom of Romish Edom is not unproportionable to the judgement of the Syrian Idumea. 1. In the kind, a fire; 
2. For severity  by which is signified an utter desolation: 2. A devouring fire, which signifies the incurableness of her estate, she shall never rise from under the judgement. 3. The chief subject is Teman, the Metropolis, signifying the utter ruin of Rome itself: 4. It shall reach to the Palaces of Bozrah, noting the generality of the judgement through all the Kingdom of Antichrist. 
Most probable that Rom● shall be destroyed with material fire, for five reasons.   
First, the destruction of Rome shall be by terrible fire, even in the letter it is most likely; though some of great note think not so: for, 1. It is said, Reuel. 17.16. the ten horns which thou sawest, shall hate the whore, and make her desolate, and naked, and burn her with fire: and chapter 18.8. she shall be burnt with fire. By which oracle of the holy Ghost it plainly appears, that the Christian Princes, which have been in such league with Rome, shall at length make war against the very city of Rome, take it captive, spoil it, famish it, and at last burn it with fire. 2. Harlots by the law of God were to be burnt with fire, as we see in the example of judah and Thamar, Gen. 38.24. But Babylon is the mother of whordoms and abominations of the earth, Reuel. 17.5. yea the great whore, with whom the Kings of the earth have committed fornication, verse 2 therefore etc. 3. She as Ashur hath a long time been the rod of God's wrath, by which the Church hath been scourged, and corrected for many ages: and now must be cast into the fire, broken and burnt. 4. There is no other nitre or meane● to purge that idolatrous city: We would have cured Babel, but she would not be cured therefore she shall never be purged, 
jerem. 51.9.  but all her dross and trash shall pass the fire. 5. By the law of retaliation she must be consumed with fire: for whosoever durst mock or resist her, or any of her decreees, was presently adjudged to fire: burning was the peculiar punishment of God's Saints, whom she condemned for heretics. Of Syrian Edom it was said, As thou hast done, it shall be done to the, 
Obadi. 15.  thy reward shall return upon thine own head; and of the Roman. Wi●ked Papists make the furnace seven times hotter than Nebuchadnezzars but here is a furnace heated by God himself for themselves. They device an unnatural fire and furnace under the Parliament, to consume the innocents of three Kingdoms: but give her double (saith the Spirit) to that she hath done: first, 
Reuel. 18.6.  ten Kings shall set upon her and burn her with fire, and after this, God himself shall cast her in to an hellish and supernatural si●e, for all the cruel and blazing fires which she hath kindled in all countries, pitil●sly to consume the bodies of God● Saints The praeludium here of was seen in our Edomite Captines; they lay fire and powder for others, but the fired powder flies in their own face.  
Object. Antichrist must be destroyed with the sword of the Spirit, and the breath of the Lords mouth, not by carnal weapons.  
Answ. 
2. Thess. 2. ●.  The clear shining of the Gospel shall detect the mystery, wherein Antichrist worketh, and lay him naked, and discover his frauds, by which he gulls the world: the truth shall war, and prevail against his heresies. But this hinders not, 
Antichrist to be overthrown with the sword temporal as well as spiritual.  but that the Princes of Europe (seeing the infinite wrongs sustained by him) shall join to set the seat of Antichrist on fire: considering the Scripture affirms it so manifestly, as even the Papists themselves subscribe to the general truth of it: for these be the words of Ribera: Romam non solùm ob pristinam impi●tatem, sed & propter ea quae postremis temporibus commissura est, magno incendio perflagraturam, adeo perspicuum est & manifestum, ut ne stultissimus quidem id negare possit. And the text is plain, that the Kings, Mariners, and Merchants shall stand and see the smoke of her burning, Reuel. 18.9.  
Object. But this seems impossible: for we see Kings and Princes stick fast to support her, as Spain, France, and many Kings of Europe.  
Answ. God can and will do it, 
Even by Kings that are or were his friends.  who hath horses and chariots of fire to besiege her withal, if means should fail. But God will do it by them, Reuel. 17.17. For he hath put into their hearts, to fulfil his will. And by many means God can effect it: 1. He can soon convert them from their Antichristian and Papistical superstitions to the truth, as sundry of them are already. 2. It may be, that sundry of them which yet retain Romish idolatry, may for some other causes turn against the Pope and waste Rome, as for his unjust claims, his horrible pride and tyranny, his treasonable practices against them, pardons to kill them, etc. and thus by Charles the 8. and Lewis the 12. Kings of France, was Rome sacked and spoilt, and the Pope opposed: as also by Charles the 5. his army. And is this unlikely, when not only the Pope's Agents and Priests shall give the Sacrament and absolution to gunpowder-traytors? but Jesuits teach it lawful, yea meritorious to kill Christian princes, nay Popes themselves so proclaim it, as Sixtus Quintus of the villain that murdered Henry the 3. of France.  
Object. But then this prophecy may seem to be in part fulfilled.  

Overthrow of Rome not partial, but total.  Answ. No, this fire of Edom must be a devouring fire (which is the other part of the similitude) that must quite consume Teman the Metropolis: so this first against Rome must be as a forerunner of the fire of hell, it must be unquenchable, and agreeing with that fire of the Syrian Edom: Obad. 18. A fire shall be kindled in Edom, and devour them, and there shall be no remnant of the house of Esau: for the Lord hath spoken it. This ruin of Rome shall be like the ruin of jericho, which can never be re-edified: and is notably shadowed in Reuel. 18.21. by the casting of a millstone into the sea: noting both the swiftness and irrecoverablenesse of their estate, no more to be raised again than a millstone can rise out of the bottom of the sea and float again. Yea the eternal desolation of Rome is noted by denying such things to be ever any more in her, which a city cannot be without, viz. A millstone shall not be heard in her, nor the light of a candle seen, nor any crafts-man, nor any voice of joy, nor any bridegroom, or marriage, or procreation. A poor city it is, or none at all, where none of these are.  
Object. But the state of Rome is the strongest state in the world, 
Magnificence of Rome no whit secureth it.  for wisdom, wealth, strength, and many of our great ones go back to them: so as you speak unlikely things.  
Answ. 1. God will honour himself by effecting his will in unexpected and unconceivable means: He is wise of heart to lay unknown pipes and means for his purposes. 
Zach. 4.2.  And herein it shall be like Edom, Obad. 8.9. In that day I will destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding from the mount of Esau, and thy strong men O Teman shall be afraid: neither is there wisdom or strength that shall help against the Lord. 2. God by themselves, if others be sla●ke, can hasten their destruction; as it was with Edom, Obad. 7. The men of thy confederacy, and they that were at peace with thee, deceived thee. So our late Edomites were detected by themselves, even by their own confederacy. 3. What if some go to them, and give them a little lightning before their death? See we not such infamy cast upon them all by their daily practices and plots, as all the water in the sea can never wash away? Yes, we see with our eyes, that they gain not, but fall, notwithstanding all their supplies of succours.  
To comfort the poor Church of God, in that, 
Use. 1 Comfort for the Church of God.  when the enemy marcheth furiously like jehu, God sets in, and provides for his safety. Reuel. 10.10. john having before prophesied of many mischiefs to befall the Church, by Antichrist and the Turks, both conspiring against it, in this Chapter brings Christ in a vision for the comfort of the Church, thus described: An Angel, namely of the Covenant, our great Mediator; coming from heaven, to make himself better known, and nearer to his Church; clothed with a cloud, not only in our humane nature clouding & vailing his Deity, but still obscured by the world; with a rainbow on his head, a sign of reconciliation, an assurance that he will remember his covenant, as Genesis 9.15. and a token, that although storms and tempests be upon the Church, yet Christ at length will drive them away, and reduce the calm of it, and a fair season; his face as the Sun, shining as in his transfiguration, to his Church; his feet as pillars, for strength, of fire, because of his efficacy and force to overcome all difficulties. He is a constant slander as a pillar, and fierce, for his Churches good. A sweet meditation against all fiery, furious, and sulphurous plots of the enemies of the Church. He hath the Rainbow on his head, his feet are pillars of fire, and further, he sets his foot on the sea and earth, to note the subjection of the sea, and earth, and all the creatures, and all the world unto him.  

Vs● 2. Terror for the Church of Rome.  The justice of God shall one day magnify itself against that bloody seat, city, and kingdom of Antichrist: for, 1. He that is the unmerciful maintainer of all treasons, and supreme head of all heretics, must needs be fearfully destroyed. 2. He that is concluded to be more merciful than Christ, because Christ delivered none out of Purgatory; and more powerful than God, because God makes but creatures, he makes the Creator, shall dear buy that and other such blasphemies. 3. Pride (we say) must have a fall, and, the higher the pride, the lower the fall. He that hath fought against the Kings of the earth, 
Reuel. 19.16.  yea against Christ the King of Kings, the ten horns shall fight against him. He that out of his horrible ambition hath made mighty Princes hold his stirrup, lead his horse, become his footmen and footstool, shall one day be paid for all. He that hath taken from them, Imperial Crowns, Purple, Sceptres, Kingdoms, shall by them (ere long, I doubt not) be left desolate and naked. He that hath long overborne them with the brag of his primacy, and set himself above all that is called God, shall by them be made to drink of the cup of their Supremacy. They that have given the Saints blood to drink, shall have blood to drink, herein like to old Edom, Obad. 16. Edom drunk upon mine holy mountain: and the heathen must drink them up, and swallow them, and they shall be as though they had not been. Pharaoh drowned the Israelites children, and was drowned himself. The same fire licked in the enemies, which they made so hot for the three children of God. Humans gallows catcht himself. Catesby, Rockwood, Grant, devisers of the powder-plot, by their own powder were almost blown up, yea made unable for their own defence: and the same day Catesby the first deviser, and P●rcy the chief actor were killed with one bullet shot with powder. 
judg. 17.  As I have done (said great Adonibezek) so God hath done to me.  
From all this it follows, 
Use 3. All devices of Papists insufficient to sustain their bloody monarchy.  that all the balm in Gilead cannot heal them: not the ten horns or Kings, not the seven heads, not his power and bloody warns, his Spanish Inquisition, his Massacres, his two traitorous Colleges, his Bulls and Excommunications, his Council of Trent, his Order of Jesuits; not his blacking of the lives and practices of his adversaries, not his juggling with Images, his false miracles and legends, his lies and equivocations, his falsifying of all authority, and the like, can still uphold his tottering state, down he must for all his props, he must dye in the midst of his Physicians; we must expect it, pray for it, and rejoice in it.  
Come out of her, my people, come out of her: 
Use. 4 Separate from them spiritually and corporally.  for it is a people ordained to destruction: Reuel. 18.4. Be not partakers of her sins, lest ye partake in her plagues. Come out in affection, in action, and in habitation, both by spiritual and bodily departure. God is careful of his people: he would not have Lot destroyed with Sodom, nor Israel in Babylon, jere. 51.45. nor the jews in jerusalem at the destruction thereof: A voice was heard (saith josephus) to leave the city, which many believed, and fled into Pella, and they that would not, were all miserably destroyed. Little Mice (they say) presaging the ruin of an house, do fly out before hand. Let us by divine instinct be so wise for our own safety: fly communion & company with Papists. 
Reuel. 18.2.  For Rome is called an habitation of devils: if a man would dwell among devils, let him dwell among Romanists. And it is no schism, but God's commandment. Never hear such whisperings, as speak of a reconciliation of our religions, for that cannot be. Yet hate not their persons, but their sins; and pray for the men. It is dangerous to travel among them, much more to entertain near and intimate acquaintance with them. Therefore fear to make or meddle with them: leave them to God's judgement, which must needs be executed.  
The end of the second Sermon.   

THE ROMISH FOWLER.  Psalm. 124.7. 
Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are delivered.  
THE matter of this Psalm is gratulatory: the occasion, some great deliverance of the Church, from some deadly plot, and imminent danger: Or (as some think) David recounteth and collecteth all those special deliverances, which God had wrought for Israel, since their coming forth of Egypt, till this time: which being many and great, he compiles this Psalm, and gives the Lord the glory of them all.  
In the words of my Text are two things considerable: 


Division of the Text.  1. A danger, the extremity whereof is set down by a similitude.  
2. A deliverance: in it 

1. The means: the snare is broken.  
2. The end: we are delivered.      
The danger is set out by comparison of a Fowler, who hath laid his nets, and hath caught a silly bird within the meashes of it, of which himself and every man else thinks he hath it sure enough. Where the danger is amplified, 1. By the Authors of it, Fowlers: 2. Their instruments, nets and snares: 3. The crafty laying of them, so as they have compassed the silly bird within the snare.  
I. The Scriptures compare the enemies of the Church (the silly Dove of Christ) to Fowlers, Fishers, Hunters: 
Enemies of the Church compared to Fowlers, in 4. respects.  1. In respect of their purpose, which is to take and catch that they hunt for: they intent to kill and destroy ere they return. This was cain's purpose against Abel, if he could get him alone; Pharaohs against Israel; Nero, Dioclesian, and the other Emperors against the Primitive Church. 2. The Fowler makes but a sport of taking his prey: as also the Hunter: So the enemies of the Church count it but a sport to destroy and waste the Church and people of God. Yea, as they feed upon the silly birds they catch, with delight; so these feed on God's people as on bread, Psal. 14 4. 3. Fowlers are so cruel, that they spare none, young nor old, male nor female; all go together into the bag. And Popish Persecutors spare no age or sex, neither old men nor children, but have pulled them out of the belly to the fire; neither unlearned nor learned, but have cut off Pastors, Doctors, Bishops, Archbishops; neither the living, nor yet the dead. Most barbarous inhumanity. 4. Fowlers and Hunters will be at great cost to maintain their game, and count no pains painful, through frost and snow; they will endure much hardness in hope of their prey. So the enemies of the Church care not what cost and charge they be at, what pains they take, to waste and destroy the Church: they cannot sleep, till they have done evil; 
Prou. 4.16.  their sleep departs from them, that is, nothing else troubles them but to be disappointed. Such great Fowlers of the Church in the old Testament were the enemies on every side: On the East: Ammonites, Moabites, Chaldeans, Assyrians: on the West: the Philistims: on the North: the Syrians: on the South: Egyptians, Arabians, and Idumeans: and the Church of God as a little bird in the midst of them all. Haman hath ten thousand talents for the King's treasury, 
〈…〉 9  i● all the jews may be utterly rooted out. Such great Fowlers of the Church in the new Testament have been the vassals of Antichrist, 
Romish Nimrod a mighty Hunter of the Lords flock.  and especially that great Nimrod of Rome, who with his Popish Kings, Tyrants, and persecuting Bishops, hath eaten up the poor Saints of Christ in all Countries; as did their Predecessors the ancient Tyrants, Psal. 83.4. Come, let us cut them off from being a nation, and let the name of Israel be no more in remembrance. Our own book of Martyr's records, that one of our Popish Bishops was so violent a fowler to furnish his Master's dishes, 
Bonner, a Bonfire.  that himself in five years' space took and roasted 300. silly Martyrs, most of them in his own walk and diocese. Such were our Fauxes and Fawkners, who made sure account of such a prey as was never before laid▪ for, namely for three whole Kingdoms at once: which would have filled all their nets. For God and man concurred to punish the iniquity of this time, 
Great labour and cost for the powder-treason.  said the Letter to L. Mounteagle: for the obtaining whereof they despised all danger, and all labour is thought little in digging half a year together through hard foundations; they will bestow any cost whatsoever, of their own and other men's; Digby promised 1500. pounds, Tressam 2000 Percy all that he could get of the Earl of Northumberlands rents, besides ten galloping Horses. And nothing troubled Faux, 

Four thousand pounds.  
Practices of the wicked termed snares, 1. for secrecy, 2. suddenness.   but that he was disappointed.  
II. The Scripture both here and else where compares their means and instruments, to snares, nets, and gins, which are set in the ways of God's Saints to take them And that for two causes.  
1. It notes the secrecy of the danger, which makes it far more dangerous and inevitable: for nets and snares use to be laid in secret, and out of sight. In vain were the net laid before the eyes of all that hath wings, Prou. 1.17. As therefore the fowlers or fishers go about their matters craftily and subtly, they will stand privily behind a tree, they dissemble all, they will lay meat as though they intended to feed the silly bird, which they mean to feed upon; they have a Lure or Call, as if they were friends and birds themselves; but the end is to kill and destroy: So do the Fowlers of God's Church, Psal. 83.3. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and have consulted against thy secret ones. So ever have done the Romish Antichristian Fowlers, who have been taught by their great Nim●od, leoninae pelli assuere vulpinam, Always to match together the Lion and the Fox. 
Cum Petri nihil efficiant ad praelìa claves, Auxilio Pauli forsitan ensis erit.  julius' the 2. can turn him either way, to Peter's keys or Paul's sword. What they cannot do by open force, they can do by secret fraud, wherein oftentimes there lies more strength than in the former.  
The Syrian Antiochus Epiphanes was a lively type of the Romish Antiochus: of whom it is said, Dan. 8.24.25. His power shall be mighty, but not in his strength: he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people, and by his policy shall cause craft to prosper in his hand. A lively description of the Romish Antiochus or Antichrist, that beast arising out of the sea, having as well the horns of the Lamb as the speech of the Dragon. 
Reuel. 13.1.11.  He intrudes himself as the head and husband of the Church, while he robs and wastes it. He professeth himself a servant of servants, 
True only in No●hs sense of Cham. Gen. 9.25.  while he sets himself above all Kings and Commanders: as Boniface the 8. in the year of Christ 1300. before a great concourse in a solemn jubilee, one day showed himself in his Priestly Pontificals, with the cross carried before him: the next day in an Emperor's robes, with a naked sword before him, and this title proclaimed, Ego sum Pontifex & Imperator: terrestre ac coeleste imperium habeo: 
Luk. 4.6.  All this is mine, and to whomsoever I will I give it.  
What is the whole religion of Rome but a mystery of iniquity▪ a bundle of policy, 
2. Thess. 2.7.  which by secret conveyances and t●●ines both brought and held all the Kingdoms and Countries in Europe, within the snare and bondage of a silly Friar, by sembled sanctity, lying miracles, false donations, forged writings, and the like: and thus hath ensnared men's bodies, goods, lives, and consciences. Never saw the world so cunning a fowler.  
Are his emissaries and such as he sends out, of better disposition than himself? No, witness Gregory the great: As Christ sent out simple and silly plain men to raise up his Kingdom, so shall Antichrist make choice of crafty, and double, 
Astuti et duplices.  and deceitful persons for his business. How subtly did these two friars, Clement and his Associate lay their snares, when they flew the French King, Henry the 3. pretending great good business for the Church and State?  
When the Papists in France could not by open force oppress the Prince of Condy, and Casper Colignius the Admiral of France: they could by fraud and cunning, as by a lure, pretending peace and nuptial solemnity, raise a sudden Massacre, by which thirty thousand Protestants fell into their snare, who most perfidiously were slain, against all laws of God, nature, and nations, not much without the space of one month.  
What Potentate ever laid the foundation of obedience in conscience, 
Srange fetches of the Pope to uphold his throne.  or could overcome his enemies without war, by a parchment Bull, or maintain himself and his pomp at all men's costs and devotions, or conquer opposite Princes by their own subjects, or establish himself by dispensing with unlawful marriages and lawful oaths, or maintain so many Intelligences by Confession, or pleasure all men in their humours, by wealth, poverty, austerity, voluptousnesse? What a notable combination of knaveries is there in that religion, wherein all these things and many more, are most eminent, most usual?  
To come to our own Country: what did those traitorous bandits and emissaries, All●n, Harding, Sanders, Parsons, Campion, and others, but by writing and speaking pretend singular love, Instruction, and care over their Countrymen, whose religion they left? yet indeed what intended they but destruction of Prince and State, being trumpets to rebellion, raising up arms, some out of Spain, some out of Ireland, some desperate cut-throts at home, to take away the life of that blessed Lady Elizabeth of eternal happy memory? What a number have they snared under the pretext of peace, truce, and friendship, as Duke Alba in the Low Countries? and as the King of Spain in 88 while he was providing that invincible navy against our Prince and Country, he sent the Duke of Parma to entreat of peace; as if it were honesty in Catholics, whom they cannot kill by war, to delude and spoil them under the name of peace, not without villainy and perjury.  
How secretly did our late foolish fowlers lay their nets and trains? with what fair pretences? 
Papists bound in conscience to kill Gods Anointed.  It was merely and only for religion, said Faux: and he was bound inconscience to do it, because the King was an heretic: he was sent by the name of john jonson to Percy, to confer for relief of the Catholic cause. All of them took an oath for secrecy, yea heard Masses, and took the Sacrament never to reveal any thing. Now to the laying of snares as deep as hell: 36, barrels of gunpowder are provided, & numbers of iron bars, to blow up with one deadly blow, in time of peace, in time of Parliament●al England, Scotland, and Ireland, in their King and posterity, in their laws and governments, in their Church and Religion, in their commonwealths and justice, in their tenors and records, yea in their whole State and policy: that he that could carry his heart into the survey of the consequents, might clearly see a fearful doomsday of all these three goodly kingdoms. And, as before it was done it was cloaked under the title of some famous exploit for the deliverance of persecuted Catholics: So afterward, to turn the odiousness of so foul a fact as might have turned the sun into darkness, & the moon into blood, they had prepared their Proclamations, to lay it upon Puritans, under which title they would have revenged it by the Massacre of all the godly in the Land, within their reach. Here be cunning Fauxes and Foxes indeed, in whom we may see the true picture and portraiture of every sound Catholic: who by the principles of Popery are taught to be as true to their Sovereign as judas to our Saviour.  

Use.  What great need have we then to get us into that secret, which their secrets cannot come into? namely under the secret of the Almighty: under the shadow of his wing. 
Palm. 91.1.3.  For the promise to such a one is, Surely he will deliver thee from the snare ●f the hunter. The poor bird is safe no where abroad, but in the nest: and the Church is no where safe in earth, but only in heaven, while it saith with the Prophet David, Thou art my secret place, Psalm 32.7.  
So much for the secrecy of fowlers.  
2. Their instruments of mischief are compared to snares and nets, in respect of the suddenness of that destruction, which they intent to God's people. A snare or a net winds in a bird suddenly, thinking on no such thing: Nay sometime, while the poor bird is playing or singing, as if it were without all danger, the net or grin wraps it in on all sides. So the enemies of the Church, knowing, that sudden and unexpected evils can hardliest be prevented, and wound the deepest, commonly effect most deadly stratagems when God's people lest expect them. This is the guise of Antichristian enemies to the Church of God: which while it is not suspicious, but sometimes too charitable and credulous, they lay their snares where no man can possible suspect. Would any man think the Pope would instigate to kill Christian Princes at the very Mass? yet by the counsel of Pope Sixtus the 4. the two Princes of Medici's were hurt and slain even at Mass; and the lifting up of the host was made a sign of the murder by the Pope's Legate: 
Henry the 6. Emperor, by Bernard a Monk, under Pope Clement the 5.  as their own Volateran writes. Would a Prince think to be poisoned (of purpose) in receiving the Sacrament, by these charitable Catholics? yet one was by the powder of diamonds tempered with the wine of the Sacrament. Would a Catholic King, most devoted to Romish religion, and a champion for it, expect to be slain by Catholics, and men of peace, before excommunication? yet this was just (saith Reinolds) and the charitable Pope Sixtus the 5. said, A true Friar had slain a counterfeit Friar. Could any man have expected that sudden terrible blow, and an universal destruction from under the Parliament house, from which the honour, justice, happiness, life and soul of our Country (under God) hath been so long maintained and preserved?  
This shows us, that Papists are not to be trusted, though never so fawning, never so flattering. 
Use.  For indeed they are most cruel, both in their positions, and in their dispositions. Their positions are these, and such like: 1. The Oath of Allegiance is against Catholic faith, and the health of souls, saith the Pope's Breve. 2. Prince's excommunicate by the Pope, may be deposed and killed by their subjects. 3. No faith is to be kept with heretics: and all are heretics that are not of their religion. 
Arctissimo conscientiae vinculo.  4. All men are bound to resist heretical Kings, in the straitest bond of conscience. 5. Even a secret heretic is ipso iure deposed, and all his leprous posterity, saith Symancha. 6. It is a just and honourable war for the Nobles to rise up in Arms against Queen Elizabeth, saith Cardinal Allan. Such also are their dispositions: and such are their practices.  
We have seen the Fowlers, and their nets: now let us proceed.  
III. The crafty laying of these snares is such, as they have compassed the bird, 
Dangerous and mischievous plots may prosper for a while.  and it seems impossible any way to escape. For the danger was, as if the Prophet had said: We were on every side included in the nets of the fowlers, that what way so ever we could turn us, we were hemmed in; the danger met us on every hand, and death every way laid hold upon us. Thus David (Psal. 18.4.5.) confesseth, that the snares of death compassed him: he was even as a man bound and pinioned to execution, so as he saw nothing but death before him. And the snares or cords of the grave beset him: so hopeless was his estate, as if he were laid forth already, and wrapped in the bands and clothes of death to the burial, both in his enemy's conceit, and his own.  
The same was our condition in that Gunpowder treason: the enemies made sure of their prey: they saw their expectation even in their hands: and brought their wicked conception to the very birth: the Crown and Kingdom was theirs: they had disposed of the chief Offices, the chief holds, and revenue of the Land: only one terrible blow was to be given, and the hand of wickedness lifted up on high, reaching fire to the fuel, which should have turned three Kingdoms into one Bonfire.  

There is an hour of darkness for the wicked to work in, four reasons.  Quest. Why doth the Lord suffer the enemies thus to ensnare his people, that the Case seems desperate, the deliverance impossible?  
Answer. 1. That we may see our own simplicity, who cannot observe or prevent their snares, the crafty wiles of Satan and his instruments against the Church. 2. That we may take notice of God's patience toward his enemies, suffering them as long as he may, and then his justice in taking them at the height. 3. That we may learn to depend on God's power and wisdom, for safety and defence; who only is able to match and overmatch the enemies in both: for there is no power or policy against the Lord. 4. That the greater the dangers be, God's goodness may be the more manifest, and that in most desperate evils we may acknowledge our deliverance to be miraculous, and so the praise of all may be referred to the Lord, 
Psal. 9.9.  who is a very present refuge in the troubles of his Church; as ourselves found in this our danger.  
Now we come to the second general part of the Text, namely the deliverance of the Church, Our soul● is escaped.] that is, our lives were hunted, our heads even on the block, & the stroke a giving, and death fetching his blow: but yet we are delivered, we have escaped with our lives.  
Herein consider, 1. the manner, 2. the means of the deliverance.  
The manner, as a bird escaped out of the net: The means, the net is broken.  
For the manner: 1. Beyond and above the expectation of the Church, when all things seemed desperate, when all counsel and means failed among men, and no hope was left, even than came deliverance. How can a poor bird, wound in the nets of the Fowler, expect but to be taken? And this is matter of more joy & gladness, than if the danger had been less. 2. Beyond and beside the expectation of the fowlers themselves, to their greater disappointment & confusion. How will the fouler rage and storm, when a silly bird is gotten away out of his net? so do the enemies of the Church, who have been at great cost, and charge, and pains, and beaten all their wits to lay their nets, to be disappointed even then when they have their expectation between their hands; as the case of these Conspirators was.  
For the means: the net is broken.] God alone hath broken in pieces their crafty counsels and devices: God hath frustrated all their purposes: when they had hemmed in the people of God, as a bird in a net, on every side, God himself makes a way out; as when the net is broken asunder, the bird escapeth.  
Doctr. The Lord in his season powerfully delivers his Church, by breaking the nets of the enemy. 
God still finds a time to rescue his Church from the snares of the wicked.  Psal. 33.10. The Lord breaks the counsel of the Heathen, and brings to nought the devices of the people.  
Reasons. 1. Because GOD is ever present with his Church, in the midst of it, to help it at the greatest pinches. Esa. 8 9.10. Gather together on heaps, ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces, etc. for God is with us, namely as our shield and protection: and, if God be with us, 
Rom. 8.31.  who can be against us? Zeph. 3.14. Rejoice O daughter of Zion, be joyful O Israel, rejoice with all thy heart O daughter jerusalem: the Lord hath taken away thy judgement, and cast out thine enemy's: the King of Israel, even the Lord is in the midst of thee; thou shalt see no more evil. The Lord is every where present, but not every where as in his Church: he is the King, and the shelter of it by a special providence.  
2. The Church is God's darling and delight: his people is dear unto him: he that toucheth them, toucheth the apple of his eye, Zach. 2.8. In all their troubles he is troubled, and taketh wrong done to them as done to himself: and therefore must needs revenge upon the enemies one time or other. See Nahum. 1.2.9. because the Lord is jealous over his people, he reserves wrath for their enemies: he shall come unto them as unto thorns. The cause also is his: they hate the godly for his sake: and therefore he takes their part.  
3. As God is willing to save his people, so also he is every way most able. 1. He is more watchful for his Church, than all his enemies can be against it: He that keepeth Israel, 
Psal. 121.4.  doth neither slumber nor sleep: in which he out-matcheth the enemies, who, though they often break their sleep through greediness of the prey, yet sometime they must sleep. He is a more watchful guard than Saul's, when David came and took away his spear and pot from his head. 
1. Sam. 26.  The phrase is taken from watchmen, who stand on walls in time of war, to foresee the approach of enemies, and give warning: they may be treacherous, or sleepy, as when the Capital in Rome had been taken by the Frenchmen, if the Geese had not been more waking than the watchmen of the walls. But the Lord is a faithful and watchful keeper: let never so many watch the mischief of the Church, he is sufficient against them all, hath seven eyes, Zach. 4.10. 2. He is wiser than all his enemies, and herein over-matcheth them, that he knows all their counsels, they know none of his: which advantage the King of Israel had of the King of Syria by reason of God's Prophet. 
2. King 6.12.  He knows their whole plot and projects, and suffers them to carry them a long time, but knows when to prevent them, and how to dispose them to the good of his Church: for there is neither counsel nor wisdom against the Lord. 3. He is stronger than all the enemies: joh. 10.29. My father is stronger than all: no one, no nor all together can resist his power. And therefore when great men have banded and bended all their forces against Christ and his Church, they imagine but a vain thing, Psal. 2.1.  
4. God hath ways enough to deliver his Church, even when things seem very desperate. He hath seven pipes to his seven lamps, 
Zach. 4 2.  and these oftentimes laid very secret and out of sight. He can make a way in the sea, and the waters a wall for his people: which cannot be expected by man: yea he can suspend and stay the course of nature; he can suffer his children to be cast into the fire, then qualify and cool the furnace.  
5. The Lord commonly delighteth in such a deliverance of his Church, 
The righteous shall dip his foot in the blood of his enemies.  as is joined with the confusion of his enemies: as in the red sea, the same way and waters, which were the preservation of the one, were the destruction of the other. Esai. 33.11.12. Ye shall conceive chaff, and bring forth stubble: the fire of your breath shall devour you. And the people shall be as the burning of li●e: & as the thorns cut up, shall they be burnt in the fire.  
And hereby the Lord manifesteth his power and justice. 1. That the wicked, while they take crafty counsel together, should be paving a way to their own destruction. He takes the wise in their craftiness, 
1. Cor. 3.19.  that they lay a net in which themselves fall. When they make covenants with death, and dig to hell to make God's children so sure as none should escape them, than their own destruction shall be the Church's deliverance. What a broad net had Haman laid for the jews? None could be fairer for the game than he that had the King's edict, ring, posts, and all he desired. But in due season his net took himself and his family: his gallows caught himself and his sons: in whose destruction God laid the preservation of his Church at that time. The same in the powder-plot: what device was ever fairer, or nearer? or when was there a more universal net laid for God's Church these thousand years? yet the Lord in the very full season joined our deliverance with their detection and destruction.  

2. Thess. 1.6.  2. It is just with God, that wicked men, while they device mischief, should only make rods for their own backs: though their pretences be never so fair and specious. As for example: Dan. 6.7. the Courtiers of Darius, (as they can easily lay their plots, to sway Princes to evil counsels) come to the King, whose power they would abuse, and none wish him so well as they, O King, live for ever: none so observant of the King's edicts as they, All the rulers of the kingdom, officers, governors, counsellors and Dukes have made a decree concerning the worship of thee O King, that none shall ask any thing for thirty days, save only of thee. This Daniel, one of the children of the captivity, regards not thee nor thy decree. They proclaim him seditious, rebellious, and a traitor that hath no respect either of King or law, but despiseth authority and edicts, well and wisely devised and published. These are ordinary nets laid against godly men by ungodly. Then must the law of the Medes and Persians, sealed with the King's signet, be executed upon him. He is cast into the den. They have him in their net. But they cannot hold him: Nor can he be delivered but with the destruction of them all by the lions. Here, by plausible speeches what did they but make their own rods? And so was it in our own instance, in whom God's justice shined most eminently: All the while, they digged a pit for themselves, and fell into the pit they had digged for others: according to that of the Psalmist, He hath digged a pit, and is fallen into the pit he hath made: his mischief shall return upon his head, 
Psal. 7.15.  and his cruelty upon his own pate. As their heads and pates upon stakes are still eye-witnesses.  
3. God's justice is herein manifest, 
●arò antecedentem scelestum, D●seruit pede poena claudo.  that for the delivery of his Church he not only breaks their nets, but makes them break their own nets and necks: And this is the greater confusion, when the authors of sin are made the authors of their own punishment. For example: Such is their thirst after the overthrow of the Church and godly, that they still call in more company, and take in more partners, that if one miss, another may hit, and all may be sure not to fail. But God's hand now overruleth the matter, and makes their own carnal counsel their confusion: that whereas one could keep counsel, company shall reveal it: As in the many conspirators about the powder-plot, in which one of them furthered the punishment of another, but not the performance.  
This shows unto us, 
Use. 1 Church of God invincible.  that the Church is altogether invincible: no net shall long hold it, but it shall break thorough all nets. It may be pressed, not oppressed: oppugned, not expugned. It is an heavy stone to heave against, Zach. 12.3. For, 1. The enemies cannot work wisely enough to prevail, but, as the more the Egyptians oppressed Israel, the more they increased; so is it here. 2. Though the godly be in themselves fewer, weaker, 
Exod. 1.12.  more simple, more shiftless, yet are they strangely and strongly preserved, and may say with the Prophet, there be more with them than against them. 
2. King. 6.16.  3. The Church stands upon two sure pillars, like Boaz and jachin: first, God's promise, which is, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. Secondly, her foundation is on a rock, against which if the floods beat, and the winds blow, it shall surely stand, Matth. 7.25. Why then do the Pope, and Papists, and that Antichristian league, still travel with wickedness, and conceive mischief, to bring forth a lie? What do ye imagaine against the Lord? Nahum. 1.9.  
This is a ground of comfort for us, when we see enemies leaguing themselves against God's people, that they make no spare of destroying either by secret means, or open. God's help and deliverance will show itself in due season: he is a present help in trouble. Is he a God a far off, and not at hand? on the mountains, and not in the valleys? Doth he hear his people before he call, and not when they call? 
Esa. 65.24.  No, the Church is never so near some great deliverance, as when her enemies are at the top of their pride and rage. For when they will root out the name of Israel, and destroy the law, then is it high time for the Lord to put to his hand. 
Psal. 119.126.  When they have power in their hand, and no arm of flesh to repress them: when none will offer himself in the cause of God, than the Lords own arm shall save it, 
Esa. 59.16.  but so as we be found in the way of deliverance, carrying ourselves in this affliction, as children when they see the father hath taken up the rod, run unto our father, confess our sins, bewail them, beg mercy, and sue for it as for life and death. This is the way to stay our father's blow, to obtain compassion, and cause him to throw his rod into the fire: as the Prophet brings him in relenting for his people, Host 11.8. How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, O Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me: my repentings are rolled together. For this is the condition, 2. Chron. 7.14. If my people, among whom my Name is called upon, do humble themselves, and pray, and seek my presence, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear out of heaven, and be merciful to their sin, and will heal their land.  
When we have received such a seasonable deliverance, it becometh us to break out into the praise of God, 
Use. 3. Praise is comely for the upright.  and perpetuate the memory of it, and provoke ourselves unto thankfulness. So doth our holy Prophet in this Psalm: he sings out the praise of God to all posterity, for so great a deliverance in so present a danger. Motives hereunto: 1. How many monuments hath the Lord himself erected from time to time, to preserve in memory special mercies bestowed on his people? 2. Hath he not taken order to write them in his book of mercies and monuments? Psalm. 102.18. This shall be written for the generations to come and the people which shall be created, shall praise the Lord. 3. Hath he not established and appointed special days for the memory of special mercies, most worthy to be had in everlasting remembrance?  
And surely (my brethren) if Moses and Israel had cause to compile a song for their so strange a deliverance, and the overthrow of their enemies; as Exod. 15.1.— If Deborah had cause to praise the Lord with voices and instruments, for the overthrow of the Canaanites, and victory over Sisera; as judg. 5.1.—. If the good women came with Timbrels and dances to praise the Lord, when the Lord brought an horrible slaughter upon the Philistians, and their chief Champion Goliath, who defied the host of Israel, and railed upon the God of Israel, and so saved Israel that day; as 1. Sam. 18.6.7. If that day were a day of joy and gladness, of light and rejoicing, wherein the jews prevailed against their enemies, and saw the ruin of their chief adversary Haman that cursed Amalekite; as Hest. 9.17. Then surely have we just cause to sing out, and declare abroad, and rejoice both in God's house, and in our own houses, for the great things that the Lord hath done for us in our admirable deliverance out of a more admirable red sea, not of water, but of fire and brimstone, and from the hands of those furious Champions of Antichrist, those Romish Sisera's, Goliahs', that defied the host of British Israel, and those cursed Amalekites, against whom the sentence is passed, that the name of Amalek shall be put out from under heaven. 
Exod. 17.14.16  But never let the fact of this Amalek, nor this day of Purim be put out of the Calendar: to the perpetual infamy of the Popish generation, so long as the Sun courseth about the earth.  
Look we often in this glass, which God holdeth this day before our eyes; O come and behold the works of the Lord, 
Psal. 46.8.  the great works that he hath wrought for this English nation; a people whom God hath now redeemed from a second hell, which was indeed to be a lake of fire and brimstone, a very spark out of hell▪ brought by furies and devils rather than men. Consider we seriously, how our souls ●are delivered from the neither most hell. As in the first and great redemption from the lowest hell, God of his mercy redeemed us by the blood of his own only Son: so of his mercy hath he extinguished the flames of this intended hell, by no other means than by the blood of those sons of Beliall. And, as for that greater redemption we must magnify the grace of God, 
Luke 1.74.75.  being redeemed from the hands of our enemies to serve him in righteousness and holiness all the days of our life: so in this lesser redemption, we must stir up ourselves to the cheerful praise of God, not in word and tongue, but in heart and life. Let us call upon ourselves every one apart, as David, Psal. 9.1.2.3. I will praise the Lord with all my heart, etc. for that mine enemies are turned back: and Psal. 116.12. what shall I render to the Lord for all his loving kindness towards me? and let us call upon one another, as he doth, Psal. 34.3. Praise the Lord with me, and let us magnify the Lord together. He hath filled our hearts with gladness, our mouths with laughter, our tongues with matter of triumph: when we were as a bird in the net of these fowlers, he broke the net, and we are escaped.  Verse 8. Our help standeth in the Name of the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth. 
THese words are the conclusion of the whole Psalm, wherein the whole benefit of all the deliverance of the Church, both for time past and future, is ascribed to the Lord of heaven and earth. He had said before, the snare is broken but had not told us by whom, now he expresseth him, Our help is in the Name etc.  
Quest. why saith he not in the Lord, but, in the Name of the Lord? 
Exposition.   
Answ. By the Name of God is meant that by which he revealeth himself to his Church, as a man is known by his name. And in this argument the Name of God signifieth the aid, the power, the strength, and the goodness of God: so it is used, Psalm. 44.5. in thy Name we shall tread down our enemies, that is, in thy strength and power. Our help consists in that power and strength which the Lord putteth forth for us.  
Who hath made heaven and earth.] Qust. Why is this added? Answ. 1. To advance the Lord in his Attribute of Omnipotency. 2. To strengthen our faith when means fail us: for this power is not tied to means. Therefore these are set the first words of the Creed, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. 3. To show us to what end the world, the heavens and the earth were made, namely that it might be a Theatre and glass of the divine power and glory of God. 4. To intimate how easy it is for God in most desperate cases to help his children: much more easy than to make heaven and earth. 5. To show, that he can dispose all things both in heaven and earth for their safety.  
I. Note hence the nature and work of faith in every believer: which is, 
Faith in dangers lifts up the hearts to God's promises and Atributes.  to elevate the mind to God in perils and dangers which is the time wherein faith most bestirs itself, and to apply God's promise of aid, his presence and deliverance in all our troubles: not only believing his Omnipotency and goodness, but that he is so unto us and all his chosen. For this is a speech of faith, which looketh beyond all external means, and fixeth the eye of the soul only upon God, in whose hand help is. And farther, the nature of faith is, to search into all the Atributes of God, whereby it may fortify itself and become inexpugnable. It looketh to the Name of the Lord. It considereth him as jehova, one that is willing to accomplish all his promises to his Church; else he could not be jehova, by which Name he would be known to his people. It beholdeth his power and omnipotency at the same time: and then what shall hinder the Church's safety, if God be both able and willing? It seeth also all his power exercised for her safety. It beholds at once both the pillars of the Temple, 
1. Kings 7.12.  Boaz, with him is strength; but what are we the better, if we apply it not? and jachin, that is, the Lord will establish.  

Use. Hab. 2.4.  Let us live by faith at all times, especial in dangers, still looking beyond the means: and give glory to God with Abraham, Rom. 4.20. who was strong in faith, and fully persuaded, that he who promised was able also and willing to perform. Object. What then? must we reject means? 
Faith and the use of means how they stand together.  Answ. No, for God giveth means for our good: But 1. No means can help us without God, as God can without means. 2. Means must be used, but not trusted in: Psalm. 20.7. Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God. here he condemns not the use of chariots and horses, but trust and confidence in them. 3. Never let us stand in the means as our helpers, but in the Name of God, who affords both them and success in them. Hence it is, that God sometimes, yea for the most part worketh his greatest works by weakest means, 
Meanness of instruments commends the virtue of the Agent.  that the means might be as a glass through which we might behold the brightness of his own Majesty and grace. Dan. 11.34. They that understand and instruct many shall fall, and when they shall fall they shall be holpen with a little help. Why a little? Because through weak means we may see Gods greater strength. So in the year 88 there was a little help for England: but the victory was Gods. So in the Gunpowder treason, a little help and means by his Majesty's singular care: but this was, that through it we might easier see that Omnipotent help of him, who made heaven and earth.  

Church of God helpless in itself.  II. Note that the Church's help is not in itself: and the dangers of it, and harms threatening it, are far greater than it is able, without better help than it own, to withstand. So was it with the Church at the red sea: so with the three children of God in the fire; what help had they of themselves being bound? So it was in Hamans' device, and so in Per●ies.  
Reason. 1. That the members of the Church may herein acknowledge the sleights of Satan and wicked men, who are mad against soundness of grace, and yet most witty to combine their malice and madness against God's people. 2. To try them to the uttermost, and prove their soundness, in faith and patience. Fire that must try gold, must be quick and piercing, and seem utterly to burn and consume it. 3. That the Lord may herein have occasion, both to uphold his chosen in the affliction with strong inward consolation; and also to put forth this his omnipotent power in some strong and glorious deliverance. 4. That his children being driven out of all other expectations may be vehement in prayer, and fetch help from heaven, which they want in themselves. That extremity of the Israelites at the sea, made Moses to cry unto the Lord with vehemency, Exod. 14.15. and when jehosaphat knew not what to do, his eyes were to the Lord, 2. Chron. 20.12.  
Mistake not the estate of the Church, 
Use.  when it seems to be oppressed, nor yet of the members. God for these ends suffers Satan and his instruments so cunningly to carry their malice and matters, as oftentimes Gods dear children are in the eyes of the world helpless. But, did Christ cease to be the Son of God, because the jews said, Let God help him now, if he will have him? or the Saints of old, who received no corporal deliverance, 
Matth. 27.43.  but a better resurrection? or our own Martyrs, who seemed helpless in their hands and flames? No, 
Heb. 11.35.  the Lord was their help, and he will not suffer the souls of the righteous to perish: which we shall further see in the next observation.  
III. Note that the Church and people of God are never so helpless, 
Church at weakest is made strong enough to hold out.  but that they have an omnipotent power with them, and for them, even his Name who made heaven and earth. This is their privilege and sanctuary. The name of God is a strong tower, the righteous sly unto it & are exalted▪ Prou. 18.10. Psal. 33.17. An horse is a vain thing in battle & shall not deliver any by his strength: Why, what shall help them? The eye of the Lord is on them that fear him, and upon them that trust in his mercy, to deliver their souls from death, and preserve them in the time of famine. 2. Tim. 4.16. At my first appearing no man assisted me: (small help indeed:) Notwithstanding the Lord assisted me, and strengthened me, etc.  
Reason. 1. This comes to pass by God's promise of his constant presence with his people, to be with them in six troubles, and in seven, in fire, and water, and extremest perils. 
job. 5.19. Esai. 43.2.  All which promises, although they run with exception of the cross, yet are never frustrate, but made good one time or other, one way or other. This promise is their safe conduct. And it is equal, seeing they labour in his service, and cast themselves upon his hand. 2. What else is it that keeps the Church as an Ark upon the waters from drowning and perishing among so many tyrants, enemies, and persecutors as thick as waves, but this most helpful hand and power of God the Pilot of it? The Church hath mighty power against it, all the help of the wicked, and the gates of hell. But his eye and wing is nearer than than the hens to preserve her silly chickens, Psal. 91.2. 3. As it was with the Son of God our head, so is it with the members, who faithfully follow his steps in patient labouring and enduring. What his estate was, see joh. 16.32. Behold, the hour cometh, and is now already, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own house, and shall leave me alone: but I am not alone, for the Father is with me. Christ was very helpless, when his followers fled for fear, and his Disciples durst not tarry with him, but left him alone: yet than he had this presence and power of his Father: And so have the godly, both Pastors and people. 4. They can never be so helpless as they shall not be able to cry for help, and bemoan their case to God. Neither want they friends to solicit their cause at the highest Court, but have all the godly, petitioners for them.  
The faith of the doctrine is a chief part of worship and honour given to God: 
Use. 1  when the Saints refer the whole work of their salvation and safety to the Lord: as Psal. 3.8. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord, and thy blessing is upon thy people. And when they can commend their whole safety, for the continuance and preservation of it, unto the Name of the Lord wherein all help lieth.  
It is a most firm prop to stay and lean upon in all trials, 
Use 2.  able to sustain the heart continually with strong comfort: when we can oppose this help of God against all the threats and boisterous proceedings of God's enemies. As subjects have no way but to fly to the King for refuge and help against the oppressor: so God's people have a way of help, by which they lie safe in the midst of danger, and shall have the better end of the staff against their adversaries, because they may say as David against Goliath, 1. Sam. 17.45. I come to thee in the Name of the Lord. A godly heart grounded in the truth of this doctrine, may securely contemn whatsoever Satan or his instruments do machinate against it. Look at any thing in heaven or earth, it hath in it matter of strength and comfort. He that made them, hath power to command all things in them for thy safety and good. Here is a faithful helper, a very sure refuge in trouble: men may promise help, and fail, or help on the trouble of the Saints; 
God is a faithful, and powerful, and constant helper.  but God will not. Here is a powerful helper: men would help oftentimes, but are weak and cannot, where the enemy hath fortified himself with advantages and resolutions; but the Lords Name is a strong helper: if Nabuchadnezzar shall say, Who shall, 
Dan. 3.15.17.  or who is able to deliver you out of my hands, we may say with the three children, Our God is able: He can say to the raging sea, Thus far shalt thou come, and here shall thy proud waves stay. 
Prou. 8.29.  He can dry up jeroboam's arm, stretched out against the Prophet. Finally, here is a constant helper: men are unconstant and light: one speech or suspicion may drive away many from following Christ himself, and m●ny in days of trial slip away, and are helpless: but the Lord helpeth constantly: our help is ever in the Name of the Lord: he is unchangeable in his goodness toward the Church, never weary of well-doing as men be. And without this ground in the heart, men must needs shake like trees in the forest with every wind, 
Esai. 7.2.  and fear where no fear i●: but those shall not need to fear any evil tidings, whose heart is fixed on the Lord. 
Psal. 112 7.   

Use. 3.  Labour to be a member of the Church: stand in the way and station, in which God hath set thee: Go on in thy holy course: keep the way of uprightness. For in this way God hath promised help and protection, and thou mayst expect it. Arm thyself, and address thee to bear b●unts and blows as a soldier: but fear not victory, so long as God is near thee, and thou near him and his help. Put on patience to wait without haste-making: though he delay help awhile, he denies it not. Never seek to prevent troubles by laying aside integrity and good conscience. It is no way of safety to provoke God, nor a means of defence to lay aside the armour. This is the condition of divine protection, 1. Pet. 3. vers. 13. No man shall hurt you, while you follow the thing that is good. jonas would fain avoid trouble by flying from God: but God fetcheth him back again with a witness.  
Here by the way note a special difference between the wicked and the godly in their troubles. 
Difference between the help of the godly and wicked.  One hath his help from heaven, others from hell, or not higher than from the earth. One from the Name of God, others against the Name of God. The wicked expect help one from another, and combine against the righteous, and can help themselves by lying, slandering, violence, and turning themselves into all fashions and forms for advantage: but the godly, expecting help from the name of God, keep themselves in God's right ways, and will meet with help only thence. 
Host 14.9.   
Let us trust ourselves with God in troubles as well as in peace, 
Use 4.  expecting the accomplishment of that gracious promise, Psal. 34.19. Great are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of all. If we take Gods Name with us for our help, the number of crosses shall not foil us, nor the power of persecutors daunt us, nor the continuance of trials break us. For nothing can hinder his helping hand from his servants. Nothing but sin separates between God and us: be humbled for sin, meet God in repentance, keep not silence, be instant in prayer, and all shall be well. Christ is our ship: if we be never so tossed, we shall not be drowned; come to him, awaken him as his Disciples, Master save us, 
Matth. 8.25.  Master of the great ship of thy Church help us, we perish: and he will in due time stir up himself, and speak to the wind, and the sea, and there shall be a great calm.  
The end of the third Sermon.   

THE ROMISH CONCEPTION.  Psalm. 7.14.15.16. 

The King's Majesty in his Speech on the gunpowder treason applieth this text to that occasion.  Behold, he shall travel with wickedness: for he hath conceived mischief, but he shall bring forth a lie.  
He hath made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the pit that he made.  
His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his cruelty shall fall upon his own pate.  
THe occasion of the Psalm is in the inscription, concerning the words of Cushi, one of Saul's Courtiers, and David's accusers to Saul, as if he had been a Rebel, and sought Saul's life. The parts of it are three.  
1 A prayer for deliverance from his enemies, and that God would clear his innocency, to the 12. verse.  
2 A Prophetical prediction of the destruction of the wicked, to the 17. verse.  
3 A vow of thankfulness for deliverance, in the last verse.  
These three verses of my Text, being part of the se●ond general, having in them two particulars: First, that all the labour of wicked men against the Church is ●ut labour in vain, in respect of their own intent and expectation, verse. 14. Secondly, that the labour of wicked men is turned clean contrary to their own intent and expectation, vers. 15.16. And these things are set down two ways: 1. In Metaphor and similitude. 2. In simple and express speech.  
The former, 
Plots of the wicked aptly compared to a woman's travail.  that all their labour is in vain against the Church, is expressed by a Metaphor frequent in Scripture, taken from the travel of a woman. The mind of a wicked man is compared to a womb or belly. The conception is hurtful and mischievous thoughts and enterprises. The cunning contriving, carrying, and watching of fit opportunities, is the nourishing, perfecting, and preparing to the birth, while they carry it the just months: in the mean time swelling with their own presumptions, and glorying in the certain expectation of their conceived hopes. The attempting of their enterprises is the parturition and travel, which costs them no small pain and labour. The birth or fruit is some misshapen monster, some mischievous imp, some treacherous Massacre, some invincible army or powder-plot, borne (as Onuphrius writes of Pope Alexander the 6. for the destruction of all Italy, so) for the destruction of all England, Scotland, and Ireland. But this monstrous shape is called a lie, because mentiri is contra mentem ire (as some allude.) When they look upon their own child, and see the ugly face and shape of it, in all the deformed members: it is not to their mind, they are ashamed and confounded, and would fain seek some father abroad, either the Huguenot; in France, or the Puritans in England, but that it is so like the fire as none can mistake the father of such a monster.  
The latter, that all the labour of the wicked is turned quite contrary to their own expectation, is set down by another similitude, taken from Hunters, who as they lay snares, and gins, and pitfalls, to take the silly creatures; even so wicked men dig pits, and delve deep, and lay their trains to wind in the godly into the destruction by them prepared: In which sense it is said of Io●sh and I●hoiakim, Ezek. 19.4.8. that the nations laid their nets for them, and they were both taken in their pit.  
But himself falls into his own pit which he made: that is, whatsoever mischief the cruel Adversary's device against the godly, it catcheth themselves, whereof David had good experience: Sa●l lays his train, and digs a pit against David.  
1 Sam 18.21. I will give David Micoll, that she may be a snare to him, and the hand of the Philistims may be upon him: and verse. 25. the King desireth no dowry, but only an hundred foreskins of the Philistims, to be avenged of his enemies, for Saul (saith the Text) thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philstims: but Saul fell into his own pit, himself fell by the hand of the Philistims, Chap. 31. The Philistims pressed so sore upon him, that they slew his three sons, wounded himself sore, and his own hand also was against himself.  
In the last verse of my Text, all this is set out in simple and express words, His mischief shall return upon his own head, his cruelty upon his own pate, according to that in Prou. 5.22. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his own sin.  

devices against the Church vain, & pernicious to her enemies.  Doct. The wicked counsels and enterprises of the enemies of the Church, are not only vain in respect of others but mischievous against themselves. Esa. 33.11. ye shall conceive chaff, & bring forth stubble: the fire of your breath shall devour you, In which place the holy Ghost holds the same comparison as here: comparing wicked men to women that have conceived, who carry and nourish the child in their womb, and at last bring forth. But what child bring they forth with so much travail? Surely that which is a shame to the Parents: chaff and stubble, vain and unprofitable conceits, that come to nothing. But that is not all. They bring forth a dangerous and pernicious irpe, which for the most part is the death of the mother. It is a fire, which as easily consumes them, as a mighty and raging fire doth chaff or stubble. Their own fire devours them. 
Pro. 6.17.  For, can a man carry fire in his bosom, and not be burnt? Esa. 59.5. The wicked conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity: they hatch the cockatice eggs. The cockatrice or basilisk is no sooner hatched, but it kills him with the very sight that lights upon it, and ordinarily it eats out the belly of the dam in coming forth. Such are the issues and fruits of cruel and mischievous men against the Lord and his people. Psalm 9.15. The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net that they hid is their own foot taken.  
Reason. 1 This is so because God scattereth the devices of the crafty, so as they cannot accomplish what they enterprise. job 5.12. he will not always let the success be to their expectation. They consult not with God, but against him, and therefore must not prosper. Come (saith Pharaoh) let us work wisely to keep under the Israelites. 
Exod. 1.10.  But he could not work wisely enough: the more they oppressed, the more the other increased, verse. 12. They might drown many male children, but themselves must save Moses the Deliverer. 2. God's love to his Church makes all the counsels of the enemies pernicious to themselves: for he takes all that is done against the godly, as done against himself: he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of mine eye, Zach. 2.8. God hath undertaken the care and charge of his people, and will never neglect the safety of his charge, nor to relieve his people that commit themselves to him; but especially when they call upon him to turn the counsels of wicked Achitophel's into folly. All the contempt and cruelty is against God himself: therefore mischief against the Church must needs be like an arrow shot bolt-upright▪ which falls upon the head of the shooter. 3. The device of wicked men against the just must needs miscarry, because they set their plots upon a slippery foundation, which will bring down the house upon their own heads: namely upon lies and falsehood. Psal. 62.3.4. How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? ye shall be all slain, ye shall be as a shaken wall: their delight is in lies. And the whole frame leans upon the arm flesh, or the arm of man, which they make their hope, and so lie under the curse of them that make flesh their arm, jer. 17.5. and withdraw their hearts from the Lord. Esa. 59.4. they trust in vanity, conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. 4. It is most just with God to render tribulation to them that trouble his servants: 
2. Thess. 1.6.  that the most righteous law of retaliation might be returned on them. Psal. 62.11. God spoke it once, yea twice I heard it, that power belongeth to God, and mercy: 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  for thou rewardest every one according to his deed. How just is it, that the Artisan of death should perish in his own net? and, that he who breweth mischief, should drink it?  
This is that just retaliation which our Saviour threatens, Mat. 7.2. with what measure you meet, it shall be measured to you again. If the Egyptians make a wicked decree to drown the Israelitish children, and will needs follow them into the sea to drown them: it is just that themselves be drowned with a memorable destruction. You have heard how Daniel was appointed for the Lion's food, but the next day all his accusers and their families were cast in in his stead, and torn in pieces ere they came to ground. You have heard also how the same furnace which was prepared for Sadrach and his fellows, licked up and burnt (in stead of them) the accusers. Yea the Lord in this just retaliating of evil men, hath often smitten their own consciences, and opened their own mouths, to clear his righteous judgement: as we see in Adonibezek, judg. 1.7. seventy kings under my table with their thumbs cut off gathered bread under my table; As I have done, so hath God rewarded me.  

2 Thess. 1.2. Histor. Eccles. lib. 9 cap. 9  Eusebius recordeth of the cruel tyrant Maxentius, that coming with an army against Constantine the Great: to deceive Constantine and his army: he caused his soldiers to make a great bridge over Tiber where Constantine should pass, and cunningly lay planks on the ships, that when the army came upon the planks, the ships should sink, and so drown the enemy: but Maxentius hearing of Constantine's approaching: in his rage rushed out of the gates of Rome, 
Pontibus his devolutus est, ruos ad religiosi Principis paraverat exitium.  and commanded his followers to attend him: and through fury forgetting his own work, led a few over his bridge: and the ships sinking, himself and his followers, were all drowned. And Eusebius fitteth our very text unto him, Lacum ap●ruit, et effodit cum, et incidi● in soueam quam operatus est, He made a pit and digged it, and fell into the pit that he made.  
This sets forth unto us the misery of the wicked enemies of the Church: 
Enemies of the Church, subject to 4. great miseries.  which we shall more clearly see in four particulars.  
1 Misery: That all their pain and labour is for their own destruction. Sin in Hebrew is called gnamal, and in Greek ponerîa: both which words signify labour and travel: to note the great labour, that wicked men take in committing sin; they are even as women in travel. jer. 9.5. they take great pains to do wickedly. Sin is a work of the flesh, and sinners are workmen, Esa. 59.5. weavers and spinners: but wove an ill web, and spin a thread of their own destruction, even an halter for their own heads; as Haman was at charges to set up his own gallows. Our text shows, that they willbe at pains and travel for their designs, as a woman that carries and brings forth a child; but the birth kills themselves, and themselves must feel the smart of their subtle devices.  
2 Misery: That they live in perpetual peril of destruction. There is not a moment, wherein they can free or secure themselves from the stroke of God: They cannot say at any time, Now we are in safety: because they are always in arms against God. If they would hide their counsels from him, behold, he sees in the darkness aswell as in the day, to overturn them all, and make wicked counsel worst to the counsellor. 
Ps●lm. 139.12. Malum consilium, consultori pess●●um  If they would combine themselves in holy leagues and confederacies, hear what the wise man saith, Prou. 11.21. though hand join in hand, yet shall not the wicked escape unpunished. All of them united are as easily overcome in hi● hand, as one man. Esa. 8.9. gather ye together on h●●pes, and ye shall be broken to pieces: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken to pieces. 
Psal. 14.4.  If they would by rage and fury make quick dispatch, and swallow up at once the people of God, and eat them as bread: behold, themselves are never nearer destruction than when they are most violent. The Egyptians were not more ready to kill and slay, than the waters were to drown them.  
3 Misery: That inexpected destruction comes, when they expect the sweet fruit of all their labour: when they look for light, behold darkness. Here this birth of wicked men is unlike the travel of women. When the child is borne, the woman's danger and pains are gone, and joy comes in the stead▪ 
john 16.21.  because a child is borne into the world, and this mak●s her forget her sorrow. But in this birth, and afterward ●s the greatest danger and peril, and but a beginning of sorrows. When they cry peace, peace, then comes a sudden destruction. Balthasar was seized on even in his cups, where there was nothing but carousing and jollity: and Amnon in his brother's house, at a feast, when his heart was most merry, was slain by his brother: which was the issue of his incest. Little thought he, that that reckoning awaited him.  
4 Misery: That the mischief plotted against their greatest enemies recoils upon themselves; as a piece overcharged, and recoiling, strikes down the shooter, not the party aimed at. Prou. 11.8. The just escapeth out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead: and, the wicked shall be a ransom for the just. Wicked men catching the godly at advantage are merciless: no pity may be used, no ransom will be taken for their deliverance: therefore God takes the matter in hand, 
Wicked to be pitied rather than ●na●ed.  to pay a ransom for them, body for body, skin for skin, life for life and the right owners of mischief shall enjoy it.  

Use 2.  There is little cause, why God's people should envy the prosperity of their enemies, or study for revenge: but rather pity them, and pray for them so many as are curable, for their last dish will mar all the feast: little do they know what they are doing. They are twisting a cord, to hang themselves. They are digging a pit, but the earth falls on them, and pashes themselves to pieces. The bread of affliction prepared for others, themselves m●st eat. They (poor men) are in travel of a viper, which must needs kill the parent: 
V●pera, ●. d. 〈…〉.  and seeing they cannot be stopped from sin, they cannot be stopped from the punishment.  
As little cause have the enemies to glory in their conception. Stay a while, and behold the lineaments of the birth from top to toe, and see a shameful and ugly visage.  
I come now to the application hereof to our present occasion.  
This day is this text fulfilled in your ears. Wherein give me leave a little to show you, 
Conception of pow●er traitors 〈◊〉▪ yet p●●nicious to them.  how our own sowers of wind have reaped the whirlwind, and how those who traveled with wickedness, have brought forth not only a lie, but an untimely and mischievous birth, which no sooner saw the light, but most justly it deprived the parents of it.  
This misshapen monster was the Gunpowder-treason, a mother of treasons, an unmatchable storehouse of villainies, wherein grex cum reg●, arae cum focis, Piety and justice, Peace and Plenty, Religion and Honesty, should all have been buried in one grave, and all consumed in one bonfire.  
This conception pleased them well: for it was meet, that whence they received all their mischief (namely, the Parliament) that very place should be designed for their punishment, said Catesby to Winter, who wondered at the fi●e conceit.  
They bear not their conception without much labour, and pains, and care, and cost: Great care of secrecy, that none be admitted into the Council, 
Much ado in th●s conception.  but by oath and the sacrament. Great labour in many painful journeys, both beyond seas, and on this side, in digging the pit and the mine, night and day, many months together, etc. And as great cost: Digby hath 1500. pounds: Tressam 2000 Percy would bring 4000, and ten galloping horses, though he robbed the Earl of Northumberland for it, out of the rents of several houses. The charge of 36. barrels of powder, wood, coal, iron in abundance, and of victuals for so many labourers and diggers. No less care in contriving, and forming this misshapen monster in the womb, and carrying it the due months. And all this while they swell with conceit, and dream of nothing but disposing the kingdom, and every man's estate. Every thing both at home and abroad is so cunningly contrived: they make themselves sure of all. Why? the Letter saith, God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness of these times. And to the Lord, Retire yourself into the country, where you may expect the event with safety: for though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and the danger is passed so soon as you have burnt the letter. And in the country, the night before the day designed to be our doomsday, they boldly entered into a stable, and took away great horses, which they made account of, as their own by their own Law, now the Laws were blown up. And Sir Nimrod Digby appoints his hunting match that day, to surprise the Lady. They have their Proclamations ready, and all cocksure. Thus have they conceived mischief, and these Digbyes' and diggers have digged a pit with a mouth as wide as hell, to swallow up three great kingdoms at one morsel; and have carried the conception the full months.  

Much ado to little purpose.  Now to the Birth. For, what (saith Percy) shall we always talk (Gentlemen) and never do any thing? But what do they? They bring forth a lie: a vain work they have in hand: God scatters their device. They plot destruction against all the godly in the land; they cannot hurt one of their hairs. Nay worse than so: the pit they have digged falls on themselves. These hunters hunt the lives of others, themselves are hunted and taken. The powder they lay for others, blows up themselves. And this is worth the observing, that Catesby first deviseth the powder-plot, and his own powder first burns himself; 
Saepe in magistro● scelera rediérunt suos.  he first smarted, and was maimed, and after killed together with Percy by one bullet shot with powder. Others consenting were many slain with shot and powder, yea even those whose lives were desired to be spared for further use: yet God's justice brought their own de●i●e on their heads. One of them (as Faux) was sorry he could not blow up himself: he would have thought it a benefit, if it had been no worse with him than he had intended to others. Another (as Winter) seeing the ugliness of this monster, was so confounded▪ as he professed, that his fault (for the temporal part) was greater than could be forgiven: and confessed he saw too late, that such courses please not almighty God. All of them, in case it had been done, purposed to disavow it for the foulness of it, till they had power enough to make their party good: and counted it an action worthy to be laid upon their greatest enemies, whom they termed Puritan. Yea God opens their own mouths against themselves. Winter professeth before hand, that if it should not take effect, the scandal would be so great, which the Catholic Religion should sustain by it, as not only our enemies, but our friends also (saith he) would with good reason condemn us.  
Thus we see the truth of God, and his justice: for he hath said, Woe to thee that spoilest: shalt thou not be spoilt? 
Esai. 33.1.  Ye see how justly he that takes the sword, 
Matth. 26 ●2.  perish thurby by the sword. Here is just, Agags case, 
1. Sam. 15 33.  Thy sword made many childless, and God's sword shall make thy mother childless.  
See also what little cause we have to trust Papists, who da●e attempt such devices for the relief of the Catholic cause, as all of them confessed this was. Must you● Religion be thus relieved? It hath ever so been: and so never was from the Lord. Object. Why do you impute this to our Religion, being the error of a few infortunate Gentlemen? 
Treason not accidental, but essential to Romish religion.  Answ. If it were only the error of their nature, (to use the King's Majesty's distinction) it were the more tolerable: but it is the error of their Religion: And most truly hath his Majesty showed, that no other Sect of Heretics (not excepting Turks, jews, Pagans, or they of Calicute) did ever by the grounds of Religion maintain, that it is lawful or meritorious to murder Princes or people for the quarrel of Religion; but only Romish Catholics.  
This doctrine they would as impudently deny as they do other. The light makes them ashamed, and so they deny their own doctrines. They will deny, that the Pope properly pardoneth sins, or that they teach it. They will as impudently deny, that ever Pope had a bastard: that ever a woman was Pope, and an hundreth such, which their own chief writers avow. But let us know, that religion, which is set upon lies, and held up by lies, by conceiving mischief, and bringing forth lies, to be fitter for Antichrist, than for jesus Christ, or Christians professing his name.  
And now, seeing the wicked are fallen into the pit they made, and the powder they laid for us, hath blown up themselves; let us conclude with the next words of this Psalm, We will praise the Lord according to his righteousness, and sing praise to the name of the Lord most high. We will set forth his righteousness and faithfulness, in keeping his promises, and in saving the lives of thousands of his Saints, destinated to death, as sheep to the slaughter.  
The end of the fourth Sermon.   

THE ENGLISH GRATULATION.  Psalm. 126.3. 
The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we rejoice.  
THis Verse is the marrow of the whole Psal. occasioned by the return of God's people out of Babel's Captivity into their own Country: who never received less favours than this, without thanksgiving. Unto which duty of praise the better to provoke themselves, they amplify the benefit, verse. 1. and make it great in their eyes and hearts, as it was in itself; so great and incredible, as when God brought it to pass, they were as men in a dream, thinking it rather a dream, and a vain imagination, than a real truth or action. 1. Because it was so great a deliverance, from so great and lasting a bondage, it seemed too good to be true. 2. It was sudden, and inexpected, when they little thought or hoped for it. Thus the sudden, and inexpected news of Joseph's life made Jacob's heart fail him, 
Gen. 45.26  that he could not believe the relation of his sons to be true. 3. All things seemed desperate, nothing more unlikely, or impossible rather: for indeed, the godly themselves, sticking so much to sense cannot so well weigh the great works of God in the scowles, or with the weights of God, as they should. 4. The manner was so admirable (without the counsel, help, or strength of man: nay, it was beyond and against all humane means;) that they doubt whether these things be not somnia vigilantium, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. Plato.  the dreams of men that are awake. For so we read in Act. 12. that Peter being in prison, the next day to be brought forth to death, slept between two soldiers; and the Keepers before the door: but was led out by an Angel, and with him passed sundry gates and streets; verse 9 yet Peter knew not, that it was true which was done, but thought it had been a dream, and that he had seen a vision. It was so incredible, so inexpected, so sudden, so immediate a deliverance, that he could not believe it.  
But as Peter being come to himself, said, Now I know for a truth that the Lord hath delivered me, vers. 11. so this people of God knew it was more than a dream, even a real deliverance, and could not but express their joy, as men do when they laugh. But as the cause was abundant, so they say they were filled with laughter, verse 2. Nay, the Gentiles themselves observed the benefit, and preached it, even the enemies could observe a special work of God's power and favour for them, verse 3. And should they be behind the Heathen, and not with full heart and mouth celebrate the benefit? Should God lose his glory by his own people, whom the benefit concerned, and find it among the Heathen, who were but lookers on? No: and therefore they proclaim it in these words, The Lord hath don● great things for us, etc.  
Wherein we may consider these four particulars.  

1. The Author or Agent, the Lord.  
2. The Work or Act, hath done great things.  
3. The Persons for whom, for us, his Church.  
4. The Effect, whereof we rejoice. Of these in their order.   
I. The Agent is the Lord: verse 1. the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion. It was a divine work, passing not humane power only, but humane apprehension: for it was not very easy to conceive, much less to effect.  
observ 
All safety of the Church from God.  All deliverances of the Church are the works of God. What means so ever he useth, himself is the principal Agent: and of it, it must be said, Digitus Dei est hic, This is the finger of God. For 1. the help of man is vain, 2. God only hath promised deliverance, and will be depended on, 3. the glory of deliverance belongs to no other, Psalm. 50.15. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will hear thee, and thou shal● glorify me.  
II. The work, great things. The Lord is a great God, and great things beseem him: Psalm. 135.5. I know the Lord is great; and he doth great things. 1. To manifest the greatness of his power, above all creatures. 2. That there may never want some great occasions of praising and glorifying his Name. 3. That our eyes may be lifted up above humane counsels, and not fixed on inferior things, when we see events which could be wielded by nothing but an Omnipotent and Divine hand.  
III. The Persons for whom these great works are done (for us:) Great are the works of God, 
God's greatest works are done for the Church.  seen in the Creation and Government of the world. But the greatest works of all he doth for his Church. 
1. Election.  1. He hath chosen them to be his people, and selected them from all nations of the earth, to be a peculiar inheritance, and his own possession of all the earth. 
2. Habitation.  2. He hath made his residence and abode with her, as he hath with no other society of men in the world. 
3. Ministration.  3. He hath made unto her all his gracious promises, and given the custody of his word to her, and to no other people of the earth. He hath not dealt so with every nation, neither have they known his laws▪ Psal. 147.20. 
4. Tuition.  4. He hath taken upon him the defence of his Church, as of no other people, to be as a shield, or as a loving and careful Husband of his dear and faithful Spouse. 
5. Sweet sensible experience.  5. He hath given her such experience of his providence and protection in many marvellous deliverances, both for soul and body, as no people ever had the like; to the perpetual overthrow of all her adversaries.  

Namely for the Church of the jews.  These and the like great works in general, the Lord hath done for his Church.  
Look now upon Israel, who utters the words of our Text: what great things God hath done for them, both in general, and in this special.  
For the general: 1, Israel was Gods elect, his son, Exod. 4.22. his fi●st borne, more loved, more privileged than any; his treasure, his portion, Deut. 32.8.9. To him belonged the adoption. Rom. 9.4. and he was not numbered among the nations. He is select and chosen out of all the world. He must have the promises; Of him are the Fathers; and of him is Christ, God blessed for ever. 2. God dwelled in Israel. Of Benjamin it is said, that the Lord dwelled between his shoulders, Deut. 33.12. With him was the Ark, and the glory, Rom. 9.4. and when that was taken, the glory departed from Israel. 
1. Sam. 4.21.  He dwelled at Salem, and his Tabernacle was at Zion, Psalm. 76.2. God is present every where, but dwells only in his Church. Of Zion it was said, There will I dwell. 3. Their Laws & ordinances were merely from God: theirs was the Covenant, Rom. 9.4. The Tables of the Covenant, written with Gods own hand, and delivered to them. And the giving of the Law, that is, their Statute-lawes & judicials were not enacted by men, but came from heaven: In which respect no nation was so honoured, Deut. 4.7.12. Was there ever any nation, to whom God came so near, and spoke out of the fire, 
The instances of Gods great care in preserving the jews.  & c.? 4. Their preservation and protection was a great work of God: as we shall see in some instances.  
1. Great was his care to send them into Egypt, by reason of the famine, that they might increase in a fat land: but he sent a man before, even joseph, to provide for them the fattest of the land, Psalm. 105.17. 2. Great was his work of preservation in Egypt under that extreme tyranny of Pharaoh and the Taske-maisters, who could not work wisely enough to keep them under, 
Exod. 1.10.  but, the more they oppressed them, to diminish them, 
Vers. 12.  the more they increased, so as of seventy souls in 220. years the increase was 600000. men, besides women and children. 
Moller.  Psal. 105.24. He increased his people greatly, and made them stronger than their enemies. 3. Great was his work in drawing them out of Egypt: to which purpose he sent Moses his servant, (miraculously drawn out of the water) and Aaron whom he had chosen, vers. 26. By whom he wrought those mighty signs and wonders, vers. 27. of darkness, blood, frogs, lice, hail, caterpillars, the death of their first borne, etc. Insomuch as the enemies loaded them with rich jewels and earrings, and hastened them out of the Country. God would not have his servants go without their wages for so hard labour, which the Egyptians had not considered. Besides, he will have them to have somewhat away, to bestow and confer for the use of the Temple. And when Pharaoh pursued them, so as they saw no way to escape him, God gave them a great deliverance through the sea, 
Exod. 14.31.  and him a great and miraculous overthrow. Such a work God never wrought for any people. 4. Great was his providence and protection of them in the wilderness, where he led them forty years: first, guiding them by a strange pillar of a cloud by day, and of fire by night in all their journeys: secondly, feeding them with Mannah from heaven (in which were a number of miracles) and refreshing them with water out of a rock: thirdly, covering their bodies with the same clothes forty years together, which did not tear by wearing, not so much as their shoes: fourthly, fight their battles for them, suffering no man to do them harm, but rebuking even Kings for their sakes: five, when he had his people alone, he prescribes his whole worship, concerning holy things, holy persons, places, and times; reareth up a stately Tabernacle for his own presence; in it placeth a glorious Ark, whence he immediately gave answers and directions by Vrim and Thummim, and accepted sacrifices, by fire immediately from heaven: all testimonies of his immediate presence.  
5. As great was his care and providence in bringing them into the land of Canaan, casting out all their enemies before them, raising up joshua to lead them in, and a●ter him judges and Kings, Samson, Deborah, David, Solomon, and their successors even till their Captivity in B●bilon. He gave them a goodly land and fat, flowing with milk and honey. In it were vineyards which they planted not, and houses which they builded not. He gave them a city which was on earth as the sun in heaven, the eye of the world, an earthly paradise, the seat of their Princes, and Metropolitan of judea, containing an hundred & fifty thousand men, the inhabitants. In it was a Temple, the beauty of the whole world, and the glory of the earth: Thither the tribes went up twice in a year, to worship the Lord, Psal. 122.4. In it were the Colleges of Priests, at whose mouth they were to require the Law, Mal. 2.7. In it the thrones of justice were erected, Psalm. 122.5. In a word: Great and glorious things are to be spoken of this City of God Psal. 87.3.  
Thus the Church in Israel might well say, The Lord hath done great things for us. But, she need not cast her eyes so far back. Here is one great work in steed of many great things, as which indeed hath many great things in it: on which, while she fixeth her eyes, she count● sh● hath matter enough of rejoicing.  
IV. For God having now revenged the impiety of the Priests and Princes, (who had not only profaned his Land, Temple, and worship, with Idols, but had filled all the corners of the land with innocent blood by Nabuchadnezzar King of Babel, called the scourge of God, for the space of seventy years;) It pleaseth him now to return in mercy to his miserable people. For he never striketh but withal provides a remedy, always in judgement remembering mercy.  
And in this the● Return there was great cause of joy being so great a work of God's mercy. For 1. God seemed now to forget the causes of their Captivity: 
Return out of Babilonish Captivity, great matter of rejoicing in 5. respects. 1. Sins pardoned. 2. Misery expounded.  their idolatry, their contempt of his Ministers, with other heinous and foul sins, which broke out so far that there was no remedy. 2. Cron. 36.15. But now he graciously returneth: therefore certainly those sins are forgiven them.  
2. They had now a long time been exposed to all the enemy's wrath, who had unmercifully oppressed and slain them, and cruelly dashed their infant's brains against the stones, carried them far from house and home, among heathens, and strangers to them and to the Covenant: & strangely used them, not suffering them any house or harbour, but let them spend their time in weeping by the water's side, 
Psalm. 137.1.  exposed to all injury of wind and wether, of men and beasts. But now, as health is sweet after a long disease, so is liberty after a long bondage. Here is great cause to rejoice for temporal freedom from corporal misery.  
3. Their shame and reproach in captivity was infinite: 
3. Ignominy chased. vers. 3.  the Adversaries on one hand insult and call for their Hebrew songs; on the other hand, their City Babel whither they we●e carried, being the Metropolitan and head of the Monarchy at that time, all the people of the known world resorted thither, and carried into all Countries the jews reproach. But now the Lord hath removed their shame, and published from thence to all the world, their glorious deliverance.  
4. In Captivity they were but cives mundi, 
4. Inheritance restored.  men of the world, but now they are ciu●s ecclesiae, members of the Church: that Country being a testimony to the godly, that they belonged to God's Covenant, and to that heavenly Canaan, of which that was a type. Now their Captivity was an abdication from the family of God: and being spoilt of these good things, how could they think, but that they were cast out from God, from the Covenant, from heavenly Canaan aswel as earthly? But now they are received again into the family, and people, and Country of God; their title to heavenly Canaan is renewed; and for this they rejoice.  
5. Whereas the Babylonians had robbed the City, but especially had defaced and burned the Temple, 
5 Religion advanced.  profaned both it and all holy things, and set up the abomination of desolation in stead thereof; (that now, where God was worshipped of his own people according to his will, the devil was worshipped by Heathens and Infidels:) Now the Lord having raised Zion out of the dust, he hath reared his Temple, and his Worship again: he hath cast out the filth and pollution, by which they defiled his Temple: he hath set up again the shining lights in the Temple, standing up in golden Candlesticks: he hath set the sweetbread on his Table: the book of the Law is restored again: and the holiness of the Lord shines again in all his ordinances. God enjoys his worship and glory. They enjoy their land and peace, and sit safe under his protection, as in times past. And these are the great things, whereof they now rejoice.  
Now to the application.  
This day are these things performed in our ears, who may truly say with the Church of Israel, The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we rejoice.  
We will not go so far backward (as if time would give leave, 
As great things done for Britan's as for Israelites, if not greater.  we might:) to compare the Lords general mercies to us with theirs, wherein we are not inferior; giving us a land as rich, more large; peace more stable; Kings and Princes, as Saviour's and judge's, leading us along to Canaan; the covenant of grace as peculiar, more sure to us than to them. What Oracles had they which we have not? yet we have what they had not. Had they worship in shadows? we have it in substance. Had they good things in promise and expectation? we in the very thing, and full accomplishment. Christ was to come of them: but he is come unto us. I will only speak of our deliverance from Babylon, of which the Church here speaketh.  
That Rome is Babylon, 
Rome termed Babylon in 6. resemblances.  the learned Jesuits themselves confess. And if they did not, we could easily show, that one egg is not liker another, than Rome is to Babylon. As in this Collation. 1. Babel was the great City, that must rule over all nations, Gen. 10.10. 
Roma tuum no men terris fatale regendis. Episcopus Occumenicus.  And Rome is the great City, that must rule over all Cities and Churches: her Bishop must be Head and Monarch of the Church, and set himself above all that is called God. 2. At Babel was the first confusion of tongues, Gen. 11.7. In and from Rome is the confusion of tongues, and of errors, one not understanding another in the word, or sacraments, or other their services: All is in a strange language to them. 3. At Babel was horrible superstition and wickedness, in Priests and people, and thence it spread all abroad. Rome is a sink of superstition and filthiness, and all nations have drunk of her cup, and been made drunk with her horrible enchantments and wickedness. 4. Babel held the Church in slavery seventy years: so the Church of Christ hath been oppressed a long time under the tyranny of the Romish Church. 5. Babel robbed and spoilt the Church of her treasures, and the Temple of God, and horribly polluted it. Rome hath robbed the Christian world of infinite treasures by fraud and deceit, 
Palls, Agnus ●ei's, Indulgences, etc.  selling for millions that which was not worth the dust of men's feet. And the Church by her hath been robbed of the word, the Sacraments, the offices of Christ, and most comfortable doctrines, the chief dowry and revenue that Christ her Head gave her. 6. Babel most miserably entreated the Church: Psalm. 137.1. Her eyes did nothing but drop down tears day and night. And she provided a furnace, to cast such in as would not worship the image, Dan. 3.6. All books and writings of the Church are full of the bloody cruelty, by all instruments of cruelty, and all plots of cruelty, in the Roman Church, both the head and the members. 
Deliverance from Rome as great as that from Babylon: 5. instances.   
Now that our deliverance from Romish power and plots is as great a work to rejoice in, as this of Israel from their captivity, is easily proved.  
1. God hath broke the yoke of the King of Babel, the Romish Nabuchadnezzar, from off our necks, when we lay among the pots, by that great Cyrus, King Henry the 8. who thrust out the Pope and Papal power, cut the sinews of their strength, cast out the Canaanites that were in the land, pulled down the dens of thieves and robbers, and set his people to build an house for the Lord God of Israel. As great a work as ever the people of this nation saw either attempted or executed. All the Kings before him durst not meddle; well they might mourn under their bondage, and murmur at the Oppressor; but did nothing, because they durst not.  
2. When Cyrus had begun the work, Darius commanded it to be finished and performed, Ezra. 6.1. Even so what King Henry had begun, young Da●ius Edward the 6. (as another josiah) finished to good purpose. For as Darius made a decree for the house of God in jerusalem, both for the building of it, and for the rendering of the vessels of the house of God, of gold and silver, which Nabuchadnezzar had taken out of the house of God, vers. 3.5. So this Edward of blessed memory (imitating Darius) in the first year of his reign proclaimed the advancement and building up of the worship of the true God in a true manner, 
King Edward the 6. another Cyrus, or Darius.  and brought in the vessels of gold and silver, which Romish Nabuchadnezzar had taken away. He set the lights in the Temple again, in many shining candlesticks. The Sweetbread was set again on the Table of the Lord, and the Cup of Christ his precious blood, which had been stolen away by those thieves, was now found, and comfortably restored to the owners. The book of the Law was found, and restored again into a known tongue, as in josiahs' time by Hilkiah the Priest. The sweet silver sounding Trumpets sound continually in our ears, in daily preaching the blessed word of God. The holy Ark a sign of God's presence dwells again among us, and Dagon is fallen before it; the house of Baal and his vestry destroyed; his groves cut down and grubbed up. Are not these great works, which the Lord hath done for us, wherein we must rejoice?  
3. After this, for the unthankfulness of this land, as the building of the Temple was hindered for a while by Sanballat and Tobiah, so in the days of Queen Mary this great work of God was interrupted: in which time, what the Babylonians could not conquer by Scripture, they could subdue by torture: and now fire and sword was the Catholic and invincible argument: that the new Romanists might not degenerate from the old bloody Romans their forefathers, whose measure they filled to the full. For in less than five years, three hundred of the faithful servants of Christ, without respect of Nobility, degree, learning, gravity, sex, age, or natural humanity, were in our Country burned to ashes. But God had no delight in that bloody Religion: It is as great a work of mercy as any of the former, that he made it as short as bloody. For if violent things and times should continue, the world could not.  
And behold a greater work which the Lord hath done for us, whereof we rejoice: 
Queen Elizabeth England's Deborah.  in raising us up our ancient Deborah of England, neverdying Elizabeth, the wonder of the world, and mirror of nations: who quickly quenched those hot and furious fires, and herself being brought from a prisoner to a mighty Prince, opened the prisondoores, and delivered them that were apppointed to death. Now were the castles of their superstitions and hopes, cast down again, and made even with the ground. What great works God did for her, and us in her time, were too long to recite: how she outstood the curses and Bulls of the Romish Nabuchadnezzar, and saw in her time seven of themselves tumbled out of their pretended chair of S. Peter: 
Seven Popes died in the reign of Q Elizabeth.  how wonderful her many deliverances were, from many hellish treasons, devised by the army of Priests, sent from the King of pride, and attempted by the Romish Captains of that great Nabuchadnezzar. How the Lord went out before our Armies, and as in the days of Israel's Deborah, so of England's Deborah, he m●de the sea and winds fight for us, and by his own right hand got us the victory: 
Ch●ist in all that 〈◊〉 showed 〈…〉, said the Turk.  that memorable year and overthrow of 88, shall be a perpetual witness so long as the world standeth, how God himself fights against that Religion, which so furiously fights against him. How she judged and ruled in peace, honour, and happiness five and forty years, to the honour of God and his Gospel, and terror of all enemies: and in the same peace and happiness exchanged her earthly with an heavenly and everlasting crown of glory.  
4. A great work of God it was for us to rejoice in, when at her decease the enemies who had long looked for a day, found it the day of their greatest disappointment: whilst the Lord, setting himself for our good in our gracious King and the fruitful plants, renewed all our prosperity, gave us a new tenure of the Gospel, and a new hold of our peace and liberties: of whom we may say as was said of David; He is the light of Israel: and of josiah; the breath of our nostrils: who by his power and pen hath showed himself a Defender of the true Faith.  
5. To come to the great works of this day. That these Babylonians might keep their hands in ure, what foul and desperate designs have they attempted against the life of the King's Majesty, our gracious Sovereign? For while this light of Israel remaineth, impossible they think it is for their kingdom of darkness to prevail.  
Among other devices, that shame of Popish Religion, that hideous gunpowder-treason, shall never be put out from under heaven. In which were many great works of God for us Englishmen: whether we consider the greatness of the danger, or the greatness of the deliverance.  
First, consider the greatness of the plot: the greatest mischief that ever was, wanting a fit name to express it, unless you will call it a Catholic villainy: a plot of greatest and universal danger to us, of greatest triumph to the Adversary. Here the head and tail, branch and root, one and other, Prince and people, Nobles and Gentry, old and young, Papists and Protestants, should have been destroyed together. For as Duke Medina said, his sword knew no difference between Catholics and Heretics, no more should this hellish or hellfire, which it was a spark of.  
Besides the secret carriage and contriving of it made it most dangerous, more dangerous than the Babylonish captivity: for the Babylonians dealt aperto mart, there was some hope of safety either by prayer, or power, or truce, or preparing against them, there a man knew his adversary: but here is a cruelty digged out of the depth of darkness, all of them sworn to secrecy, yea the Sacrament was a seal of their wickedness, sworn brethren in evil, at league among themselves, 
Ce●es. 45.5.  but no more league for us to be expected than from hell itself.  
Here we might say as Hannibal sometime said of two Roman Captains, one working by power, the other by policy; Magis se a non pugnante Fabio quam à pugnante Marcello sibi metuere: We are more afraid of sly and quiet Papists, than of boisterous armed Turks.  
How these plotters would have triumphed in the fact, as the Babylonians over Israel, 
Psal. 137.2.  Sing us now one of the songs of Zion, we may well perceive by their glorying in the hopes of it; God and man (saith the Letter) have concurred to punish the iniquity of the time, and, The danger is passed so soon as you have burnt the letter, and They shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament. Happy were we, that they reckoned without their host, and so came to another reckoning: else had the Funerals of England been their sports and merriments. How should this Act have been canonised and registered in the Pope's Calendar, amongst the most Heroical facts that ever were attempted! For, if treason against the person of one King was so extolled, how would this have been advanced, being against the King, Prince, State, and three whole famous Kingdoms! Guignard the jesuit terms the act of james Clement in murdering Henry the 3. of France with a poisoned knife, which he thrust into his belly, an Heroical act. The Jesuits of France term it a gift of the holy Ghost: Nay Pope Sixtus the 5. in a solemn oration made in the Consistory of Cardinals, (Decem. 11.1589.) compared the treason of that cursed Dominick with the act of Eleazar or judith; 
Factum mirabile, etc. Rex Francorum occisus per manus monachi.  yea a far greater work, a rare, a notable and a memorable act, that a Monk, a religious man, had slain the unhappy French King, in the midst of his host: An act not done without the providence of God, and the assistance of his holy Spirit.  
Oh hellish blasphemies of unerring Popes, not justifying only, but abetting and extolling most heinous treasons, against the highest powers on earth! oh blasphemous beasts teaching men that God is a murderer of Kings and Princes! How then should this fact have been eternised if it had succeeded! And, if there were such rejoicing at Rome by public professions, bonfires, shooting of ordinance, and present publishing of a jubilee, by the Pope & his Cardinals, hearing tidings of that perfidious and bloody Massacre at Paris, anno. 1572. in so much as the Cardinal of Lorraine gave him a thousand Crowns that brought the first news of it: What public joy in Rome, what Masses, processions, triumphs, and gifts would there have been, if this stratagem had had success.  
Bellarmine shall not deceive us, who tells us in his Letter to the Archpriest, 
Bellarm, in his letter to George Blackwel Archpriest of the English.  that it was never heard of from the Church's infancy vn●il this day, that ever any Pope did command, that a Prince (though an heretic, or ethnic, or persecutor) should be murdered; or did approve the fact when it was done by another. This is a lewd and unconscionable untruth: unless we conceive he means, that it was never heard by those who were deaf and could not hear: As by a jesuitical Aequivocation it may well be construed.  
I conclude this point with the speech of Agis to an evil man, ask him who was the best Spartan: his answer was, Qui tui dissimillimus, He that is most unlike thee. So is this to be a good Catholic, nay he is the best Catholic, who is most unlike these Catholics.  
We see our danger, and how great it was.  
Now secondly, let us see, how the work of God is as great in our deliverance, both for the Matter and for the Manner of it.  
I. For the Matter; we were delivered from great evils, to great good things.  
First, we were delivered from a terrible blow: A deadly blow to King, Queen, Prince, Nobles, judges, Bishops, Counsel, Gentry, Commons, all. A deadly blow to all Laws and Law makers, to justice, peace, titles, tenors, records, and the whole Commonwealth. These Babylonians had sacked and spoiled all the Land. A terrible deadly blow to religion, piety, the Gospel, the Word, the Sacraments. These Babylonians would have razed down the Temple to the very foundations of it, and carried away all the vessels and rich ornaments of it. The ways of Zion should have mourned, because none could come to her solemn feasts. 
Lament. 1.4.  Lastly a terrible & deadly blow to all Lovers and Professors of religion within the whole Land, which (as the traitors) should have been drunk with the innocent blood of the Inhabitants.  
Secondly, we were delivered from a terrible day, like the day of the Lord which shall burn like an oven, Mal. 4.1. A terrible day, wherein the frame of the world should have seemed dissolved, the sun should have been turned into blood, the earth should have opened her mouth and swallowed the inhabitants, the air should have been darkened through the blackness and lamentation of that day. A dismal doomsday of England, a day of fire and brimstone had that fifth of November been, if the fireworks of these firebrands had prevailed.  
Thirdly, we were delivered from a terrible tyranny and yoke, to which that of Babel was altogether incomparable. 1. Spiritual: our glory had been gone, and we might well have been called I●habod: In stead of our Ark we should have had the abomination of desolation set up, the horrible idol of the Mass, ignorance worshipped as a god & mother of devotion; Preaching hindered; Preachers martyred, & all worship in an unknown tongue: an ignotant & rascal sort of greasy filthy Priests; & a doctrine, 
2. Thess. 2.7.  which is a very mystery of iniquity. 2. Temporal: Answerable to their tyrannous doctrine is their tyrannical practice. 
Eius avaritiae totus non sufficit orbis: Eius luxuriae meretrix non sufficit omnis.  The whole world satisfieth not their covetousness, nor all the harlots in the world their filthiness. Look where that religion is stable if it have not swallowed even the fat of the Land. And what Nobleman dares meddle with a base hedge-Priest? And for their practice is not behind their positions, and in both, Turks and Cannibals are behind their cruelty. One of themselves writes, It had been better the poor Indieses had been given to the devils in hell, than unto them: and themselves professed they would never come in heaven, if the Spaniards came there. Well hath his Majesty observed, that not the Turks, Tartars, or they of Calicute who worship the devil, do lay such principles of cruelty in their Doctrine as Papists do.  
We see the greatness of our deliverance, privately: now see it positively.  
In one word: The good things we are restored unto, are, the fruition of God and his Christ, in his holy ordinances, with the Gospel of peace: to the peace of our Country, under our peaceable Governor; new leases of our liberties, lands, callings, lives, and all that heart can desire.  
II. The Ma●nor or means of our deliverance was altogether wonderful. 1. It was easily brought about, not by millions of gold and silver, not by the power or wit of man. 2. It was done mightily, not by the devil (as Faux blasphemously spoke) but by the immediate work of God: though, as Cyrus had some glory of the Babylonish delivery, so our Cyrus, our gracious King had worthily some glory of his princely care and watchfulness in this discovery. 3. It was done seasonably, in the very due time, when all was ready, & the conception was even in the birth. 4. It was done to their own confusion: detected by themselves; their hands that should have acted it, detected it by writing. Discovered against themselves: mischief returned on the heads that devised it: they fell into the pit that they digged for others: death intended against their brethren, caught themselves, and that by their own powder. All this to the utter confusion of their Religion, as we have heard Winter himself foretelling.  
Therefore let us rejoice in this great work of God, as his ancient people in this place. For why? The greatest rage of the enemy is turned to his greatest praise: Psal. 76.10. Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: both in his glory and his Church's deliverance. And what is the end of all Gods great deliverances, but to praise his name, and glory in his praise? Psal. 106.47. Is not ours the benefit? Have not wicked men seen and felt, that God having chosen our land to dwell in, will not eas●y be cast out of his lodging? and will not this cool their blood, and daunt their spirits from the like enterprises for time to come? Doth not this hazard thus happily diverted make addition to our strength and peace? Oh blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord jesus Christ, who for his own sake, by his own hand, hath heaped up our happiness. He that is mighty, hath done great things for us, and holy is his Name. Oh praise we the Lord; for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever. Holy Father, knit our hearts unto thee, that we may fear thy great and dreadful Name. Teach us to be truly and unfeignedly thankful to thy holy Majesty, for this day's mercies, and all heretofore: that so we may receive the continuance of thy favours to our everlasting comfort, and evermore rejoice in thy great salvation. Blessed be God.  
FINIS.