THE Parricide Papist, OR, cut-throat Catholic. A tragical discourse of a murder lately committed at Padstow in the County of Cornwall by a professed Papist, killing his own Father, and afterwards himself, in zeal of his Popish Religion. The 11 of March last passed. 1606. Written by G Closse, Preacher of the Word of God at Black Torrington in Devon. VIRESCIT ❀ WLNERE ❀ VERITAS printer's or publisher's device ¶ Printed at London for Christopher Hunt, dwelling in Lovells' Inn in Paternoster-row. 1606. THE Parricide Papist, OR, cut-throat Catholic. PErusing the plentiful and profitable labours of many learned & zealous Writers of this time, and the Christian forwardness of all sorts bending their batteries against the Bulwarks of Superstition & Popery, some with their pens, others with their pikes, and all with their prudent policies pursuing the recoiling Miscreants: I thought it not impertinent to my place, profession, and occasion, to cut a few vacant hours out of my private businesses, ses, and to latch a blow (amongst others,) at the skull of the seaven-headed Dragon, & whore Apoc. 17. 3 of Babylon, rather to testify my consenting will to true Religion, than my contenting skill as able, to add any ornament unto that which the Lord hath so gloriously adorned with wisdom, and power to support itself against all malignity of the world, and the gates of hell not able to prevail against it. Every clear eye, and judicious care, hath sufficiently discerned the cause of Rome to be deserted, and destitute of all defence by argument: enough (if not too much) hath been answered to all their allegations in defence of their false Synagogue, and accusations in offence and derogation of our true reformed Christian Churches: and of these blind Worms; and deaf Adders, may be verified the saying of Solomon, That though you bray a Prou, 27, 22 23, 9, fool in a Mortar, yet he will be never the wiser. I shall therefore commend unto your Christian considerations, the Tragical act and event, which lately happened in the County of Cornwall, (not far from the place of my habitation:) and seeing our Popish pamphletors cuculate nothing more than surmised calumniations against the persons of our godly and most painful Ministers, not being otherwise able to discredit their doctrines, I will expose to their Owle-sight eyes examples of their own Sectaries to be looked upon, and seriously considered. Wherein to shun the just taxation of slander, (which is most proper to their Popish practices,) I will propose matter in fact evident, by public Records, in quality execrable, in time new, and freshly bleeding in our eyes. Luther and Beza, being surcharged with manifold fictions, and odious imputations, outlived the envy of their enemies, and in their life time confuted their forged imputations: but the examples of these men's more than barbarous bloodthirstiness, shall outlive all ages living, and remain inchronicled as Prodigies, and stand enrolled in public acts, as memorials to all posterities, so long as our laws, or any civil government shall be pracised in the Land: and let them hear me to tell them plainly, that which our blessed Saviour told their forefathers the Pharisees roundly, that they are of their Father john; 8, 44 the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning: they are the progeny of Cain, sacrificing Abel, because he sacrificeth to GOD Gone, 4, 5. a better smelling oblation than theirs. If they will needs judge the Tree by the fruits, & the cause by the effects: then what piety can be imagined in that Profession, which is so bloody, as theirs is notified in all the world to be? Yea, their whore of Babylon, in all her deliciousness, is especially banqueted Apoc, 17. 6, with the blood of the Saints. If I should speak of usual murders, which common cut-throats commit in their purse-taking, or that furious swaggerers shed in their hot bloods, and wrathful revenges, it were no more in comparison of that which cometh in this argument, than a bloody nose to a gasping wound. For though all kill is cruel, and an enemy to nature, yet the unnatural & detested Parricides (whereof this argument entreateth) astonisheth all humane reason to consider it, appalleth all the senses to apprehend it, and exceedeth all credulity to believe such a thing to be done, till they behold it actually performed. The wise Lawgiver answered discreetly, Solon. excusing himself that he made no Law for him that murdered his Father, because he never imagined such an odious act against nature would ever be imagined, much less attempted of any humane creature. But see the blindness of heresy and false religion, which being a poison of the soul, brought from the den of darkness, and a drug of the devil, how it not only opposeth the creature against the Creator, man against GOD, and man against man, but transformeth their whole natures, engendering in them unnatural thoughts and desires, and producing effects odious to GOD and nature. In these our latter days, men being 1, Tim, 4, 1 2, Tim, 3, 2, 3, departed from the faith, are become (as the Apostle saith) unnatural: and God giving them over into a reprobate sense, which would not receive Rome, 1, 26 the love of the truth, they have changed the natural use of things, to that which is against nature; as not only their execrable Sodomitries, but their thrice detested Parricides, openly testify, and cry out against them. Do I, or dare I enstyle them Parricide Papists, or cut-throat Catholics, and be destitute of examples pathetically to move, and effectually to prove it? No, no, amongst many old, I will introduce one new exemplary instance thereof, lately acted in the midst of their smoking broils, irrefragably warranted by unreprovable witnesses. One Inigo Ieanes of Padstow in the County of Cornwall, being lately somewhat reclaimed from his Popish profession, & frequenting the Church (though as it appeareth with no great devotion) was in the harvest of their late politic platform, assailed with the persuasive tongue of one William Manfil, (a professed Romanist) to return to his old bias again. Who upon better information of his friends, replied, that it was in vain now any longer to consect in that Religion, seeing after the death of the late Queen, the inauguration of a most religious King, forced the tide & stream against the Romish Church, so that both hap and hope, were drowned and perished together. Yet the Temptor, like sathan his master, desirous to cast down the strong in faith from the pinnacles of the Temple, persuadeth Math, 4, encouragement, and confidence of better success, assuring him, that platforms were then in hand, not only for redemption, but renown of the Catholics, & that forces were in full preparation both at home and abroad to advance the Catholic cause, as he termed it. Only it behoved them to apply their massings, and ceremonial observances, to obtain it by merit at God's hands. Perhaps they imagined (as the Prophet Psal, 50, 21 speaketh) that GOD was like unto themselves, and would participate with them in any wickedness, if they could make him smell to their bloody unbleeding sacrifice. But the poor credulous caitiff, being led on by these fair pretences, and hopeful preparations, relapsed Catholic again: and as busy as other Wasps of that swarm, consorted with the crew of other corner-creepers, in obscure Caves to do service to the Prince of darkness. And although james the Father of them said Inigo Ieanes often dissuaded him from those dangerous courses, which the severity of the Laws would sharply correct, yet he desperately running on, and resolved to persist, not only refused to obey the admonitions of his father, but became an earnest persuader that he would permit them a place of secrecy in his house, for the exercise of their idolatrous massings. The Father, (whether fearing God or the Law more, I omit to censure) still constantly contradicted his sons unreasonable and unseasonable request, alleging, that at this time, Laws were making in the Parliament, to punish Popery more severely than ever heretofore: and that upon just occasion of the late discovery of so damnable a stratagem, as was never plotted against any Christian or Heathen state: and therefore in some round terms (as it seemed) checked & rejected his peevish sons Popish petition. But he, in the frantic spirit of a Papist, hastily took up a club or beetle (wherewith they used to cleave wood) and rudely, (O let me study a more apt word for such savage inhumanity) barbarously assailed his own natural Father, and struck him violently on the head to the ground. And doubting that he had not thoroughly dispatched him, took up a bar of iron, & struck him with main force and broke his back, so that he presently died of those wounds. Then this Inigo Ieanes, leaving his Father groveling on the ground, and wallowing in his own blood, immediately fled to a Chapel (called Saint saviours) near Padstowe, and hastily unclothing himself, with a bad and blunt knife (adding all his force thereto) ghastly in two or three places gashed his own belly athwart, that his bowels were to be seen. The Mother of the said Inigo shortly after coming into her Garden, and finding her husband thus cruelly murdered, and utterly dismayed therewith, came into the house inquiring for her son Inigo Ieanes, and finding him fled away, she caused another of her sons, and some other messenger to seek him: who coming unto the foresaid Chapel of Saint saviours, found him there leaning to one of his hands, & most grievously wounded. Upon some speeches and conference, the said Inigo confessed the murdering of his father, and wounding himself: and was very desirous to speak with Master Nicholas Prideaux (then and now high Sheriff of Cornwall,) dwelling near the said Town of Padstow, to the intent he might reveal some special matters unto him, wherewith it seemed his conscience was surcharged. And being brought unto his presence, he instantly made known unto him, how he had been seduced by the foresaid Manfill unto his erroneous Religion: and that the same morning, himself, with seven men, & eight women more, had been at Mass, at one Richard Hores house of S. Eruin. Hereupon the said Master Prideaux, sent for three other justices of the Peace next adjoining, namely Master Arundel of Trerise, Master Michael, and Master Cosworth Esquires, to whom upon further examination he confessed all that is before declared: and that he had been thereunto drawn & moved by the instigation of the devil, and seeming very sorrowful for the fact, after some two or three days languishing, departed this life. And so we will leave him to the tribunal seat of the most righteous, and All-seeing judge to be censured. Before I proceed further in examining the innumerable impieties in this one fact comprised, I may not omit to note unto the world, what a blind & senseless guide they had for their Priest, that from such a director, no hope of better fruits could be conceived. This paltry Popeling, was well known a little before to be a bad and rude Schoolmaster, and a fellow of such noted stupidity, that young Gentlemen, servingmen, and others, for an exercise and recreation, would practise to have him stand still, whiles they with all their force, quoyted sbillings or testernes at his blockish brow, which for a small piece of money he would as quietly endure, as if a Stoical stupidity had possessed his brains and body, even till his face and forehead was oftentimes most grievously gashed, moving many beholders to pity him, which did not pity himself. This Dorus, was now lately become like one of jeroboams Priests, taken as one out of the 1, Reg. 13, 13 2, Chro, 11 15 judges, 17, 10, 11, basest of the people, & consecrated with the Pope's unguent, a priest of the devil, or Masse-monging Catholic. This calf of Dan, being now become a Bell-wether to the scabbed flock, it is doubted whether the sheep infected him more with the hope of hire, to become a Micahs priest, or he with his Ramme-like forehead, had hardened the faces of his flock unto this extreme impudency and impiety: but sure the proverb was well shared amongst them, such a priest, such people. Their mother was Atheism, their nurse Ignorance, Darkness their dwelling, and Confusion their inheritance. Let me return to our seraphical Doctors of Rome, which accuse all the world but themselves of impurity: and let them answer me in earnest, shall we know the tree by the fruits? Math, 7, 16, judge of the soundness of the profession by the works of the professors? Will you try us, not by rules of Divinity, but examples of Divines? Look upon this pattern, peruse this picture of your Parricide Papist, whose offence is taxed, not as he is a man falling through infirmity, but as he is a Papist, erring wilfully, no passion but his profession, no hope of gain, but blind devotion, no reason but his unreasonable Religion, plunged him into these execrable enormities. It is your religion that hath dubbed you man-quellers, king quellers, selfe-quellers. Are you not Parricides? alas, your masters are not like Peter, that forsook Math, 26, 34 john, 21, 15, his Master, & repenting did countervail his triple denial, with a threefold confession of him: but as your Legend noteth of judas, that had murdered his father, and committed incest with his mother, and became Christ's disciple for a colour to shadow his horrible impieties, and betraying his master lastly hanged himself: such succession rightly correspondeth with your Popedom, by bloodsheds they are hatched, grow great, and strengthen themselves. Phocas murdered his Master the Emperor Au●. Victor. Mauritius, and was it not the first & surest step to the Romish Popedom? But it may be you can allow this lay Parricide to murder Princes, for establishment of a Popedom: Your holy Fathers, Popes & Bishops, have by sundry poisonings, some lost their lives and places, & others gained them: how approve you this spiritual parricide? Christian Kings and Princes, are designed to destruction by your holy Pope's ordinances: is it no Parricide? The Prince of Orange, & the French-King deceased, murdered by Papists, and he that now reigneth, assailed to be slaughtered by your unhallowed hands: will not all men abhor these portentous parricides? King john of England, long ago poisoned by Monks, & our late renowned Maiden Queen more often attempted with treacheries, than your Pope's crown hath hairs of an honest Prelate, doth it not proclaim to the world your damnable parricides? Let me make an end with you all, which would make an end with us all, your late stratagem, to blow up with gunpowder our potent King, Queen, Prince, Prelate, Nobility, & the whole state of Parliament, was it not an unheard of practice of Parricide? I hear some of your politics under their vizards to confess, that it was an horrible Answer to the Discovery: preface to the King. project, which no Religion can excuse, no reason defend, no authority maintain: that God & heaven are against it, men and earth detest it, (the silly (you should have said, slily) delinquents) themselves did lament it. Go to then, if to murder Parents, (which are in the highest degree of natural love) if to murder Princes, which are in most eminent dignity of political parentage, if to murder a whole Commonwealth, your native Country (quae una omnes Cicero. omnium charitates complexa est) compriseth the lives, and loves of us all, be not an inexplicable parricide, than I must, and will confess, I have overleaped my limits, & mistitled your professors of the Popish religion, in terming them Parricides. But a father of children, must needs be touched with a horrer in his heart, to conceive how many fathers and mothers you would have made childless, & children fatherless by your hellish projects: A Prince that is honoured as a father in his kingdom, and embraceth his subjects with an affectionate love, abhorreth the remembrance of so vile an enterprise, to see a state so flourishing, in a moment torn, and utterly disfigured: All lovers of God and Religion, yea every man that tasteth any sweetness of civil society, standeth amazed, and amated at the consideration of such barbarous immanity, overturning Temples, palaces, cities, and families, without any remorse, or respect of Religion, or order: and yet all these effects, cannot be denied to be the fruits of your Romish religion. I will conclude, and hold it maintained with a world of witnesses, that though the term be tart, yet it is true, Papists are Parricides. But why (say they) is this rude phrase of cut-throat Catholics (so harshly sounding in vulgar ears) applied to our pope-holy professors? Let Northumberland, above twenty years ago murdering himself in the Tower, Arden strangling himself in Newgate, and this our Cornish Catholic, (so lately killing his father and himself) stand forth as fresh-bleeding examples to verify it. Did not Percy and Catesby, which chose rather to die wilfully and desperately by the soldiers hand, then submit themselves, and live to confess their faults, satisfy the King and Commonwealth, and permit themselves a breathing time to repent them of their hideous attempts, bear witness against them, & convince them to be desperate Selfe-murtherers? I dare not charge all, nor any of their complices which died in prison, to be guilty of Selfe-poysoning, but the manifest desperate attempt of Nicholas Oven, most bloodily mangling, and massacring himself in the Tower, and with his own hands tearing out his fat and bowels, the second day of March last passed, (this our Cornish cut-throat seconding him within nine days after) cannot be denied, nor exempted from the imputation of barbarous immanity in our Popish professors. What is the whole practice of the Romish Church, wading through blood of Princes and kingdoms to establish a Popedom, continually complotting and practising massacres in the whole Christian world, but a public proclamation to beware of cut-throat Catholics. Though they go in sheeps skins, Math, 7, 15 1, Reg, 14, 2, 6. we know them to be Wolves: howsoever disguised, the true prophet discerneth the dissembling of jeroboams wife, and will prophecy the renting of their kingdom. Whatsoever their oaths and protestations be, we know their Equivocations & Dispensations; not peace but war, not loyalty but rebellion, not the King's honour, but the Pope's advancement is their errand. And let the favourers, and furtherers of your treasous understand, that those which hate their natural Prince, will not long adhere to Strangers. Such as can consent to the confusion of their native Country, will not be trusted for friends to any Commonwealth. Such as murder their Parents, will not spare Aliens. Those that kill themselves, which is the fountain of all loves, (for sibi nequam cui bonus erit) can never find any whom they will deem worthy of preservation, if they shall cross their cursed courses. Their pontifical Bishop, (that beast which Apo, 17, 1, 2, sitteth upon many waters,) and hath brewed and broached these bloody broils in the Christian state, and glorieth in his title, to be called Ecclesiae Catholicae Pontifex, a Bridge-maker, to transport his passengers the Catholic creatures into his Sea of Rome, over the Rivers and streams of blood, mixing his intoxicating potions of heresies, idolatries, and traditious, wherewith the Kings of the earth, (quaffing & carousing the cups of his fornication) are made drunken, as the evangelical prophet speaketh. Else let him be Pontifaex, et terrae fax, the dregs of the Sea, and firebrand of the Earth, with his filth polluting the waters, and with his fiery faggots of persecution, scorching and consuming the inhabitants of the world. No doubt it shallbe done unto him, as he hath done unto others, and his measure shall be in seaven-folde manner, measured unto him again, when the beast shall be cast into the Lake that burneth with fire & brimstone for evermore. But for a monition to the simple seduced ones, (for the Seducers seem desperately hardened in their pertinacy) we pray you to look on the present state of things, with open and equal eyes, and consider the courses & carriages of the cause on both sides: and let them in plainness confess, whether they have not discerned the hand of God against them and their attempts, turning their deepest devices like Achitophel's policies, into foolishness, and 2, Sam, 17, 14, 23, 18, 9, 1, Reg, 1, 7, 2, 25. Numb, 16, 1, 2, 31, bringing the wheel over their Counsellors and conspirators, so that they both perish together, like Achitophel and Absalon, joab and Adoniah, Corah and his complices. Their hardened Pharaoh, striving to keep God's people in bondage, & servitude to his ordinances, and will not let them peaceably depart to serve their living God, according to his commandment, shall no doubt in the end, receive the condign wages of his merit, and hardness of heart: and our Moses and Aaron's, Exod, 21, 51 (our elected Princes, priests & prophets) shall prosper in the deliverances, informations, and government of God's people. The mighty God, who by little and little cast out the Canaanites, & planted Israel in their Land, hath his workings constant and consonant, always like himself, full of patience & justice, with a slow and strong arm bringing 2, Sam, 7, 10. Exod, 1, 7, 8, mighty things to pass. The kingdom of Antichrist is in short time by degrees cut short, and abated, and the Israel of GOD, hath as mightily prospered, out of a few families enlarging his borders into many kingdoms, and what remaineth, but that he which letteth 2, Thes. 2, 6, 7. be taken out of the way, and that the man of sin being revealed, may be also removed & rooted Math, 15, 13 out, as a plant which is not of our heavenly fathers planting. We confess the Church of Rome received, and for many years retained the sincerity of the Gospel and true religion: and so there was a good Pharaoh in Egypt, which by holy Joseph's Gone, 45. 10 direction ordered his kingdom, & gave unto the people of God a fruitful possession in the Land of Goshen, where they prospered, and Gone, 47, 6 multiplied exceedingly; but there arose in process Exod, 1, 8, of time another Pharaoh, which knew not joseph, and became a tyrant unto the people of God, and cruelly oppressed them. So Rome is become Babylon, her Candlestick is removed, Apoc, 18, 2, 3, 4, Cap, 2, 4, 5. she is fallen from her first faith, and the faithful City is become an Harlot, and her Antiquity without Verity, is but oldness of Errors, and we must depart from her, which is departed from God. If she will return unto her spouse, & forsake her Lovers with whom she committed all her fornications and abominations, we will rejoice with her for such an holy reconciliation: else we will cry unto the people of God to come out of her, & not to partake with her sins, and idolatries, lest they partake of her grievous plagues and punishments, when the cup of the Lords wrath shall be powered upon her. God of his unspeakable goodness, make that your sins be not an hindrance unto his rich mercies, but that he will speedily, for the Elects sake, cut short the power of Antichrist, and amplify the borders of his kingdom, that our eyes may see it, and our posterity may rejoice in his great salvation, and praise him for all our corporal, and spiritual deliverances. So be it. Amen. FINIS.