A reply TO A Person of Honour His pretended ANSWER TO THE VINDICATION OF THE PROTESTANT RELIGION In the point of OBEDIENCE to sovereigns, And to the BOOK of Papal Tyranny.  
By Peter Du Moulin, D. D.  
LONDON, Printed for Henry broom, at the 〈◇〉 at the West end of St. Pauls, 1675.   

A reply TO A Person of Honour, &c.  
WHEN after a long storm of the State, and Eclipse of Monarchy, 
How I was engaged in this quarrel.  God in mercy visited England with the blessed return of her long wished King; who like a powerful Sun dispelled by his presence the clouds of our fears, and ripened our hopes into Thanksgivings; Then the several minds and parties in the Nation joined to admire the Lords doing, 
Psal. 118.  which was marvelous in their eyes; and said unanimously, This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. The Roman catholics expressed a great share in that general joy; but they marred it by their insolence: For the Most Excellent King Charles the First having been execrably murdered by Sectaries, whom they styled Protestants; The Papists because some of them had suffered and fought for the King, stood very high upon their merits, and cried up the honour of their catholic doctrine, which had kept them loyal; whilst the Protestants cut off their Kings neck, as a holy sacrifice, by the principles of their Religion. 
Besides a great number of them which actually served in the Kings Enemies Army, of which I have set a Royal attestation at the end of this Discourse.  Forgetting what a small number they were among the Protestant forces that served the King, and that being persecuted at home, some of them joined with the Kings Armies, but most of them took sanctuary in the Kings Garrisons, where they sate still skulking and expecting the event.  
To exalt themselves and depress us, a Jesuitical Libel was published, entitled Philanax Anglicus, whose drift was no less then to prove the Protestant Religion to be inconsistent with the Government of the Kingdom; the Protestants not to be suffered in any State, as being Rebels both by Doctrine and Practise; and the Roman catholics to be the only rare good Subjects. That Book also excuseth Mariana, and laboureth to wipe off all the just aspersions sticking to the Jesuits for their doctrine and practise of King-killing.  
The mischievousness of the Libel was long undiscerned to many, because the title page. attacked only some Protestants of integrity, pointing at the precise Professors. Then the Preface affirmed the Author to be a Priest of the Church of England. And the Epistle was addressed to the Right Reverend Gilbert, then Lord Bishop of London, soon after advanced to Canterbury. The worst venom was towards the end, and few Readers would red so far; But the Papists bought the Book apace, and it was come to a second Edition before I saw it.  
When I had perused it, I was stung with a deep indignation, which I expressed to our very Reverend Dean of Canterbury Dr. Turner, now with God, and to our Society, that such a Book had been so long suffered, and neither suppressed nor answered. The worthy Dean was moved at it, and  told me in a loud tone, Do you answer it: I took that summon as made to me by a good Spirit, and answered, That I would do it.  
In two respects I was fit for it. The one because I was better acquainted then English Divines with the affairs of Religion in France, upon which the libeler insisted much. The other that I had most certain and unanswerable proofs, that the English Jesuits, and the very Court of Rome, had to their power promoted the Kings murder; whereby their boast of loyalty, and their insultation over the Protestants would be blasted.  
My Noble Adversary saith that the Author of the Book is a Lay-man and a married man, 
An Account of the Book of Philanax, and of my Answer to it.  and that I know so much. So much I know only by his report, and, if he know it, I believe it upon his word. So much I know also of the Author by his work, that he is extremely ignorant: So ignorant as to say that {αβγδ}( which is barbarous Greek) signifieth an eloquent oration; That compescere is Latin for cutting off: And that St. Austin is the most ancient and the most learned of all the Fathers. Yet the Book truly represents all the objections of his party against ours about obedience to sovereigns. The Reverend Dr. Barwick Dean of Pauls, now advanced to heaven,  told me that it was an Epitome of a large Book made by a Jesuit twenty or thirty years before, whose name I have forgotten. This epitomiser recompenseth the lowness of his learning with the height of his malice, and patcheth up his ignorance with his impudence.  
What an insolent part was it of him to choose a venerable Prelate, a Bishop of London, for the Patron of his virulent satire against the Religion established in the Kingdom? And in his Epistle to that Prelate to trample upon the ashes of his predecessor the most Reverend and rarely virtuous Prelate Juxton, with foul contempt, and such words as intimate worse then they express?  
Upon the Protestant Religion, and the Professors of the same, he bestoweth the basest Terms, and in his scolding rhetoric of Oyster wives, excels even the Eloquence of Billingsgate. To charge the Doctrine of Protestants with Rebellion, he borroweth passages out of our Authors, corrupted and falsified: Not by him, I clear him of that, for he cannot so much as red their Latin; but by many of his predecessors, who had made them ready to his hand;& which had been many and many times before alleged& answered.  
In representing the disobedience of some Protestants he is less wide of the truth, then in the account which he giveth of their doctrine. For persons chafed with oppression in their persons, estates and consciences, will hardly be very exact in their obedience to their oppressors. But his truest stories are chequered with lies, and biased by passion.  
As for Divinity, Antiquity, and reasons to confute or convert us, they are things above his pitch; his task being only to disguise us in vizards of his predecessors making, to make us look ugly and odious.  
Against such an Adversary I had two things to do. The first to justify our Doctrine, and state it such as it is indeed. For which( although I neglected not to show how untruly the passages of our Authors were alleged, yet) I declared that we tied not our faith to any Writers sayings, but only to those of Holy Writ. Also that we aclowledge no authentical Declarations of our Doctrine but our public Confessions of Faith; Which therefore I set down, as they were framed by the National Synods of the several Reformed Churches.  
The other part of my task was to answer the Adversaries objections about our disobedience to sovereigns. I did freely aclowledge and condemn all evil actions in that kind, which were truly objected against us confuted the false imputations, and shewed that the grave Divines of the party had rebuked the disobedient. Also that in the greatest distractions the greatest number of true Protestants approved themselves good Subjects and stood to their duty.  
Having thus acted the defensive part, I made bold to take the offensive; and justly retorted the charge of disobedience upon our accusers: showing that both for doctrine and practise they were before-hand with us in that charge: That rebellion with us was a crime, but with them a virtue, when done in obedience to the Head of their Faith, the Pope. That the Jesuits his darlings had taught our late Rebels the principles of rebellion. That the same had taught our Democratists the way to make Kings deposable and liable to justice. That the Popes were the great Authors of rebellion of Subjects against their Princes, and the boutefeus of civil and foreign wars, which I proved by their Decrees and their History of above eight hundred years.  
And because the Adversary had taken great pains to defend the Jesuits, I also took some pains to examine that defence, and prove their guiltiness by those very passages which he defended. I made use of their Books to set them forth in their true colours, and show what plagues they have been to Princes and States since they were known in our world: And all to subject the whole world unto the Pope, to whom they have sworn the vow of blind obedience, which the other Votaries take not. But in recompense, the Jesuits take not the vow of Poverty which the other Orders take. They need not to use Feoffees as the Franciscans and Dominicans do to get estates contrary to their rule; They accumulate riches openly, and pick quarrels with Monks of ancient Orders, put them out of possession and nestle themselves in their Monasteries. Wherein they are assisted by their great Patron and earthly God the Pope, because those fat Monks are heavy and less stirred up by their Vow to promote the Popes omnipotency; which the Jesuits make their prime business, being picked up for that purpose, men of nimble wits, bustling in the world, industrious and active in all intrigues of State. Where when they are once in credit, they spare not to work the ruin of Kings and Kingdoms, if they hope that it will conduce to their main end, the advancing of the Popes Supremacy. Of that England had many experiments. One of late date. And I am charged for charging them with it.  
Well Gentlemen, if I have offended you in a high degree, and hit you in the place where you are most tender and quick, 
Of the main accusation against the English Jesuits.  you may thank yourselves. This is the product of your insultation over us, and charging our very Religion with the principles of those that acted the hellish Tragedy of the Kings murder. Could ye think after such a provocation to be spared, if any Protestant had a certain intelligence which might abide the test of Authority, that those actors were acted by your English Jesuits, and by the very Court of Rome?  
In that great crisis of this State, when the King was in the hands of men that would have no King because they would have no Law, and no restraint in their Religion, the fundamental point whereof was, that every man must have a full and publicly allowed liberty to serve God in the way which he liketh best. Those Papists that loved their King, yet could not but like well of that way of libertinism, which being established by public order, would at once ease their necks of the yoke of all the penal laws against them: And the Jesuits( who ever were the plague of Kings, and were then, as they are now, the principal directors of the consciences of the English Papists) would make no difficulty to comply, yea and be assisting to those that would take away the King, the life of the Law, the only rub that stood in their way to their imagined sovereign good, full liberty of Conscience. Besides, they might be sure of the assistance of those, who in all parties make always the greatest number, those that love their worldly interess more then the spiritual, and would make liberty a cloak of maliciousness and licentiousness. Wherefore it cannot be found strange that some of those that had the greatest interess in that liberty, as most under the greatest severity of the Law, would be active in removing that rub. And the Court of Rome which ever advanced her power by putting down all power and all laws but her own, would not fall to husband that opportunity to get again that free and full range in the fair large helds of our Kings Dominions, which they happily enjoyed in the unhappy dayes of King John and King Henry the Third, and their Subjects.  
To that end in the critical time of the imprisonment of our late most Excellent King, when the Papists of England had a greater freedom then at any time since Queen Mary's dayes, that plot was framed which I represented in the 59. page. of my Vindication of the Protestant Religion. To spare the Readers labour to seek it in that Book, Here it is.  
This certain Intelligence shall be justified whensoever Authority will require it, 
They were eighteen.  That the year before the Kings death a select number of English Jesuits were sent from their whole party in England, first to Paris to consult with the faculty of Sorbon, then altogether Jesuited, To whom they put this Question in writing, That seeing the State of England was in a likely posture to change Government, whether it was lawful for the catholics to work that change for the advancing and securing of the catholic cause in England, by making the King away, whom there was no hope to reclaim from his heresy: This was answered affirmatively. After which, the same persons went to Rome, where the same Question being propounded and debated, it was concluded by the Pope and his Counsel, That it was both lawful and expedient for the catholics to promote that alteration of State. What followed that consultation and sentence, all the world knoweth: And how the Jesuits went to work God knoweth, and Time, the bringer forth of Truth will let us know. But when the horrible parricide committed on the Kings sacred Person was universally cried down as the greatest villainy which had been done in many Ages, the Pope commanded all the Papers about that Question to be gathered and burnt: In obedience to which order, a Gentleman in Paris was demanded a copy which he had of those Papers. But the Gentleman who had had time to consider and detest the wickedness of that project, refused to give it, and shewed it to a Protestant friend of his, and related to him the whole carriage of that negotiation, with great abhorrency of the practices of the Jesuits.  
When my Book and this Charge in it came forth, which was in the beginning of the year 1663. it struck such a terror in the Roman catholic party, that all the strength of Somerset-house( where a man of great note was much concerned in that Charge) rose up to crave Justice against me; yet upon another pretence, which was the mention I had made after Mr. Prynne and Mr. Foul●… of the Priest flourishing with his Sword when the Kings head was cut off, and saying, Now our greatest Enemy is dead. But upon calmer thoughts the great clamour was suddenly hushed, and I forbidden by Letters from the 
That prohibition was taken off by the same Secretary of State in the year 1668. upon my Petition, that I might be permitted to reprint the same Book with Additions.  Secretary of State to writ my more: Who seeth not in the inordinate and unsettled motions of that carriage, the violent distraction of their minds, between anger and fear? And that when they were the fiercest to fall upon me, they were cowed by their guiltiness?  
One would think by the effect, that an order was taken by the soberest man of the Roman catholic party, that after they had thus put a stop to my Pen, none should provoke me to writ by writing against me. For I heard nothing of them for five or six years, till a gallant Adversary, who likely had not taken counsel of the grave heads, a young Nobleman of great honour and good parts, took the field against me, as a perdieu of the Roman Army; using this main Argument against me, That it was unreasonable to accuse a Party that had spent so much of their blood in the Kings Service to be guilty of the Kings blood. Of which we shall speak anon.  
Four or five years after his Lordships first Edition, Mr. Cressy seeing the ice broken by him, thought himself bound to go after him, and charged me that the Queen Mother having divers times summoned me to prove my accusation, I would never do it. But the quiter contrary is true. For her Majesty was so far from summoning me to bring my proofs, that it was by her especial means that I was bidden to hold my peace.  
Mr. Cressy was followed by a Priest preaching in the Coffee-house, whence he sent me a Challenge to make my words good against the Jesuits.  
To which my Noble Adversary addeth in his third Edition, that I am defied by Papists, and solicited to it by Protestants.  
I may satisfy all reasonable persons of both parties with this reasonable resolution, taken with my best judgement, and( I trust) with the assistance of Gods wisdom which I have humbly and earnestly called upon. To justify it before Authority, I have undertaken; To justify it before those that have no authority, I will not, and must not, neither in duty nor in prudence.  
When the itch of curiosity is once laid aside, all wise men of all parties will aclowledge that in a charge of High Treason to a Society, a good Subject and a prudent man ought to behave himself as I do; viz. Make the Crime so known that public Authority may take notice of it; yea, and offer it to Authority to prove, but never bring the proofs till he be called by those that have power to bring him to account. I desire so much charity of my Readers to believe that when I made that public offer I had my senses about me. I knew what a strong party I was to justle with; and what danger and disgrace would attend me if I came short of my proofs. Certainly never any man of sober sense made such a public offer, but he had a desire to be called in question. Which if the party concerned do not, where lieth the fault of the concealment of proofs?  
My Noble Adversary personateth me answering his summons without authority, in this manner, Your humble servant Gentlemen, I kiss your hands; I engaged to answer no summons but what issueth from Authority. Remember you stormed at my Book. You would have stopped my Pen. Your silence sheweth your guilt. Sue me, Sue me, for the Law is free.  
I am content, my Lord, to own all that you make me say. You strive against nature to make yourself merry with my behaviour; But I am sure it makes you sad, and cuts yours and your parties heart. The Papists( say you) defy me to bring my proofs. Do they so? But I defied them Twelve years ago to get me summoned to bring them. Why did they not do it the very next day? Why instead of that did they go about to silence me? Why did ye own your guilt by your silence? Had the like Crime been laid to the charge of the poor Protestant Ministers of France, as weak and friendless as they are, they would not have lain one day under it, without making their way to a public redress.  
Yet still you defy me to bring my proofs, To whom I pray? To yourselves you mean. Must I who have called upon Authority to make you Criminals of State, now decline Authority and take the guilty for my Judges? Must I tell you my Witnesses that you may tamper with them, or fright them, or destroy them? If I did, you would not fail to call me( as your Champion doth very civilly) a prating fool. Such cases must not be examined before other Judges, then those that have power over both the parties. You will not be put to answer before Authority. But you will put me to answer before you. Haud stulte sapitis. You take a sure course. If I must pled before no other Authority then yours, you will be sure to absolve yourselves, and condemn me.  
I have heard it said for you, that Jesuits in England cannot appear Plaintiffs in judgement, being forbidden by the Statutes under great penalties to appear at all. But since you could without appearing get me silenced, you could without appearing also have found ways to make me speak.  
It is no small policy for you to allow years enough to witnesses to die, while you sit leisurely considering whether you shall call your Accuser to account. And the witnesses cannot be young, it being now twenty seven years since the Crime was committed. We will be therefore as politic to preserve the clear evidence of the Fact, as you are to smother it. That then it may be kept for the true information of Posterity, the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury shall be desired to be after my death the depositaries of the same. 
Accusation of the Jesuits by the English secular Priests.   
Let not the Papists storm at this, and say, Can ye find in your hearts to accuse us that have fought for the King, to have joined with his enemies to destroy him? Some of you have fought for the King, and some against him. We accuse not the loyal Gentlemen of that Religion, but the worst sort of their Confessors, to whom therefore they should look how they trust their consciences. Let them hear their own party speak.  
A little after the Kings return the Secular Priests set forth a Discourse in print, 
The Jesuits Reasons unreasonableness, 1662. Vide Dr. Stillingfleets last Book against Cressy, pag. 479.  wherein they upbraid the Jesuits and the Jesuited; That it is no evidence of their loyalty that any of them have been of the Kings side, it being a maxim or practise of their Society in quarrels of Princes and great men to have some of their Fathers on one part, and others for the contrary.  
That Discourse also reckons up the several Treasons in Queen Elizabeths time, the Jesuitical designs of excluding the Scottish Succession, and Title of our sovereign; the Gun-powder Treason, which if it were not their own invention, he confesseth they were highly accessary to it, by prayers before hand, and public testifications after the fact was discovered: Nay many years after they did, and peradventure to this very day do pertinaciously adhere to it.  
That by their wicked and unjust practices they had provoked the Magistrates to enact the penal Laws; and that their seditious Principles are too deeply guilty of the blood of Priests and catholics  shed in the Kingdom ever since they came into it.  
That they never yet renounced the doctrine of the Popes deposing Princes; That their Generals Order against teaching this doctrine was a mere trick, and never pretended to reach England. That Santarellus his Book was printed ten years after it, teaching the power of deposing Princes in all latitude. And why should the peace of the Kingdom have no better security then their Generals Order? Who knows how soon that may alter, when good circumstances happen? and then it will be a mortal sin not to teach this doctrine.  
This and much more to the like purpose you may red in that Discourse, which( no doubt) was suppressed as soon as it came forth by the numerous and prevailing Jesuitical party: Yet was it drawn out of darkness by that skilful and happy inquisitor of Books, our excellent Dr. Stillingfleet, that rich householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old, for the building up of Gods Church, and confounding of her Adversaries.  
That after this hard 'bout my Noble Adversary may have some breathing, 
Of passages of less moment which my Adversa y excepteth against.  I will descend with him to passages of less moment which he excepts against in my Book. Such are the narratives of private passages, which serve to give light to that which is of a more public importance. For by comparing many instances of the inclination of the Jesuitical party a little before and a little after the Kings murder, the carriage of the Jesuits and the Court of Rome to bring him to that end appeareth to be very suitable to that wicked purpose.  
Upon these his Lordship hath made some short reflections which he brings in as Appendices of his Answer to the pregnant confuter of his Apology. But as for the main body of my Book which rep●esents how the Popes from age to age for above Eight hundred years were the incentives of Wars and Rebellions in Christendom, All that is left untouched by him. For which I accept of his excuse in his third Edition, That since mine own Antagonist replies not, and since he thought it fit to fit still, it was not the custom of catholic Writers to thrust their sickle into anothers harvest. But then his Lordship should not say, that he hath fully answered me, to all intents and purposes whatsoever.  
But the truth is, I have shewed him the way to leave me unanswered, for I had dealt with him so before, taking no notice of his first Edition in which he playeth with his own Wit against my Father and me; Why? because I found nothing there in which Gods cause was interested. Only some personal attacks, which were so far from wounding me, that they have not paired one of my nails.  
I might have expostulated with his Lordship for his unsincere dealing with me. For whereas I had set down a Narrative about the English friars of Dunkirk, and upon better information caused the word English to be blotted out with the Pen in all the Copies, yet his Lordship persecuted me again and again about that word English, and would not accept my amendment for his satisfaction. Certainly his Lordship hath a hard heart that will not suffer his Adversary to amend. I would not have dealt so with him and his party, seeing the great need they stand in of amendment.  
My mistakes( if I have made any in relations about the number and quality of persons) are not material as long as these circumstances alter not the substance; the truth whereof is justified by persons of great worth and intelligent travellers.  
My mention of the Priest being present at the Kings death, and flourishing with his sword when the Kings head went off, was copied out of Mr. Prynns perfect Narrative, and confirmed again by his private Letters which I keep. And it was of that, not of my charge to the Jesuits, that I  told to his Lordships noble Kinsman that my Author was Mr. Prynn, whose ashes we shall not need to disquiet whenever that matter is stirred.  
In my late Book of the Papal Tyranny, I had related how I was once accosted in my Inn in Warwickshire by a Travellour, who asked me whether I was a catholic, and that I  told him I was. That then he exspatiated in a long complaint of the sufferings of the catholics. And when I  told him that it would have been another world with the catholics if the Powder had taken fire at Westminster; he answered with a deep sigh, It was not Gods pleasure. My Noble Adversary thinks it unlikely that a traveller unacquainted with me should ask me whether I was a catholic. But I did not say that it was the first word that the traveller spake to me, and what occasion I might have given him to think that I was of that Religion; because our discourses before were not worth committing to the Press, I related only that which was material to my purpose. And so much I affirm to be true upon my credit, which( I praise God) is unquestioned among them that know me. And so long as I know it to be true, I am not much moved by another mans thinking it to be unlikely to be so.  
Now I am necessitated against my will to speak of private offences between my Noble Adversary and myself, 
Of private offences.  which being not worthy of the Readers patience, I will be as brief as I can upon that subject.  
I tax his Lordship of unsincere dealing with me. I had said in my charge of the English Jesuits that when they were deputed to consult the Sorbon, the Sorbon then was altogether Jesuited. His Lordship suppresseth these words in his copying out of the charge, and instead of it puts in this parenthesis of his own( who you must know, Reader, ever were the greatest catholic enemies the Society had in France.) So he dooms me to non-sense, by concealing my sense, and bringing in his own. Let others find a name for this action. I will but make it known to his Lordship that in those dayes of the minority of King Lewis the XIV. the Sorbon was all Jesuited, and so it was once in the minority of his Father. For the weakness of Princes and civil broils are the proper reign of the Jesuits. But when that King came to his majority the Jansenians got strength, and the Jesuits were weeded out of the Sorbon.  

Vindication of the Protestant Religion. p. 37.  I tax his Lordship of the like unsincerity in wresting my words, to a contrary sense to mine. Upon the keeping of places by some French Protestants against their King, I had said that the necessity of their keeping those places seemed to be justified by the reason of the first grant, which was to preserve them from the violence of their bitter enemies. I had made it my task to condemn their keeping of those places against their King, notwithstanding that seeming justification; And I acquitted myself of that task faithfully. But this Nobleman takes no notice of it, and will have that seeming to be my judgement and approbation; which, if he have red and considered my Book, is to speak against his knowledge and conscience.  
His Lordship having given me fair warning that he would deal with me without compliment, makes his word good, by calling me plainly a prating fool, which truly I take to be no compliment. But I was not held such by the King and his council, when a French Book of mine in the defence of the Royal Cause was brought to his Majesty in Paris, by the very Reverend Doctor Cosins, two moneths before his Majesties happy restoration. The Book was judged so apposite for the interess of the Kings affairs, that( being out of print, for it was printed eleven years before) his Majesty commanded it to be reprinted in Paris, and gave sixteen Lewises for a new Edition; A great sum then for his Majesty to spend upon a Book. I fear that I may say after St. Paul, 
2 Cor. 12.11.  I am become a fool in glorying. But I may say also after him, You have compelled me. And his Lordship for his part hath fulfilled a prophesy, The child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient.  
His Lordship is pleased to undervalue me as a strange commodity, or rather( in his apprehension) an incommodity sent out of France. I am not ashamed, my Lord, of my Country. I was born in France: And the Noble Chief of your Name may satisfy your Lordship of my extraction there. When I came over into England it was without a design of staying in it, but to serve my sick Father, who had been honourably sent for by the Most Excellent King James. I had not been a seven-night in England, when I was welcomed to it by the beneficence of that Great and Good King. A fair invitation for me to live in England. And I have ever since, to my power, shewed myself so true to the interess of the Church and State of England, that I am considered in it in a nearer notion then that of an Alien and Stranger.  
But his Lordship takes great care that I be still considered in that notion. Witness this passage in his first Edition which he hath repeated again verbatim in the third: Now there are spread such a number of lies about our danger from the French, 
Pag. 434.  that people are ready to ston all they meet. And should the rabble run into a sudden fury( as God knows but they may) Mr. Du Moulin and his family may perchance also go sharers with his Country-men: For his being a free denizen would be thought a weak argument by the outrageous and overheated multitude. Could his Lordship have more expressly pointed at me, and recommended me to be massacred by the people? unless he had said downright, Take him and kill him.  
But I will be so much a good Fellow that I will take this at his hands as a piece of drolling. For I have that opinion of his Lordships nobleness and charity, that if he saw me, his Antagonist, in that danger, he would draw his sword and rescue me.  
On his Lordships part likewise so much equity and good humour might have been expected as to have taken merrily that which was merrily answered to him, That his Lordship might stand in more danger then I of that peoples fury, if he appeared before them in a Priests habit, and a shaved crown; it being then reported that his Lordship was turned a Clergy-man. And he needed not therefore to have flown up to the highest expressions of anger. For if his Lordship really honoureth his own Clergy, he must hold it no discredit to appear in a Priests habit and properties, no more then the Duke of Joyeuse was discredited by walking in Procession in his Capucins habit. So my jest had no teeth, and I assure his Lordship that my mind had no gull. Honni soit qui mal y pense.  
I have done answering for myself, being not concerned, either for duty or reputation, in all the sport or anger which his Lordship indulgeth to his passion in tossing my Name. Much good may do it to his Lordships heart; I receive no harm by it, and will not cry when I feel no pain. Besides, I value not my petty personal interess so much, nor the leisure of my worthy Readers so little, as to transgress upon their patience with useless and empty jangling.  
But because his Lordship takes a singular delight in trampling upon the memory of my father, 
Vindication of my Father.  whose works shall praise him as long as there is a Church on earth; I owe so much duty to his memory, which is sacred to me, that I will bestow this Section to vindicate him from injurious imputations.  
Casaubon is brought in to disparaged him. And I am  told that he doth so in some Epistles of his. It is no new thing that Learned men envy one another. And it is known that my Father was exquisite in human learning, which was Casaubons great skill. Yet my Father ever loved and respected him, and returned unto him good for evil.  
I am sorry that I must touch a Sore which I have in vain wished healed, or at least concealed, and which my Brother hath made known to the World by publishing an Epistle of my Father. For that and for the 
Jugulum Causae.  Book in which he hath inserted it, much contrary to my sense, I have seriously expostulated with him. But as it falls out, that Epistle is now of good use, since Casaubons Letters against my Father are published.  
My Fathers Letter was written from Paris in the year 1610. to his Noble Friend Bishop Montague, when King James sent for Casaubon the first time, by the persuasion of Arch-bishop Abbot and Doctor Mayerne( for to them both my Father had writ before to that purpose) to remove him from the temptations of Cardinal Perron and other chief Persons of the Popish Clergy, who were continually about him to pervert him. And Casaubon,( though an honest and religious man) gave too much ear to their solicitations, being angry with the Magistrates of Geneva, who had wronged him as he said, and had deprived him of his Wives Inheritance.  
But although in that anger he had a great mind to change party, yet he could never be brought to approve the Communion under one kind, the Popes tyranny, the Service in an unknown tongue, the Worship of Images, and the Works of Supererogation. It is the character that my Father giveth of him to the Right Reverend Bishop Montague. And he beseetheth that good Prelate, who was gracious with the King, to move his Majesty to give to that Prince of Letters such fair provisions as should stay him in England, and make him writ against Baronius. The design was godly and prudently projected, and it took effect. For Casaubon had such fair offers made to him by the King as turned his mind from the Cardinals ill counsels. So whereas he had promised to the Queen Mother of France to return, he engaged his word to King James that he would but go to Paris to dispose of his businesses and come again into England, as he did: And being settled in it, he writ by the Kings command against that great Annalist. So much did my Father for the man that had disobliged him. But he might say to him, Non tibi said Religioni.  
My Noble Adversary is very obstinate in charging my Father with disloyalty. And although by his own Letters to the Assembly of Rochell, and by the impartial testimony of Monsieur Balzac, and even by that of the Queen Regent of France, and by the constant course of his behaviour in a mutinous age, his loyalty was made eminent. Yet his Lordship continues his stale objections against it without any colour. But he dealeth with me as he doth with the solid Answerer to his Apology. For after he hath been disarmed by him, he fights against him again and again with the very weapon that was taken from him; which is against the law of arms.  
How vainly doth his Lordship seek glory by detracting from a glorious person after his death? much like one Duke of Guise who never killed any enemy, but ran through and through a dead Spanish Commander; or like the valour of the Hares plucking the beard of the dead lion. This is offensive I aclowledge it; but why doth he squeeze it out from my Pen? Can a Son hear with patience his Father branded with disloyalty, the blackest of crimes? Dare a disloyal Son of our Church that nursed him with the sincere milk of Truth and Piety, a Son that takes part with his Mothers sworn Enemies, speak against disloyalty, and charge with it one of the rarest Patterns and Patrons of Loyalty that our Age hath seen?  
My Father may well be hated by the Enemies of Gods Truth, for he was the blessed and ever conquering Defender of that Holy Cause, the terror and the admiration of his Adversaries, who made many frustrated attempts upon his life, and after his death have not yet done persecuting of him.  
whilst the Sister of Henry the Fourth of France lived in her Brothers Court, my Father, who was her Minister, was in the Court very often; where at the first he was much attacked with Disputes. But that lasted not long, when the Court-Clergy had found him too hard for them. One time some of the greatest persons of both Religions desired to hear the Bishop of Eureux( since Cardinal Perron) in private conference with him. Of the success nothing was known but what may be guessed by this true account. The noble hearers made them both promise that they should publish nothing about the Conference. A promise which should never have been required, nor kept, if the reigning party had overcome. There was ever since a mutual respect between them.  
Some years after, the Cardinal being in his Country Palace, where he nobly entertained his Neighbours of both Religions, one President Chevalier happened to say to the Baron of Montataire, who was a Protestant; Your Du Moulin is an Ass; The Cardinal was moved at it; An Ass! said he. Sir, do not call him so. Never any rubbed himself against that Ass but was kicked down by him.  
But what! he rejected and disgraced all the Fathers that are against him, if we must believe my Adversary; and his Author for it is the Jesuit Petra Sancta. His Lordship might have learned so much wisdom of Nicodemus,( but that it is in the Gospel, and it is a forbidden and dangerous Book for him) Doth our Law judge a man before it hath heard him and known what he doth? Why doth his Lordship judge him before he hath red him and known what he saith? Had he but opened his Books of Controversies he might have found them all stuffed with passages of Fathers, which show that the New Roman Religion is condemned by the Old.  
His Lordship saith after Petra Sancta, that my Father was not ashamed to call St. Cyprian an Anabaptist. I do not believe that he called him so. But he may have said that St. Cyprian rebaptized heretics of all sorts. Of which Petra Sancta could not be ignorant.  
But the wise Reader would be entertained with better matters than personal Contests. 
Answer to an Objection about S. Cyprian.  Yet for that I will take my rise from an Objection of my Noble Antagonist against my Father. Who can now marvel( saith he) that we should be called by the Son( meaning me) disloyal to our King, since the glorious Martyr Cyprian is branded by the Father as a traitorous desertor( it is his new word) of his dear Lord and sovereign?  
I dare say that his Lordship knoweth not what to make of his own Objection, which( no doubt) but he had from his admired Patron Petra Saneta. A Reader that looks for plain sense would think that my Father had branded St. Cyprian with High Treason against an Emperour, his sovereign, that loved him, and had advanced him. But in St. Cyprians time there was none but Pagan Emperours of the Roman Empire, and such as persecuted Christians; and in whose Courts St. Cyprian never set his foot. Who can then that dear sovereign of St. Cyprian be? And how is Cyprian branded by my Father to have traitorously deserted him?  
To unriddle that Riddle two things must be known, the one the haughty and violent nature of Petra Saneta, than whom never any man flew higher for the absolute sovereignty of the Court of Rome, being himself a Roman. Which sovereignty( though against knowledge and conscience) he would affirm to have been adored in the primitive Ages of the Church. Wherefore all contradiction to the Roman See's power, whether in the ancient or the later ages, is in his account flat Rebellion and High Treason.  
Because then my Father writing against the late Usurpations of the Popes, had truly represented how bold the ancient Bishops were with the Roman Bishop; and especially how St. Cyprian Bishop of Carthage had called a Synod in Africa of fourscore and seven Bishops, and in that council had condemned Steven Bishop of Rome; and yet the Jesuit durst not lay Rebellion and Treason to his charge, because Cyprian is a Saint and a Martyr, held so still in the Church of Rome; and Pope Stephen is a man of no account in the esteem of Posterity: Therefore my Father, the Relatour of this action of St. Cyprian, must have all the Crime laid upon him, as one that branded that glorious Martyr as a traitorous desertor of his dear Lord and sovereign the Pope. So much comment was necessary to understand that proud and dark assertion; And my Noble Adversary oweth me thanks for this gloss upon his obscure Text.  
One thing more is necessary to understand it and confute it; It is to search Antiquity, and give a full account of that business. St. Cyprian flourished about the midst of the third Century, and was Bishop of Carthage; a man generally respected of all the Christians of the Empire. In his time Stephen, and after him Cornelius were Bishops of Rome, whom Cyprian never acknowledged for his Lords and sovereigns; but when he was in the kindest terms with Stephen he called him Fratrem& Consacerdotem, his Brother and fellow-Priest. Aeneas silvius( who was since pus the Second) makes this ingenuous description of those times, 
Epist. 88. ad Mart. Mayerum.  Sibi quisque vivebat,& ad Ecclesiam Romanam parvus habebatur respectus, that then the Roman Church was little regarded.  
Between St. Cyprian and Stephen there arose a contention, in which both were in the wrong. Cyprian would have all converted heretics to be rebaptized. Stephen rebaptized none. Whereupon Cyprian( as I said before) gathered a council of eighty seven Bishops, 
Cypr. Ep. 75.  and condemned Stephen and his Roman Church. What! did an African Bishop, and so many Bishops with him, condemn a Bishop of Rome in full Synod, and all his Church? What did the Bishop of Rome upon that high provocation? What could he do less then to Excommunicate that Bishop of Carthage, and all the other African Bishops his Complices in that Rebellion, and put all their Churches in interdict? But no such matter. That Pope bore it patiently, knowing that his Orders would not have been obeied in Africa, and that Cyprian was more respected then he every where, even in the Roman diocese. The worst that he durst do against Cyprian was to forbid the Christians at Rome to receive his legates.  

Epist. 72.  Cyprian in a Letter of his to Stephen, after he hath declared his sentiment, concludes thus, Hereby we offer violence to no man, and give no law, seeing that every Pastor hath the freedom of his will in the government of his Church, of which he must give account to God. Whereby it is manifest that other Bishops in those dayes dealt with the Bishop of Rome upon equal terms.  
Cyprian dealt no less roundly with another Bishop of Rome, Cornelius. For when Felicissimus a Priest excommunicated by Cyprian was gone to Cornelius, not to appeal to him( for there were no appeals to Rome in those dayes) but to find some comfort in him; and Cornelius had given too much ear to that man, 
Epist. 55.  Cyprian expostulated with Cornelius about it, and represented that it belonged not to him to receive those whom he had excommunicated, and to judge causes already judged in Africa. And that it was only to a few Desperado's that the Authority of the Bishops of Africa seemed less then that of other Bishops, meaning the Roman.  
My Noble Adversary having very unluckily for his party brought St. Cyprian upon the stage, 
Of the Appeals of Africa to Rome alleged by my Adversary.  hath no better luck in producing his Successors that came a hundred and threescore years after. For his Lordship takes it for granted, that in St. Austins time Appeals were made from Africa to Rome, and that St. Austins authority countenanced them.  
Let us examine the truth of it. Two councils were held at Milevis in Numidia, the first in the Year 402, 
Baron. an. 402.& 415.  the second in the Year 415; both upon the same matter. And because the Canons of both the councils are set together undistinguisht, the two councils are taken for one. These councils met about the heresy of Pelagius and Celestius, and about the Rebellion of some of the African Clergy, who being condemned in Africa went to Rome for redress. One of them was Celestius who was upheld a while by Zozimus Bishop of Rome, and then forsaken by him.  
Such Appeals having never been practised before, the African Bishops in the Milevitan council( whether in the first or the second it is not known, and not material) framed this notable Canon.  
It is decreed that the Priests, the Deacons, and other clerks under them, if in their causes they complain of the judgement of their Bishops, be heard by the neighbouring Bishops, who being by their Bishops consent adjoined unto them, shall decide their business. And if from their judgement they must again appeal, let them not appeal but to the councils of Africa, or to the primates of their Provinces, as it was many times decreed concerning Bishops. But whosoever shall appeal beyond the Sea, let him be admitted by none to the Communion in Africa. This Canon is found in the Greek Copies in these terms, and in Balsamon, and in Zonaras, and in many Latin Copies, 
Balsamon in Collectione Canonum Carthaginiensium. Can. 31.  and is thus alleged in the council of rheims under Hugh Capet, and by Hincmarus.  
The same Canon was confirmed and renewed in the sixth council of Carthage, upon occasion of one Apiarius a Priest in Africa, who having been condemned by Urban his Bishop, had appealed to Rome; at which the Bishops of Africa were highly offended. Out of this Canon Balsamon infereth thus, Hence it is made manifest that those of the Roman Church vainly glory that the differences of all Churches must be judged by their Church by way of appeal; For if that Church be not allowed to receive the Appeals of Africa, much less can it claim a right over other Provinces.  
These Canons of Milevis were decreed by a company of wise and holy Bishops, of whom Aurelius Bishop of Carthage was one, and St. Austin Bishop of Bona another: And it was he that had framed those Canons which forbid the Appeals to Rome, as Bellarmine himself acknowledgeth, Canones Milevitani ab Augustino praecipue compositi.  

Lib. 1. de Matrimonio c. 17. §. Respondeo. Gratian Causa 2. Qu. 6. Can. Placuit. An. 419. sect;. 70.  These Canons being so opposite to the Roman Interess, no wonder that the Advocates of Rome have made bold to falsify and corrupt them. In the Roman Decree compiled by Gratian, after these killing words of that pregnant Canon, Whosoever shall appeal beyond the Sea let him be admitted by none to the Communion in Africa; this tail is sowed up to it, Nisi fort Romanam Sedem appellaverit, Unless perhaps he appeal to the See of Rome. But that Canon was made purposely to hinder the Appeals to the See of Rome. Baronius hath more ingenuity then to defend that corruption; for he freely acknowledgeth that this Canon hath very much displeased the Bishop of Rome, as hurtful to his authority.  
The Fathers of that council to give some satisfaction to the Bishop of Rome after this round dealing, writ to him a Letter full of respect, but without any derogation to the authority of their Canon. That Epistle is inserted among St. Austins Epistles.  
But nothing sheweth better that they stood stiff to their Canon, and how much the See of Rome was grieved at it, then the behaviour of that See. In the Year 419. a council was held at Carthage in which were two hundred and seven Bishops. To that council Boniface Bishop of Rome sent three legates, Faustinus, Philippus, and Asellus; to whom no presidency was offered. Only Faustinus, who was a Bishop, sate the third, the two others that were no Bishops were made to sit after all the Bishops.  
Those legates were charged in their instructions to move and endeavour that Appeals from Africa unto the Roman See might be allowed, notwithstanding the Canon of the Milevitan council, which forbids those Appeals upon the penalty of Excommunication. But in that council, before their faces, the same Canon was renewed, and the reason given for it, that Apiarius Priest of Sicia in Africa, being excommunicated by his Bishop, had been received favourably by Pope Zozimus and admitted to his Communion.  
Upon that the Roman legates arose and pleaded for the authority of the Bishop of Rome, 
Baron. an. 419.& 420.& seq.  for which they alleged no Text of Scripture, nor the Popes Primacy by virtue of his Succession in St. Peters Chair; for those proofs were not yet in use; but they brought forth a supposititious Canon which they pretended to be a Canon of the council of nicaea, whereby Bishops are allowed to make their Appeals to the Roman See.  
All the Bishops of the council having heard the reading of that Canon were very much amazed, and said that such a Canon was unknown unto them, and that they had never heard of such an Order. Then Alypius; legate of the Churches of Numidia, 
Vide Acta Concilii.  spake thus in the name of the Synod: Having consulted the Greek Copies, how comes it to pass that we find no such thing in them? Wherefore Holy Pope Aurelius, we beseech your Holiness, because it is believed that the Authentical Writings of that council are in the City of Constantinople, that you be pleased to sand some persons with the Letters of your Holiness, not only to him, the Bishop of that place, but also to the venerable Bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, that they would sand us that council with the attestation of their Letters, that for the time to come all ambiguity may be removed; for we have not found it as our brother Faustinus saith.  
He moved also( to mitigate that Faustinus) that the pretended Canon should be provisionally received, till the return of those that should be sent. The advice of Alypius was followed, saving the provisional reception of that Canon.  
The Reader may observe by the way that Aurelius Bishop of Carthage hath the style of Pope and your Holiness bestowed upon him by Alypius, Titles which the Bishop of Rome engroceth now to himself alone, but then given to all Bishops.  
The council was so far from receiving provisionally the Canon brought by Faustinus, that they inserted the twenty Canons of the council of nicaea into the Acts of their present council, without the Canon of Faustinus; While he besought the council in vain that they should not sand to Constantinople, not to Alexandria, not to Antioch, least it should breed discord between the Churches, but should refer themselves to the only testimony of the Bishop of Rome. But his Remonstrances were not regarded. In those dayes the Pope and his legates in councils used supplications and remonstrances, which they submitted to the Assemblies judgement, but used no command.  
So the Sixth council of Carthage sent Deputies to the Oriental Bishops to fetch the Original Copies of the council of nicaea. While they were in their journey Boniface Bishop of Rome dyed, to whom Celestin succeeded. The Deputies returned, bringing the Original Copies of the council of nicaea to the council of Carthage, assembled again for that subject; In which nothing was found of that which Faustinus had alleged. And upon the discovery of the Imposture, Letters of grave admonition were written by the council to Celestin Bishop of Rome, in the form which followeth.  
After the duty of our salutation, we earnestly beseech you that hereafter you do not so easily give ear to those that will come to you from hence. That you admit no more to your Communion those whom we have excommunicated. For your Venerability will easily perceive that it is forbidden by the council of nicaea. For if it once appear that so much is forbidden to inferior clerks and Laymen, how much more would that council have it observed by Bishops? that they being suspended from the Communion may not be hastily or unduly admitted to it again by your Holiness. Let your Holiness also reject the ungodly flying of Priests and inferior clerks to you for a refuge. For no Ordinance of the Fathers hath denied that to the African Church. And the Nicene Decrees have subjected as well the clerks of inferior degrees as the Bishops unto their Metropolitans. For they have most wisely and most justly provided that every business may be decided in the place where it is sprung; trusting that the grace of the Holy Ghost shall not be wanting to each Province, so that equity may be prudently discerned and constantly observed by the Priests of Christ. Especially seeing that it is lawful for every one that is grieved by the judgement of his Judges to appeal to the council of the Province, and even to an Universal council. Unless perhaps some believe that God may inspire every one of us with justice to examine a cause, and deny it to a multitude of Bishops assembled in a council. How can a judgement from beyond the Sea be valid, to which the persons of necessary witnesses cannot be brought, by reason of the infirmity of their sex or Age, or of many other intervening impediments? For that your Holiness should sand over some persons we find it not ordained by any Synod of the Fathers. And as for that you have sent us by Faustinus our Fellow-Bishop, as belonging to the council of nicaea, we could not find it in the most undoubted Copies of the council sent to us by S. Cyrillus our Collegue-Bishop of the Church of Alexandria, and by the Venerable Atticus Bishop of Constantinople. Which also we have sent to Boniface your Predecessor of venerable memory by Innocent Priest, and Marcel Sub-deacon. ●… e also to sand us your clerks to be your Executors in favour of any one that desireth it of you; least that it s●em that you will bring furnosum typhu●… sequli, the fumous pride of the world, into the Church of Christ, which beareth the light of simplicity, and the brightness of humility, before them that desire to see God.  
This excellent Epistle and precious Jewel of Antiquity is found in the Tomes of the councils at the end of the Sixth council of Carthage, and in the Greek Canons published by Du Tillet, and in the Code of the Canons of the African Church; and is acknowledged true by Bellarmine, Baronius, and generally by all the Romanists that have written of that controversy. Yea, in the council of rheims, held in Hugh Capets time, Arnulphus Bishop of Orleans makes use of that Epistle against the Popes authority.  
The Canon which the Roman legates falsely alleged, as made by the Nicene council, was made at Sardica, Where an Universal council being convocated, 
Socrat. l. 2.  it became particular by the dissension of the Bishops; the Orientals having left it in anger, and being gone to sit at Philippopelis. The Occidentals that remained at Sardica, framed that Canon which permits that Appeals should be made to Julius Bishop of Rome. This Canon was so little regarded that Threescore years after it had not been so much as heard of in Africa. Which sheweth that it was not intended to perpetuate a power in the Bishop of Rome, but to choose the person of Julius to be an Umpire of the business in hand, and that after the death of Julius, o● even in his time after the ending of the difference, the Canon was out of date. Had it been of any authority the Roman legates would not have failed to have alleged it as decreed by the Holy Fathers assembled at Sardica.  
Very lately some Romanists have fancied that the council of Sardica was a piece of the council of nicaea; Then which nothing could be devised more ridiculous. For the council of Sardica sate Two and twenty years after the Nicene council. nicaea is in Bithynia; Sardica in Selavonia. But what! since the Roman legates in the Sixth council of Carthage did not bethink themselves of that shift, some kind Gentlemen, eleven hundred years after, have found it out for them.  
My Noble Adversary could not have done me a greater favour, then to have given me occasion to set forth this notable History, this ancient Charter of the pride and forgery of the Roman Church, for which the Popes may now pled a prescription of Twelve hundred years. That Age of the Church was eminent for piety and worthy men. And had it continued as pure in Doctrine as it was then, there had been no ground for the breach of the Church in these last Ages. But even in that Orthodox Age of the Church pride and unsincerity were entered already into the Roman See.  
What saith my Noble Adversary to these Histories? He that finds so much fault with the Oath of Allegiance, 
Of the small power of the ancient Bishops of Rome.  for forbidding all subjection to the Bishop of Rome; and who( no doubt) believeth that Doctrine of Bellarmine, that to be subject to the Bishop of Rome is necessary to salvation; Will he not see the African Church, to whose authority he appealeth, met in a council of Two hundred and seven Bishops declaring against that opinion? and St. Austin a principal man in that dissent? They declined by an express Canon all subjection to the Bishop of Rome. They called all the Oriental Churches to be Witnesses and helps of their refusing of his Dominion. And those Oriental Churches assented to their just request. Those three great Patriarchal Churches, Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, furnished them with authentical evidences to confounded the Popes Usurpation.  
But perhaps( may my Noble Adversary say) they all did wrong to the Bishop of Rome, and disputed a right with him of which he was in possession before.  
I have upon occasion of his Lordships Allegations shewed that in the third and in the fifth Ages he had no such possession, and that his pretences of Dominion over other Churches were sufficiently blasted. He may be pleased now to see with me what may be found in the three other primitive Ages to favour the Popes pretended power. The task shall not be long, for where there is nothing there is not much to be said.  
If there be any Divine right in the Popes claim, the nearer it comes to the spring, the clearer it will be. Now in Holy Writ, which is the spring itself, there is not one word of that superintendency of one man over the whole Church, or of the necessity for all that will be saved to be subject unto him.  
Neither did the primitive Bishops of Rome assume any such power, or so much as a rule over the neighbouring Churches, for any thing that appeareth unto us in the Ecclesiastical History. They were elected by the suffrages of their Clergy and the desire of their People. That Clergy and that People could not give them power to govern the whole Church to the utmost ends of the Earth, which the Bishop of Rome claimeth now. Had the Pope had any such power in the first Age, his great Friends and Annalists would not have been so silent about it.  
In the beginning of the second Age Anacletus was Bishop of Rome, 
Baron. an. 103.  and held the bishopric Nine years, in which time he ordained five Bishops, five Priests, and three Deacons; a small number to govern the Universal Church. It seems that then his Precincts were very narrow.  
Of Telesphorus who came to the bishopric of Rome in the Year 142. Damasus saith that he made an Order for fasting seven Weeks before Easter. And pus in the Year 159. made an Order that Easter should be kept on the Sunday, but these Orders obliged no Church but their own. For about the Year 167. Anicetus being Bishop of Rome, Polycarpus Bishop of Smyrna came to confer with him about the keeping of Easter, which himself kept on the fourteenth of the Moon of March. Of which conference Eusebius giveth this account. 
Euseb. Hist. lib 5. c. 26. according to the Greek.  Polycarp and Anicet having a little conferred together of certain things about which they differed, made their peace presently. And for their different observation of that holy day they broken not the bond of Charity. Yet Anicet could not persuade Polycarp that he should alter his custom, and likewise Polycarp could not persuade Anicet to practise the custom of Asia. So Polycarp thought not himself subject to the Order of the Bishop of Rome; And the Bishop of Rome took it not unkindly that Polycarp would not be ruled by him, knowing that he had no authority to rule him.  
Victor, one of his Successors, towards the end of the second Century was not so wise as he, for upon that inconsiderable difference he Excommunicated all the Oriental Churches. Whereby he only drew contempt upon himself: 
Euseb. Hist. lib 5. c. 25. in Graeco.  For on the other side all the Bishops enjoined him to keep peace, union and charity with his Neighbours, as Eusebius witnesseth. The Greek word {αβγδ} is notable; signifying that they made to him a contrary command, and that they had as much power over him as he over them.  
Such Excommunications were not acts of power but declarations that he that pronounced them would have no communion with them against whom they were pronounced. 
Hilarii fragmenta. Victor. Tunens. an. 549.  Thus Hilary Bishop of Poitiers excommunicated Liberius Bishop of Rome. Thus did the African Bishops excommunicate Vigilius Bishop of Rome in the Year 549.  
Howsoever Victors behaviour was rash; and he is condemned for it as an act without precedent, the like to which was never known before, by an Epistle of St. Irenaeus.  
Yet out of St. Irenaeus Cardinal Perron in his 44. Chapter against the Most Excellent King James, and in many other places of that Book, brings this Text for the Roman Churches Authority; Ad hanc[ Romae] Ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire Ecclesiam. Which the Cardinal interprets thus, That by reason of the principality of power of the Church of Rome all other Churches must comform themselves to it. Whereas the History of the time sheweth that in the second Century the Roman Church had no principality of power over the other Churches. The right interpretation is, That all the Churches of the Empire must of necessity resort to the Church of Rome, because the Seat of the Empire was there, according to the Ninth Canon of the council of Antioch, {αβγδ}, because those that had businesses flock to the capital City. So it was not a necessity of Ecclesiastical duty, but of temporal businesses, that obliged all other Churches to resort to that of Rome.  
Besides, convenire ad hanc Ecclesiam signifieth not to have a conformity with that Church, as rustici conveniunt ad macellum, signifieth not that the Country people are of the Markets opinion, but that they resort to it and meet there. But the Cardinal for a false assertion had need to find a false translation of this passage, which if it were rightly translated makes nothing at all for him.  
Of the third Age of the Church I have spoken before. It was the Age of St. Cyprian, who being alleged by my Noble Adversary occasioned me to begin by his Age my examination of the Popes, power in the Primitive times.  
In the fourth Age of the Church we find not by any action of the Bishop of Rome, or by any deference unto them, that they were considered as heads of the Universal Church, or that they bore themselves for such. In the great work of establishing the Christian Religion in the Empire, which was the proper work of an Universal Bishop and the Head of the Faith( as Bellarmine styleth the Pope) we do not red of the least stirring of the Bishop of Rome. All was done by the godly and active power of the Emperor Constantine. And the chief Divines which he employed about it were Hosius Bishop of Corduba, and Eusebius Bishop of caesarea.  
Once we find the Bishop of Rome joined in Commission with other Bishops to judge a difference between the Donatists and Cecilian Bishop of Carthage. 
Aug. Ep. 162. Optat. Milevit. lib. 7.  The Commissioners appointed by the Emperor were Melchiades Bishop of Rome, Maternus Bishop of colen, Reticius Bishop of Autun, and Marinus Bishop of Arles, with some other Bishops near Rome. By these Commissioners the Donatists were condemned; and Cecilian absolved. From which judgement the Donatists appealed to the Emperour; And by their importunity they obtained that their cause should be once more judged, which was done in a council called for that purpose at Arles. So the Bishop of Rome's judgement was brought under judgement. Doth not the whole conduct of that business show that he was not considered as the sovereign Judge of the Church?  
No more was his Successor Sylvester in the council of nicaea, of which the presidency was by the Emperour assigned to Hosius Bishop of Corduba. Him Baronius falsely supposeth to have been Sylvesters legate, whereas Sylvester had there two Roman Priests that were his legates, who sate after Hosius.  
The sixth Canon of that council sheweth that the Roman bishopric had then certain limits, whereas the Pope now acknowledgeth none.  
In the same Century, two and twenty years after the council of nicaea, sate the council of Sardica, of which I spake before. A council disgraced and weakened by the departing of all the Oriental Bishops from it, who were double the number to the Occidental. The power given to Julius Bishop of Rome to receive Appeals, by a Canon made after that separation, was so unsignificant after the death of Julius, that the Roman legates who produced it in the Sixth council durst not say that it was made at Sardica, know●… that it would have been exploded as of no authority, but would make it pass for a Nicene Canon.  
How fraudulently and how unsuccessfully Four Popes did labour to bring the Churches of Africa under the ●…man Jurisdiction in the Fifth Century, I have shewed before.  
What! Did five hundred years pass of the first and purest Age of the Church, and nothing found in them for the Popes Universal Episcopacy? Well, where History is wanting they have devised Fables. Such are the Decretal Epistles, of which Baronius himself saith in an angry amazement, Behold into what peril one Isidore Mercator the Collector of those Epistles hath brought our affairs! 
Baron. an. 865.  So that the Church seemeth on that side to be endangered, if we shall say those things which he hath collected, or rather feigned, to be firm and certain. Wherefore Perron, the greatest searcher of Antiquity for the Papal power, is ashamed of them, and never makes any use of them; nor of the Donation of Constantine a ridiculous Fable, proved to be so by the learned Censurer of the Roman Forgeries, a Book able to undeceive all Romanists but such as will be deceived; and to satisfy my Noble Adversary( whose deliverance from the Roman Yoke I do hearty crave at Gods hands) that for such a supposed necessity to be in subjection under the Bishop of Rome, which makes him so stiffly to refuse the Oath of Allegiance, he hath no ground in the purest Antiquity.  
Now how it may become a Divine Right in that See to have Dominion over all the Consciences in the World if they will be saved, of which his Predecessors the nearest to Christs time did not so much as dream, no Reason can comprehend it. Let his Lordship bend the strength of his judgement upon that reasoning; and find if he can how the Primitive Episcopacy can have propagated to these unholy Ages a Divine Right of Universal Power, which it had not in its more holy beginning.  
I suppose that stubborn Romanists, after that so much was evidenced to them, will say, What though for some of the first Ages the Roman Bishop claimed not that Right over all Christians, nor his Temporal Power over Princes and States: Yet his long continuance, and his immense growth since those fixst Ages, hath something more then human in it, which breeds in us a devout reverence and admiration.  
We also would look upon Papacy with a devout reverence, if it were grown and confirmed in truth and goodness, as it is in wealth and power. But truly I am so far of their mind, There is something more than human in it. There is in it the work of the Devil, who even in St. Paul's time was beginning to wove the mystery of Iniquitiy. The Devil is more ancient yet then the Roman Papacy; but his Antiquity doth not create to him a right to be the Prince of this World. All Historians of Christendom writing of the times in which they lived, will testify that the Papal power was got by imposture, and when they had got strength, continued by open tyranny.  
There is also much of Gods Providence in it, even his heavy wrath upon wicked mankind, whose hearts estranged from God and Goodness, and bent to do wickedness with greediness, deserve no better than to be blindfolded with gross and damnable errors, trampled upon by Tyranny masked with Religion, and driven hoodwinked into perdition. Very fit and very worthy they are to be enslaved to him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall sand them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had delight in unrighteousness.  
In the beginning of my Vindication of the sincerity of the Protestant Religion in point of Obedience to sovereigns, 
How the Roman Religion stands with Loyalty. Epist. ad Blackwel. Praefat. ad librum de summo Pontifice.  I had made this address to the Roman catholics who had stood loyal to the King in that great and late defection. I will be your humble suitor, that since the Pope is called by Cardinal Bellarmine the Head of the Faith, and the Fundamental ston of Sion, you would seriously consider, how your taking the Popes sense and authority for the foundation of your Faith in the point of Obedience can consist with that honour and loyalty which you harbour in your generous breasts: And how you that venture your lives so freely for the defence of your King, can aclowledge the power which the Pope assumeth of disposing of the Crowns and Lives of Kings, and absolving you from the duty of your Allegiance when he thinks good. Certainly when you have weighed this in the balance of Conscience and sound judgement, you shall find yourselves hedged in within this dilemma, Either to cease to be good Subjects, or to aclowledge that the Pope can err, even when he speaks and makes Decrees from his Chair.  
It seems now that the prudent Roman catholics of England have weighed the pregnancy of that reasoning, and found it impossible for them to be acknowledged good English Subjects as long as they maintain the Popes absolute Infallibility, as their Fathers did, and themselves a few years ago. So( whether out of prudence or conscience they know best) very large professions of theirs are come abroad, declaring their dislike of that Roman principle, That the Pope hath power over the Temporals of Kings, and may dethrone them when he thinks good.  
My Noble Adversary although he holds the Pope to be Infallible when he sits in a General council, yet makes bold in his 106 page. to oppose Innocent the Third's, and the Lateran councils authority. This is the Decree. 
Lateran. Con. sub Inn. III. cap. 5.  In case any Prince be a favourer of heretics after admonition given, the Pope shall discharge his Subjects from their Allegiance, and shall give away his Kingdom to some catholic Prince that may root out those heretics and possess his Kingdom without contradiction.  
Against that council his Lordship excepteth thus, I grant that councils in the determination of Faith are Infallible and Divine, but we say not that all their Ordinations are so[ another would have said Ordinances.] Then he spends much Ink to make us understand that which he is loathe to speak out, That the Popes Decrees about disposing of the Temporals of Kings are of those constitutions which are not about matters of Faith, and in which therefore the Pope and the council are fallible.  
But that the Jesuits his dear Friends may not chide him for granting too much unto Kings, he taketh from Kings in his 109. and 110. Pages that which he had given them, by this extravagant supposition. The Emperours of East and West, the Kings of England, France, Hungary, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Arragon, &c. may agree together to purge their Kingdoms of heresy. And to be assured of the performance of the compact( since the negligence of any one may prejudice the rest) they may also consent, if they please, that the Church upon failure shall give their Dominions to another that will perform the League or Treaty. These Princes, Reader, which I name were all here present by their ambassadors, as Matthew Paris and other Writers of those times tell us: And had they made such a compact among themselves, it had been certainly as lawful as that of Smalcald against Popery, or any other Protestant confederation. And here is the Pope reinvested again in the power of deposing Kings, of which it seems his Lordship was sorry that he had devested him.  
This Nobleman takes great delight to give career to his imagination, but giveth little exercise to his judgement, and is rare at his May be's. It may be those Kings would agree to purge their Kingdoms of heresy. And it may be they would doom themselves to loose their Kingdoms, if they did not. And it may be that in that case they would devolve their Kingdoms to the Pope. In stead of all which may be's, a wise man would writ in each place it may not be, and be in the right; for they are against sense and reason, and against the Histories of the time.  
We have more of those may be's in his Lordships Book. It may be that a Letter was sent to the Pope with King James Hand and Seal, whereby he declared himself a Roman catholic. And it may be that the two Breves that the Pope sent from Rome to exclude from the Crown of England all that were not catholics were not intended against King James, but against English Protestants of the Royal Line. And it may be that the Plot of the Gun-powder Treason was contrived by Secretary Cecil.  
Observe, that after he hath brought in these once as may be's he will another time allege them as real truths. If that way of arguing by may be's in disputes about matter of fact be once allowed, we must shut up all Historical Records, and harken to those that can most conceitedly range in the wild fields of possibility. And why not so, as well as in matter of Doctrine shut up the Bible, and harken to Oral Tradition?  
But our business now is about the Popes power over the Temporals of Kings, which his Lordship after much tergiversation denieth to the Pope, as being not a matter of Faith, but only a human constitution. But who hath given his Lordship authority to distinguish in the Decree of an Universal Roman council, what is of Faith and what is not? Certainly the Popes and the councils meaning was to make it a matter of Faith that the Pope hath power to absolve Su●jects from their Allegiance, and to depose sovereigns. It is certainly an Article of the Roman Faith, no less then Transubstantiation, which was established in the same council.  
Whatsoever these Gentlemen distinguish in England, asserting the Popes Spiritual power to be a point of Faith, and the Temporal not; there is no such distinction made at Rome. 
Distinct. 22.  But the Canon Omnes of Pope Nicolas is the Roman Faith, That Christ hath committed unto St. Peter both the Earthly and the Heavenly Empire. This is plain, and the French saying must here take place, l'entente est au diseur, All speeches must be taken as the speaker meaneth. A Roman Doctor, Alexander Pesantius, made a Book of the Immunity of Bishops, and of the Popes power, dedicated to Pope Paul the Fifth, where he saith, 
Pag. 45.  The sovereign pontiff by Divine Right hath a most full power over all the Earth, both in matters ecclesiastic and Civil. And in the margin, Papa Jure Divino est direct Dominus Orbis. So they speak, and so they mean at Rome. This is the Roman Faith.  
My Noble Adversary allegeth for his cause that which I had alleged against it; That the Book of Santarellus, printed at Rome Ann. 1625. was condemned in Paris, for this Doctrine, That the Pope for heresy may depose Kings, and exempt their Subjects from the Obedience due to them. But he forgets to tell his Reader that the Book was allowed by the General of the Jesuits Aquaviva; and how the French Jesuits were plunged when the Court of Parliament asked them their Opinion about it.  
No doubt but that many of our new half Roman catholic Gentlemen, if they were at Rome, and were brought in question for that crime, that in England they had denied the Popes Temporal power to depose Kings, would be as nimble as the Jesuits in Paris, who when they were cited before the Court of Parliament and were asked whether they believed with the Book of Santarelius, licensed at Rome by their General Aquaviva, answered No Being asked again, whether they would be of his Opinion if they were at Rome, they said that they would do at Rome as they do at Rome. No doubt, I say, that they would be at Rome of Rome's Opinion. And as one of the Presidents answered the Jesuits, God deliver us from those Confessors that have one Faith in Paris and another at Rome. So will I say, God deliver us from those professors that have one Faith for England and another for Rome.  
I cannot but reflect upon the remnant of the History; That Father Cotton being commanded by that Court to confute that Book of Santarellus, he being then in full health dyed a few dayes after, though no body saw him sick; having by all likelihood doomed himself to death, and helped to it by his own Fellows, to avoid that odious task. I make a great question whether these politic catholics that deny here the Popes Temporal power, would seal their Faith of that Doctrine with their blood at Rome.  
Yet I am verily persuaded that some Papists who profess that Belief that the Pope hath no power over the Temporals of Kings, seriously believe what they profess; and that my Noble Antagonist is one of them: Though withal I must needs say, that it is much easier for a Person of Honour to entertain such a persuasion, then to reconcile it with the Principles of the Roman Communion under the Government and Obedience of a Head so grossly mistaken concerning his own Power. I believe also that his Lordship would be ready to join with Coeffeteau Bishop of Marseille, my Fathers brave Adversary; Who in his Answer to the most Excellent King James's Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, speaks thus; It is most certain that if the Pope would invade Kingdoms, and give them for a prey to whom he would, dispossessing the right possessors, he should deserve that Princes, strengthening themselves against his violence, should fall upon him as the Robber of their Inheritances. And again, The Popes pretend no right to the Temporals of Kings. They content themselves to exercise their authority upon the crimes of men, whom they bind and unbind, not extending it unto their possessions, which were not allotted to the Popes Jurisdiction that he should dispose of tyrannically.  
To that honest profession, my Father, who answered Coeffeteau by King James's command, replieth thus; 
He was not yet Bishop.  What causes may move Coeffeteau thus to favour Kings, and pare the Popes nails, I do not inquire. But so much I know, that at another time, and in another place, he should for these words be sent to the Inquisition: For they directly oppose the actions of the Popes, and the sentiment of the Roman Church.  
We may praise God that there never wanted in the Roman Church some generous Spirits that rowed against that great stream. But the stream hath proved too strong from them. For the Popes, and several councils called by them the last Five hundred years since Gregory the VII.( who was the first that spake out and acted that Doctrine with the utmost violence) have established it as solemnly and firmly as human strength and policy could do it.  
That Pope pronounceth this Oracle, 
Qu. 7. Cap. No● Sanctorum.  By Apostolical authority we dispense from their Oath of Fidelity those who by right of Allegiance and by Oath are obliged to excommunicate persons, and absolutely forbid them to keep their Fidelity to such persons.  
Nicolas the Third boasteth that the Emperor Constantine had deferred to the Roman Pontifes both the one and the other Monarchy, 
Cap. Fundamenta de electione in vi.  trusting on that fabulous donation of Constantine, cried down by all the Learned.  
Innocent the Third declareth that it belongs to him to promote to the Empire such as he listeth— And that the apostolic See hath translated the Empire from the grecians to the Romans. 
Cap. Venerabilem de electione.   
Clement the Fifth presiding in the council of Vienna, 
Clement. Pastoralis de sententia& rejudicata.  speaks thus, We both by the Superiority which we have over the Empire, and by the power into which we succeed when the Empire is vacant, &c.  
It is worth observing that this Clement the Fifth, who beareth himself so high as to be the disposer of the Empire, is the same that stooped to Philip le Bel of France, and greeted him with the Bulla Meruit for his great merits towards the Roman See. Those merits were, that Philip being many ways injured by Pope Boniface the Eighth, had chastised him so severely in his own person, by his Deputies Prosper, Colonna, and William de Nogarets, that he dyed mad out of anger thirty five dayes after. So doth the Pope deal with Princes, he renders them good for evil when they have the advantage over him; and he renders them evil for good when he hath the advantage over them, inverting that great duty, which indeed properly belongs to God and good Princes, 
Parcere subjectis& debellare superbos:  
To spare the lowly and tread down the proud.   
The Pope having little of Gods likeness in him, treads on the neck of those that crouch under him, and like a Spaniel licks the feet of them that beat him.  
The Canons and Decrees of Rome for the Popes Temporal power lighted no where in so fertile a soil as England. No where did they take a deeper root. No where did they yield a more plentiful crop to his Holiness. It was his rich Meadow which he mowed thrice in the year. That Article of the Roman Faith was so really believed in England, so stiffly maintained by the Clergy, that for all the Acts of Parliament against the Usurpations of Rome, the Pope was always more obeied then the Laws of the Land. And the reason which they gave openly for it was, That it is better obeying God then Men: As the reason they gave for exempting themselves from the Jurisdiction of the Secular power was, That they must maintain the Liberty which Christ had purchased for them with his Blood. And is this the happiness and greatness of the Kings of England under Popery, which his Lordship so much boasts of?  
But this matter is so fully represented and prest home by our worthy Champion Doctor Stillingfleet, in his last Answer to Mr. Cressy, that I and all other Writers may spare our labour to prove that worshipping of the Popes Temporal power is the prime Article of the Roman Faith, and that Faith the bane of the State, the plague of the Church, and the shane of Christianity.  
It is well that my Noble Antagonist disclaimeth that Faith. But how can he justify that to the Head of his Faith, the Pope? 
That the Rom. Faith admits of no rejecting of the Popes Temporal power.  He saith that a refusal to obey the Pope in this point is not accounted a disobedience, but the making use of a right which the Church hath declared to belong to temporal powers.  
I humbly desire his Lordship to let us see that Declaration; It would give a great satisfaction to the World. Let us see a Decree from the Pope and the councils, or but from the Conclave, exempting Roman catholics from obeying those express prohibitions of keeping fidelity to a Prince deposed or excommunicated, or declared heretic by the Pope.  
His Lordship allegeth Cardinal Perron, who in his public Oration to the States of France assembled at Paris, said, That this proposition of the Popes power to depose Kings was problematique. But herein the Cardinal was a double dealer, for in the whole Oration( all but that period) he defends the Popes power to depose Kings as a necessary point of the catholic Faith: and saith that he will suffer martyrdom to maintain it. Whereupon the most Excellent King James( who hath confuted that Oration in his Book of the Right of Kings) saith wittily to the Cardinal, that thou his martyrdom would be a problematique martyrdom. I desire his Lordship in his next Book to tell us, how the same Proposition can be Problematique, and yet a necessary Point of the catholic Faith.  
Could some passage have been found in any of the famous English Champions for Popery to justify his dissent to that Article of the Popes Temporal power over Princes, we may be sure that his Lordship would have imparted it to us. But that shift is but of yesterday, and unknown to their predecessors.  
Truly I am hearty glad, that some Roman catholics of England are come so far in their way to us, as to reject the Popes Orders which are contrary to their allegiance. O that there were such a heart! O that they were once resolved to bring all the Popes Orders and Doctrines to the touchstone of piety and found reason! And that they would come out no more with that unreasonable determination, unworthy of Christians and reasonable Creatures, It is so, and it shall be so, because the Pope, who cannot err, will have it so: Whereby Christians to be good catholics are doomed to blindness and brutishness, and barred from performing that reasonable service which God in his Word requires of all souls.  
But his Lordship takes it very unkindly that catholics are charged with the Opinions of men, as a real part of their Religion, when they themselves tell them the contrary. In a good hour Gentlemen; It is well you have left so much of your Religion: I pray how long is it since it was no more part of your Religion? And how come you, that are so famous for Unity, to differ so much about a necessary Point of the catholic Faith, as your great Cardinal calls it? I am sure it was the Religion of your predecessors that heaped up the powder under the Parliament-house. For those wretched Zealots would never have so much as imagined such a hellish enterprise, much less have laboured hard and continued long in the promoting of it, had they not firmly believed that the King was an Usurper of the Popes power and Dominions; and that it was their duty to the Head of their Faith to destroy a King excluded by him from the Crown as an heretic. It matters not whether the Pope had a hand in the plot. If he had, it must be imputed to his own Ambition and Covetousness, which to satisfy, it is usual to that See to go through seas of blood and heaps of ruins. But it is more infamous for the cause that those zealous Roman catholics acted as they were instructed and principled by their Religion. They found the Kingdom under an Interdict, excommunicated by pus the Fifth, and again by Clement the Eight: And they were taught, that those were not to be accounted murtherers that kill excommunicate persons, out of zeal for their holy Mother the catholic Church. And as for the Kings person he was deposed as soon as come, and before, by two Breves of Clement the Eighth, sent into England before the death of Queen Elizabeth, which forbade the English to admit of any King that was not a Roman catholic. And they knew that deposed Kings, by the Popes standing Laws are delivered up to be slain, by any that will take it in hand.  
Truly I have no less compassion then execration for those murtherers, considering calmly that it was out of mere zeal of their Religion, and in obedience to the Papal Decrees that they undertook that horrid design. The Roman Court worketh the greatest mischiefs that are done in Christendom by zealous seduced Consciences, sometimes by private order, but always by public Laws and standing Decrees. 
Psal. 94.  It is the throne of iniquity, which frameth mischief by a Law.  
My Noble Antagonist takes much pains to little purpose, to charge Secretary Cecil with the contriving of the plot. For which end himself hath contrived a pretty Romance, and shewed that if he would employ his talent that way he might outdo the Ethiopique History of Heliodorus. I must needs say it was gallantly invented, Se non è vero è ben trouato.  
Yet I may object against that conceit of a counterplot, of which the King himself is made a promoter, that no wise King and no faithful counselor would, to entrap a few traitors, suffer themselves and the whole State to be brought to such a brink that there should be nothing wanting to destroy them, but to put a match to the powder.  
But though we granted all his Lordships devices to be so many truths, Secretary Cecil could have decoyed none into that plot, but such as were so principled before that they would sacrifice their lives to restore to the Pope the Temporal power over England, by the destruction of their King and Country. And which way soever they were brought into that plot, they acted as their Neighbours initiated in the same principles would have done, if they had hit upon an occasion.  
The Popes storming about the Oath of Allegiance made upon that occasion, sheweth what the Roman Faith consisted in, and the point of Religion of which he is most sensible, viz. his pretended right to dispose of Kingdoms. 
Dated Sept. 22. 1608.  It was for that point of Faith that Paul the Fifth by his apostolic Letters exhorteth his English Worshippers rather to suffer all torments, and death itself, then to take that Oath.  
The English Papists, that were not Romanized enough to prefer the Popes Temporal power before their Estates and their Lives, rejected those apostolic Letters, pretending a suspicion that they were forged by heretics to draw persecution upon them.  
Upon that consternation of his party, if the Pope could have been persuaded by compassion to relent and mollify that hard sentence, it was time then, if ever, for him to come out with that condescension imagined by my Noble Antagonist, that a refusal to obey the Pope in that point, is not accounted a disobedience, but the making use of a right which the Church hath declared to belong to Temporal powers. But so far was he from that condescension that he by a second Letter wondered at their doubting of the truth of his apostolic Letters, to dispense with themselves under that colour from obeying his commands. And therefore he assureth them that they were his own, written not only out of his own motion and certain science, but after a long and grave consideration. Not an ace will he abate after his most mature consideration of the height of his Temporal pretence; Nor to his frighted English followers will he abate any thing of their Roman Faith, about his power to depose their King, whatever may become of them.  
What if the King had made them suffer all kinds of torments and death itself? What if the Kingdom in that strife had become an Aceldama, a field of blood? That was of smaller importance in his Holinesses account, then if they should have saved their Estates and their Lives by swearing that Allegiance to their King which all Subjects in all States owe to their sovereigns. Had the feared Persecution followed upon that sternness of the Pope, and the comforming of his party to his pleasure; his Holiness sitting in the mean while quiet in the Vatican, would have looked upon England on fire, as Nero look't singing upon Rome burning, which himself had set on fire.  
That the Popes Temporal power was the point of Faith upon which he required the peoples constancy in the Faith, it was seen by Bellarmine's Book written much about that time, 
Tortus p. 19.  in which he giveth to the most Excellent King James this catholic Instruction. The King of England is by double right subject to the Pope; The one common to all Christians by reason of the apostolic authority, which extends over all, according to that sentence of the 44 Psalm, Thou shalt establish them Kings over all the Earth. The other proper, by direct Dominion. This is the Faith of all the English Papists that have suffered and acted for the Pope in England. This is the Faith in which the Pope much concerneth himself. Let King and People subject themselves to his Temporal power, then they are good catholics. In other points, that concern not his Prerogative, and are not lucrative to his Clergy, they may be allowed a great latitude.  
The Canons and Decrees of Rome for the Popes Temporal power over Princes were no where more effectual then in England, where for many Ages it was so strongly believed to be a Divine Right, and so fiercely defended by the bewitched Clergy, that for all the Acts of Parliament against Provisors and other Usurpations of Rome, the Pope was always more obeied then the Laws of the Land. Such was the catholic Religion in England from Gregory the Seventh contemporary to the Conqueror till the Reformation. Then were the Kings of England, either continually groaning under the oppressions of Rome, or continually struggling against them, whereby their Reigns were made uncomfortable, and their People squeezed to the blood and marrow with Roman exactions. 
pag. 375.  My Noble Antagonist boasteth that his Religion had governed England with glory for many years. But I maintain to him, that no Kings reigned in England with glory but such as vigorously repressed the exorbitancies of the Pope and his Clergy under pretence of Religion. But all things look as the beholders eye is disposed. Which made that Roman slave Petra Sancta to commend Henry the Third of England for an example of a wise and happy King, because he let the Pope do all that he would in his Kingdom, and was timorously enslaved to his pleasure; whereas for that very cause he was the most miserable of all Kings, and his Subjects the most miserable of all People, as all the Historians of that time do testify.  
Of the insolences of Rome against England in that long space of time, and of the frequent penal Statutes to repress them, 
Chap. 5. Of his Answer to Mr. Cressy.  our worthy Champion Dr. Stillingfleet hath given a full account very lately, and shewed that worshipping of the Popes power, both Spiritual and Temporal, is the prime Article of the Roman Faith, and that Faith the malignant Ulcer of the State of England.  
Where were the eyes of my Noble Antagonist, when he found the glory of the English Nation eclipsed since they partend with the Roman Religion? 
Of two great Princes.  And that the greatest Princes were always the best Sons of the Church? meaning the Roman. We will not speak of the Kings within our memory. Posterity will give them their due praises. Look to the Age of our Grandfathers, yea to all Ages and Kingdoms; and find me if you can any Reign comparable to the long, wise, and fortunate Reign of Queen Elizabeth; One whom( I am sure) his Lordship will not aclowledge a good Daughter of the Church. What great enemies abroad did she overcome? What dangerous Adversaries at home did she suppress? How did Arts, and Commerce, and Wealth, and Learning, and Military virtue, flourish in her Reign? What Adversaries did she not subdue? What Friends did she not assist? What King and State did not respect and court her? How did the Holy Religion prosper, and Idolatry go down, and the fulminating of many Popes against her served only to make their power contemned, and Gods vigilant care of her Person and Kingdom magnified? And truly to that vigilant care of God all that Prosperity must be attributed. For that so many attempts against her life should be quashed; That a woman without Husband, without Issue, not strengthened in the love of the People by Heirs of her Body, should yet possess their love in the greatest height, master so many difficulties, and achieve so many great things, certainly it was the Lords doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Let the Papists, who are great Gazers upon Miracles, admire those of her preservation, both in her Prison and upon her Throne; when the whole interess of the Religion and the State was hanging upon the single thread of her life; which therefore the combined powers of Hell and the wicked World did labour to cut off. And how amid those numberless plots she was protected from above, and crwoned with blessings and glory, in the continued prosperity of a Reign of four and forty years. Certainly her life was a long web of unparalleled Miracles; the like to which were never wrought at Loretto and Compostella.  
The Emperour Charles the Fifth, the greatest man of his time, as great in worth as in place, will hardly be acknowledged by my Noble Antagonist a good Son of the Church; because he besieged and imprisoned the Holy Father. And much less will he hold him such, when he considereth the two last years of his life, of which I have seen notable memoirs. Being harassed with the heavy weight of the affairs of his large Dominions, he unburthened himself upon his Son and his Brother, and retired to a private life and place, with few Servants, and two Divines to assist him in his Meditations and Devotions. He had a remorse to have used too much severity to the German Lutheran Princes, and began to examine the reasons they might have to stand so stiff for their Religion. He applied himself to red the Scripture, and writ his Meditations and Observations upon it. He writ also in little papers several Texts of Scripture, most of them about justification by Faith, which he stuck upon the Wainscot or Hangings of his Study; and there they were found after his death. In his last sickness, he would have no assistance for his Conscience, but of those two Divines: And by his will he gave not a penny for Masses and Obits. After his death the Inquisition seized upon his Papers and burnt them. The like they did to his two Divines. There wanted no more, but to burn the Emperour. Let the Reader judge in what Religion that Prince dyed.  
I have singled out two the most glorious Princes of that Age, which have almost filled it up with their long Reigns( for Queen Elizabeth began her Reign presently after that Emperours death) to let my Noble Antagonist know that his Observation about the glory of those Princes that are true Sons of the Church in his account doth not hold. And that those that are not so, prosper nothing the less for it.  
If from Monerchies his Lordship will look upon republics, neither the Venetians nor the Dutch, nor the Protestant Hants-Towns prosper the worse for not being good Sons of that Church.  
My angry Antagonist, to make me angry also, 
Of the French Protestants.  giveth many attacks to the French Protestants. Most of them, needing no Answer, shall have none from me, for I love not to return railing for railing. It is better to let things of no worth fall to the ground then to take them up. It is not so of all calumnies. His Lordship( or rather his lying Author) accuseth them of a Massacre in Paris: He might as credibly have accused them to have done the like at Rome or at Madrid; for they never were Masters of Paris no more than of Rome and Madrid, to commit there such acts of violence.  
It is as untrue and as unlikely that the Queen of Nazarre committed Massacres, both in those places where her Husband was sovereign, as in those which he held under the Crown of France. That Queen Margaret de clois was a person of a rare virtue, piety, and wisdom; A right Heroine. She being Sister to King Francis the First used her credit very effectually with her brother to assuage the persecutions of the Protestants in France. Her Husbands Dominions being very small( a little parcel of the little Kingdom of Navarre) and in comparison of France inconsiderable, Would she have been so imprudent as to persecute Roman catholics within her narrow precincts, and thereby to provoke the Papist in the large Territories of France to persecute her brethren professors of her most holy Faith, whom she did with all her power and interess in the French Court protect and favour?  
The Popish Clergy of France, seeing their Cause much discredited by the terrible executions and frequent Massacres of Protestants, as acts most unsuitable with the Christian Meekness enjoined by our great Master, have compiled Books of lying Relations of Massacres committed by Protestants upon Roman catholics, and fathered most of them upon that good Queen, and upon the People of the outmost skirts of the South of France, where Protestants are numerous: Which being very remote from the places where Popery is most strong, many Readers choose rather to believe the Relations true then to go to the places to examine the truth of them. I have seen some of those Books of lies, where the English sufferers for High Treason are not omitted, and they are styled Martyrs for the catholic Faith. I have seen also Garnet and Oldcorne set down in the martyrology of the Jesuits printed at Rome. And I have red with horror the printed Legend of Saint James Clement, the Sacrilegious murderer of his sovereign Henry the Third of France. Yet that Saint, though exalted in a public Oration by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, was not Sainted by his Holiness and his Conclave, because the party of the League upon the coming of Henry the Fourth to the Crown began to go to wrack.  
To return to the Objections against the French Protestants; My Noble Antagonist saith that they had Miltons Book against our precious King and Holy Martyr in great veneration. That they will deny. But it is no extraordinary thing that wicked Books which say with a witty malice all that can be said for a bad cause, with a fluent and florid style, are esteemed even by them that condemn them. Upon those terms Miltons wicked Book was entertained by Friends and Foes, that were Lovers of Human Learning, both in England and France. I had for my part such a jealousy to see that traitor praised for his Language that I writ against him clamour Regii Sanguinis ad Coelum.  
That some of the Regicides were taken in the Congregations of the French Protestants is no disgrace to them. The Churches doors are open to all comers; false Brethren and Spies enter into it. But how much they detested their act, they expressed both in their Conversation and in printed Books, as much as the English Royalists.  
His Lordship supposeth that they had a kindness for cromwell, upon this ground, that cronwell had a kindness for them. Had his Lordship had any ground for that assertion by any act of theirs, he would have been sure to have  told us of it. It is true that cronwell did them that kindness by his interess with Mazarin to make them enjoy the benefit of the Edicts made in their favour. He knew that it was the interess of the King of England( which he would have been) to oblige his Protestant Neighbours, and to show himself the Head of the Protestant Cause. A point of State better understood by those Writers that have used the testimony of their Divines for the approbation of the Discipline of the Church of England, then by those that have laboured to make the breach wider.  
My Noble Antagonist complaineth much, that whereas the French Protestants have the free exercise of their Religion allowed by Edicts, the English catholics have the free exercise of their Religion forbidden by Statutes.  
If his Lordship look to the time when the Edict of Nantes( which is the Charter of their Liberty) was granted, he shall soon see the cause of that diversity. That Charter was granted to them at the end of the Civil wars to reward them for their fidelity and long service to their King against the League. But at the same time the English Papists were considered, as a rebellious restless party, which never left hatching plots against the Life of their sovereign, and the happiness of the State. At that time also the Popes, by redoubled Bulls did excommunicate the Queen, and put the Kingdom in interdict, and forbade the Roman catholics to keep fidelity to their natural Prince. If then the Queen and the State put a restraint upon a party whom the Popes had animated against them, that party may thank the Popes.  
The English Papists ought not to complain to be restrained in the exercise of their Religion, as long as it is part of their Religion to depend upon another sovereign then their own, a foreign power that claimeth a direct Dominion over England. The French Protestants are free from those encumbrances of their Liberty of Conscience. They yield no Allegiance to any power but their own sovereign. Their Pastors are no Creatures of an outlandish Master, and swear no fidelity to him as the Romanist Bishops do. They maintain the independency of their King from any but God. They give no jealousy to their sovereigns by their Doctrine. And that they may be reputed harmless Subjects, they need not curtail their Religion as the English Papists do of late.  
Whether his Lordship hath more ground to say that their Religion is Rebellion, or the Parliament of 1605. to bestow that title upon his, let the equitable Reader judge.  
I must aclowledge that my Noble Antagonist is in the right when he saith that the Roman catholics in England are always unfortunate. 
Why the Roman catholics of England are always unfortunate.  So they are, and ever shall be till the obtain one of these two things.  
The one to obtain a Declaration from the Pope and his Conclave, that they renounce and disclaim all rights whatsoever over his Majesties Dominions. My Noble Antagonist speaking of the civil Obedience, saith, that the Church hath declared it to belong to temporal powers; an obscure and timorous expression. For where hath the Church declared it? And is not the Roman Churches power one of those temporal powers which he meaneth? But the Pope claimeth his pretended rights still, both for the Spiritual and the Temporal. And hath by force and arms renewed his Claim in the late Rebellion and bloody Massacre in Ireland.  
To that Objection my Noble Antagonist answereth very weakly; that the Pope being a Temporal Prince may have intrigues with other sovereigns, and invade their Land as other Princes do. That Reason would serve, if he had a difference with his Neighbours of Naples and Tuscany, about some of his Towns. But with England and Ireland he could pick no quarrel but upon the old claim, his challenging of those Kingdoms to be feudatory to the Church of Rome. Did not the Nuntio then exercise the Royal power both at Land and Sea? Did he not absolve the Kings Subjects from their Allegiance? Did he not imprison those catholics, and threaten to take away their Lives, who had promoted the Peace, and desired to return to the Kings Obedience? Did he not give a severe check to those of the Irish Nobility who had declared, that the Pope had no power to dispense with their fidelity to his Majesty? Did not Cardinal Barbarini at the same time put the Irish Nobility in mind that the Kingdom of England was still under Excommunication? Do we not see that the Pope watcheth for the opportunities of recovering his pretended sovereignty over these Kingdoms, and either makes breaches to enter into it, or enters in at those which others have made? And can any reasonable man find it strange, that after the many old attempts of the Papists against their sovereign and the State, out of their zeal to that Papal Claim; and after the late war made by the Pope in Ireland upon that old Claim, the State hath a jealous eye upon those that profess a dependence on him upon any account whatsoever.  
But the Popes Spiritual power( saith he) is received in France, and giveth no jealousy. I could say that the Popes kindling of the war of the League, and the Concordat made at Rome, Ann. 1576. between the Pope and the House of Guise, whereby all the Liberties of the Gallican Church should have been abolished, and the Pope made the absolute Lord of France; and the encroachment of the Popes Courts upon the Kings Courts, give ground enough to the State of France to be jealous and weary of a foreign Monarchy within their Monarchy. And they may ere long sand that Italian Jurisdiction packing over the Alpes; the Gallican Church being able to preserve itself without the Roman influence.  
But the French State hath not that cause to be jealous of the Roman Jurisdiction which the English hath. The Pope layeth not a particular claim( at least not openly) to the sovereignty of the Crown of Erance, as over that of England, ratione recti dominii, as feudatory to his Triple Crown. And the Kingdom of France lieth not under Papal Excommunication, as England doth. Wherefore my Noble Adversary hath no reason to think it strange that a stricter hand is held over the Roman catholics of England, then over the Protestants of France. I tell you again, Gentlemen, you shall never be but unfortunate in your native Soil, as long as you have any dependence upon that irreconcilable foreign Enemy of the State you live in. For you may be sure that you shall never find so much fatherly compassion in that holy Father of yours, that he should forego his claim upon these Kingdoms to procure your ease.  
Well, since you cannot obtain of him to forego his claim, you must obtain of yourselves to forego your dependence upon him. There is no other way for you to buy your peace in your Country.  
But you renounce all dependence upon the Popes Temporal power, and depend only upon the Spiritual. Oh Gentlemen, the World hath felt too long the sad consequence of that fallacy. The pretence of the Spiritual power was the beginning and the ground of his Usurpation upon the Temporals of Princes. When he had once got himself acknowledged Universal Bishop, he was not long before he bore himself as Universal King, who may dispose of the Temporals of Kings as he thinks good. Why? he exerciseth that Spiritual power in ordine ad spiritualia, for the spiritual good of the Church. He being the Head of your Faith, it must be a point of your Faith that you ought to rebel against your sovereign whensoever he commands it, believing that it is for some Spiritual good that he doth it, and you must have so much docility, as never to dive into the right of the Cause, but obey in silence his Motum proprium& certam scientiam.  
It is no new Article of the Roman Faith, that the Pope hath the two Swords, the Spiritual and the Temporal; because St. Peter said, Behold two Swords, and Jesus answered not, It is too much, but, It is enough. This is enough with him to prove that the Pope hath the Temporal and the Spiritual power, 
Extravag. Unam Sanctam.  as Boniface the VIII. authentically and scientifically concludeth. If it be not enough with you to be persuaded that both those Swords belong to the Pope; Your best course will be to disclaim them both, and wean yourselves of that ruinous conceit that you cannot be Christians without acknowledging the Bishop of Rome for the Head of your Faith. The Christian Church hath subsisted many Ages without acknowledging the Bishop of Rome for the Head of their Faith, and without any dependence from Rome, and was then much purer then it is now.  
And now, my Lord, I may take my leave of your Lordship to sit still, both now and hereafter; having had so little to say to your provocations that I was forced to imitate your Lordships picking out of my Book what you thought fittest to oppose. Without following your example I had had nothing to say, worth the Readers pains; who is little concerned in our personal Contests. About these I have said all that I can and will say; my little self-interess( when it is not wedded with the Cause of God) being not worth the labour of the Press to defend it.  
And for Controversies about Religion, I shall behold with comfort and singular joy Gods Holy Truth defended, and error impugned, by the ablest and worthiest Champions that ever any Church was blessed with. The Lord prosper them in fighting his Battels; open the blind eyes, and convert the hard hearts; Make his way known upon Earth, and his saving health among all Nations.   

An Extract out of the Declaration of the Most Excellent King and Martyr Charles the First his Majesty, to all his loving Subjects, after his late Victory against the Rebels on Sunday the 23. of October, 1642. In the second Part of his Majesties Works, pag. 213.  
ALL Men know the great number of Papists which serve in their Army, Commanders and others; The good industry they have used to corrupt the Loyalty of all our Subjects of that Religion; the private promises and undertakings they have made to them, that if they would assist them against Us, all the Laws made in their prejudice should be repealed. Yet neither the weakness of Our own condition, nor the other Arts used againsts Us could prevail with Us to invite those of that Religion to come to Our succour, or to recall Our Proclamation which forbade them to do so. And We are confident( though we know of some few whose eminent ability in command and conduct, and moderate and unfactious dispositions have moved Us in this great necessity to employ them in this Service) that a far greater number of that Religion is in the Army of the Rebels then in Our own.  
FINIS.