of their creeping-crouch, kissing the pax, offering their candles, signing with ashes, partial shrifts, merry pilgrimages, ridiculous miracles, and a thousand such may-games, which now you begin, after this long hissing at, to look upon soberly, and with admiration! A religion, whose fooleries very boys may shout and laugh at : if for no more but this; That it teaches men to put confidence in beads, medals, roses, hallowed swords, spells of the Gospel, Agnus Dei, and such like idle baubles; ascribing unto them divine virtue; yea, so much as is due to the Son of God himself, and his precious blood! I speak not of some rude ignorants: your very Book of Holy Ceremonies shall teach you, what your holy fathers do, and have done. That tells you, first, with great allowance and applause, that Pope Urban the Fifth sent three Agnos Dei, to the Greek Emperor, with these verses: "Balsam, pure wax, and chrismes-liquor clear It quells the rage of fire; and, cleanly bore, And, lest you should plead this to be the conceit of some one fantastical Pope, hear, and be ashamed, out of the same Book †, what, by prescription, every Pope useth to pray, in the blessing of the water, which serves for that Agnus Dei. If you know not, thus he prays: "That it would please thee, O God, to bless those things, which we purpose to pour into this vessel of water, prepared to the glory of thy Name: so as, by the worship and honour of them, we, thy servants, may have our heinous offences done away, the blemishes of our sins wiped off, and thereby we may obtain pardon, and receive grace from thee; so that, at the last, with thy saints and elect children, we may merit to obtain everlasting life. Amen." How could you choose, but be in love with this superstition, magic, blasphemy, practised and maintained by the heads of your Church? A religion, that allows juggling equivocations, and reserved senses; even in very oaths. Besides all that hath been shamelessly written by our Jesuits to this purpose, hear what Franciscus Vic * Balsamus, et munda cera, cum chrismatis undâ conficiunt Agnum, quod munus do tibi magnum. &c. Fulgura de cælo &c. Peccatum frangit ut Christi sanguis et angit, &c. + Sacr. Cerem. lib. i. Ut ea, que in hoc aquarum vasculo, præparato ad Nominis tui gloriam, infundere decrevimus, benedicas: quatenus, ipsorum veneratione et honore, nobis, famulis tuis, crimina diluantur, abstergantur maculæ peccatorum, impetrentur veniæ, gratiæ conferantur; ut, tandem, unà cum sanctis et electis tuis, vitam percipere mereamur æternam. toria, an ingenuous Papist, and a learned Reader of Divinity in Salmantica, writes, in the name of all. "But what shall a confessor do," saith he*, "if he be asked of a sin, that he hath heard in confession? May he say, that he knows not of it? I answer, according to all our Doctors, that he may. But, what if he be compelled to swear? I say, that he may and ought to swear, that he knows it not: for that it is understood that he knows it not, besides confession; and so he swears true. But say, that the judge or prelate shall maliciously require of him, upon his oath, whether he know it in confession, or no: I answer, that a man, thus urged, may still swear that he knows it not in confession: for that it is understood, he knows it not to reveal it, or so as he may tell." Who teach and do thus, in another's case; judge what they would do, in their own. O wise, cunning, and holy perjuries, unknown to our forefathers! A religion that allows the buying and selling of sins, of pardons of souls so as, now, purgatory can have no rich men in it; but fools and friendless. Devils are tormentors there; as themselves hold from many revelations of Bede, Bernard, Carthusian: yet men can command devils; and money can command men. A Religion, that relies wholly upon the infallibility of those, whom yet they grant have been and may be monstrous in their lives and dispositions. How many of those heirs of Peter, (by confession of their own records,) by bribes, by whores, by devils, have climbed up into that chair! Yet, to say that those men, which are confessed to have given their souls to the Devil that they might be Popes, can err while they are Popes, is heresy, worthy of a stake and of hell. A religion, that hoodwinks the poor laity in forced ignorance, lest they should know God's will; or any way to heaven, but theirs; so as millions of souls live no less without Scripture, than as if there were none: that forbids spiritual food, as poison; and fetches God's Book into the Inquisition. A religion, that teaches men to worship stocks and stones, with the same honour that is due to their Creator: which practice, lest it should appear to her simple clients, how palpably opposite it is to the Second Commandment, they have discreetly left out those words of God's Law, as a needless illustration, in their Catechisms and Prayer-Books of the vulgar. A religion, that utterly overthrows the true Humanity of Christ : while they give unto it ten thousand places at once, and yet no place; flesh, and no flesh; several members, without distinction; a substance, without quantity, and other accidents; or substance * Fran. à Victoria Ordin. Predicatorum, Sum. Sacram, art. 184. p. 104. Sed quid faciet confessor, cùm interrogatur de peccato? &c.-Respondeo, secundum onines, quòd sit....Sed fac quòd judex aut prælatus ex malitiâ exigat à me juramentum, an sciam in confessione: Respondeo, quòd co ictus juret se nescire in confessione, quia intelligitur se nescire ad revelandum, aut taliter quòd possit dicere. C and accidents, that cannot be seen, felt, perceived. So, they make either a monster of their Saviour, or nothing. A religion, that utterly overthrows the perfection of Christ's sa tisfaction. If all be not paid, how hath he satisfied? If temporal punishments in purgatory be yet due, how is all paid? and if these must be paid by us, how are they satisfied by him? A religion, that makes more Scriptures, than ever God and his ancient Church; and those, which it doth make, so imperiously obtrudes upon the world, as if God himself should speak from heaven and, while it thunders out curses against all that will not add these books to God's, regards not God's curse, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. A religion, whose patrons disgrace the true Scriptures of God, with reproachful terms, odious comparisons, imputations of corruption and imperfection; and, in fine, pin their whole authority upon the sleeves of men. A religion, that erects a throne in the conscience to a mere man; and gives him absolute power to make a sin, to dispense with it, to create new Articles of Faith, and to impose them upon necessity of salvation. A religion, that befools all temporal Princes: making them stand barefoot at their great Bishop's gate; lie at his foot; hold his stirrup, yea, their own crowns at his courtesy: exempting all their ecclesiastical subjects from their jurisdiction; and, when they list, all the rest from their allegiance. A religion, that hath made wicked men, saints; and saints, gods. Even by the confession of Papists, lewd and undeserving men have leaped into their calendar. Whence it is, that the Pope, before his canonization of any saint, makes solemn protestation, that he intends not in that business to do ought prejudicial to the glory of God, or to the Catholic Faith and Church *. And, once sainted, they have the honour of altars, temples, invocations; and, some of them, in a style fit only for their Maker. I know not, whether that Blessed Virgin receive more indignity from her enemies, that deny her; or these her flatterers, that deify her. A religion, that robs the Christian heart of all sound comfort, while it teacheth us, that we neither can nor ought to be assured of the remission of our sins, and of present grace and future salvation that we can never know, whether we have received the true sacraments of God, because we cannot know the intention of the minister, without which they are no sacraments. A religion, that racks the conscience with the needless torture of a necessary shrift; wherein the virtue of absolution depends on the *Papa facit protestationem, ante canonizationem, se nihil intendere facere, quod sit contra Fidem aut Ecclesiam Catholicam. Aliqui tamen clarissimi viri dicunt, &c. Quia Papa quodammodo cogebatur ad canonizandum quendam contra suam voluntatem. Lib. Sacr. Ceremon. fulness of confession; and that, upon examination: and the sufficiency of examination is so full of scruples, besides those infinite cases of unresolved doubts in this feigned penance, that the poor soul never knows when it is clear. A religion, that professes to be a bawd of sin; while, both (in practice) it tolerates open stews, and prefers fornication in some cases to honourable matrimony, and gently blanches over the breaches of God's Law with the name of venials and favourable titles of diminution; daring to affirm that venial sins are no hindrance to a man's cleanness and perfection. A cruel religion, that sends poor infants remedilessly unto the eternal pains of hell, for want of that, which they could not live to desire; and frights simple souls, with expectation of feigned torments in purgatory, not inferior, for the time, to the flames of the damned. How wretchedly and fearfully must their poor laics needs die! for, first, they are not sure they shall not go to hell; and, secondly, they are sure to be scorched, if they shall go to heaven. A religion, that makes nature vainly proud, in being joined by her, as copartner with God, in our justification, in our salvation; and idly puffed up in a conceit of her perfection, and ability to keep more laws than God hath made. A religion, that requires no other faith to justification in Christians, than may be found in the devils themselves; who, besides a confused apprehension, can assent unto the truth of God's revealed will. Popery requires no more. A religion, that, instead of the pure milk of the Gospel, hath long fed her starved souls with such idle legends, as the reporter can hardly deliver without laughter, and their abettors not hear without shame and disclamation. The wiser sort of the world read those stories on winter evenings, for sport; which the poor credulous multitude hears in their churches, with a devout astonishment. A religion, which, lest ought should be here wanting to the doc'trine of devils, makes religious prohibitions of meat, and differences of diet; superstitiously preferring God's workmanship to itself, and willingly polluting what he hath sanctified. A religion, that requires nothing but mere formality in our devotions. The work wrought suffices alone, in sacraments, in prayers. So the number be found in the chaplet, there is no care of the affection: as if God regarded not the heart, but the tongue and hands; and, while he understands us, cared little whether we understand ourselves. A religion, that presumptuously dares to alter and mangle Christ's last institution; and sacrilegiously robs God's people of one half of that heavenly provision, which our Saviour left for his last and dearest legacy to his Church for ever: as if Christ's ordinance were superfluous; or any shaveling could be wiser than his Redeemer. A religion, that depends wholly upon nice and poor uncertainties, and unproveable supposals: That Peter was Bishop of Rome: that he left any heirs of his graces and spirit; or, if any, but one in a perpetual and unfailable succession at Rome: that he so bequeathed his infallibility to his chair, as that, whosoever sits in it, cannot but speak true: that all, which sit where he sat, must, by some secret instinct, say as he taught that what Christ said to him absolutely, ere ever Rome was thought of, must be referred, yea, tied to that place alone, and fulfilled in it: that Linus, or Clemens, or Cletus, the scholars and supposed successors of Peter, must be preferred, in the headship of the Church, to John, the Beloved Apostle, then living: that he, whose life, whose pen, whose judgment, whose keys may err; yet, in his pontifical chair, cannot err: that the golden line of this Apostolical Succession, in the confusion of so many, long, desperate schisms, shamefully corrupt usurpations and intrusions, yielded heresies; neither was, nor can be broken. Deny any of these, and Popery is no religion. Oh, the lamentable hazard of so many millions of poor souls, that stand upon these slippery terms; whereof if any be probable, some are impossible! O miserable grounds of Popish Faith, whereof the best can but have this praise, that perhaps it may be true! A religion, that hath been oft dyed in the blood of princes: that, in some cases, teaches and allows rebellion against God's Anointed; and both suborneth treasons, and excuses, pities, honours, rewards the actors. A religion, that overloads men's consciences, with heavy burdens of infinite unnecessary traditions; far more than ever Moses, commented upon by all the Jewish Masters: imposing them with no less authority, and exacting them with more rigour, than any of the royal laws of their Maker. A religion, that cozens the vulgar, with nothing but shadows of holiness, in pilgrimages, processions, offerings, holy water, latin services, images, tapers, rich vestures, garish altars, crosses, censings, and a thousand such like, fit for children and fools, robbing them, in the mean time, of the sound and plain helps of true piety and salvation. A religion, that cares not by what wilful falsehoods it maintains a part: as Wickliffe's blasphemy; Luther's advice from the Devil; Tindal's community; Calvin's feigned miracle, and blasphemous death; Bucer's neck broken; Beza's revolt; the blasting of Huguenots; England's want of Churches and Christendom; Queen Elizabeth's unwomanliness, her episcopal jurisdiction, her secret fruitfulness; English Catholics cast in bears' skins to dogs; Plesse's shameful overthrow; Garnet's straw; the Lutherans' obscene nightrevels; Scory's drunken ordination in a tavern; the edict of our gracious King James, anno 87, for the establishment of Popery; our casting the crusts of our sacrament to dogs: and ten thousand of this nature, maliciously raised and defended, against knowledge and conscience, for the disgrace of those, whom they would have hated, ere known. A religion, that, in the conscience of her own untruth, goes about to falsify and deprave all authors, that might give evidence |