Now, if it shall appear, that as the lust of our first parents did, at that time, disappoint the good intention of God in making a pure world, and brought in by their disobedience the corruptions that are now in it; so that since likewise the bishops of Rome, by their unsatiable ambition and avarice, have designedly, as much as in them lies, frustrated the merciful purpose, he had in the happy restoration he intended the world by his son, and in the renewing and reforming of human nature, and have wholly defaced and spoiled Christian religion, and made it a worldly and heathenish thing, and altogether uncapable, as it is practised among them, either of directing the ways of its professors to virtue and good life, or of saving their souls hereafter; if, I say, this do appear, I know no reason why 1, for detecting thus much, and for giving warning to the world to take heed of their ways, should be accused of impiety or atheism; or why his holiness should be so inraged against the poor inhabitants of the vallies in Savoy, and against the Albigenses for calling him Antichrist. But to find that this is an undoubted truth, I mean, that the Popes have corrupted Christian religion, we need but read the New Testament, acknowledged by themselves to be of infallible truth, and there we shall see that the faith and religion preached by Christ, and settled afterwards by his apostles, and cultivated by their sacred epistles, is so different a thing from the Christianity that is now professed and taught at Rome, that we should be convinced, that, if those holy men should be sent by God again into the world, they would take more pains to confute this gallimaufry, than ever they did to preach down the tradition of the Pharisees, or the fables and idolatry of the Gentiles, and would, in probability, suffer a new martyrdom in that city under the vicar of Christ, for the same doctrine which once animated the Heathen tyrants against them. Nay, we have something more to say against these sacrilegious pretenders to God's power; for, whereas all other false worships have been set up by some politick legislators, for the support and preservation of government, this false, this spurious religion brought in upon the ruins of Christianity by the Popes, hath deformed the face of government in Europe, destroying all the good principles and morality left us by the heathens themselves, and introduced, instead thereof, sordid, cowardly, impolitick notions, whereby they have subjected mankind, and even great princes and states to their own empire, and never suffered any orders or maxims to take place, where they have power, that might make a nation wise, honest, great, or wealthy; this I have set down so plainly in those passages of my book which are complained of, that I shall say nothing at all for the proof of it in this place, but refer you thither; and come to speak a little more particularly of my first assertion, That the Pope and his clergy have depraved Christian religion: Upon this subject I could infinitely wish, now letters begin to revive again, that some learned pen would employ itself, and that some person, versed in the chronology of the church, as they call it, would deduce, out of the ecclesiastical writers, the time and manner how these abuses crept in*, and by what art and steps this Babel, that reaches at heaven, was built

This shall be done in the course of this collection.

by these sons of the earth. But this matter, as unsuitable to the brevity of a letter, and, indeed, more to my small parts and learning, I shall not pretend to, being one who never hitherto studied or writ of theology, further than it did naturally concern the politicks; therefore I shall not deal by the New Testament as I have done formerly by Titus Livius, that is, make observations or reflexions upon it, and leave you, and Mr. Guilio, and the rest of our society, to make their judgment, not citing, like preachers, the chapter or verse, because the reading the holy scripture is little used, and, indeed, hardly permitted among us".

To begin at the top, I would have any reasonable man tell me, whence this unmeasurable power, long claimed, and now possessed by the Bishop of Rome, is derived, first, of being Christ's vicar, and by that, as I may so say, pretending to a monopoly of the holy spirit, which was promised and given to the whole Church, that is, to the elect or saints, as is plain by a clause in St. Peter's sermon, made the very same time that the miraculous gifts of the spirit of God were first given to the apostles, who says to the Jews and Gentiles, 'Repent and be baptised every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the holy ghost; for this promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.'

Next to judge infallibly of divine truth, and to forgive sins as Christ did, then to be the head of all ecclesiastical persons and causes in the world, to be so far above kings and princes, as to judge, depose, and deprive them, and to have an absolute jurisdiction over all the affairs in Christendom, in ordine ad spiritualia; yet all this the canonists allow him, and he makes no scruple to assume, whilst it is plain, that, in the whole New Testament, there is no description made of such an officer to be at any time in the Church, except it be in the Prophecy of the Apocalypse, or in one of St. Paul's epistles, where he says, 'who it is that shall sit in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.' Christ tells us his kingdom is not of this world, and if any will be the greatest among his disciples, that he must be servant to the rest; which shews that his followers were to be great in sanctity and humility, and not in worldly power.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Christians of those times, almost in every epistle commands them, to be obedient to the higher powers or magistrates set over them: And St. Peter himself (from whom this extravagant empire is pretended to be derived) in his first epistle bids us 'submit ourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the kings, or,' &c. And this is enjoined, although it is plain, that they who governed the world, in those days, were both heathens, tyrants, and usurpers; and in this submission there is no exception or proviso for ecclesiastical immunity. The practice as well as precepts of these holy men shews plainly that they had no intention to leave successors, who should deprive hereditary princes, from their right of reigning, for differing in religiont, who, without all doubt, are by the ap

• Roman Catholicks in Popish states.

* Alluding to Do'e nan, or Father Parson's Book against Queen Elizabeth; and to the Popish doctrine of deposing kings for their religion. See page 35.

pointment of the apostle, and by the principles of Christianity, to be obeyed and submitted to in things wherein the fundamental laws of the government give them the power, tho' they were Jews or Gentiles. If I should tell you by what texts in scripture the Popes claim the powers before-mentioned, it would stir up your laughter, and prove too light for so serious a matter; yet, because possibly you may never have heard so much of this subject before, I shall instance in a few; they tell you, therefore, that the jurisdiction they pretend over the church, and the power of pardoning sins comes from Christ, to St. Peter, and from him to them. ، Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth', &c. From these two texts, ridiculously applied, comes this great tree, which hath, with its branches, overspread the whole earth, and killed all the good and wholesome plants growing upon it: The first text will never by any man of sense be understood to say more than that the 'preachings, sufferings, and ministry of Peter was like to be a great foundation and pillar of the doctrine of Christ : The other text, as also another spoken by our Saviour and his apostles, Whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose sins ye retain they are retained,' are, by all primitive fathers, interpreted in this manner, 'Wheresoever you shall effectually preach the gospel, you shall carry with you grace and remission of sins to them which shall follow your instructions: But the people, who shall not have these joyful tidings communicated by you to them, shall remain in darkness and in their sins." But if any will contest, that, by some of of these last texts, that evangelical excommunication, which was afterwards brought into the Church by the apostles, was here presignified by our great master, how unlike were those censures, to those now thundered out, as he calls it, by the Pope. These were for edification and not destruction, to afflict the flesh for the salvation of the soul; that apostolical ordinance was pronounced for some notorious scandal or apostasy from the faith, and first decreed by the Church, that is, the whole congregation present, and then denounced by the pastor, and reached only to debar such person from partaking of the communion of fellowship of that Church, till repentance should re-admit him, but was followed by no other prosecution or chastisement, as is now practised*. But suppose all these texts had been as they would have them, how does this make for the successors of St. Peter, or the rest? Or, how can this prove the bishops of Rome to have right to such succession? But I make haste from this subject, and shall urge but one text more, which is, the spiritual man judgeth all men, but is himself judged of none;' from whence it is inferred by the Canonists, that, first, “ the Pope is the spiritual man;' and then, that he is to be judge of all the world;' and last,' that he is never to be liable to any judgment himself;' whereas it is obvious to the meanest understanding, that St. Paul, in this text, means to distinguish between a person inspired with the spirit of God, and one remaining in the state of nature; which latter, he says, cannot judge of those heavenly gifts and graces, as he explains himself,

• In the Church of Rome.

when he says, The natural man cannot discern the things of the spirit, because they are foolishness unto him.'

To take my leave of this matter wholly out of the way of my studies, I beg of you Zenobio, and of Guilio, and the rest of our society, to read over, carefully, the New Testament, and then to see what ground there is for purgatory, by which all the wealth and greatness hath accrued to these men; what colour for their idolatrous worship of saints and their images, and particularly for speaking in their hymns and prayers to a piece of wood, the cross I mean, salve lignum, &c. And then fac nos dignos beneficiorum Christi, as you may read in that office*; what colour, or rather what excuse for that horrid, unchristian, and barbarous engine, called the Inquisition. brought in by the command and authority of the Pope, the inventor of which Peter, a Dominican friar, having been slain among the Albigenses, as he well deserved, is now canonised for a saint, and stiled San Pietro Martine?

In the dreadful prisons of this inquisition, many faithful and pious Christians, to say nothing of honest moral Moors, or Mahometans, are tormented and famished, or, if they outlive their sufferings, burnt publickly to death, and that only for differing in religion from the Pope, without having any crime or the least misdemeanor proved or alledged against them; and this is inflicted upon these poor creatures, by those who profess to believe the scripture; which tells us, that 'faith is the gift of God,' without whose special illumination no man can obtain it; and therefore is not in reason or humanity to be punished for wanting it? And Christ himself hath so clearly decided that point in bidding us let thetares and wheat grow together till the harvest,' that I shall never make any difficulty to call him Antichrist, who shall use the least persecution whatsoever, against any differing in matters of faith from himself, whether the person, so dissenting, be Heretick, Jew, Gentile, or Mahometan.

Next, I beseech you to observe in reading that holy book, though Christian fasts are doubtless of divine right, what ground there is for enjoining fish to be eaten, at least flesh to be abstained from one third part of the year,' by which they put the poor to great hardship, who not having purses to buy wholsome fish, are subjected to all the miseries and diseases incident to a bad and unhealthful diet; whilst the rich, and chiefly themselves and their cardinals, exceed Lucullus in their luxury of oysters, turbats, tender crabs, and carps, brought some hundreds of miles to feed their gluttony, upon these penitential days of abstinence from beef and pork. It may be it will lie in the way of those who observe this, to enquire what St. Paul means, when he says, "That in the latter days some shall depart from the faith, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving;' but all these things, and many other abuses brought in by these perverters of Christianity, will, I hope, ere long be enquired into by some of the disciples of that bold friart, who, the very same year in which I prophesied that the scourge of the Church was not far off, began to thunder against their indulgences; and since, hath ques

⚫ The adoration of the cross on Good Friday. Martin Luther, who was an Augustine Friar.

1517.

tioned many tenets long received and imposed upon the world. I shall conclude this discourse, after I have said a word of the most hellish of all the innovations brought in by the Popes, which is, the clergy; these are a sort of men, under pretence of ministring to the people in holy things, set a-part and separated from the rest of mankind, from whom they have a very distinct and a very opposite interest by a human ceremony, called by a divine name, viz. Ordination; these, wherever they are found, with the whole body of the Monks and Friars, who are called the regular clergy, 'make a band which may be called the Janizaries of the Papacy; these have been the causes of all the solecisms and immoralities in government, and of all the impieties and abominations in religion; and by consequence, of all the disorder, villany, and corruption we suffer under in this detestable age; these men, by the Bishop of Rome's help, 'have crept into all the governments of Christendom, where there is any mixture of monarchy, and made themselves a third estate; that is, have by their temporalities, which are almost a third part of all the land in Europe, given them by the blind zeal, or rather folly of the northern people, who over-ran this part of the world, stepped into the throne, and what they cannot perform by these secular helps, and by the dependency their vassals have upon them, they fail not to claim and to usurp by the power they pretend to have from God and his vicegerent at Rome. They* exempt themselves, their lands, and goods, from all secular jurisdiction, that is, from all courts of justice and magistracy, and will be judges in their own causes, as in matters of tythe, &c. and not content with this, will appoint courts of their own to decide sovereignty in testamentary matters and many other causes, and take upon them to be the sole punishers of many great crimes, as witchcraft, sorcery, adultery, and all uncleanness. To say nothing of the forementioned judicatory of the inquisition; in these last cases, they turn the offenders over to be punished (when they have given sentence) by the secular arm (so they call the magistrate) who is blindly to execute their decrees under pain of hellfire; as if Christian princes and governors were appointed only by God to be their bravo's or hangmen. They give protection and sanctuary to all execrable offenderst, even to murderers themselves, whom God commanded to be indispensably punished with death. If they come within their Churches, cloysters, or any other place, which they will please to call holy ground; and if the ordinary justice, nay, the sovereign power, do proceed against such offender, they thunder out their excommunication; that is, cut off from the body of Christ not the prince only, but the whole nation and people, shutting the church doors, and commanding divine offices to cease, and sometimes even authorising the people to rise up in arms, and constrain their governors to a submission, as happened to this poor city in the time of our ancestors; when, for but forbidding the servant of a poor Carmelite friar who had vowed poverty, and should have kept none to go armed, and punishing his disobedience with imprisonment, our whole senate, with their Gonfalonier, were constrained to go to Avignon for absolution; and, in case of refusal, had been mas

In the Church of Rome.

+ In Popish states, whoever flees to a convent, church, or other place set apart for religiou exercises, is protected from justice.