CHAP. LXII.
Truth.Secondly. I observe how inconsiderately—I hope not willingly—he passeth by the reasons and grounds urged by those three princes for their practices; for, as for the bare examples of kings or princes, they are but like shining sands, or gilded rocks, giving no solace to such as make woful shipwreck on them.
King James’s sayings against persecution.
In King James’s speech, he passeth by that goldenmaxim in divinity, “that God never loves to plant his church by blood.”
Secondly. That civil obedience may be performed from the papists.
Thirdly. In his observation on Rev. xx., that true and certain note of a false church, to wit, persecution: “The wicked are besiegers, the faithful are besieged.”
King Stephen’s, of Poland, speech against persecution.
In King Stephen’s, of Poland, speech, he passeth by the true difference between a civil and a spiritual government: “I am,” said Stephen, “a civil magistrate over the bodies of men, not a spiritual over their souls.”
Now to confound these is Babel; and Jewish it is to seek for Moses, and bring him from his grave (which no man shall find, for God buried him) in setting up a national state or church, in a land of Canaan, which the great Messiah abolished at his coming.
Forcing of conscience is a soul-rape. Persecution for conscience, the lancet that letteth blood of kings and kingdoms.
Thirdly. He passeth by, in the speech of the King of Bohemia, that foundation in grace and nature, to wit, “That conscience ought not to be violated or forced:” and indeed it is most true, that a soul or spiritual rape is more abominable in God’s eye, than to force and ravish the bodies of all the women in the world. Secondly. That most lamentably true experience of all ages, which that king observeth, viz., “That persecution for cause of conscience hath ever proved pernicious, being the causes of all those wonderful innovations of, or changes in, the principallest and mightiest kingdoms of Christendom.” He that reads the records of truth and time with an impartial eye, shall find this to be the lancet that hath pierced the veins of kings and kingdoms, of saints and sinners, and filled the streams and rivers with their blood.
All spiritual whores are bloody.
Lastly. That king’s observation of his own time,[172]viz.,“That persecution for cause of conscience was practised most in England, and such places where popery reigned:” implying, as I conceive, that such practices commonly proceed from that great whore the church of Rome, whose daughters are like their mother, and all of a bloody nature, as most commonly all whores be.