CHAP. LXVII.
In the second place, I answer and ask, what glory to God, what good to the souls or bodies of their subjects, shall princes, or did these princes bring in persecuting? &c.
In his opening of the seven vials, in print, Mr. Cotton confesseth that Queen Elizabeth’s persecuting the papists had almost ruined the English nation.
Peace.Mr. Cotton tells us, in his discourse upon the third vial,[175]that Queen Elizabeth had almost fired the world in civil combustions by such her persecuting: for though he bring it in to another end, yet he confesseth that it “raised all Christendom in combustion; raised the wars of 1588 and the Spanish Invasion;” and he adds, both concerning the English nation and the Dutch, “that if God had not borne witness to his people and their laws, in defeating the intendments of their enemies, against both the nations, it might have been the ruin of them both.”
The wars between the papists and the protestants.
Truth.That those laws and practices of Queen Elizabeth raised those combustions in Christendom, I deny not: that they might likely have cost the ruin of English and Dutch, I grant.
That it was God’s gracious work in defeating the intendments of their enemies, I thankfully acknowledge. But that God bore witness to such persecutions and laws for such persecutions, I deny: for,
First, event and success come alike to all, and are no argument of love, or hatred, &c.
Secondly, the papists in their wars have ever yet had, both in peace and war, victory and dominion; and therefore, if success be the measure, God hath borne witness unto them.
It is most true, what Daniel in his eighth, and eleventh, and twelfth chapters, and John in his Revelation, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth chapters, write of the great success of anti-christ against Christ Jesus for a time appointed.
Eventus omnis belli incertus.
Success was various between Charles V. and some German princes: Philip of Spain and the Low Countries; the French king and his protestant subjects: sometimes losing, sometimes winning, interchangeably.
The wars and success of the Waldensian witnesses against three popes and their popish armies.
But most memorable is the famous history of the Waldenses and Albigenses, those famous witnesses of Jesus Christ, who rising from Waldo, at Lyons in France (1160), spread over France, Italy, Germany, and almost all countries, into thousands and ten thousands, making separation from the pope and church of Rome. These fought many battles with various success, and had the assistance and protection of divers great princes against three succeeding popes and their armies; but after mutual slaughters and miseries to both sides, the final success of victory fell to the popedom and Romish church, in the utter extirpation of those famous Waldensian witnesses.
God’s people victorious overcomers, and with what weapons.
God’s servants are all overcomers when they war with God’s weapons, in God’s cause and worship: and in Rev. second and third chapters, seven times it is recorded—To him that overcometh, in Ephesus; to him that overcometh, in Sardis, &c.; and Rev. twelfth, God’s servants overcame the dragon, or devil, in the Roman emperors by three weapons—the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and the not loving of their lives unto the death.