How cruelly did the Arian emperors, Constantius and Valens, use the Christians! Fourscore ministers, that came to Valens to complain of the Christians' sufferings, were burned together in a ship.

The Vandal Arians, under Gensericus, and many of his barbarous successors, are yet more cruel, and put the true Christians, especially the ministers, to as exquisite torment as the pagans had done before them. Some were sawed asunder, some were made the food of swine, some anointed with honey and hung up for wasps to eat, some dragged by the heels, naked, through thorns and briars and stony ways, with many the like torments. And what the Christians have suffered from the Turks, and other Mahometans, through all their dominions, I think I need not recite.

And as you have heard what Satan hath done by infidels and heretics, which withdraw from the church; so, thirdly, if he can but get any that call themselves Christians, and hold the fundamental truths, to be false to their own profession, and to engage themselves in any worldly, ambitious designs, or to entertain any corruptions in doctrine, worship, or government, how ordinarily doth he make use of these for the violent opposition and persecution of the truth and servants of Christ? Whoever be the instrument, he careth not, so it be Christ and his kingdom that is opposed; yea, he had rather do it by them that pretend to be his servants than by any others, for then, 1. He can make their very misguided zeal an instrument of his cruelty; 2. And he can make the world believe that all these being Christians, their religion is uncertain, and their natures as cruel as any others, when they so contend and persecute each other; 3. And it gratifieth his malice more to turn the name and profession of Christianity against Christ, and to fight against him under his own colours, than to do it by open adversaries: 4. besides that, such venom and corruption in the bowels of the church hath a greater tendency to its ruin than the withdrawing of any parts from it can have.

And, indeed, it is but false friends and real enemies, such as seem Christians, but are not so indeed, nor were ever truly joined unto Christ, whom Satan employeth in these works of cruelty (excepting what lesser injuries may be done in a passion, as Asa did).

When Satan had by degrees seduced the church of Rome to so many innovations and errors, and had got such interest among

them, and engaged them in such an ambitious, tyrannical enterprise as to domineer over all the christian world, both princes, pastors, and people, and to corrupt the doctrine and worship of Christ, upon this account he maketh them his instruments for as cruel and bloody persecutions of Christ's churches, and as malicious endeavours to hinder the light of the Gospel, as ever were performed by infidels, Mahometans, or the filthiest heretics that ever I read of. I shall give but a touch on this, because it is so largely recorded in Fox's Acts and Monuments,' and Mr. Clark's 'Martyrology,' besides many others, which, for all their rage against them, shall stand as records of their hellish cruelty, to all generations.

Their murders upon so many thousands of the Albigenses and Waldenses, godly people of France, both there and in other countries whither they fled, is beyond most of the heathen's persecutions. Of many hundred thousand persons that were judged to be of the Waldenses' faith, against the pope's usurpation and corruptions, they so slaughtered, and scattered them and consumed them, that few of their societies were there left visible. Their own bishops complained that they could not provide lime and stone to build prisons for them, nor defray the charge of their food; the world was even amazed at the cruelties which they exercised. Thousands of men, women, and infants, they burned together in caves, forced them headlong from the rocks, burned them at stakes, and many ways butchered them, and at last assaulted them by armies, and forced them to defend themselves against this papal cruelty. They raised armies against them out of many nations, as against infidels, to merit paradise by their murders; and continued these wars for very many years; burning their towns, and driving the women, with their children, into the snowy mountains and caves to perish, or inhumanly butchering them.

To recite the cruel slaughters that they made also in Bohemia, would be too long. The horrible murders that since then they have made in France, breaking faith with them, and killing them in the churches, when they were met to worship God; were it but that one massacre at Paris, and other cities and countries thereupon, it were enough to show that it was the hellish enemy of Christ and his Gospel, that led them on; and to tell all generations to come what principles hell and Rome are acted by, and how insatiable their thirst is for the blood of upright, righteous men! It is generally supposed that they

murdered, at that time, ten thousand persons in Paris, and thirty thousand within a few weeks in that and other places: and that even then when they pretended peace, and seemed to live in quietness, suddenly rising in one night to this bloody execution.

Through the great mercy of God, we in England have tasted but little of their fury in comparison of their sufferings. Yet what days we had in part of Henry the Fifth's reign, and Henry the Eighth, and especially in Queen Mary's, and how many were stifled in prisons, and burnt at stakes, up and down the land, in four or five years' space, Mr. Fox in his Acts and Monuments' hath acquainted you, and it is too near us to be quite unknown or forgotten.

The Spanish invasion, in 1588, was but a threatening.

The gunpowder-plot, by which they would have blown up the heads of the nation, lords, bishops, and commons, at once, in preparation to the rest of the tragedy; this was but a Romish squib to make sport with. Such murders as were committed on Henry the Third, and Henry the Fourth, kings of France, are but a popish salutation. A breakfast they gave us in Ireland of the cruel bloodshed of so many thousand, in a few days, as hath brought by the ensuing revenging war such a dinner to the actors as such inhuman wretches might well expect.

It were endless to mention the blood that these leeches have sucked, by the devil's appointment, in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, and other countries. Were there no more to discover the hellish and Romish fury, but the Spanish inquisition only, it might for ever shame and confound the agents and their principles: it were too long to relate all their subtle, deceitful examinations, tedious imprisonments in a dark, narrow, nasty hole, separate one from another, where it is worse than death for any to give them the least relief, or let them speak to one another, or hear from one another; and this, perhaps, for two or three years, if they die not the while: and then they are tormented with the most cruel tortures that they can devise: their bodies stripped stark naked, in a remote dark cellar, the inquisitors sitting on seats, appointed for the purpose, to direct the tormentors, and intermix their examinations and reproaches; their hands are first tied behind them, and cords tied thereto, and weights at their feet, and so they are drawn up by a pulley to the top of a gibbet, and let down again, and at last strappadoed; when they are drawn to the height with greater weights at their feet, they are suddenly let fall almost to the

ground, where the cord stops them, and puts all their limbs out of joint besides which they anoint some of their feet with oil, and set them to a fire to scorch, and then lay them on their backs in a narrow trough, where a keen cross bar under their backs, doth hinder them from coming to the bottom, and there, covering their faces with a fine cloth, they open their mouths and pour water from on high till they drive the cloth into their throats, and then pluck it out again. Their thighs and legs they bind with small cords, and strain them till they sink into the flesh. And in all this, they will not permit the modest virgin, or gravest matron or lady, to have the least rag to hide her nakedness.

And all this is to force them to recant and confess others, even all that they have but talked with about matters of religion, that so they may have more of the same employment. And when all is done, they array them in a coat all over painted with devils and fire, and lead them forth before the people on a scaffold, with their tongues tied with their devices, and so to a fire, where they are burnt to death.

These are the generation that crept into our armies and cities, and country in England, and provoke the deluded people to call for liberty of conscience, that the papists may have liberty here, who deal thus mercifully with others, where they have full

power.

By this time, I hope, it is no hard matter to discern what a friend Satan is to Christ and his kingdom, who will not by his good will let one godly Christian escape his rage, but pursues them in all ages, in all countries, with all sorts of torments and cruelties, by all sorts of enemies; and will not suffer so much as any propagation to be made of the Gospel, any discovery of saving truth, or opposition to darkness and wickedness, but he presently raiseth a war against it, and sendeth forth his bloodhounds to fall upon the instruments, and all that do befriend them,

Obj. Other men suffer in the world at the hands of others as well as at Christians.

Answ. I have said already that Satan is an enemy to all mankind; but as his malice is most against Christ and his kingdom; so by what hath been said it may appear, that he doth not so openly rage against any others. Though yet, while he seems to favour and befriend them, and use them as his servants, he doth indeed exercise more cruelty on them than he

doth on the faithful in their sharpest torments that he inflicteth on their bodies.

And, indeed, he is but preparing them for the everlasting torments, by making them here his slaughter-men, and drenching their souls in the guilt of blood; which also in this life doth sometimes overtake them, as was before noted of the Irish ; who having murdered many hundred thousands of their peaceable neighbours, in a manner exceeding all former persecutions, I think, that ever were read of by pagans, Turks, or former papists, for hellish cruelty, were at last, by the revenging sword of war, by plague and famine, the most of them swept off from the face of the earth. Concerning which, and the Spanish Inquisition especially, and other things here recited, I again wish you to peruse Mr. Clarke's 'Martyrology,' which I think a very useful book, for common people who have not learning, time, or means, to read over those many large volumes in several languages which are there contracted; it being very necessary that they should be acquainted with the combat that hath been maintained between light and darkness, the war that Satan hath managed against Christ, from the beginning to this day; and who have been Satan's instruments, and what their exploits. And I believe that those who are tempted to popery, will find in such history a competent preservative.

Sect. X.

If all this afford not sufficient evidence, let this also be added, to clear the rest, that there is in the very hearts or natures of the servants of the devil, of what place, degree, or nation soever, throughout the world, an inbred hatred and enmity to the kingdom and true subjects of Jesus Christ.

This is apparent in the whole course of their lives, whereby it is manifest that it is not only the effects of misinformation and prejudice received from others, or of bare education, or difference of opinions, or the like, but the effect of those different masters whom they serve, and captains whom they fight under, and spirits which do actuate them, and principles and doctrines by which they are acted.

By these two ways is this enmity fully manifested.

1. By the hatred which they have to Christ's ways and

servants.

2. By their resistance and reluctancy against his persuasions, and the difficulty of drawing men over to his ways.