they loudly charged him before the tribunal of Pilate: If thou lettest this man go (say they), thou art no friend to Cesar. (John, xix. 12.) And the Apostles, although they constantly taught that we ought to obey magistrates, and that every soul should be subject to the higher powers, and that not only for fear of wrath and punishment, but also for conscience sake (Rom. xiii. 1); yet they were said to stir up the people, and to incite the multitude to rebellion. Haman brought the Jews into the disfavour of Ahasuerus, by representing them as a stubborn and rebellious people, that despised the edicts and laws of princes. The wicked king Ahab charged Elijah the Prophet of God, that he troubled Israel. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, accused Amos the Prophet of a conspiracy before Jeroboam. And behold (saith he), Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel, and the land is not able to bear all his words. (Amos, vii. 10.) In short, Tertullian saith, this was the general accusation against all Christians in his times, that they were traitors, plotters, and the common enemies of mankind and therefore if truth, which is still the same, suffers the same reproaches as it did formerly, it may indeed seem troublesome and uneasy, but it is not new or unusual.

10. It was easy forty years ago to fix such slanders upon the then rising and unknown truth, when the first rays of it burst forth in the midst of so great a darkness, and few men had heard what doctrines were taught, when Martin Luther and Huldericus Zuinglius, two excellent persons, who were given by God to enlighten the world, began first to preach the Gospel; when the thing was new, and the event uncertain, and the minds of men surprised and unsettled, and their ears open to all manner of calumnies; and it was not possible to invent that defama

tion of us which would not be believed by the people, even upon the account of the novelty and strangeness of the thing. And so it was in the more ancient times: the first opposers of Christianity, Symmachus, Celsus, Julianus, and Porphyrius, represented the primitive Christians as a seditious and rebellious sect, before either prince or people knew well what the Christians were, or what they professed, or what they would have; but now, when our enemies may see and cannot deny, that in all our words and writings we diligently admonish the people of their duty, that they should obey their princes and magistrates, though they are wicked men, which is also confirmed by experience, and seen and observed by all the world; certainly (I say) it is now a senseless thing to attempt to make us odious by a parcel of superannuated over-worn lies, when they have no new and fresh crimes to lay to our charge.

11. We bless our gracious God, whose cause this is, that there hath yet been no example of any insurrection or rebellion in any of those countries, kingdoms, or commonwealths, which have embraced the Reformation. We have not subverted any monarchy; we have not diminished any prince's jurisdiction or rights; we have not troubled any commonwealths; the Kings of England, Denmark, and Sweden; the Dukes of Saxony; the Counts of the Palatinate; the Marquises of Brandenburg; the Landgraves of Hessia; the commonwealths of the Switzers; the free cities of Strasburg, Basil, Frank-. fort, Ulm, Augsburg, and Noremberg, are all in the same state they were before the Reformation; or rather, because the people are now better instructed in the matters of obedience to their governors than they were before, in a better state. Let. our defamers go into those places where the Gospel

is settled by the blessing of God, and then tell us where princes have more majesty? where there is less pride and tyranny? where are princes treated with more respect? where the people are less tumultuous? where the civil government or ecclesiastical was ever in greater tranquillity?

12. But you will say, the boors of Germany fell into tumults and insurrections upon the first preaching of this doctrine. Be it granted; but then Martin Luther, the first divulger of it, did with great vehemence and sharpness write against them, and reduced them to their allegiance and duty.

13. And whereas some ignorant men have objected, that the Switzers murdered Leopold, the archduke of Austria, and, changing the state, erected a commonwealth, and so freed their country; this was done, as appears by all histories, above two hun dred and sixty years since, under Boniface VIII. when the papal power was at the highest, about two hundred years before Huldericus Zuinglius began to preach the Gospel, or indeed was born. But from that time to this, all things there have been in the greatest tranquillity and quiet that was possible, not only in relation to foreign wars, but intestine commotions; so that if it were a sin to deliver their country from a foreign dominion, which oppressed them with great insolence and tyranny, yet it is unjust and absurd to load the Reformation with the crimes of others, or them with those of their forefathers.

14. But, O immortal God! shall the Bishop of Rome accuse us of treason? will he pretend to teach the people subjection and obedience to magistrates, or has he any regard to majesty? Why then does he suffer himself to be called by his flatterers, the LORD OF LORDS, which none of the ancient bishops of Rome ever did; as if he would have all kings and princes,

whoever they were, and wheresoever, be no better than his vassals and slaves? Why does he boast that he is the KING OF KINGS, and that he has the right of cominanding them as his subjects? Why does he force emperors and monarchs to swear obedience to him? Why does he boast that his own majesty is seventy-seven times greater than the majesty of the Emperor; and that forsooth, because God made two great lights in heaven, and because the heavens and the earth had not two several, but one single beginning? Why have he and his followers in that, like the Anabaptists and Libertines, shaken off the yoke, and exempted themselves from the jurisdiction of all civil powers, that they might with greater liberty and security plague the world?

15. Why has he his legates, that is, a crafty sort of spies, as it were in ambush, in the courts, councils, and chambers of all kings? Why doth he, as his interest requires, set princes at variance amongst themselves; and at his pleasure fill the earth with seditions? Why does he proscribe, and take for an heathen and pagan, whatever prince withdraws himself from his dominion, and promises his indulgences so freely, if any man will by any means whatsoever assassinate his enemies? Doth he preserve empires and kingdoms, or at all consult and desire the public peace? You ought, O pious reader! to pardon us, if these things seem a little more sharp and eager than becomes a divine; for so great is the provocation, so great and so impotent withal is the ambition of the Pope, that it cannot be expressed in other or milder words. For he had once the insolence to say in a public council, that all the authority of all the kings in the world depended upon him. He, out of ambition and desire to rule, distracted the Roman empire, and tore in pieces the Christian world; he absolved the Italians, and

among them himself, from the oath wherein they were obliged to the Emperor of Greece, with great perfidy; and solicited his subjects to revolt from him, and called Charles Martell the Great out of France into Italy; and after a new and till then unheard-of manner, made him emperor. He deposed Chilperick, King of France, an innocent prince, only because he did not like him, and set up Pipin in his place. He would, if he had been able, have cast out Philip the Fair, another king of France, and have adjudged the kingdom of France to Albert, King of the Romans. He broke the power of Florence, though his own country, which was then a most flourishing city; and, changing its free and peaceable state, he delivered it up to the lust of one man. He made all Savoy to be torn in pieces by the Emperor Charles V. on the one side, and Francis L. King of France on the other; scarce leaving to the miserable Duke one city to shelter himself in.

16. I am weary of examples, and indeed there is nothing more troublesome than to enumerate the great actions of the Popes of Rome of this nature. I pray, of whose party were they who poisoned the Emperor Henry VII. in the eucharist, and they who did the same to Pope Victor in the holy chalice? Who exercised the same arts upon our King John of England, in a common table-cup? Whoever they were, and of what party soever, this is certain, they were neither Lutherans nor Zuinglians. Who is it, that at this day permits the greatest kings and monarchs to kiss his feet? Who is it that commands the Emperor to hold his bridle, and the King of France his stirrup? Who was it that cast Francis Dandulas, Duke of Venice, and King of Crete and Cyprus, under his table, to gnaw the bones with the dogs? Who crowned Henry VI. the Emperor, at Rome, not with his hands, but with his feet; and