They are Kings, we are Subjects, bound in a bond, & obligation, which exceeds all other Bonds, & cancels all other obligations. A Son unto his Father, a Wife unto her husband, a Servant unto his Master, an Homager unto his Lord, an Inferiour to his Superiour, Nature, Sense, Reason, Humanitie, Christianitie, Divinitie binds them to Obedience, with a Bond which cannot bee broken: but the Bond of Allegiance to our King containes them all, exceeds them all. Is Hee not a Father, an Husband, a Master, a Lord, nay as God unto his subjects? Was not Moses, Aaron’s God, a God to the High Priest, and to the Father of the Priesthood. No warrant can I then find from Heaven; no dispensation upon the Earth, that can justifie, or excuse the least Disobedience. It may bee that a prince is injurious to his Subjects: Omnis illegitima defensio Filii adversus Patrem; Is he worthy the name of a Sonne, that will enter an action of Trespasse against his Father? It may be his yoke is heavy, and his loines burdenous; Ferendo & patiendo, lenienda Iniuria est; Patience, and toleration, is the best lenitive, and the readiest remedie. It may be he is irreligious and would draw others after him: Religio defendenda est moriendo, non occidendo, patientiâ, non Savitiâ, non scelere, sed Fide; Religion is to be maintained, by dying ourselves for it, not by murdering others for it, by patience, not by fury, by loyalty, not by rebellion. It may bee hee is a Tyrannt and bloody: but Inde Imperator, undè homo antequàm Imperator, inde potestas unde Spiritus, He made him a King, which made him a Man; and he receaved his authoritie from him, from whom he receaved his breath. Saviat, Laniet, Nubecula est, citò transibit. Let him rage, kill, Massacre, hee is but a storme, sent of God to chastise his children, expect but God’s leasure, he will soone vanish, and God will send a calme againe: as he speakes in Tacitus; Nŏ est nostrum aestimare quem supra ceteros, & quibus de causis extollas; nobis obsequis gloria relicta est. God sets up whom pleases him; our Vertue, our Dutie, our Glory consists in our Obedience, not for feare only, but for conscience, not […], to our gratious Lords, but even […], those whom hee hath set to be whippes & scourges over us. Are wee then bound to obey them in all things? and to say, as the Israelites did to Joshuah, All that thou commandest we will doe? No; for there may be a time, wherein wee must say rather with the Apostles; It is better to obey God, than to obey Men. And if there be an opposition between the will of God, and the commandement of the King then we must crave pardon; Da veniam Imperator, Tu Carcerem, Ille Gehennam. But in all cases, yea of profest Heresie, yea of open Idolatry, yea of manifest Apostasie, our tongues are bound, we may not speak evil of them; our very thoughts bound, we may not conspire against them; our hands bound, we may not so much as lift up our little finger against them. In all cases, Erubescit Ecclesia, Filios fieri Castigatores Parentum; The Church hath ever shamed to make the Sonnes correctors of their Parents: and Gladium dare, in manus Filii ad trucidandum Patrem, membri ad concidendum corpus, Nefas est, & insanura; to put a sword into the hand of a Sonne to kill his Father; of a member to wound his own head, or stab into his own heart, it is more than impietie, more than madnesse. The Sonne unto the Father, the Wife unto the Husband, the Servant unto his Master, the Monke unto his Abbot; the Priest unto his Bishop is bound to performe due and canonical obedience, notwithstanding any sentence of excommunication. Are all these bound, and may subjects be discharged? God hath directly commanded Obedience, and subjection; therefore no man directly or indirectly, absolutely or respectively, by temporal jurisdiction, or in Ordine ad Spiritualia, as a Pope, or as a Prince, can justifie the least disobedience, or warrant so much as a thought of rebellion: no dispensation can discharge the Subject, no sentence can depose a lawfull and an anointed King. God, which is the God of order, & not of confusion, foresaw in his wisdome, that it were better for the estates of Kingdomes, & lesse injurious to his Church, if the insolency of a wicked King, were sometimes tolerated without controll, than that the estate of his chiefe deputy, and Lieutenant upon the earth should be subjected to change and alteration, to deprivation, or deposing, at the pleasure and partialitie either of Priest, or of People. The one may be the cause of many disorders, the other must needes bee the Mother of perpetuall confusion.
In the Practice of the Church, wee have Confitentes Reos, the evidence and confession of our Adversaries. For they which confesse it was not done in the Primitive times, quia deerant vires Temporales; and that the Emperours Constantine, Valens, Julian, and others might have beene by the Bishops Excommunicated, and deposed, and all their people released from their obedience; if the Church or Catholikes, had had competent forces to have resisted. I say, they which yeeld reason why it was not done, evidently acknowledge it was not done.
Looke into the estate of the Jewes, and times of the Prophets; looke into the days of Christ, and of his Apostles; looke into the days of our Fathers, and Primitive times: you shall finde many open Idolaters; bloody Persecutors, backsliding Apostataes, many branded with the marke of Jeroboam, which sinned, & made Israel to sinne; yet not one dispossessed of his inheritance, or deprived from his kingdome.
There is a particle in my Text, to which, if to any our Adversaries may lay just claime, and that is Hodiè this Day: for their unjust challenge of Supremacie, and Domination over Princes, is Nupera, Novitia, Hodierna; it is New, it is Late, and in Comparison it is but a Day old. I am sure Ab Initio non fuit sic; from the beginning it was not so; nay long after the beginning it was not so. Primus Hildebrandus; Hildebrand6 was the first that ever practised it, and that Novello Schismate, making a new Rent betwixt the Church, and the Empire. Lego, relego, nusquam inuenio quenquam ante hunc Regno privatum, I read, and read againe, but I never find any in any age, before Henry the 4th, deposed from his estate and deprived of his Empire. Henry the first Patient, Hildebrand the first Agent; a man abhorred of all the world, renowned by Cardinall Allen, as a notable good man, and learned, who suffered whatsoever he did suffer for meere justice, in that he did Godly, Honourably, and by the Duety of his Pastorship whatsoever he did against the Emperour.
Now began the New, Popish, Antichristian world, to come to his Height before which time, there was never Flatterer so shamefull, as to yeeld, never Pope so impudently audacious as to challenge this transcendent Authority over Princes. Which enforced Abulensis to distinguish betwixt Kings of former, and Kings of later times; Non est simile de Regibus illis, et Regibus nostris, the Kings then, the Kings now are not alike; Rex tum praeerat sacerdotibus, & poterat Occidere, à fortiori privare Dignitatibus, & Officiis; the King was then above the Priest, and might take his Life from him, much more depose him from his Office and Dignity. But that was in the olde world; & Franciscus Romulus (quem Bellarminses benè & novit & amat whom Bellarmine both knows and loves); (Bellarmine7 himselfe being the Author of that Booke, as neere Kin to Him, as to Tortus) puts a difference betwixt the Popes, in Primitive times, and in our Dayes. They were fitted ad subeundum martyrium,