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The sanguinary lawes, and cruell execution of them upon Catholique Priests in Eng∣land.
1. THere was one sinne more of which the English Government since the Schisme there was guilty, which God seldome leaves unpunished, and for which, even during the time of my being a Protestant, I apprehended some time or other as a sharp visitation; which
was the enacting and putting in execution those bloudy lawes against poor Catholique Priests, against most of whom there was not the least pretence of any charge of sedition or Treason? But for this only crime of being of that heavenly Vocation, to which the Spirit of God had called, and the sacred authority of the Church had exalted them; And for a conscionable discharge of that calling, they were arraigned, condemned, drag'd to the place of execution, there ignominiously hang'd (among thieves and murderers) and their half-living bodies most inhumanely quartered, and exposed to the sun and weather.
2. This crime was the more inexcuseable, be∣cause committed by Englishmen, who (though violent enough in their passion when it is pro∣voked, yet) are apt in a short time to relent, and by English Protestants, a Sect pretending a∣bove ordinary to moderation and clemency. But the truth is, the Calvinisticall Spirit ha's been working in that state and government ever since the beginning of Q. Elizabeths reign; for the Calvinists were the Councellors that first suggested, those cruelties, which their descen∣dents have since eagerly pursued and acted by the hands of others, till (their so long proje∣cted designs succeeding) they might have the pleasure to glut themselves with Christian bloud even to vomiting, as they have of late done.
3. Now that this is no false character of that Calvinisticall Spirit, (besides many wo∣full experiences in other countreyes) our
great Presbyterian contrivers, and managers of the late war have given severall testimo∣nies irrefragable, who (whensoever they were pressed with want of treasure, knowing the complexion and temper of their own faction in London, how delightfull a spectacle of bloud would be,) had no readier ways to ex∣tort supplies of money from them, then by fea∣sting and regaling them with the cruell execu∣tion of a Catholique Priest, or shedding the bloud of their own Archbishop, or of some other considerable Royaltist. I be∣seech almighty God, that when the time shall come that he will make inquisition for bloud, he would sever the innocent from the guilty, and not impute to the whole Nation the cruelty of that one bloudy Faction there.