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, these now made ad Coercendos Principes; They to suffer martyrdome, these to raise Rebellions; They taught Patience, these practise violence; They professed subjection, these move seditions; They quenched the blood of Tyrants with their Innocent Blood; the bloodthirstinesse of these cannot be swaged, but with the Sacred Blood of God’s Anointed. All this is [Hodie] This Day! Lamentable it is, that ever the sunne shined, or gave light unto this Day. Before Christ, & a thousand yeeres after Christ, Nec usut, nec exemplum, nec mentio, there was neither Practice, nor Precedent nor challenge, nor mention, of this Tyranny. The Possessions and Inheritance of Private men, the Crownes & Thrones of Princes, were then accounted of another Nature. They held them not of the Church, they could not be deprived of them by the Church. The Church could not bestow on her dearest Children by any Blessing; the Church could not then, therefore cannot now, deprive her greatest enimies of them by any Curse, Sentence, Censure, Excommunication. The Prophets never claimed it; our Savior never gave it; the Apostles never received it; the Holie Fathers never heard of it: shall we thinke them carelesse of their lawfull Authority? Nay rather, we conclude, that they, which challendge to be their Successors, are Usurpers of New, unheard of, and unjust Tyranny.
It is true that the sentence of Excommunication hath ever beene, and ever should be, accounted a fearefull and terrible sentence, a grievous and intolerable Punishment; by some called Virga ferrea, a Rod of Iron, by some Mucro Spiritualis a spiritual sword, by many Fulmen Ecclesiasticum, the Churche’s Thunderbolt; which shakes the Consciences, affrights the Spirits, dauntes the Hearts, & leaves behinde it a Terror in the Souls of Men. In the definition of their Greater Excommunication, which I finde in their Law, I finde these circumstances. 1. The Judge, and that is the Church, or some Authorized by the Church. 2. The Nature; it is a Censure Ecclesiasticall. 3. The Cause, Consumacy in some open notorious mortall sinne. 4. The Proceeding must be Canonicall; the Delinquents openly called, and have their just defence. 5. The Effect, separation from the Prayers, from the Sacraments, from the Society of the Faithfull. Lastly, the End, that he may be ashamed, being ashamed, he may convert, converting, repent, repenting, he may be saved. Here is all Spirituall, Judge, Nature, Cause, Proceeding, Effect, End, All Spirituall. Here is Exclusion from Spirituall Comforts; here is no violence to their Persons, no prejudice to their Estates. In Ecclesia Disciplina visibilis Gladius cessaturus; in the Discipline of the Church, there is no use of the visible and material sword: for we are set up, to watch over your soules, another beares the sword, Evaginandum nutu sacerdotis, to be unsheathed at the Becke of the Priest; as Bernard speakes, and Allen urges, but Nuta(i) Rogatü; Nondum mandant, Praelati Domino Regi, sed supplicant, sive Rogant; at the becke, that is at the Petition, of the Prelates; for in this Case the Prelates commaunde not our Lord the King, but they supplicate, and make Request unto him. It is the confession of their owne Law, it is the ground of their Significavit; Ecclesia non habet ultra, quod faciat, the Authority of the Church is ended, when the sentence of excommunication is pronounced. The Church can proceede no further, then, Tradatur Curiae seculari; Brachium seculare in vocandum; the Secular Power must bee implored; the Authority of the Prince must be assistant. It is true, that the Law alleadges: Mille exempla sunt, & Constitutiones, there are many Examples and Constitutions, wherein it is evident, that they which contain the censure of the Church, have beene Banished, Proscribed, Imprisoned, but per Publicas Potestates, by Publique, and Temporall Authority of Princes, per Potestates (i) Principes.
And here, as in handling all causes of this nature, we must distinguish betwixt the jurisdiction which the Church may claime by Commission from Christ, and that which the Church hath receaved by Donation, and Indulgence of Princes; betwixt that which appertaines to Excommunication properly, & in its owne nature, and the Penalties that have beene
