Neither did they only conceive this hellish wickedness, but were big of it, and kept it close many months, and pleased themselves in the same, as monstrous and misshapen as it was. There wanted neither wit, nor counsel, nor combination, nor secret encouragement to effect it.
Nay, it was an holy villany, sealed with oaths, sacrament, and all the bonds of secrecy that could be invented. Oh horrible profanation, to set God's seal to Satan's plot. But God, who delighteth to confound all pre-
THE SAINT S SAFETY IN EVIL TI3IES. 311
sumptuous attempts, discovered it when it should have come to the hirth, and so it proved but the untimely fruit of a woman.
They brought forth a lie, for whereas they intended to have blown up king and kingdom, churchmen and church, statesmen, yea, the whole state itself, all at once, without any warning to prepare themselves for another world, they not only missed of this, but brought that ruin upon themselves which they intended to others ; whereas they thought for ever to have established their (religion, shall I call it, or idolatry, or) superstition, they have by this means made it more odious than ever before ; as the northern gentleman could say, that though he was not able to dispute, yet he had two argu- ments against popery, equivocation and the gunpowder- treason. But they turn it off easily, as they think. Alas ! it was but the plot of a company of unfortunate gentlemen. It was our happiness that they were unfortunate ; whereas if it had succeeded well, they would have had other terms for it. Successful villany goeth for virtue.
Well, the net is broken, and we are delivered. God thought of us when we thought not of him, and awaked for us when we were asleep (here is a place for behold), for what a miserable face of things would there have been if their plot had succeeded ! '
Now what return shall we make for all this ? They conceived mischief, let ns conceive praise, and travail of holy resolutions to give up ourselves to God, who hath given us our king, our state, yea, om-selves to ourselves. He hath given us our lives more than once, every one of us in particular, especially in the last heavy visitation.* But had it not been better for many in regard of their own particular, to have been swept away in that deluge, than to live longer to treasure up further wrath to themselves ? Many are not content to go to hell alone, but they will draw as many others as they can into theii* fellowship here, and torment hereafter. Oh beloved, the preservation of such, is but a reservation to fm-ther judgment ! What good got the king of Sodom by being delivered once, and then after to be consumed with ' fii'e and brimstone from heaven '? Gen. xix. What got Pharaoh by being dehvered from ten plagues, and then to perish in the sea? Esod. xiv. What are all our temporal deliverances, if we live still in sin, go on in sin, die in our sins, and so perish eternally ? Blessings, without re- turn of due thanks, increase the guilt of sin, and the increase of guilt causeth the increase of judgments.
The most proper homogeneal way of thanks, is to stir up ourselves to a greater hatred of that rehgion. They would fain free it, as if it were the fault of some persons only ; but alas ! what can be else distilled from those dangerous points they hold (as that, the pope hath temporal jurisdiction over princes, that he may excommunicate them; that he vwy, out of fulness of power, dispense icith the oath of allegiance: that he cannot err; that subjection to him is a point of absolute necessity to salvation, dr.) What, I say, can be distilled from these opinions, but treason in a people that live under a prince of a contrary rehgion ? The dispositions of many of them are better than their positions.
However perhaps the present popef may be more moderate and neutral, yet this is the infusion of their religion wherever it prevails, and these tenets shall be acted and in full force when they please, and it will please them when it shall be for the advantage of the CathoUc cause. This was Bellarmine's tenet. If the pojje should err in commanding vice or forbidding virtue, the church is bound to believe vice to be good, and virtue to be ill, or « The plague.— G. t Urban VIII. (fJ.—G.
812 THE saint's safety in eatl times.
else it slioidd sin afjainst conscience ; for it is hound to believe what he com' viands.''' Thus tliey make the judgment of man the rule of truth and falsehood, good and evil ; whereas truth is truth, and that which is false is false, whether men think so or no. There is an intrinsical evil in evil, which the judgment of any man cannot take away ; and the truth and goodness of things stands upon eternal grounds, not flexible or alterable by the will of any creature ; otherwise it were all one as to think the course of the sun should be guided by a dial. Is there any hope of their coming to us when they had rather have the rules of nature and religion, which are as un- moveable as a mountain of brass, to vary, than be thought to confess that the pope may err ! which indeed is the grand and leading error of all. But how should we expect our words should prevail, whenas the great works of God prevail not at all with them ? The efficacy of error is so strong in many, that though they should see the vial poured out ' upon the throne of the beast,' Rev. x-\d. 10, jei will they not repent.