Church-history of the government of bishops and their councils abbreviated including the chief part…

The rest of the Epistle exhorteth Kings to avoid Pride and Tyranny: As I cite it historically to show you the Spirit of Papacy, so fas est et ab hoste doceri. There is somewhat in it worthy the remembering, that greatness prove not pernicious to themselves and others, for want of goodness.

The rest of the Epistle exhorteth Kings to avoid Pride and Tyranny: As I cite it historically to shew you the Spirit of Papacy, so fas est et ab hoste doceri. There is somewhat in it worthy the remembering, that greatness prove not pernicious to themselves and others, for want of goodness.

§ 58. But sure these Papal arguments savour not of infallibility: May not a mean wit discern, 1. That goodness giveth not right to places ⟨p. 364⟩of Government without a call, else the best man must be always King: And then what Pope had Title to his Seat? Right to Heaven, will not prove a right to Kingdoms: Nor, è contra, Power to cast out Devils will not prove that the exorcist may cast out the King,¹ nor give him Laws. 2. What though the King be a Scholar to a Grammarian, a Musician, a Physician? Is it therefore absurd that he be King over these Masters? What though he must obey his Physician for his life? May he not command that Physician for the common peace? What though he cannot do that which a Physician, a Musician &c. can do? May he not rule them for all that? 3. What a discontented mind have such holy Prelates, that cannot be satisfied with their Title to Heaven, their Miracles, Sanctity, Church-Keys &c. unless they may also be above Kings, and have the secular power also? 4. And what cause have Kings and States to look to themselves, that are under such Priests, where every Clergy man is their Master? And how many superiors then hath every Popish King? Even as many as he hath Prelates, Priests or exorcists. Yet I will confess that if Princes had been as bad still as some of them have been, and as such Popes pretended; and Popes and Prelates, and Priests had been as Infallible, Holy, Wise and Peaceable as they have pretended, and had not proved the shame of Religion and Incendiaries of the Christian World, in so many generations, it would have tempted men strongly for the interest of Religion and mankind, to wish that all power had been committed to the Clergy, and that Campanella's Regnum Dei, or Fift-Monarchy, by Priestly Government of the World, had taken place. But when their own historians make forty Popes together Monsters of wickedness, and piety at the same time to be translated to the Princes, this turneth our thoughts another way: Especially when we find still that a proud, worldly, wicked Clergy, are the great confounders of the World.