Such work as this, hath destroyed the Greeks, or Eastern Churches, set up Turkish Tyranny, by dividing Christians, weakening, and ruining the Emperors, making Religion a mere Image of lifeless formality, and Ceremony, and a powerless dying thing. Such a Clergy hath darkened, and lamentably brought low the Christian Churches in Muscovy, Armenia, Georgia, Mengrelia, Syria, Abyssinia, and extirpated them in Nubia, and brought them in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Spain, France, and most of Germany to what they are: Such a Clergy have brought Ireland from the laudable State ⟨p. 127⟩which it was in, in the days of Malachi, as Bernard described it, into the barbarous, brutish, ignorance and bloody inhumanity at which it is now arrived; and had the chief hand in the murder of two hundred thousand persons in the late Rebellious insurrection; such a Clergy had a chief hand in the civil wars in England in the reign of William Rufus, King Stephen, Hen. 3. King John, &c. the subject of Pryns History of the Treasons of Prelates: And alas such a corrupt sort of Ministers keepeth up the division of the German Protestants, under the name of Lutherans and Calvinists, about Consubstantiation, Church-Images, and doctrines of Predestination not understood. And had the Low-Countries ever had the stirs between Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants, or England and Scotland ever had the miserable contentions, wars and cruelties between the former Episcopal parties, and the Laudians, or between them and the Presbyterians and Independents, and all the silencings, and woeful contentions and Schisms that have thence followed, if the vices of the Clergy had not been the cause. And had we continued in this case these twenty years last, silencing, reviling and prosecuting about two thousand conscionable Preachers, and writing and preaching still for executing the Laws against them, and ⟨p. 128⟩the prosecuted people flying from such a Clergy as ravening Wolves, And some censuring the innocent with the guilty, could all this have been done by a wise, holy, and peaceable Clergy, that served God in self-denial, and knew what it is to seek the good of Church and souls?
Such work as this, hath destroyed the Greeks, or Eastern Churches, set up Turkish Tyranny, by dividing Christians, weakning, and ruining the Emperors, making Religion a meer Image of lifeless formality, and Ceremony, and a powerless dying thing. Such a Clergie hath darkned, and lamentably brought low the Christian Churches in Moscovie, Armenia, Georgia, Mengrelia, Syria, Abassia, and extirpated them in Nubia, and brought them in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Spain, France, and most of Germany to what they are: Such a Clergie have brought Ireland from the laudable State ⟨p. 127⟩which it was in, in the days of Malachias, as Bernard described it, into the barbarous, briutish, ignorance and bloody inhumanity at which it is now arrived; and had the chief hand in the murder of two hundred thousand persons in the late Rebellious insurrection; such a Clergy had a chief hand in the civil wars in England in the reign of William Rufus, King Stephen, Hen. 3. King Iohn, &c. the subject of Pryns History of the Treasons of Prelates: And alas such a corrupt sort of Ministers keepeth up the division of the German Protestants, under the name of Lutherans and Calvinists, about Consubstantiation, Church-Images, and doctrines of Predestination not understood. And had the Low-Countries ever had the stirs between Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants, or England and Scotland ever had the miserable contentions, warres and cruelties between the former Episcopal parties, and the Laudians, or between them and the Presbyterians and Independents, and all the silencings, and woefull contentions and Schisms that have thence followed, if the vices of the Clergy had not been the cause. And had we continued in this case these twenty years last, silencing, reviling and prosecuting about two thousand conscionable Preachers, and writing and preaching still for executing the Lawes against them, and ⟨p. 128⟩the prosecuted people flying from such a Clergy as ravening Wolves, And some censuring the innocent with the guilty, could all this have been done by a wise, holy, and peaceable Clergy, that served God in selfdenyal, and knew what it is to seek the good of Church and souls?
