earth, commanded Peter to feed his sheep, and, as a servant, to administer to them; he gave them no authority to slaughter them, or to fleece them, or to use any tyranny towards them. Thou pretendest to sit in Peter's seat; have a care, I warn thee, that it be not Satan's chair, for it is very doubtful if the man Peter was ever at Rome, and it is for certain he never had any authority there, and was neither lord, master, or pope, but a servant to the servants of Jesus Christ, which title thou also ownest in words when in deeds thou art as proud as Lucifer, and wouldest set thy feet on the necks of kings and princes, and proudly trample on the people of God. Thou pretendest to the spirit, shew it by thy works; to infallibility, but thou hast failed in thy doctrine, and in thy practices. I hold with thee, that the spirit is to be the guide of the saints, and that the spirit is infallible, and can never be mistaken; but it is not to be confined to thee, and to thy cardinals; for, I tell thee, our pope, George Fox, hath as much of the spirit as thou hast, and it is as infallible; and therefore thou oughtest not to ingross it to thyself, since it is communicated to all the children of God, and to all the saints that observe and hearken to the light within. But thou hast done wickedly; thou and all thy predecessors, for several hundreds of years, have been building a very Babel of confusion; thou hast made religion the devil's stalking-horse, to drive souls into his snares; thou hast set up the calves at Dan, and in the mount; thou hast polluted religion with idolatry, and made of it a mere piece of art, policy, and legerdemain; I tell thee plainly, thou hast set up a pompous outward religion, only full of gaudy outsides, without any truth or sincerity, and without the spirit, the light, or the life of God. Look, therefore, I advise thee, as a friend and brother, to the light within thee, which shineth in thy darkness, that will teach thee better things; thou canst not but see and know the vanity of thy religion, which thy sons and thy daughters follow; and thou thyself laughest at the ignorance and folly of most of thy adherents and followers, who zealously follow thy dictates, without sight or knowledge. Thou actest against thy own conscience, and against knowledge, and against light, which is the sin against the Holy Spirit; and for this thou shalt be condemned, unless thou timely repent thee of, and reform thy errors. It is to maintain thy pride, thy lust, and thy covetuousness, that thou strivest to kick against the pricks, and to establish thy abominations in the sight of the Israel of God; but the day will come, and is even at hand, that thou and thy Ishmaelites, which are become the sons of the bond-woman of sin, shall be cast out into utter perdition. Thou and thy gor-bellied cardinals, that live like princes, and fatten themselves up in their abominable lusts, against the day of slaughter, are very unlike the apostles, and disciples of Christ, who taught and preached the word with pains, care, and travel, in meekness and poverty, from the true light and spirit shining within their souls; and, were the primitive Christians on earth again, to see the shop of confusion, thou and thy hierarchy have made out of their simple spun thread, they would not be able to know or believe this to be any part of the religion they taught or begun, with so great labour, travel, pains, and martyrdom. Thus hast thou made all their labours of little or no effect; and still takest care to keep poor souls in the snares of sin, and in the bonds of ignorance. I tell thee plainly, thy conscience does witness against thee, and thou dost see these truths; but it is thy pride that makes thee, tyrant-like, to exercise lordship and dominion over others, and to maintain this lordship and tyranny; thou art fain to exercise cunning arts and policies of the carnal man, and even to fly to the subtleties of the serpent, and the wicked one, leaving no stone unturned to maintain thy vanity, and to fulfil thy lusts. Thou knowest well enough there is no purgatory, such as thou hast invented to affright and delude poor ignorant people out of their money; but the execrable gain, which thou makest by indulgencies, will not let thee reform that wicked and abominable error. Thou also knowest the vanity of praying to saints, and to carved idols, express against the word of God. not. Yet, because of the gain and reputation these bring to thee, and the means to delude the ignorant, by false miracles, and pretended reliques, thou still keepest it on foot with all thy ridiculous shews, processions, jubilees, holy water, exorcisms, altars, copes, mitres, crosiers, surplices, and other trinkets, invented by the devil and his instrument, the vain mind of subtle man, to draw the eyes and ears, but not the hearts of the calvish multitude, who bleat after these things, and understand them Thou knowest the unnaturalness and impossibility of thy breaden God's real presence, and yet, for the great respect it begets to thee and thy priests, with the rabble of monks, friars, nuns, hermits, and such like, thou still most stifly, against religion, sense, and reason, maintainest that idle opinion. Think therefore, before it be too late, of repentance and reformation; do the work thoroughly. The light hath formerly shined, with some glimmering, in the times of the Albigenses in France, and of Wickliff in England, and of Jerom and Husse in Prague, and afterwards of Luther in Germany; they caused some reformation from the grossest of thy superstition, and filthiness of idolatry; but yet too much of the dregs remains, and the carnal-minded man yet retains much of thy pride, vanity, pomp, and shew in their outward wor ship; and much of thy ambitious lordship and dominion; but we, the simple and harmless sheep of God's fold, called by the people, in scorn, quakers and shakers, from the strong actuating of the spirit within, have reformed ourselves to the pattern of the apostles and primitive teachers and preachers, and, being filled with the spirit, speak from the light thereof. And from this light I plainly write to thee, being stirred up to warn thee of the wrath to come, and to tell thee, that, unless thou makest a thorough reformation, according to our holy pattern, and come into the community of the saints on earth, thou shalt never have communion with those in heaven. I am to denounce judgment against thee, and thou shalt be overthrown, and thou shalt be scourged for thy abominable practices against the people of England, in the plottings, underminings, murthers, and wicked contrivances of thy ban-dogs, that call themselves Jesuits, but are Judasses, that betray kingdoms, and worry the people. Thy time is but short, and thy reign of a few days; for either the King of France, if ever he gets the monarchy of the west, will unnest thee, and remove thy see to Paris, and have a pope of his own, or else God will let loose the rage of the Turk against thee, and suffer him to plant his half-moons in Rome as well as in Jerusalem, for a scourge and vengeance of all the filthiness and abominations acted in that place. Look to it, I give thee this friendly warning, take it to heart, for I tell it thee in plainness and sincerity, and from the light which shiaeth in Thy Friend in the Love, and in the Truth, month, in the year 1679. E. B. Faculties granted at Rome, 1678, to John Locet, Englishman and Priest for England and Scotland, and for all the King's Dominions, excepting Ireland. 1. Power to absolve from heresy and apostasy, all both ecclesiasticks and laicks. 2. To absolve in all cases of the Bulla canœ. 3. Power of dispensing marriages within the third and fourth degrees of consanguinity and affinity, and to declare them lawful, and such issue legitimate. 4. Power of administering all the sacraments. 5. Power of restoring the just right of asking being lost. 6. Power of celebrating mass in all decent places above or under ground, on portable altars twice a day, if necessary, and if it cannot be otherwise celebrated for fear of hereticks. 7. Of laying up of holy things in secret, without lights, if there be danger. 8. Power of reciting the rosary, or other prayers, if they cannot have a breviary, or other office. 9. Power of keeping and reading any prohibited books, besides those contained in the Bulla cana, besides those of Charles Moline, Nicholas Machiavel, and books of judicial astrology. As also of giving licence to others to read the Scriptures faithfully translated into English, and to the laicks English books against hereticks, as need shall be. 10. Power of dispensing and commuting simple vows for a reasonable cause, that of chastity and of religion being excepted. 11. Power of blessing the sacraments, and other holy utensils necessary for the mass, where there is not unction. 12. Power of dispensing the eating of flesh, eggs, white meats, also in the time of Lent. 13. Power of granting a plenary indulgence for those converted from heresy, and to those who cannot be confessed in the article of death. 14. Power of granting, every Lord's-day, and on holy days, an indulgence for ten years to those that assist at those meetings, and a plenary indulgence to those that confess and receive the sacrament on cer. tain feast-days. 15. Power of having the benefit of these indulgences themselves., 16. Power of celebrating the mass ad requiem for any one on a port, able altar, for the freeing a soul out of purgatory. They were granted for seven years only, and reversible, without shewing cause, at the will of the pope. Signed, BARBARINE, Proctor. CHR. ABBAS BLANCUS, Secretary. THE PAPISTS BLOODY OATH OF SECRECY, AND LITANY OF INTERCESSION, FOR THE CARRYING ON OF THIS PRESENT PLOT. With the manner of taking the oath upon the entering into any grand conspiracy against the Protestants. As it was taken in the chapel belonging to Barmbow-hall, the residence of Sir Thomas Gascoigne, from William Rushton, a popish priest, by me Robert Bolron. TOGETHER, WITH SOME FURTHER INFORMATIONS, Relating to the Plot, and murther of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. Jovis 16mo Die Decembris, 1680. Ordered, that Mr. Robert Bolron have liberty from this house, to print and publish the said Oath of Secrecy and Litany. WILLIAM GOLDSBROUGH, London: Printed for Randal Taylor, near Stationers-Hall, 1680. Folio, containing twenty-four pages. AFTER the ancient piety, zeal, and strictness of life, exemplary in the primitive Christians, had in a measure put the dominion of this world, and the keys of the next, into the hands of the clergy, the care of gaining souls became, in a few centuries, obsoleted; the former illustrious times of virtue vanished, and a gloomy night of ignorance soon overspread the universe. The clergy (the authors of this unhappiness) finding their religion and greatness must be maintained by power and policy, and conscious to themselves, that their lives and doctrine held no good correspondence with the purity and poverty of their predecessors, took a course, because they had little left of their own, to trade with the piety of the ages past, and prop up their own ignorance and sloth by that means. To work they go they make gods of the deceased propa. gators of Christianity, and inshrine their rotten bones, or those of others, in cases of gold and silver. The next thing was to persuade or compel the people to adore them. In this erecting a new order of demi-gods, they imitated the pagans in their wickedness, but not in their virtue or valour, and clapped the festivals of these new pagods into the calendar, in the places of the old holidays of Saturn, Minerva, and Bacchus, &c. This project answered expectation, they grew greater, but not better; the miracles, pretendedly wrought at those shrines, and multitude of ceremonies, dazzled the vulgar, supported the reputation, and supplied the defect of the clergy; the glorious lives, wonders, and martyrdoms of the ancients were made into mantles to hide the ignorance, lust, and avarice of worthless impostors; and laws every where were made to restrain men from peeping into the ark of the church. And, to strip princes privily of their power, and to draw their subjects to other de pendencies, numerous orders and societies are conjured up (as though the laity had not groaned enough under the seculars) to erect a kingdom in every kingdom for the pope, and to supply him, in every corner, with a villain spiritual, to stab or poison what potentates he pleases. Things thus jogged on till the days of our grandfathers, when, in England, the Pope and his clergy were secluded, and it was made death for any Romish priest to enter the realm; yet, since, they have not only come hither, but, by help of factors and proselytes, acquired great estates in these kingdoms, and arrived to a height of no less confidence, than of ruling the rost, destroying us all, and introducing popery. This is as clear as noon-day, by many testimonies; among which, this oath following is a most notorious evidence, on which I shall make some remarks. The Oath of Secrecy, given by William Rushton to me Robert Bolron, the second of February, 1676-7. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. I I Robert Bolron, being in the presence of Almighty God, the blessed Mary ever virgin, the blessed Michael the archangel, the blessed St. John Baptist, the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, ❝ and all the saints in heaven, and to you my ghostly father do declare, and in my heart believe the pope, Christ's vicar-general, to be the true and only head of Christ's Church here on earth; and that, by virtue of the keys of binding and loosing, given his holiness by our Saviour Christ, he hath power to depose all heretical kings and princes, and 'cause them to be killed. Therefore, to the utmost of my power, will defend this doctrine, and his holiness's rights against all usurpers whatever, especially against the now pretended King of England, in 6 regard that he hath broke his vows with his holiness's agents beyond seas, and not performed his promises in bringing into England the holy Roman catholick religion. I do renounce and disown any alle. giance, as due to the said pretended King of England, or obedience to any of his inferior officers and magistrates; but do believe the protestant < doctrine to be heretical and damnable, and that all are damned, which do not forsake the same; and, to the best of my power, will |