54 The Popes of Rome had for many ages challeng'd and practis'd a power· to disthrone princes, to give away their realmes, to interdict whole kingdoms and provinces and devote them to slaughter, to loose subjects from all bonds and oathes of allegiance to their soveraignes, and to stirre up both princes and people to the mutual! murther of each other, which abominable courses had bene iustly cast upon them as reproach, they pretending to doe all these things for the propagation of the true worship and the advance of God's glorie. This reproach they retorted when some protestants upon the same pretence did maintaine that idolatrous princes were to be remoov'd, and such magistrates sett up as feared God, who were guardians of both tables, and bound to compel] all their people to the right religion. This confusion was there among the ~ons of darknesse at the first appearance of gospell light. About this time in the kingdom of Scotland, there was a wicked queene, daughter of a mother that came out of the bloody house of Guize,' and brought up in the ' Popish religion, which she zealously persever'cl in, as most suitable to her bloody lustful temper; she being guilty of murthers and adulteries, and hateful for them to the honestest of the people, was depos'd, imprison'd, and forc'd to flie for her life; but her sonne was receiv'd into the throne, and educated after the strictest way of the protestant religion according to Calvin's forme. Those who were chiefely active and inslrurnentall in the instice executed on this wicked qneene,. were the reformers without consent of parliament cloth oblige the subj ect's conscience, upon pain of eternal cJamnation." For refus ing to license the publ ication of the fir'st sermon , the good Archbishop Abbot was bani shed and confined to a bad and unhealthy country-house. For the latter, the preacher, though sentenced by the lords to be fined and imprisoned, was by the king pardoned, and promoted to a bi shoprick. After this, let it be de.. cideJ whether Charles reverenced episcopacy as a divine institution, o;· valued it as an e,ngine of state? and in what lig ht be cau~cd his subjects to view jt? r Mary Qu~en of Scots.
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