Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;
Ver. 12. Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into prison] For Herodias' sake, though under pretexts of fear of sedition, because of the great multitudes that followed and admired him, as Josephus hath it. This hath ever been an ordinary accusation cast upon the most innocent, to be seedsmen of sedition, and troublers of the state. Jeremiah was held and called a traitor, Elijah a troubler of Israel, Paul a pest, ευρηκαμεν τουτον τον λοιμον, Acts 24:5. Luther, tuba rebellionis, the trumpet of rebellion, &c. Invenies apud Tacitum frequentatas accusationes maiestatis, unicum crimen eorum qui crimine vacabant, saith Lipsius. There was some colour of right, yea, of piety, laid upon the French massacre, and by edicts, a fair cloak sought to cover the impious fraud, as if there had been some wicked conspiracy plotted by the Protestants against the king, the queen mother, the king's brethren, the king of Navarre, and the princes of the blood. For there was coin stamped in memory of the matter, in the forepart whereof (together with the king's picture) was this inscription, Virtus in rebellea Power in the rebellion, And on the other side, Pietas excitavit iustitiam. Loyalty stirs up justice. Not many years before this, Francis, king of France, when he would excuse to the princes of Germany (whose friendship he then sought after) that cruelty he had exercised against the Protestants, he gave out that he punished Anabaptists only, that bragged of enthusiasm, and cried down magistracy, stirring up the people to sedition as they had done not long before in Germany. (Scultet. Annul.) This foul aspersion cast upon true religion gave occasion to Calvin (then a young man of 25 years of age) to set forth that incomparable work, called his Institutions of Christian Religion, concerning which, Paulus Melissus long since sang,
" Praeter Apostolicas post Christi tempera chartas,
Huic peperere libro saecula nulla parem. "
Since Christ's and the apostles' time no such book hath been written.
He departed into Galilee] Succenturiatus prodit Ioanni, saith a learned interpreter. He therefore went into Galilee (which was under Herod's government) to be, as it were, a supply and successor to John, whom Herod had imprisoned. How well might the tyrant say of the Church, as those Persians did of the Athenians, βαλλομεν, ου πιπτουσι, τιτρωσκομεν, ου φοβεονται. "We overturn them, and yet they fall not; we wound them, and yet they fear not." (Stobaeus.) St Basil bade the persecuted Christians tell the tyrants with a bold and brave spirit, Εαν γαρ παλιν ισχυητε. παλιν ηττηθησεσθε. "If ye prevail again, yet surely ye shall be overcome again." (Enarr. in Isa 8:10) For there is neither power nor policy against the Lord. Charles V (than whom all Christendom had not a more prudent prince, nor the Church of Christ (almost) a sorer enemy), when he had in his hand Luther dead, and Melancthon and Pomeran, and certain other preachers of the gospel, alive, he not only determined not anything extremely against them, or violated their graves, but also entreating them gently, sent them away, not so much as once forbidding them to publish openly the doctrine that they professed. (Acts and Mon.) For it is the nature of Christ's Church, the more that persecutors spurn against it, the more it flourisheth and increaseth, as the palm tree spreadeth and springeth the more it is oppressed; as the bottle or bladder, that may be dipped, not drowned; as the oak, that taketh heart to grace from the maims and wounds given it, and sprouts the thicker; as fenugreek, a which the worse it is handled (saith Pliny) the better it proves. (Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus, per damna, per caedes ab ipso ducit opes animumque ferro. Horat.) This made Arrius Antoninus (a cruel persecutor in Asia) cry out to the Christians, who came by troops to his tribunal, and proclaimed themselves Christians (so offering themselves to death): O miseri, si libet perire, num vobis rupes aut testes desunt? (Tertul. ad Scapulam. Ω δειλοι, ει θελετε αποθνησκειν, κρημνους, η βροχους εχετε .) "O wretched men, if ye be so desirous to die, have you neither rocks nor halters wherewith to despatch yourselves?" Diocletian, after he had in vain done his utmost to blot out Christ's name from under heaven, and could not effect it (such was the constancy of the primitive Christians, that no sufferings could frighten or discourage them, but that they grew upon him daily, do what he could to the contrary), laid down the empire in great discontent, and betook himself (as Charles V also did) to a private course of life. (Bucholcer, Chronol.) As lambs breed in winter, and quails come with the wind, Numbers 11:31, so good preachers and people spring most in hard times. No fowl is more preyed upon hy hawks, kites, &c., than the pigeon, yet are there more doves than hawks or kites for all that, saith Optatus. μικρον ποιμνιον, Luke 12:32. So the sheep; and so the sheep of Christ: "A little little flock," he calleth it, but such as all the wolves on earth and devils in hell cannot possibly devour. The Christians of Calabria suffered great persecution, A.D. 1560; for being all thrust up in one house together, as in a sheepfold, the executioner cometh in, and among them taketh one, and blindfoldeth him with a muffler about his eyes, and so leadeth him forth into a larger place, where he commandeth him to kneel down; which being done he cutteth his throat, and so leaving him half dead, and taking his butcher's knife and muffler all of gore blood, cometh again to the rest, and so leading them one after another, he despatcheth them all, to the number of 88. (Acts and Mon.) All the elder went to death more cheerfully, the younger were more timorous. I tremble and shake (saith a Roman Catholic, out of whose letter to his lord this is transcribed) even to remember how the executioner held his bloody knife between his teeth, with the bloody muffler in his hand, and his arms all in gore blood up to the elbows, going to the fold, and taking every one of them one after another by the hand, and so despatching them all, no otherwise than doth a butcher kill his calves and sheep. Notwithstanding all which barbarous cruelty, the Waldenses or Protestants were so spread, not in France only, their chief seat, but in Germany also, many years before this, that they could travel from Collen to Milan in Italy, and every night lodge with hosts of their own profession. It is not yet a dozen years since Pope Urban VIII (that now sitteth), upon the surrender of Rochelle into the French king's hands, sent his breve to the king, exasperating him against the Protestants in France, and eagerly urging, yea, enforcing the destruction of all the heretics stabling in the French vineyard, as his inurbanity is pleased to express it. Reliquias omnes haereticorum in Gallica vinea stabulantium propediem profligatum iri. (Bp Hall's Answer to Pope Urban.) But "what shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou foul tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper,"Psalms 120:3,4, which burn vehemently and smell sweetly. God shall shortly put into the hearts of the kings of the earth (and this king among the rest of the ten) to hate the whore, to eat her flesh, and to burn her with fire, Revelation 17:16. (Babylon altera adhuc stat, cito itidem casura, si essetis viri. Petrar.) There are not many ages past since one of his predecessors broke open the gates of Rome, mouldered the wall, dispersed the citizens, and condemned the pope to a dark dungeon, lading him with bitter scoffs and curses. There are not many years past since the realm of France was ready, upon the pope's refusal to re-bless King Henry IV, upon conversion to them, to withdraw utterly from the obedience of his see, and to erect a new patriarch over all the French Church. (Philip le Beausandys.) The then Archbishop of Bruges was ready to accept it: and but that the pope (in fear thereof) did hasten his benediction, it had been effected, to his utter disgrace and decay. (Powell on Toleration.) Before he would do it, he lashed the king in the person of his ambassador, after the singing of every verse of miserere, until the whole Psalm was sung out. Sed exorto Evangelii iubare, sagaciores, ut spero, principes, ad nutum huius Orbilii non solvent subligacula, saith a great divine of ours (Dean Prideaux). King Henry VIII and the French king (some half a year before their deaths) were at a point to have changed the mass in both their realms into a communion: also to have utterly extirpated the Bishop of Rome, &c. (Acts and Mon., Ex testimon. Cranmeri.) Yea, they were so thoroughly resolved in that behalf, that they meant also to exhort the emperor to do the like, or to break off from him. The same emperor, to be revenged upon Pope Clement, his enemy, abolished the pope's authority throughout all Spain, his native kingdom, declaring thereby (the Spaniards themselves, for example) that ecclesiastical discipline may be conserved without the papal authority. (A.D. 1526, Scultet. Annal.) The Eastern Churches have long since separated; the other four patriarchs dividing themselves from the Bishop of Rome, and at their parting using these or the like words: Thy greatness we know, thy covetousness we cannot satisfy, thy encroaching we can no longer abide; live to thyself. (Odi fastum illius ecclesiae. Basil.) Neither are the Western much behind, especially since all was changed in that Church, -manners, doctrine, and the very rule of faith, in the Trent Council. Then (according to some expositors) did "the second angel pour out his vial upon the sea" (upon that conflux of all sorts at Trent), "and it became as the blood of a dead man" (those deadly decrees are written with the blood of heretics), "and every living soul died in that sea," as once the fish of Egypt. (Field of the Church, Rev 16:3) For none that worship the beast "have their names written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," Revelation 13:8. Slain, I say, as in his Father's decree and promise, as in the sacrifices of the law and faith of his people; so in his members and martyrs, beheaded, as John Baptist, or otherwise butchered for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God. But the blood of the martyrs was the feeding of the Church. (Sanguis martyrum, semen ecclesice. Tert. Testes veritatis per Illyricum.) God was never left without witnesses, as is seen in our catalogues; but although John was cast into prison, yea, beheaded in the prison, as if God had known nothing of him (quoth that martyr), yet there never wanted a Jesus to go into Galilee: and that guilty Edomite Herod was sensible of it, Matthew 14:2, when he said to his servants, "This is John Baptist, he is risen from the dead." In like sort the Romish Edomite, after he had done to death Christ's two more ancient witnesses, that (Baptist-like) came in the spirit and power of Elias, to confute and confound their Baal-worships, yet to his great grief and regret he hath seen them revive and stand upon their feet again, Revelation 11:10, in that heroic Wycliffe, who is said to have written more than two hundred volumes against him, in that goose of Bohemia, that swan of Saxony (those three famous angels, that flew in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth), together with those other noble reformers in all Christian Churches. (Pareus in Revelation 14:6. Hus in that language signifieth a "goose," Luther a "swan," and John Huss at his death prophesied it.) By whom, ever since the pope was declared to be antichrist, his authority (saith Bellarmine) hath not only not increased, but daily more and more decreased. The fourth beast hath lost a head, as Cusanus the cardinal hath prophesied, A.D. 1464, and after him Trithemius the abbot, A.D. 1508. A sect of religion, saith he, shall arise once within this thirteen years, to the great destruction of the old religions. It is to be feared that the fourth beast will lose one of her heads. (Secta religionis consurget, magna veterum destructio religionum; timendum ne caput unum amittat bestia quarta. Lib. de Intelligentiis Coelestib. Bucholcer, Chron.) This he writeth in his book concerning angels and spirits: what kind of spirit it was (black or white) that dictated unto him this prophecy, which fell out accordingly, and was fulfilled in Martin Luther, I cannot tell. But the godly learned suspect it was from that evil spirit, who is said to have sung before,
" Roma, tibi subito motibus ibit amor. "
As the Emperor Frederick is reported also to have foretold in this ditty, -
" Roma diu titubans, variis erroribus acta,
Corruet; et mundi desinet esse caput. "
a A leguminous plant (Trigonella Fœnum Græcum) cultivated for its seeds, which are used by farriers. ŒD