For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.
Ver. 6. For they have shed] As Minerius that monster, the cruel Duke of Alva, bloody Bonner, the Guises, and other of the pope's champions. Duke d'Alva, boasted of it, that he had put 36,000 Protestants to death; but they were rescued by the goodness of God and by the prowess of Queen Elizabeth, and now they are got from under the altar, as Revelation 16:7. (Acts and Mon.; Camden.) a
Thou hast given them blood to drink] As Tomyris dealt by Cyrus, the Parthians by Crassus, the Romans by those Jews that cried out, "His blood be upon us," &c., as our laws do by the priests and Jesuits, and those that receive them, proceeding against such as traitors to the state. The putting out of the French king's eyes, who promised before with his eyes to see one of God's true servants burned; the death of Charles IX of France, author of the Parisian massacre, by exceeding bleeding at sundry parts of his body; who seeth not to be the just hand of God upon them? This Charles beholding the bloody bodies of the butchered Protestants, in that execrable massacre, and feeding his eye upon that woeful spectacle, breathed out this bloody speech, Quam bonus est odor hostis mortui! How sweet is the smell of a slain enemy! and shortly after breathed out his accursed soul, Inter horribilium blasphemiarum diras, saith a historian, tantam sanguinis vim proieciens, &c., after that Beza had forewarned him (but in vain) by that verse,
" Tu veto Herodes sanguinolente time. "
So Julian, Attila, Felix of Wurtemburg, Henry III of France, stabbed in the same chamber wherein he, then being Duke of Anjou, had contrived the French massacre. So let thine enemies perish, O Lord.
" Talia quisque luat, qualia quisque facit! "
"Let everyone be paid according to his deeds."
a See the Mirror or Looking Glass both for Saints and Sinners, set forth by my most loving and highly honoured friend, Mr Sam. Clarke, pastor and preacher of the word at Bennett Fink, London; unto whom not only I give thanks for his help in this publication, but also all the Churches that shall get good thereby.