110. The seditions and miscarriages of some few will be imputed to the innocent.
111. For the sake of such miscarriages, in some kingdoms, the sword will be drawn against them, and the blood of many will be shed.
112. Hereupon the misguided, passionate youth, being by the proud clergy deprived of the presence of that ministry that should moderate them, are likely enough to think rebellion and resisting of authority, a lawful means for their own preservation; and will plead the law of nature and necessity for their justification.
113. If any of the sober, wise, experienced pastors be left among them, that would restrain them from unlawful ways, and persuade them to patient suffering; they will be taken for complying betrayers of religion, and of the people's lives; that would have them tamely surrender their throats to butchery.
As in a parenthesis, I will give them some instances for this prognostic.
(1.) The great Lord Du Plessis (one of the most excellent noblemen that ever the earth bore, that is known to us by any history) being against the holding of an assembly of the French churches, against the king's prohibition, was rejected by the assembly, as complying with the courtiers (because they said, the king had before promised or granted them that assembly); but the refusing of his counsel cost the blood of many thousand protestants, and the loss of all their garrisons and powers, and that lowness of the protestant interest there that we see at this day.
(2.) The great divine, Peter De Moulin, was also against the Rochellers' proceedings against the king's prohibitions (and so were some chief protestant nobles); but he was rejected by his own party, who paid for it, by the blood of thousands, and their ruin.
(3.) I lately read of a king of France, that hearing that the protestants made verses and pasquels against the mass and processions of the papists, made a severe law to prohibit it. When they durst not break that law, their indiscreet zeal carried them to make certain ridiculous pictures of the mass priests and the processions; which moderate ministers would have dissuaded them from, but were accounted temporizers and lukewarm: by which the king being exasperated, shut up the protestant churches, took away their liberties, and it cost many thousand men their lives. And the question was, Whether God had commanded such jeers, and scorns, and pictures, to be made at so dear a rate, as the rooting out of the churches, and religion, and the people's lives?
(4.) Great Camero (one of the most judicious divines in the world) was in Montabon, when it stood out in arms against the king (accounted formerly impregnable). He was against their resistance, and persuaded them to submit. The people of his own religion reviled him as a traitor: one of the soldiers threatened to run him through. In a Scottish passion he unbuttoned his doublet, and cried, Feri, miser, Strike, varlet, or do thy worst; and in the heat, striving to get his own goods out of the city, fell into a fever and died. The city was taken, and the rest of the holds through the kingdom after it, to the great fall of all the protestants, and the loss of many thousand lives.
114. Where the devil can bring differences to extremities of violence, the issues are not hard to be conjecturally foreseen; but are such as my prognostics shall no further meddle with, than to foretell you, that both sides are preparing for the increase of their fury and extremities, and at last for repentance, or ruinous calamities, if they do as I have described.