your admittance as a charm or spell, to keep quick spirits within the circle of combined faith; which otherwise perhaps, when hell brake loose, would have sought liberty. Your charter only (whereupon I beseech you for your own soul's health, to meditate for the time you tarry in this world) for the base whereon some grounded their bad conscience in proceeding with this plot, not only to the destruction of their bodies, but to the peril of their souls, without sound and true repentance, which by the merit of Christ's Passion will serve in quacunque hora peccator ingemuerit. For though Christ were joyful that he had not lost one of those whom his father gave him in charge, and came to save and not to destroy; yet your advice was to destroy them all: such was your burning charity!

Some man surprized with a question upon the sudden, might answer sharply and shrewdly at some time, I confess, without thinking or intending ill: but this man, Mr. Garnet, cannot be you, that have confessed clearly under your own hand, your suspicion and fear of some mischief purposed and intended in their hearts, by this quick question of nocents and innocents: and therefore quod dubitas ne feceris. It seems the heart of Catesby was a fertile soil for sprouting of stinking weeds hastily, into which the seed of your securing confidence was cast. For the Powder Plot, which in January was barely embryo, became formatus fatus in the March next following; it quickened the next December, when the pioneers began to dig in the thick wall: Catesby not long after imparted his conceit secretly to you of the great likelihood he foresaw of a lucky time of birth; and thereupon was Guy Fawkes sent over by your knowledge and encouragement, to deal with sir William Stanley, about the drawing down of forces somewhat nearer to the sea side for speedy transport, which if need were, might carry torches at the solemnity. But what is your answer to this employment of Guy Fawkes? Forsooth, that your purpose was only to commend him as a soldier, but not as a conspirator. O unlucky treason, that comes to be excused by so poor an advocate! when Fawkes himself meant nothing less than to be a soldier, having so strange a part to play soon after in the Powder Train, but used this retreat as a colour to disguise the secret purpose that did only tarry time, and to eschew those watchful eyes, that nearer hand would have observed both his inlets and his outlets in that place more narrowly. The point is clear, the confessions are direct, the purpose is palpable. All the lines of your level are drawn to the center of the Powder-mine. All letters are either drawn or interlined manu scorpionis, to use the word of Hierome; and yet under pain of censure we must believe, That all this while you were in charity, because all this while (which it grieves me to remember) you were not afraid to communicate.

But now to weigh your Answers that concern the Powder-Plot itself; which is paramount in respect of the longitude and latitude to all that

have been or ever shall be: y urself cannot deny, Mr. Garnet, that Greenwell's overture, as you say in contession, como after the notice which you took of Catesby's question about innocents, was but a fruit of your own doctrine, an effect of your own instruction, and a conclusion drawn wholly out of your own propositions and principles. Now when we press to know what reason drew you to the concealment of a project so pernicious both to prince and state, without revealing it either to the king himself, tanquam præcellenti, to use St. Peter's term, or to his ministers subordinate; you start to the shift of confession for a formal help, which comes too short in respect of Catesby's first discovery, which your own words aver plainly to have wrought with you. I will not argue in this place what course a confessor should take, or how far he ought to strain for the securing of a prince's life, that otherwise is sure to perish by the rage and ignorance invincible of a base villain, (whose life answers not in value the least hair of a prince's head) because time suffers not: but I am sure that for a matter of less weight than this, and a crime of less importance than the life both of prince and state; confession received a deep wound for a long time, more than a thousand years past, in the church of Constantinople. For God forbid that matters of such weight should hang by such feeble threads. But to this excuse of tenderness in the point of confession, I would answer by making a great doubt, Whether this course of conference were a confession or not; for against your bare words, which equivocation supports, I object some likelihood, That since you kneeled sometimes, and sometimes walked up and down; since matter of conspiracy were interlaced with matter of confession, not for ease of conscience as should appear, but for advice in execution; since Greenwell was absolved instantly, which excludes the shift of reference: and Greenwell should be found to lye to the holy Ghost in case this were a true confession : in promising, Mr. Garnet, as you say, to dissuade the project which he prosecuted even to the last point, as is evident, and after the powder camp brake up: I conclude that tho’ this discovery were by confession, yet it was no supersedeas to your former knowledge from Catesby your trusty friend; and if it were none, then it can be no protection for faith putrified. What need we seek light through cobweblawns, when the drift of your whole device in seeking to conclude from one, what you learned of another, and from all what you affected and abetted in your heart, doth evidently prove your counsels to have been carried along with such a temper of reservedness, as whensoever mischief should be brought to light, the world might rather wonder at your caution, than commend your fidelity.

By shaping such weak Answers to Demonstrations so manifest, you must either work by the ring of Gyges, in making your audacity and presumption invisible, or hold a very weak

conceit of our capacities, in supposing that they can be either dazzled or deluded by such poor sophistry. For though you pretend to have received a deep wound in conscience at the first revealing of the plot, to have lost your sleep with vexation of spirit, to have offered and prayed to God for his preventing grace, to have required Greenwell's help and furtherance in crossing and diverting the design; yet all this while you suffered the project to proceed, you helped and assisted their endeavours that. were labourers, you wrote earnest letters both to Baldwin and to Creswell for their furtherance of ordinary means; you gave order for a prayer to be said by Catholicks for their prosperous success; you kept measure with the two first dimensions of fryar Bacon's brazen-head; Time is, Time was, till, thanks be to God, the third Time was past: you had ever an ear open to listen for the crack, and were in the same agony for the Powder-Plot, that Charles 5 was for the pope's duress, giving order in all his dominions, that prayers should be made for his release, when in the mean time he kept and held him in his own hand prisoner. The least word of your mouth, or labour of your pen, might have secured both prince and state, while you pretend to have broken both your sleeps and your brains, and that with a greater advantage to the cause which you would advance, than can ever grow by combustion and conspiracy. But your tenderness herein was suitable with another dutiful desire of yours to dissuade Catesby from the plot, at his coming into Warwickshire, who never meant to come thither, but as to the rendezvous, when the parliament had been blown up, and the storm had been blown over. It may be that your mind was perplexed and disquieted upon the meditation of strange events; for so was the mind of Cain, Achitophel, and Judas that betrayed his master; the reason is very pregnant in the word of God itself, That cum sit timida nequitia dat testimonium condemnationis, since wickedness is cowardly and tinorous, it gives evidence of condemnation against itself; et semper præsumit sava perturbata conscientia: but Satan prevailing his angels execute.

I will now conclude this address to you, Mr. Garnet, by observing some special points how strangely and preposterously the devil in his last Project of Powder hath altered his old properties. For the curse that God laid upon the Serpent after the first transgression, was at gradiretur super pectus suum, to creep upon his breast but now we find him mounted upon the wings of an espraie to the highest region of the air, and among the fire-works. The other part of his curse was, that he should eat Pulverem; that is, dust or powder: but now since Sodom was destroyed by sulphur, and the wife of Lot transmuted into salt, the proper materials of that mean by which Satan wrought in this hot fire; it appears that the Serpent from eating powder, which was a plain device, fell, for a worse purpose, to snuff gunpowder. Then the serpent did insidiari calcaneo, now capiti,

from which the body draweth both sense and influence. Then he began to Eve, with a modest question, Cur præcepit Deus? Why hath God commanded? now with a resolution, præcepit Deus, God hath commanded. His words in those carried a flourish of great comfort, Nequaquam moriemini, but now terror, Moriemini: for a great advantage destroy them all. The devil at that time did only nibble about the text of holy writ, tanquam mus ponticus, as Tertullian terms Marcion: but now he draws the grounds of equivocation concerning princes lives out of the very scripture and by scholastical authority. Satan tempted Christ with a fair offer, dandi omnia, of giving all upon the top of the pinnacle: but now he sets upon the great lieutenant of God's authority and dignity, with an auferam tibi omnia, both life and crown, ex penetralibus ubi Christus non est, as we are taught by his evangelist. The dragon's ambition extended no further than the sweeping away with his tail of the third part of the stars in the firmament: but now the plot of him and his disciples, was to sweep away the sun, the moon and the stars, both out of Star-Chamber and parliament, that no light be given in this kingdom to the best labourers. In the time of Saul, the devil was so modest, as to suspend his illusions and oracles till the visions of the prophets began to cease: but now though we have both Moses and the prophets et firmiorem sermonem propheticum, yet he rustles among the robes, et inaudita fundit oracula. In the beginning of the Christian church, the very name of Christ was sufficient to make Satan pack, and to quit the possession of tormented men: but he hath learned a more cunning trick of late, under the banner of Christ to fight against the lieutenants of his imperial majesty. In one point I find no change; that is, in labouring and working by all means to draw men from their trust in God's direction, to a tickle kind of confidence in themselves, and their own weak knowledge of good and ill. And as that error was the cause of Adam's exile from Paradise which was hortus conclusus; so had such another almost divided us and our heirs both from our lives and estites: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.

I have stood the longer on this point, to let you know how idly, and yet bow wilfully you strive both against the providence of God, and the justice of the land, Quæ tuo te jugulavit gladio: The more you labour to get out of the wood, having once lost the right way, the further you creep in. For the wisdom of the world is folly before God: and unpossible it is, that those counsels or proceedings should either have good proof in this world, or reward in the next, that are embrued with blood, and pursued with tyranny. If then there be no other way to heaven than by the destruction of God's anointed and their heirs, I will conclude with you, Mr. Garnet, as Constantius did with Ascesius, Erigito tibi scatam, et in cælum solus ascendito; Set up a ladder for yourself, and climb up to heaven alone; for loyal minds will

After this, Mr. Attorney opened, how Francis Treshani, a delinquent Romanist, even in articulo mortis (a fearful thing) took it upon his salvation, That he had not seen Garnet in 16 years before, when Garnet himself had confessed he had seen him often within that time; and likewise, that Garnet knew not of the Spanish Invasion, which Garnet himself confessed also, and which two things Tresham himself had formerly confessed to the lords; yet for a Recantation of these two things upon his death-bed, he commanded Vavasor, his man, whom I think (said Mr. Attorney) deeply guilty in this Treason, to write a letter to the earl of Salisbury. And to shew this his desperate Recantation, Mr. Tresham's Letter was offered to be read.

But before the reading thereof, my lord of Salisbury said, because there was, matter incident to him, and to that which should be read, he thought fit to say something. To which purpose he said his desire was, truly to lay open what cause there was for any faith to be given to these men's protestations; when they, to colour their own impieties, and to slander the king's justice, would go about to excuse all Jesuits, how foul soever, out of an opinion that it is meritorious so to do, at such time as they had no hope of themselves. Such is it to be doubted, that sir Everard Digby's protestations might be at the bar, who sought to clear all Jesuits of those practices which they themselves have now confessed ex ore proprio. That such was also Tresham's labour, who being visited with sickness, and his wife in charity suffered to come to him, this Letter was hatched by them, and signed by himself some few hours before his death, wherein he taketh that upon his salvation, which shall now by Garnet be disproved.

After all this, Garnet being demanded if these Examinations were true, he affirmed they were. And then were his own Examinations likewise read to the same effect: wherein he both confessed the seeing of Mr. Treshatn, and his sending into Spain about an invasion.

Here my lord of Salisbury concluded, That that which was said of Mr. Tresham, and others, was not done against charity to the dead, but upon inevitable necessity, to avoid all their slanderous reports and practices; for he said that even now there was current throughout the town, a report of a retractation under Bates's hand, of his accusation of Greenwell, which are strange and grievous practices to think upon. But this day shall witness to the world, that all is false, and yourself condemned not by any but yourself, your own confessions and actions. Alas! Mr. Garnet, why should we be troubled all this day with your poor man, were it not to make the cause appear as it deserveth? wherein God send you may be such an example, as you may be the last actor in this kind.

Hereupon my Lord Admiral said to Garnet, that he had done more good this day in that pulpit which he stood in (for it was made like unto a pulpit wherein he stood) than he had done all the days of his life-time in any other pulpit.

Then was another Examination of Mrs. Anne Fawkes read, wherein she confessed that Mr. Garnet and she were not long since with Mr. Tresham, at his house in Northamptonshire, and stayed there.

Then my lord of Salisbury shewed and said, it was a lamentable thing: for within three hours after he had done this, he died: and asked Garnet what interpretation he made of this testamental protestation?

Then Garnet desired the Jury, that they would allow of, and believe those things he had denied and affirmed; and not to give credit unto those things whereof there was no direct proof against him, nor to condemn him by circumstances or presumptions.