WHEREIN AMONG OTHER THINGS,

The Two Great Splendid ROMAN MISSIONS into That Empire are placed in their true Light.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

An Epitome of the Dominican History of That Church. And an Account of the Practices and Conviction of MARIA of the Annunciation, the Famous NUN of Lisbon.

COMPOSED BY MICHAEL GEDDES,

D.D. Chancellor of the Cathedral Church of SARUM. To the Right Honourable AND Right Reverend Father in God, HENRY, Lord Bishop of LONDON; One of the Lords of His MAJESTY’s Privy Council.

May it please Your Lordship, THE following Book being the History of a Church that was never at any time under the Papal Yoke, and which when its Princes, instead of being Nursing Fathers, struggled hard of late years to have brought its Neck under it; never rested until it had both broke that insupportable Yoke asunder, and secured it self from ever having the like Attempts made again upon its Liberty: To whom can it so naturally go for Patronage, as to a Noble and Great Prelate, who had the Courage, when Popery was in the height of its last Triumph among us, in his own single Person to give it the first Publick Check that it met with (a kindness the Church and State of England will, I hope, never forget, I am sure they ought not), and who has furthermore, for near these Twenty Years, made it his chief Study, by creating a right understanding betwixt all Antipapal Churches, to unite them all into one Body; that so they may be the better able to withstand their common Enemy, who is still indefatigable in his Endeavours to bring all Churches yet into bondage.

Which Consideration, together with the great Obligation the Compiler of this History is under, to neglect no opportunity of owning to the World how much he has been beholden to your Lordship; as they have put me upon dedicating it to You, so I cannot but hope, that a Person of Your Lordship’s High Birth, and admirable Benignity and sweetness of Temper, will both pardon my Presumption in so doing, and pass by any weaknesses that may discover themselves in the Composure; and also accept it as a small Testimony of my being, Your Lordship’s Devoted, and most humble Servant, Michael Geddes.

THE PREFACE.

WHEN in the Preface to the Synod of Diamper, I promised, from Portuguese Relations, to give some Account of the Churches which were never within the Bounds of the Roman Empire; I intended to have begun with the Church of Mosul, or Babylon; but not having hitherto been able to procure those Informations of it which I had then some reason to expect; and having, during my nine Years Residence at Lisbon, furnished myself with all the Portuguese Books which do any ways treat of Ethiopia, I was persuaded by some Friends to alter my mind, and to begin with That Church, which of all others, till within these Two hundred years, had had the least Communication with the Roman; and which, notwithstanding all the pains its Princes and the Jesuits have been at of late, to bring her under the Bondage of the Papacy, has, tho with a terrible struggle, maintained her Primitive Liberty and Independency on that Ambitious and Usurping See; and does to this day, with greater Zeal than ever, assert them.

And that I may not seem Actum agere in publishing an History of Ethiopia after the Learned Mr. Ludolphus: I am to acquaint the Reader, That whereas the two great Splendid Roman Missions into that Empire, are the most remarkable things that have come to our knowledge in the History of that Church; so if some of my Learned Friends are not mistaken, Those Two Missions, with all their Steps and Circumstances, are here placed in a truer Light than they were ever seen in before.

And tho I will not promise that my Conjectures upon the dark and hidden things of those Missions are all true; as who indeed that makes many, and especially in matters which have been industriously disguised by men of Art, will venture to promise? yet this I can safely say, that I have not made one but what I thought I had some ground for; And as to matters of fact, I do assure the Reader, that in the matter of the Missions, I have set down few or none, but what I had out of Roman-Catholic Writers, and licensed by the Inquisition, and who for the most part were Jesuits.

There are Four things, whereof, if I am not mistaken, this History will abundantly satisfy the Impartial Reader.

The First is , That the Roman Missionaries, but especially the Jesuits, having neither the gift of Miracles, nor of Patience, to wait for the slow issues of the old method of converting Nations by preaching the Faith to them, and every where (where they can come at them) for dispatching it with Dragoons, or by some other violent and sanguinary way. The Jesuits being all to a man of the same opinion with their great Apostle of the Indies, Francis Xavier, whose Maxim, as Ravarette informs us, was:

Mientras no estiuveron debaxo del Mosquete, no avia de ver Christiano de provecho; that is to say, Missionaries without Muskets do never make Converts to any purpose: the truth of which Maxim, John Bolunte, a Missionary Jesuit, tells us, is confirmed by universal Experience. Ni en el Brasil (saith he) Peru, Mexico, Florida, Philipinas, y Maluca, ha havido Christianidad, ni Conversion, sinla sombra de vel Poder Secular; that is, Neither in the Brasils, Peru, Mexico, Florida, The Philipins, or Maluca, have any Conversions been made, without the help of the Secular Power; affirming in another place of his book, Que en nenguna parte se ha hecho fruto sin Armas, that is, That Missionaries have done nothing any where, without Military Arms.

The Second is, That there is no Tyranny in the World equal to that which the Roman Prelates (where they have the Secular Arm at their command) do continually exercise, and that without the common relentings of humanity, upon all sorts of people, that will not turn to their Religion.

The Third is, That Missionaries, when ever they have inspired a Prince, the main Body of whose Subjects are Anti-papists, with a bigotry to introduce their Religion into his Country, do commonly before they have done with him, either run him out of breath, or make him run his head against a wall.

The Fourth is, That Ambition did very early take possession of the Jesuits Order, that Society not being above ten years standing in the World, when it had engrossed a Mission to it self, which did promise both greater and cheaper Honours to its Ministers than ever any Mission had done before.

The clear discovery of which Truths, together with that of the true Spirit and Temper of Missionaries, and the Precipices they put Princes upon, who are so unhappy as to be their Converts, must make This History to be of some use to all Protestant Countries, which may therein, as in a glass see, what treatment they are to expect from popery, when ever the Supreme Power is in its hands.

I have as an Appendix, given the Reader an Epitome of the Dominican History of Ethiopia, writ by a Friar of that Order, and printed at Valencia, in the Year 1610, and not only licensed by the Inquisition, and all the other Regular and Secular Licensers of the Diocese, but recommended likewise by them to the World, as a true, useful, and edifying History: As also a Full Account of the Practises and Conviction of Maria of the Annunciation, the Famous Lisbon Nun; which I take to be two such Originals in their several kinds, as are not easily to be met with.