As well may witness their intolerable covetousness, strange forgeries, fopperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impostures, illusions, new doctrines, paradoxes, traditions, false miracles, which they have still forged, to enthral, circumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own estates. One while by Buls, Pardons, Indulgences, and their doctrine of good works, that they be meritorious, hope of heaven, by that means they have so fleece the commonalty, and spurred on this free superstitious horse, that he runs himself blind, and is an Asse to carry burdens.

They have so amplified Peters patrimony, that from a poor Bishop, he is become Rex Regum, Dominus dominantium, a Demi-god, as his Canonists make him (Felinus and the rest) above God himself. And for his wealth and temporalities, is not inferiour to many Kings; his Cardinals Princes companions;

and in every kingdome almost, Abbots, Priors, Monks, Friers, &c. and his Clergy have ingrossed a third part, half, in some places all into their hands. Three Princes Electors in Germany Bishops; besides Magdeburge, Spire, Saltsburge, Breme, Bamberge, &c.

In France, as Bodine lib. de repub. gives us to understand, their revenues are twelve millions, and three hundred thousand levres; and of twelve parts of the revenues in France, the Church possesseth seven. The Jesuits, a new sect begun in this age, have as Middendorpius and Pelargus reckon up three or foure hundred Colledges in Europe, and more revenues then many Princes. In France, as Arnoldus proves, in thirty years they have got bis centum librarum millia annua, 200000l. I say nothing of the rest of their orders.

We have had in England, as Armachanus demonstrates, above thirty thousand Friers at once, and as Speed collects out of Lelande and others, almost 600 religious houses, and neer two hundred thousand pound in revenues of the old rent belonging to them, besides Images of Gold, Silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of Abbies, worth a million of gold.

How many Towns in every kingdome hath superstition enriched? What a deal of mony by musty reliques, Images, Idolatry, have their Mass-Priests ingrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Lauretum in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days, Ubi omnia auro nitent, saith Erasmus, S. Thomas Shrine, &c. may witness. Delphos so renowned of old in Greece for Apollo’s oracle, Delos commune conciliabulum & emporium sola religione munitum; Dodona, whose fame and wealth were sustained by religion, were not so rich, so famous.

If they can get but a relique of some Saint, the Virgin Maries picture, idols or the like, that City is for ever made, it needs no other maintenance. Now if any of these their impostures, or jugling tricks be controverted, or called in question: If a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an heroical Luther, as Dithmarus cals him, dare touch the Monks bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uprore: Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him in pieces, to keep up their trades, Great is Diana of the Ephesians: With a mighty shout of two hours long they will roar and not be pacified.

Now for their authority, what by auricular confession, satisfaction, penance, Peters keys, thundrings, excommunications, &c. roaring buls, this high Priest of Rome, shaking his Gorgons head, hath so terrified the soule of many a silly man, insulted over majesty it self, and swaggered generally over all Europe for many ages, and still doth to some, holding them as yet in slavish subjection, as never tyrannizing Spaniards did by their poor Negroes, or Turks by their gally-slaves.

The Bishop of Rome (saith Stapleton, a parasite of his, de mag. Eccles. lib.2. cap.1.) hath done that without arms, which those Roman Emperours could never atchieve with forty legions of souldiers, deposed Kings, and crowned them again with his foot, made friends, and corrected at his pleasure, &c. ’Tis a wonder, saith Machiavel, Florentinæ hist. lib.1. what slavery King Henry the second endured for the death of Th. Becket, what things he was enjoyned by the Pope, and how he submitted himself to do that which in our times a private man would not endure, and all through superstition.

Henry the fourth, deposed of his Empire, stood bare-footed with his wife at the gates of Canossus. Fredericke the Emperour was troden on by Alexander the third. Another held Adrians stirrup, King John kissed the knees of Pandulphus the Popes Legat, &c.

What made so many thousand Christians travel from France, Brittain, &c. into the Holy land, spend such huge summs of mony, go a pilgrimage so familiarly to Jerusalem, to creep and couch, but slavish superstition? What makes them so freely venture their lives, to leave their native countries, to go seek martyrdome in the Indies, but superstition? to be assassinates, to meet death, murder Kings, but a false perswasion of merit, of canonical or blind obedience which they instill into them, and animate them by strange illusions, hope of being Martyrs and Saints? Such pretty feats can the Divel work by Priests, and so well for their own advantage can they play their parts.

And if it were not yet enough, by Priests and Politicians to delude mankind, and crucifie the souls of men, he hath more actors in his Tragœdy, more irons in the fire, another Sceane of Hereticks, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, Schismaticks, Impostors, false Prophets, blind guides,

that out of pride, singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in an uprore by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one Kingdome to another, commit Prince and subjects; brother against brother, father against son, to the ruine and destruction of a commonwealth, to the disturbance of peace, and to make a generall confusion of all estates.

How did those Arrians rage of old? How many did they circumvent? Those Pelagians, Manichees, &c. their names alone would make a just volume. How many silly souls have Impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite alienated from Christ! Lucians Alexander, Simon Magus, whose statue was to be seen and adored in Rome, saith Justine Martyr, Simoni deo sancto, &c. after his decease,

Apollonius Tianæus, Cynops, Eumo, who by counterfeiting some new ceremonies and Jugling tricks of that Dea Syria, by spitting fire, and the like, got an army together of forty thousand men, and did much harm:

with Eudo de stellis, of whom Nubrigensis speakes, lib.1.cap.19. that in King Stephens dayes imitated most of Christs miracles, fed I know not how many people in the wilderness, and built castles in the air, &c. to the seducing of multitudes of poor souls.

In Franconia 1476, a base illerate fellow took upon him to be a Prophet, and preach, John Beheim by name, a neatherd at Nicholhausen, he seduced 30000 persons, and was taken by the Commonalty to be a most holy man, come from heaven.

Tradesmen left their shops, women their distaves, servants ran from their masters, children from their parents, schollers left their tutors, all to hear him, some for novelty, some for zeal. He was burnt at last by the Bishop of Wartzburge, and so he and his heresie vanished together.

How many such Impostors, false Prophets, have lived in every Kings reign? what Chronicle will not afford such examples? that as so many Ignes fatui, have led men out of the way, terrified some, deluded others, that are apt to be carried about with the blast of every winde, a rude inconstant multitude, a silly company of poor souls, that follow all, and are cluttered together like so many pibbles in a tide.

What prodigious follies, madness, vexations, persecutions, absurdities, impossibilities, these impostors, heretickes, &c. have thrust upon the world, what strange effects, shall be shewed in the Symptomes.

Now the means by which, or advantages the divell and his infernall ministers take, so to delude and disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, superstitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, simplicity, Hope and Fear, those two battering Canons and principal Engines, with their objects, reward and punishment, Purgatory, Limbus Patrum, &c. which now more than ever tyrannize;