“But we complain of ancient things”; these are old; “these things happened before.” In our own time we have a new scene of superstitious impostors and heretics, a new company of actors, of antichrists, and that great Antichrist himself: a string of popes who overwhelm everything before them with their greatness and authority.

From the time they proclaimed themselves universal bishops, to establish their own kingdom, sovereignty and grandeur and to enrich themselves, they introduced a host of human traditions: purgatory, “the limbo of the Fathers and of infants,” and all that subterranean geography; the Mass, adoration of saints, alms, fasts, papal bulls, indulgences, religious orders, friars, images, shrines, musty relics, excommunications, confessions, acts of satisfaction, blind obedience, vows, pilgrimages and religious journeys.

They added many similar elaborate trifles, intricate subtleties, gross errors and obscure questions to defend and gloss over them, until the light of the Gospel was entirely eclipsed: darkness everywhere, Scripture concealed, legends introduced, religion banished, hypocritical superstition exalted, and the Church itself obscured and persecuted.

Christ and his members were crucified more, says Benzo, by a few necromantic, atheistic popes than ever by Julian the Apostate, Porphyry the Platonist, Celsus the physician or Libanius the sophist; by those pagan emperors, Huns, Goths and Vandals.

Let the Magdeburg historians, Chemnitz, Osiander, Bale, Mornay, Foxe, Ussher and many others relate what each of them did, by what means, at what times and “with what assistance” superstition reached this height, traditions multiplied and Antichrist himself attained his position.

Meanwhile, anyone who sees their profane rites and foolish customs, so superstitiously kept and strictly observed; their multitude of saints and images, that rabble of Roman deities assigned to trades, professions, diseases, people, offices, countries and places—St George for England, St Denis for France, Patrick for Ireland, Andrew for Scotland, James for Spain, and so on;

Gregory for students, Luke for painters, Cosmas and Damian for philosophers, Crispin for shoemakers, Catherine for spinners, and so on; Anthony for pigs, Gallus for geese, Wenceslaus for sheep, Pelagius for oxen; Sebastian for plague, Valentine for epilepsy, Apollonia for toothache, Petronella for fevers; and the Virgin Mary for sea and land, for all people and offices;

anyone who observes these things—their shrines, images, offerings, hanging ornaments, acts of adoration and pilgrimages to them; their creeping to crosses; the rich gowns of Our Lady of Loreto, her votive gifts, the expense lavished on images and the number of petitioners; St Nicholas Burge in France, our former shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, and those relics at Rome, Jerusalem, Genoa, Lyon, Prato and St Denis;

and how many thousands come each year to make offerings, at such expense, trouble, anxiety and superstition—for forty separate Masses are said daily in some of their churches, and they rise at every hour of the night for Mass and come barefoot; how they exhaust themselves, their time, possessions, lives and fortunes in such ridiculous observances; their tales and inventions, false miracles, buying and selling of pardons, and indulgences for forty thousand years to come;

their processions on appointed days, their strict fasts, monks, anchorites, mendicant friars, Franciscans, Carthusians and the rest; their vigils and fasts, their ceremonies at Christmas, Shrovetide, Candlemas, Palm Sunday, St Blaise’s, St Martin’s and St Nicholas’s days; their adorations and exorcisms—will think that all those Greek, pagan and Muslim superstitions, gods, idols and ceremonies have passed in a debased form into Christianity, with only the name, time, place and outward appearance changed.

By preferring traditions to Scripture, those evangelical counsels—poverty, obedience, vows, alms, fasting and works beyond strict obligation—to God’s commandments, putting their own ordinances in place of his precepts, and keeping people in ignorance and blindness,

they have, through their cunning manoeuvres, strict discipline and servile upbringing, reduced ordinary people to such a state that, on pain of damnation, they dare not break the slightest ceremony, tradition or decree. They consider it a greater sin to eat a morsel of meat in Lent than to kill a person. Their consciences are so terrified that they are ready to despair if a minor ceremony is omitted.

They will accuse their own father, mother, brother, sister and closest and dearest friends of heresy if they do not act as they do. They will be foremost among their executioners, the first to help bring a bundle of firewood to burn them.

Whatever fine or penance is imposed, they dare do nothing but obey: roll with St Francis in the mud among pigs if ordered, wear wool next to the skin, whip themselves, build hospitals and abbeys, go to the East or West Indies, kill a king or run onto a sword’s point. They do everything without a murmur or hesitation, and believe everything.

As little children believe that every bronze statue Lives and is human, so these people think every fiction True, and believe that bronze statues have a heart.

As children think their dolls are living things, So they believe the bronze images they see.

And while the less educated are swept headlong by blind zeal, cheated and tormented by their superstitions, their own over-credulous simplicity and ignorance, their Epicurean popes and hypocritical cardinals laugh secretly and make merry in their rooms with their prostitutes. They indulge their appetites and pamper themselves.