Marin Mersenne suspects Cardano, for his subtleties, Campanella, and Charron’s Book of Wisdom, with some other works, of having a taint of atheism. Among the rest is that pestilent book On the Three Impostors of the World, which, he says, you cannot read without horror; and The Cymbal of the World, in four dialogues, by Des Périers, printed at Paris in 1538, and so on.

And as every age has had such blasphemous spirits, so they have never lacked patrons, protectors, disciples and adherents. Never have there been so many atheists in Italy and Germany, says Colerus, as in this age. Mersenne makes the same complaint about France: fifty thousand in the city of Paris alone.

The emperor Frederick, as Matthew Paris records, although it ought not to be repeated—I use his own words—is reported to have said that three deceivers, Moses, Christ and Muhammad, misled all the people of their own times in order to rule the world.

Henry, Landgrave of Hesse, heard him say it: If the princes of the empire followed my teaching, I would establish a much better way of believing and living.

To these professed atheists we may well add that impious and carnal crowd of worldly-minded people, unrepentant sinners who go to hell in a stupor or a dream. Although they profess Christianity, they will turn pale at no guilt and feel no scruple about anything they do. Their consciences are seared, and their understanding is depraved: past all feeling, they have given themselves over to sensuality, greedily practising every kind of impurity, Ephesians 4:19.

They know that there is a God and a judgement day to come; yet despite that, as Hugh says, they eat and sleep as though they had escaped the day of judgement; they play and laugh as though they reigned with God in heaven. For all the sorrow awaiting them, they are as cheerful as if they had escaped every danger and were already in heaven:

—— All fears and inexorable fate He trampled underfoot, and greedy Acheron’s roar.

Those uneducated simpletons and ignorant people who neglect and despise the means of their salvation may march along with them; above all, those Herodian statesmen who accommodate themselves to the times, scheming Machiavellians and hypocrites who make a show of religion but laugh at it in their hearts. Pretended holiness is double wickedness: they are doubly at fault,

conforming themselves to this world, which Paul forbids, and behaving like the planet Mercury: good among the good, bad among the bad. In Rome they do as they see others do; Puritans among Puritans, Papists among Papists; people for every occasion, formalists, double-dealers, lukewarm Laodiceans.

All their attention goes into pleasing others; their god is their own advantage, their labour goes into satisfying their appetites, and their efforts serve their own ends. Whatever they profess, or seem to do in public, they say in their hearts with the fool, “There is no God.”

You there —— what do you think of Jupiter?

Their words are as soft as oil, but bitterness lies in their hearts. Like Alexander VI, they are such cunning dissemblers that they never say what they think. Many conceal themselves so well that you can scarcely detect it or find any just grounds for criticism;

they do not stir up factions or oppress people as most do; they offer no bribes, make no bargains in church offices, show none of the ambition or lust of some others, and are no drunkards: sober they see the sun rise, sober they see it set; they rise sober and go to bed sober,

plain-dealing, upright, honest people who wrong no one—or so the world regards them, at least. They are zealous in religion, charitable, meek, humble, peacemakers, observing every duty, devout, honest, well spoken of and universally loved. Yet he who knows better how to judge, who examines the heart, says that they are hypocrites: a heart full of deceit; struck, the vessels ring faultily and reveal a flaw. They are unsound within.

It is often the same with writers: more holiness in the little book than in its author, more holiness in the book than in the person who wrote it. So it is with these people. Many come to church with large Bibles—Cardano said he could not help laughing at them—and will occasionally devote themselves to Augustine, read Augustine and attend sermons,

yet they are open usurers, outright graspers: their whole way of life is Epicurean; their entire life is Epicurean indulgence and atheism. They spend the day at church and sleep with a courtesan at night.

They pose as Curii but live lives of Bacchanalian revelry.

They have Esau’s hands and Jacob’s voice. Yes, and many of those holy friars, those sanctified men, put on a cloak, says Jerome, and a hair shirt, but conceal a robber within. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing,

Foul within, attractive in their handsome skin,

Fair outside and utterly foul within: lust often hides beneath sombre clothing, and hideous ugliness is covered by a shabby garment; lust itself often lies beneath mourning dress, and dreadful vices beneath a poor coat.

But who can examine all these kinds of hypocrites or penetrate their hearts? If we may judge the tree by its fruit, there have never been so many as today. Show me a plain-dealing, truly honest man! Shame, integrity and every fear are absent.