For the common people are like a flock of sheep, an uncultivated, illiterate mob, often lacking common sense: a mere beast, “a beast with many heads,” that will go wherever it is led. Lead a ram by the horns through a gap and all the rest will follow, “not by the way one ought to go, but by the way people do go.” They will do as they see others do, and as their ruler wishes: whatever his religion, they are on his side.

Now they support those idolaters Maxentius and Licinius; then Constantine, a Christian. “May those who deny Christ perish miserably!” was shouted ten times, over the course of two hours; “Those who do not worship Christ are the emperor’s enemies!” was shouted thirty times. Before long they are idolaters again under that apostate Julian; all Arians under Constantius; good Catholics again under Jovian.

“And there is little difference between the judgment of adults and children in this matter, especially that of old people and women,” as Cardano argues, “when they are driven about by fear and superstition, and by other people’s folly and dishonesty.” So I may say that their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and itself a form of madness.

It is the cause of its punishment, and itself its punishment.

Their own fear, folly, stupidity and deplorable lethargy give the others their opportunity and bring these miseries down upon their own heads. For in all these religions and superstitions, among our idolaters, you will always find that those first affected are simple, uncultivated, ignorant people: old people naturally prone to superstition, weak women, or poor, uneducated, illiterate persons, readily influenced and tricked in this way;

ready to believe anything without examination or proper consideration—for they take religion on trust, as they buy goods on credit at the cloth merchant’s. The best means of first introducing it, or maintaining it once introduced, is to keep them continually ignorant: for “Ignorance is the mother of devotion,” as the whole world knows and these times can amply testify.

This has been the practice of the Devil and his infernal ministers in every age: not, like our Saviour, to confound the world’s wisdom through a few simple fishermen and save tax collectors and sinners, but to exploit their ignorance and convert them and their companions. To achieve their purposes more effectively, they begin, as I say, with poor, stupid, illiterate people.

So Muhammad did when he published his Quran, a work, says Breydenbach, “full of nonsense, barbarous language and confusion, without rhyme, reason or sound composition, first published among a company of uncouth peasants, swine-tenders, without discernment, judgment, skill or understanding; and it is still maintained in the same way.”

For it is part of their policy to allow no one to comment on it, or dare to dispute or question any part of it, even to this day. However absurd, incredible, ridiculous or fabulous it may be, it must be believed without question. On pain of death, no one must dare contradict it: “God and the emperor,” and so on.

What else do our Papists do but put forward and spread all their new ceremonies and traditions by keeping the people ignorant? They conceal Scripture, read it in Latin and only to a few, meanwhile feeding the servile people with tales from saints’ legends and similar fabulous stories.

Whom do they begin with, or more readily ensnare, than fallen-away ladies, a few tradesmen, superstitious old people, illiterate persons, weak women, and dissatisfied, uncultivated, simple fellows? All our schismatics and heretics do the same. The heretics Marcus and Valentinus, in Irenaeus, first led astray I do not know how many women and made them believe they were prophets. Friar Cornelius of Dort led a company of simple women astray.

What are all our Anabaptists, Brownists, Barrowists and Familists but a company of uncultivated, illiterate, capricious, low fellows? What are most of our Papists but stupid, ignorant, blind horses? How could they be otherwise, when they are brought up and continually kept in darkness?

“If their pastors,” says Lavater, “had done their duty and instructed their flocks as they ought in the principles of Christian religion, or had not forbidden them to read Scripture, they would not have been as they are.” But misled throughout their lives by superstition, and carried about blindfolded like hooded hawks, how can they turn out as anything but blind fools and superstitious asses? What else should we expect from them?

Nor is it enough to keep them blind and in Cimmerian darkness. Like a schoolmaster making his boys attend to their books, sometimes through hopeful expectations, promises and encouragement, but chiefly through fear, strict discipline, severity, threats and punishment, they flatter and coax their simple listeners and so bring them into a fool’s paradise.

“You will be king, they say, if you act rightly”: do well and you shall be crowned. But chiefly, through threats, terrors and alarms, they tyrannize over and frighten people’s distressed souls, knowing that fear alone is the sole means of keeping them obedient. According to that half-line of Petronius, “Fear first created gods in the world”: fear of divine and supreme powers keeps people obedient and makes them do their duty. They play upon their consciences.

This was practised long ago by the priests in Egypt: when there was an eclipse, they made the people believe God was angry and great miseries were coming. They seize every opportunity offered by natural causes to deceive people’s senses: terrifying stories from purgatory, invented apparitions, earthquakes in Japan or China, dreadful examples of devils, possessions, demonic harassment, false miracles, counterfeit visions, and so on.