only serve to fill up so great a space of Time in the Catalogue of Roman Bishops And a Writer who lived in those Times tells us The World was amazed at the Manners of the Romans It is strange saith another Historian how far in that Age they were degenerated from the Piety of the Old Popes This Age as Another speaks was especially unhappy in this that for about an hundred and fifty years there were fifty Popes wholly fallen from the Vertue of their Predecessors being disorderly and Apostatical rather than Apostolical And if our brevity would permit it we could shew out of Platina Onuphrius and Others of your own Writers that there was no Reformation in all the Ages while these New Doctrines were in coyning Now it is the Great Philosopher's observation That Wickedness is destructive of good Principles So that it is no wonder if in such Decays of Piety and such a flood of Iniquity the Roman Church did bring in many New Articles suitable to her Manners and I think when Pride Luxury and Covetousness possess the Chair we can hardly expect any other Laws but such as shall gratifie these affections And the Practices as well as the Decrees of Rome for divers of the latter Centuries have so apparently tended this way that it hath been taken notice of by all those of her own Communion whose affection hath not rob'd them of their discerning Powers yea even in Catholick Countries it hath abated much of the Reverence formerly paid to that See by reason the designs thereof are so apparently Secular tending not to the Salvation of Souls but the support of their own Grandeur Which makes me admire our English Romanists should hug their Chains and adore those who abuse their well-meaning Devotion with Articles of Faith serving rather to carry on the Designs of the Imposers than the Salvation of their over credulous Believers Methinks an easie apprehension might discover that the Roman Guides govern you by Principles that have more of Machiavel in them than of Conscience or Gospel-simplicity and a little consideration will inform you that those things which they teach you to call Religion are Arts to enslave and impoverish you and Engines to advance themselves to the highest pitch of honour and abundance S. Bernard though a great friend to the Roman Church saw this when he said At Rome all regard is given to Honour but to Holiness none at all Were this the fault of particular mens Evil management from which no Society is free it were more excusable but there are Doctrines added to the Old Catholick Faith even most of the Tenets wherein they differ from the Church of England which are plain Artifices to increase the power and wealth of Rome Doctrines for which they dispute with us upon Demetrius's Principle because thereby they have their gain Act. xix 25. And many think the Guides of your Church contend for some of these Principles not because they believe them but because it is their Interest the people should be perswaded of them which makes them secretly laugh at their Credulity who will be imposed on by them as that great Cardinal did when he gave the People who flocked about him his Benediction in these words Qui vult decipi decipiatur And it is a vile suspicion of this which we may gather from that observation of Hospinian That in Italy the name Christian is used for an Ideot or Fool But to be more particular let us look over some Instances of such New Doctrines as are taught in the Roman Church for Secular ends We begin with the Doctrine of Implicit Faith or believing as the Church believes a Doctrine unknown in S. Cyrils time who speaking to his young Christians Bids them not meerly believe the things he spoke because he affirmed them unless he did demonstrate them to be so out of the Divine Scripture And truly this Novel Doctrine may agree with Pythagoras's Ipse dixit and is a good shelter for Paganism the best Argument for which Balbus saith is this That he had received it from his Fore-fathers The Jewish Rabbins told their Disciples They must believe whatever they taught them though they should say that their right hand was their left and it was becoming enough in Apelâ—es the Heretick to charge his seduced Scholars not to examine his Principles by Reason But it is below the Honour of true Religion to desire to be taken upon Trust so that this Doctrine is a policy of your Priests to secure their evil Principles from being enquired into and a device to make you depend on them as Infallible Oracles who can by this means lead you blind-fold whither they will and impose any thing on you which serves their Interest under the pretence of true Religion 2. Auricular Confession to a Priest was voluntary of Old and only used in case of a troubled Conscience or a strong Temptation But it is now made necessary at stated times in all probability to make the Priest master of every mans Secrets to discover the least inclination of their Proselytes to leave them to keep the Laity in awe and make them venerate and depend upon their Spiritual Guide who hereby hath them at his Mercy And their Doctors do affirm that in some cases it is lawful to discover what is revealed to them in Confession especially if it concern the Roman Church And thus they have an Intelligencer in the breast of every Great man of their Communion The Exempting the Regular Clergy from their Lawful Bishops Jurisdiction which S. Bernard complains of as an unjust thing And the freeing Ecclesiasticks from their Natural Princes Authority is that the Pope may have Subjects numerous and potent to give Intelligence and abet his Interest in the bowels of all Kingdoms The Popes Supremacy Appeals to Rome the Collation of Benefices and other Preferments the Creating their Maker in the Mass with many others do all aim at the Honour of the Church of Rome and the making its most inferior Priests revered But because the Honour of the Church of Rome cannot be maintained without vast riches it is obvious to all that many of their New Doctrines and Practices have been introduced with design to fill the Churches Treasuries or if Ignorance and Superstition were the Mother of these gainful Devices it is certain Covetousness hath been an officious Nurse unto them As in the case of Purgatory and Prayers to deliver Souls from thence a Novel fancy feared and suspected at first by some but countenanced and Decreed by that Church thereby to oblige the people to give liberally for themselves or their deceased Friends to those who sell their Prayers so commonly that they occasioned that Proverb No penny no Pater Noster It is impossible to reckon the vast sums that this Opinion brings in for so many Masses Dirige's Requiems for those Trentals Obits and Anniversaries which the deluded Romanists purchase
Old Religion which God revealed at first and which Christ and his Apostles taught That is truest which was the first saith Tertullian and that was first which was from the beginning So S. Cyprian We ought not to regard so much what some others before us have thought fit as what Christ himself who was before all hath done Now if that be the Old Religion which is taught in the Holy Scripture and the Creed herein the Religion of Rome cannot pretend to be Older than the Religion of this Church because we hold all these Articles as well as they yea if the case be rightly stated the Church of Englands Faith is the Old Religion and not that of Rome for she professeth To believe nothing as an Article of Faith but what is read in Holy Scripture or may be proved thereby Artic vi But the Roman Church declares They receive Traditions with the same veneration that they do the Scriptures Concil Trident. Sess 4. So that we hold all the Principles of the Old Religion and no other but they under the pretence of Traditions have invented and added many points to the Old Religion which are not mentioned in the Bible and Decreed other Articles contrary to the Old Religion recorded in Scripture and all these are a New Religion and yet these are the Doctrines in which we differ In all the Principles which are truly the Old Religion we and they generally do agree but if you take the Religion of the Roman Church for the Doctrines in which they differ from us it may be justly said they are of the New Religion and we of the Old since our Religion was recorded in Scripture sixteen hundred years ago as our Adversaries seem to confess when they call us Scriptuarii Scripture-men Prateol whereas all that which is properly their Religion is of much later Date And that I may not be thought to invent this Charge or to accuse the Roman Church wrongfully I will instance in the most principal of the Doctrines wherein we differ and bring in your own Doctors as Witnesses of this Truth 1. That Prayers to the Saints are not mentioned by Christ nor his Apostles is confessed by Salmeron Lindan and Bannes Etherianus saith as much of Prayers for the Dead Indulgences are not to be found in Scripture nor in the Ancient Doctors say Durandus Major Cajetan and Antoninus Transubstantiation it self cannot be proved by Scripture if you will take three Cardinals words for it And if our designed brevity would allow it the like might be proved of all the rest But we must proceed to shew there are some New things in the Romish Religion directly contrary to the Scripture The taking the Cup from the Laity is contrary to our Saviours Institution as that very Council of Constance confesseth which first enjoyned it for they say the Sacrament shall be given in one kind only to the people Non obstante c. notwithstanding our Lord did appoint it in both Concil Constant Sess 13. And your own Authentick Vulgar Translation as if this Innovation had been foreseen where the Greek only hath We are all partakers of one bread adds de uno Calice and of one Cup 1 Cor. 10. 17. The Veneration which you give to Images seems to all impartial eyes directly contrary to the Second Commandement and though your Priests will not directly confess it yet their general leaving out the Second Commandement in your Catechisms and cutting the Tenth in Two to keep up the number and conceal the omission from the Vulgar is a fair Evidence they themselves suspected that this Commandement made against them and feared others would apprehend it so To these you may add Praying in an unknown Tongue which S. Paul condemns in one whole Chapter 1 Corinth xiv as some of your own Commentators on the place confess As also the making Saints and Angels your Mediators to God when the same Apostle positively saith There is but one Mediator viz. Christ Jesus 1 Tim. ii 5. All these therefore cannot rightly be accounted any part of the Old Religion properly so called But if we shall descend lower these and many other Points of your Religion are so far from being the Old Religion that the Writers of the Roman Church do acknowledge they were not known to the Primitive Fathers yea they record the very time when most of them were imposed The Doctrine of Purgatory was first built upon the Credit of those fabulous Dialogues attributed to Gregory the First or if they were his which many doubt this was six hundred years after Christ and it was not generally believed in the Church five hundred years after as we learn from an Old Historian Otto Frising Chronic. An. 1146. And as for the Prayers made to deliver Souls from thence that gainful Article of your Church we are told by your own Authors that the first who caused them to be appointed by your Church was Odilo Abbot of Clugny An. 1000. The worshipping of God by Images was not allowed by the Ancient Fathers say your own Authors Clemangis Polyd. Virgil and Peresius Aiala And all men know this kind of use of Images can be derived no higher as to its being Decreed than that despicable Council in the Eighth Century but both the Doctrine and the Council also was rejected for many years after by the French English and German Churches Indulgences are not Ancient as Bishop Fisher confesses Nor is there any good proof in your own Authors for them before the time of Pope Alexander 3. A. 1160 or the Council of Clermont however An. 1096 And the first who made Mony of them was Boniface 9 th An. 1390. as Platina and Polydore Virgil tell us And the first Jubilee the great Market for them was not an hundred years before The forcing all Priests to vow Single Life and renounce their Wives was first obtruded upon the Church by Pope Hildebrand Without any Precedent saith an Old Historian and as many thought of an indiscreet Zeal contrary to the Holy Fathers Opinion And yet he was not obeyed here in England in this for above a hundred years after for our Ancient Records say All these Decrees availed nothing for the Priests by the Kings consent still had their Wives as formerly Auricular Confession to a Priest was never imposed as necessary until the Lateran Council It being little above fifty years before that we are informed by the famous Master of the Sentences and by Gratian your great compiler of the Decrees that it was in our choice whether we would confess to God only or to the Priest also and T. Aquinas confesseth this was the Opinion then Transubstantiation the discriminating Doctrine of your present Church was not held by the Fathers as your own Doctors acknowledge and one of the Infallible Heads of your Church affirms That the Elements cease not to be of
notwithstanding their mouldy Pretences as if they had come from far and were descended from Ancient Times their true Original is much later and nearer to this present Age. And now Secondly it will be easie to determine That as the Roman is not the Old Religion so neither ought the Professors of it to appropriate to themselves the Name of Catholick For whether we take it in the Primary and Grammatical sense for Vniversal or in its common acceptation for True Believers The Romanist hath no peculiar Right to this Venerable Title First because their Faith in those Points wherein it differs from the Church of England is not Universal for as the judicious Mr. Brerewood computes the Christians holding the Faith of Rome are not above a fourth part of those who believe in Christ And the excellent Author of Europae Speculum thus makes out the Account The Greek Church saith he in number exceeds any other and the Protestants in number and circuit of Territory are very near equal to the Papal part these are two fourth parts to which if we add the Oriental Christians which are not of the Roman Communion and those under Prester John or the Abassine Christians we have another fourth part of the Christian people and then the Romanists are but one fourth part of Christians only And it is very odd to say that the fourth part is the whole And surely my Friends you cannot seriously think the Roman Church to be the Vniversal or Catholick Church in this sense when you remember that the Pope's Authority is not acknowledged by the Generality of those Christians living in England Scotland and Ireland with the Plantations thereunto belonging nor by those of Denmark and Sweden nor by those of Transylvania Walachia and Moldavia nor by the large Church of Russia nor by the populous States and Provinces of the Dutch with their many Plantations abroad nor by at least five parts of six of the vast Country of Upper Germany nor by two parts of three of the Switzers nor by those of Geneva and Piedmont nor by very many in France Hungary Poland c. How many Millions of Christians are there in the Eastern World who have no dependance on the Roman Church The Christians of the Greek Church properly so called under the three Patriarchs of Constantinople Alexandria and Antioch those of Armenia who are professed Enemies of Rome and yearly Excommunicate the Pope The Georgian Christians with many other lesser Names in Asia the Abassine Christians in Africa all these are not of the Communion of the Roman Church and therefore how can that Church pretend to the Title of Vniversal or Catholick in this sense But secondly if you say you are Catholicks that is true Believers in all Points I desire you to consider that none say so but your Selves and 't is suspicious their Witness is not true who bear witness to themselves S. John v. 31. And where so many Articles of Faith are New it is probable some are False since the Oldest things in Religion are the truest and the best So that upon the whole Enquiry the Church of England may more justly claim the Title of Catholick because the Principles thereof are few and clearly deduced from Scripture believed in the Primitive Church and universally received by all sorts of Christians who differ in some Ceremonies but for the Points which this Church accounts necessary to Salvation the whole Christian World generally agrees in them And since the Religion of the Church of England is the most Ancient and most Vniversal you will be more truly of the Old Religion and more properly styled Catholicks by embracing the Faith professed in your own Country and disowning those who damn all Christians but them of their own Party although it be Evident there are in the World Christians far more in number than they and among those many equal in Learning and superior in Piety to the best of the Roman Church who are reprobated and sentenced to Eternal Flames by their uncharitable Anathema's SECTION II. Whether the said Opinions were not introduced for evil Ends ALthough all this be matter of Fact and acknowledged by your own Writers yet I must expect the venerable Esteem you have so long had for the Roman Church will make you slow to believe this deserved Charge of Innovation and perhaps you will wonder how so pure so Celebrated and so Orthodox a Church as Rome Primitive was should vary so much from her first Faith yet since the Change is so Evident and so well attested I hope at least your Curiosity will tempt you to Enquire First For what ends she should bring in these New Doctrines Secondly By what means they became so generally believed Thirdly Of what nature the things themselves are Fourthly Whether there be Authority sufficient in the Roman Church to Impose them on the whole Christian World Fifthly Whether the Catholicks of England ought to be swayed by that Authority to embrace them And if in examining these Particulars any thing shall be spoken which sounds harshly to your ears accustomed to hear nothing but Encomiums of Rome I shall desire you to consider that Truth is seldom grateful to Offenders and I must say with one of the Writers of the Popes Lives We relate these things because they were done and if the Popes would not have base or evil things reported of them they must do no such things or if they do them not fancy they can be so concealed as that they shall not be known nor related to Posterity Papyrius Masson de Vit. Pont. For my own part I profess I take no delight in Accusations nor shall I say any thing out of malice to that Church but out of pity to the Souls of those who without reason dote upon it If you enquire What ends the Roman Church could have to bring in these New Doctrines I Reply The first decay of that Church began in her Manners For after there were Christian Magistrates saith S. Hierome the Church became fuller of Riches and emptier of Vertue And for the Roman Bishops they began very early to affect a Dominion beyond the bounds of Priesthood as Socrates notes which made S. Basil say thirteen hundred years ago I hate the Pride of that Church and caused a Heathen Historian of that Age to say The Roman Bishops were richly clad carried in Litters and profuse in their feastings But the faults of that Age were small in respect of After-times for as their wealth and power increased their manners grew still worse and worse as we find by the complaints of Salvian and many others till at length about the ninth Age your own Baronius saith The face of the Roman Church was become most filthy when lewd and potent Curtezans swayed all there At whose pleasure Sees were changed Bishops placed and which is horrid to Pious ears their Paramors were thrust into S. Peter ' s Chair false Popes which
That it was expedient the people should be deceived in their Religion as Scaevola the Pagan Pontifex M. in S. Augustine saith and no doubt your Church agrees with the Heathen Varro in the same Author where he saith There are many Truths in Religion which it is not expedient for the people to know and though divers things therein be false yet the people ought to think them true The instances of some particulars will make this more evident 1. Miracles were the foundation and most authentick proofs for Invocation of Saints Veneration of Images and Relicks Pilgrimages Purgatory Monastical Vows and most of the gainful Articles of the Roman Church and yet S. Chrysostome saith that there were no footsteps of the power of Miracles left in the Church in his time And your S. Gregory thinks them unnecessary among Believers and so do many others Yet in the dark Ages nothing was more frequently pretended than Miracles wrought by Saints living and dead as appears by the stories of their Lives and the Legends of your Church which Relations are so senseless and so ridiculous so impossible and unlikely so little agreeing with Chronology History or Geography that the Modern Writers of the Roman Party are ashamed of them Hence your own Canus complains that these Authors of Saints Lives with false and counterfeit Fables have blemished the Lives of Saints And the same Writer saith there that the Author of your so famed Golden Legend was a man of an Iron forehead and a Leaden soul Harding also affirmeth That there be many vain Fables in it Simeon Metaphrastes is another of these Miracle-Writers and is so eminent that he is read in the Modern Roman Breviaries and yet Cardinal Bellarmine blames him for incredible stories and relations not agreeing to Ancient Writers He adds saith he many things out of his own wit not as they were really done but as they might have been done And is not this notorious forgery Yea the Popes themselves in the latest sort of Breviaries have left many of these fabulous Miracles out since they have done the work now for which they were invented the Doctrines supported by these lies are now generally embraced and when the Arch is compleated the Props on which it was raised may be laid aside yet still you ought to ask If these stories were false how came the Infallible Church to put them into her Offices if they were true why doth she now reject them And it is observable that the Roman Church at present pretends but to very few Miracles and the Doctors thereof in this knowing Age are very shy of believing any at all as one of your own Priests proves at large The Reason of which must needs be because they fear this Inquisitive and learned Generation should discover the fraud of them For since Miracles are especially necessary to convince unbelievers there is far more need of them since the Reformation when so many disbelieve the Religion of your Church than was before when all the Nations of the West were at the Devotion thereof Yet then many Miracles are recorded and now few or none an Argument sufficient to make a wary man believe there were few real Miracles at any time since the settlement of Christianity only the superstitious and ignorant credulity of the former Ages was fit to be abused with such Pretences And now why are you so stiff in maintaining those Opinions which were believed at first upon so slight and false inducements as these Legends and Miracles are confessed to be But this Argument is of late so fully handled by two excellent Pens that I may dismiss it with my hearty wish you would read those Tracts without Prejudice being not written to abuse real Religion as some tell you but to undeceive you and unmask that hypocrisie which hath long walked in the venerable Mantle of Truth Nor ought you to be angry at the Relators but at the Inventors of such falshoods who have got many fair Houses and Lands vast sums of Mony and innumerable costly Oblations by these Fictions to the scandal of Christianity it self My second instance shall be of the Artifice of Forging Records for to attest their Novel Doctrines especially that of the Pope's Supremacy they put out divers spurious Tracts under illustrious names which served to wheadle an illiterate Age into a Reverence for the Roman Church and her Opinions whereas now the cheat is so palpable that your modern Doctors though they keep the Conclusions disown those feigned books that were the Premises from whence they were inferred Of this nature are the Decretal Epistles of all the Popes from Clemens down to Pope Syricius An. 385. formerly cited as good Authorities and transcribed some parts of them into your Canon Law but now the most learned Romanists confess a great part of them to be meer forgeries Baronius styles divers of them Apocryphal And Cardinal Cusanus saith That being applied to the times of those Holy men they do betray themselves And indeed these Epistles were never cited by any good old Author and were first brought into France by one Riculfus Arch. B. of Ments five hundred years after those Popes were dead as Hincmarus Arch. B. of Rhemes a Writer of that Age affirms and Baronius also confesseth Nor did the Roman See blush some Centuries ago to alledge for its Supremacy the most fabulous Donation of Constantine the Great wherein he is pretended to make the Pope head over the whole Church and superiour to all the four Patriarchs of the East naming Constantinople for one which City was not yet built giving him in fee the City of Rome and all Italy with all the Provinces of the Western Empire though he gave all these to one of his Sons afterwards This senseless Edict was pleaded by several of the Popes in former times to countenance their ambitious pretences and of Old was received without suspicion by the gravest and learnedst Doctors saith Binius who yet confesseth there it was a meer forgery devised he thinks by the Greeks and now adaies all Romanists generally disown it and indeed it is as ridiculous a forgery as ever the world saw My Brevity will not allow me to enlarge upon this Subject otherwise I could add innumerable Examples of like dealing The absurd Council of Sinuessa The monstrous Recognitions of Clement The threescore new Canons father'd by Turrian and others upon the famous General Council of Nice The Pontifical ascribed to Pope Damasus with innumerable other Tracts of the same Metal being all apparent Forgeries and yet were long countenanced by Rome to support her unjust Supremacy and other Innovations My third Instance shall be of Suppressing or corrupting true Records of which take a few Examples The Legates of Rome within less than a hundred years after the general Council of Nice did produce two Canons to prove the Popes Right
if they be tolerably good or less wicked than other men are Papyr Masson in Vit. Julii 31 An. 1550 and the rest of his Clergy and People are suitable for It cannot be dissembled saith a late exact Observer that the whole Country is strangely overflowd with Wickedness with filthiness of Speech with beastliness of Actions both Governors and Subjects both Priests and Fryers each striving as it were with other in an Impudentness therein Europ Spec. p. 27. But I will not pursue this most ungrateful Subject which I profess I do not relate out of any envy or delight in telling such sad stories but I am forced to say these unpleasing Truths to rescue your Souls from those who serve the ends of their Ambition and Covetousness out of your Devotion from those who perswade you to call that Religion which maintains them in the highest plenty and luxury from those who Decree that Good works merit Salvation not because they believe this Doctrine for if they did they would do more Goodworks themselves but because this Perswasion among the people fills the Churches Treasures and hath made the Old Pious and poor Priests and Deacons of Rome Illustrious Cardinals who in Magnificence and Pomp dare vye with the greatest Estates of Christendom and their Great Master scorns to have Kings and Emperors thought his Equals Wherefore when you have duly weighed all this and considered the Pride and insatiable Avarice of the Roman Church and withal observed how all the Doctrines in which they differ from us tend meerly to advance these ends you cannot think it unlikely that such men with such designs should alter and add to their Old Faith especially when you hear S. Paul say The love of Mony is the root of all evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the Faith 1 Tim. vi 10. It is nothing that is truly Ancient or really good that we perswade you to renounce but Novel Policies and Devices which minister to Secular designs and you ought to account him your Friend who would rescue you from this abuse and perswade you into that Church whose Principles are Primitive plain and honest whose Clergy are content with the Revenues which the Laws of the Land allow them having none of these Vnchristian Artifices of extraordinary gains nor no design to teach you any Doctrines but such as will make you good and direct you in the way to Heaven SECTION III. Whether the said Opinions were not established by evil means THe next Enquiry is By what means these New Doctrines became so generally believed And here first we may note your Church hath good reason to use this Proverb Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion because the wretched blindness of those Ages wherein these Opinions were propagated did hugely contribute to their Reception for it is not to be denied that from the time of the decay of the Western Empire and the Irruptions of the Goths and Vandals into Europe there began to be a great decay of Learning and Barbarism crept in by degrees which is evident by the different style and way of writing which the later Fathers use in comparison of those who lived in the first four or five Centuries and at length this Ignorance became so universal That the study of the liberal Arts was generally laid aside as an Old Historian complains and that Age which bred many of these Errors is commonly by your own Writers called The Obscure Age being wholly without any persons eminent for Wit or Learning the very inferior Priests being not able to translate an Epistle into Latin which Aegyptian darkness continued in all the Western world till a few years before the Reformation as your own Espencaeus confesseth Now this gross stupidity must needs make the World apt and easie to be abused with the most absurd and monstrous Doctrines for Ignorance is the Mother of all Errors as an Old Council affirms and not of true Devotion as you now pretend This made way for the Politick Guides of Rome to impose such Opinions on the Church as might best serve their own ends These Tares were sowed while men slept Matth. xiii 25. and there were many Circumstances concurring in those unlucky Ages which contributed to the furthering the Roman designs the withdrawing of the Emperors into the East and first the Decay of the Western Empire then the destruction of the Eastern and the desolation of all the famous Oriental Churches by the spreading Inundation of Turks and Saracens so that the Pope had neither Emperor nor Patriarch for a long time that could oppose him the Miseries of all Christendom giving him opportunity to make himself the sole Governor of these Parts of the World and none were able to contend with him though many complain'd of his Vsurpation Johan Sarisburiensis telling Adrian 4 th who asked him what men thought of the Roman Church That they esteemed it a Stepmother not a Mother and the Pope of Rome himself was grievous to all and almost intolerable I shall not now be so tedious to you as to relate how this Church by force and by taking all advantages did attempt to suppress all that did oppose her Impositions and Grandeur what wars the Popes raised against the German Emperors what occasions they took to enslave the Greek Church when they petitioned for relief against the conquering and cruel Turks what Persecutions they raised against the Albigenses Bohemians and Wicklevists and how they destroyed all that resisted their Innovations with Fire and Sword only desiring you to remark That the Roman Church was the first Author of putting men to death for that which they call Heresy A practice wholly differing from the Rules of Christianity from the Opinion and Practice of the Ancient Church It being a New and unheard of way of Preaching saith your S. Gregory to force men by stripes to believe yet by Fire and Fagot the modern Church of Rome affrights the World into the Embracing these Articles or by Inquisitions and Racks awes them into silence not daring to question them Her Greatness Riches Interest and Severity to Opposers hath been one means to obtrude the belief of her gainful Articles upon men and her Policies and Frauds have been another for you cannot think it unlikely that they who have so little Piety as to turn Religion into Policy should have so little honesty as to equivocate for the defence of their Politick Religion and verily the Ignorance and Credulity of those blind Ages were such that your Church never sought for solid Arguments to confirm their New Decrees but built them usually upon Fictions and proved them by notorious Forgeries and accounted this way of proceeding not only lawful but Pious so that whosoever reads those Discourses of your Jesuites in defence of these Deceits called by them Piae fraudes will conclude the High-Priests of Rome-Christian as well as Rome-Heathen to have been of Opinion