[Illustration: Atlas with the Burden of the Tottering World 274]

Their privileges, too, and authority are very considerable: they can
deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, knead it into
what shape best suits their interest; and whatever conclusions they
have dogmatically resolved upon, they would have them as irrepealably
ratified as Solon's laws, and in as great force as the very decrees of
the papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate to their decisions,
they will bring him on his knees to a recantation of his impudence.
They shall pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposition is
scandalous, that irreverent; this has a smack of heresy, and that is
bald and improper; so that it is not the being baptised into the church,
the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to St. Peter, St.
Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay, or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that
shall make a man a Christian, except he have the joint suffrage of these
novices in learning,-who have blessed the world no doubt with a great
many discoveries, which had never come to light, if they had not struck
the fire of subtlety out of the flint of obscurity. These fooleries sure
must be a happy employ.

Farther, they make as many partitions and divisions in hell and
purgatory, and describe as many different sorts and degrees of
punishment as if they were very well acquainted with the soil and
situation of those infernal regions. And to prepare a seat for the
blessed above, they invent new orbs, and a stately empyrean heaven,
so wide and spacious as if they had purposely contrived it, that the
glorified saints might have room enough to walk, to feast, or to take
any recreation.

With these, and a thousand more such like toys, their heads are more
stuffed and swelled than Jove, when he went big of Pallas in his brain,
and was forced to use the midwifery of Vulcan's axe to ease him of his
teeming burden.

[Illustration: Midwivery of Vulcan's Axe 278]

Do not wonder, therefore, that at public disputations they bind their
heads with so many caps one over another; for this is to prevent the
loss of their brains, which would otherwise break out from their uneasy
confinement. It affords likewise a pleasant scene of laughter, to listen
to these divines in their hotly managed disputations; to see how proud
they are of talking such hard gibberish, and stammering out such
blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps may so