umstances they are placed in; whereas now, by a wholesome neglect
of thinking, they live as well as heart can wish: whatever of toil and
drudgery belongs to their office that they assign over to St. Peter, or
St. Paul, who have time enough to mind it; but if there be any thing of
pleasure and grandeur, that they assume to themselves, as being hereunto
called: so that by my influence no sort of people live more to their
own ease and content. They think to satisfy that Master they pretend to
serve, our Lord and Saviour, with their great state and magnificence,
with the ceremonies of instalments, with the tides of reverence and
holiness, and with exercising their episcopal function only in blessing
and cursing. The working of miracles is old and out-dated; to teach
the people is too laborious; to interpret scripture is to invade the
prerogative of the schoolmen; to pray is too idle; to shed tears is
cowardly and unmanly; to fast is too mean and sordid; to be easy and
familiar is beneath the grandeur of him, who, without being sued to
and intreated, will scarce give princes the honour of kissing his toe;
finally, to die for religion is too self-denying; and to be crucified as
their Lord of Life, is base and ignominious. Their only weapons ought to
be those of the Spirit; and of these indeed they are mighty liberal,
as of their interdicts, their suspensions, their denunciations, their
aggravations, their greater and lesser excommunications, and their
roaring bulls, that fright whomever they are thundered against; and
these most holy fathers never issue them out more frequently than
against those, who, at the instigation of the devil, and not having the
fear of God before their eyes, do feloniously and maliciously attempt to
lessen and impair St. Peter's patrimony: and though that apostle tells
our Saviour in the gospel, in the name of all the other disciples, we
have left all, and followed you, yet they challenge as his inheritance,
fields, towns, treasures, and large dominions; for the defending
whereof, inflamed with a holy zeal, they fight with fire and sword,
to the great loss and effusion of Christian blood, thinking they are
apostolical maintainers of Christ's spouse, the church, when they have
murdered all such as they call her enemies; though indeed the church has
no enemies more bloody and tyrannical than such impious popes, who give
dispensations for the not preaching of Christ; evacuate the main effect
and design of