for monks, confessors, and friars, as he said,

[5215] "Non audet Stygius Pluto tentare quod audet
Effrenis monachus, plenaque fraudis anus;"

"That Stygian Pluto dares not tempt or do,
What an old hag or monk will undergo;"

either for himself to satisfy his own lust; for another, if he be hired
thereto, or both at once, having such excellent means. For under colour of
visitation, auricular confession, comfort and penance, they have free
egress and regress, and corrupt, God knows, how many. They can such trades,
some of them, practise physic, use exorcisms, &c.

[5216] _That whereas was wont to walk and Elf,
There now walks the Limiter himself,
In every bush and under every tree,
There needs no other Incubus but he_.

[5217]In the mountains between Dauphine and Savoy, the friars persuaded the
good wives to counterfeit themselves possessed, that their husbands might
give them free access, and were so familiar in those days with some of
them, that, as one [5218]observes, "wenches could not sleep in their beds
for necromantic friars:" and the good abbess in Boccaccio may in some sort
witness, that rising betimes, mistook and put on the friar's breeches
instead of her veil or hat. You have heard the story, I presume, of [5219]
Paulina, a chaste matron in Aegesippus, whom one of Isis's priests did
prostitute to Mundus, a young knight, and made her believe it was their god
Anubis. Many such pranks are played by our Jesuits, sometimes in their own
habits, sometimes in others, like soldiers, courtiers, citizens, scholars,
gallants, and women themselves. Proteus-like, in all forms and disguises,
that go abroad in the night, to inescate and beguile young women, or to
have their pleasure of other men's wives; and, if we may believe [5220]
some relations, they have wardrobes of several suits in the colleges for
that purpose. Howsoever in public they pretend much zeal, seem to be very
holy men, and bitterly preach against adultery, fornication, there are no
verier bawds or whoremasters in a country; [5221]"whose soul they should
gain to God, they sacrifice to the devil." But I spare these men for the
present.

The last battering engines are philters, amulets, spells, charms, images,
and such unlawful means: if they cannot prevail of themselves by the help
of bawds, panders, and their adherents, they will fly for succour to the
devil himself. I know there be those that deny the d