alous" (as Paul saith, Rom. x. 2.) "without knowledge," they will
endure any misery, any trouble, suffer and do that which the sunbeams will
not endure to see, _Religionis acti Furiis_, all extremities, losses and
dangers, take any pains, fast, pray, vow chastity, wilful poverty, forsake
all and follow their idols, die a thousand deaths as some Jews did to
Pilate's soldiers, in like case, _exertos praebentes jugulos, et manifeste
prae se ferentes_, (as Josephus hath it) _cariorem esse rita sibi legis
patriae observationem_, rather than abjure, or deny the least particle of
that religion which their fathers profess, and they themselves have been
brought up in, be it never so absurd, ridiculous, they will embrace it, and
without farther inquiry or examination of the truth, though it be
prodigiously false, they will believe it; they will take much more pains to
go to hell, than we shall do to heaven. Single out the most ignorant of
them, convince his understanding, show him his errors, grossness, and
absurdities of his sect. _Non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris_, he will not
be persuaded. As those pagans told the Jesuits in Japona, [6493]they would
do as their forefathers have done: and with Ratholde the Frisian Prince, go
to hell for company, if most of their friends went thither: they will not
be moved, no persuasion, no torture can stir them. So that papists cannot
brag of their vows, poverty, obedience, orders, merits, martyrdoms,
fastings, alms, good works, pilgrimages: much and more than all this, I
shall show you, is, and hath been done by these superstitious Gentiles,
Pagans, Idolaters and Jews: their blind zeal and idolatrous superstition in
all kinds is much at one; little or no difference, and it is hard to say
which is the greatest, which is the grossest. For if a man shall duly
consider those superstitious rites amongst the Ethnics in Japan, the
Bannians in Gusart, the Chinese idolaters, [6494]Americans of old, in
Mexico especially, Mahometan priests, he shall find the same government
almost, the same orders and ceremonies, or so like, that they may seem all
apparently to be derived from some heathen spirit, and the Roman hierarchy
no better than the rest. In a word, this is common to all superstition,
there is nothing so mad and absurd, so ridiculous, impossible, incredible,
which they will not believe, observe, and diligently perform, as much as in
them lies; nothing so monstrous to conceive, or intolerable to p