ligious houses a thousand
devils could scarce tempt one silly monk. All the principal devils, I
think, busy themselves in subverting Christians; Jews, Gentiles, and
Mahometans, are _extra caulem_, out of the fold, and need no such
attendance, they make no resistance, [6562]_eos enim pulsare negligit, quos
quieto jure possidere se sentit_, they are his own already: but Christians
have that shield of faith, sword of the Spirit to resist, and must have a
great deal of battery before they can be overcome. That the devil is most
busy amongst us that are of the true church, appears by those several
oppositions, heresies, schisms, which in all ages he hath raised to subvert
it, and in that of Rome especially, wherein Antichrist himself now sits and
plays his prize. This mystery of iniquity began to work even in the
Apostles' time, many Antichrists and heretics' were abroad, many sprung up
since, many now present, and will be to the world's end, to dementate men's
minds, to seduce and captivate their souls. Their symptoms I know not how
better to express, than in that twofold division, of such as lead, and are
led. Such as lead are heretics, schismatics, false prophets, impostors, and
their ministers: they have some common symptoms, some peculiar. Common, as
madness, folly, pride, insolency, arrogancy, singularity, peevishness,
obstinacy, impudence, scorn and contempt of all other sects: _Nullius
addicti jurare in verba magistri_; [6563]they will approve of nought but
what they first invent themselves, no interpretation good but what their
infallible spirit dictates: none shall be _in secundis_, no not _in
tertiis_, they are only wise, only learned in the truth, all damned but
they and their followers, _caedem scripturarum faciunt ad materiam suam_,
saith Tertullian, they make a slaughter of Scriptures, and turn it as a
nose of wax to their own ends. So irrefragable, in the mean time, that what
they have once said, they must and will maintain, in whole tomes,
duplications, triplications, never yield to death, so self-conceited, say
what you can. As [6564]Bernard (erroneously some say) speaks of P.
Aliardus, _omnes patres sic, atque ego sic._ Though all the Fathers,
Councils, the whole world contradict it, they care not, they are all one:
and as [6565] Gregory well notes "of such as are vertiginous, they think
all turns round and moves, all err: when as the error is wholly in their
own brains." Magallianus, the Jesuit, in his Comme