suitors; St. Nicholas Burge in France; our St.
Thomas's shrine of old at Canterbury; those relics at Rome, Jerusalem,
Genoa, Lyons, Pratum, St. Denis; and how many thousands come yearly to
offer to them, with what cost, trouble, anxiety, superstition (for forty
several masses are daily said in some of their [6578]churches, and they
rise at all hours of the night to mass, come barefoot, &c.), how they spend
themselves, times, goods, lives, fortunes, in such ridiculous observations;
their tales and figments, false miracles, buying and selling of pardons,
indulgences for 40,000 years to come, their processions on set days, their
strict fastings, monks, anchorites, friar mendicants, Franciscans,
Carthusians, &c. Their vigils and fasts, their ceremonies at Christmas,
Shrovetide, Candlemas, Palm Sunday, Blaise, St. Martin, St. Nicholas' day;
their adorations, exorcisms, &c., will think all those Grecian, Pagan,
Mahometan superstitions, gods, idols, and ceremonies, the name, time and
place, habit only altered, to have degenerated into Christians. Whilst they
prefer traditions before Scriptures; those Evangelical Councils, poverty,
obedience, vows, alms, fasting, supererogations, before God's Commandments;
their own ordinances instead of his precepts, and keep them in ignorance,
blindness, they have brought the common people into such a case by their
cunning conveyances, strict discipline, and servile education, that upon
pain of damnation they dare not break the least ceremony, tradition, edict;
hold it a greater sin to eat a bit of meat in Lent, than kill a man: their
consciences are so terrified, that they are ready to despair if a small
ceremony be omitted; and will accuse their own father, mother, brother,
sister, nearest and dearest friends of heresy, if they do not as they do,
will be their chief executioners, and help first to bring a faggot to burn
them. What mulct, what penance soever is enjoined, they dare not but do it,
tumble with St. Francis in the mire amongst hogs, if they be appointed, go
woolward, whip themselves, build hospitals, abbeys, &c., go to the East or
West Indies, kill a king, or run upon a sword point: they perform all,
without any muttering or hesitation, believe all.

[6579] "Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
Vivere, et esse homines, et sic isti omnia ficta
Vera putant, credunt signis cor inesse ahenis."

"As children think their babies live to be,
Do they