ies, _quodlibetaries_, as Bale saith of
Ferribrigge and Strode, instances, ampliations, decrees, glosses, canons,
that instead of sound commentaries, good preachers, are come in a company
of mad sophisters, _primo secundo secundarii_, sectaries, Canonists,
Sorbonists, Minorites, with a rabble of idle controversies and questions,
[6581]_an Papa sit Deus, an quasi Deus? An participet utramque Christi
naturam_? Whether it be as possible for God to be a humble bee or a gourd,
as a man? Whether he can produce respect without a foundation or term, make
a whore a virgin? fetch Trajan's soul from hell, and how? with a rabble of
questions about hell-fire: whether it be a greater sin to kill a man, or to
clout shoes upon a Sunday? whether God can make another God like unto
himself? Such, saith Kemnisius, are most of your schoolmen, (mere
alchemists) 200 commentators on Peter Lambard; (_Pitsius catal. scriptorum
Anglic._ reckons up 180 English commentators alone, on the matter of the
sentences), Scotists, Thomists, Reals, Nominals, &c., and so perhaps that
of St. [6582]Austin may be verified. _Indocti rapiunt coelum, docti interim
descendunt ad infernum._ Thus they continued in such error, blindness,
decrees, sophisms, superstitions; idle ceremonies and traditions were the
sum of their new-coined holiness and religion, and by these knaveries and
stratagems they were able to involve multitudes, to deceive the most
sanctified souls, and, if it were possible, the very elect. In the mean
time the true Church, as wine and water mixed, lay hid and obscure to speak
of, till Luther's time, who began upon a sudden to defecate, and as another
sun to drive away those foggy mists of superstition, to restore it to that
purity of the primitive Church. And after him many good and godly men,
divine spirits, have done their endeavours, and still do.

[6583] "And what their ignorance esteem'd so holy,
Our wiser ages do account as folly."

But see the devil, that will never suffer the Church to be quiet or at
rest: no garden so well tilled but some noxious weeds grow up in it, no
wheat but it hath some tares: we have a mad giddy company of precisians,
schismatics, and some heretics, even, in our own bosoms in another extreme.
[6584]_Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt_; that out of too much
zeal in opposition to Antichrist, human traditions, those Romish rites and
superstitions, will quite demolish all, they will admit of no ceremoni