To what Fathers did he attach
himself? To the Fathers of Nice. What manner of men were they?
Such men as Silvester, Mark, Julius, Athanasius, Nicholas. What
seat did he ask for in the Synod? The last. Oh how much more
kingly was he on that seat than the Kings who have ambitioned a
title not due to them! It would be tedious to go into further
details. But from these two [Emperors, Decius and Constantine],
the one our deadly enemy, the other our warm friend, it may be
left to the reader's conjecture to fix on points of closest
resemblance to the one and to the other in the history of our own
times. For as it was our cause that went through its agony under
Decius, so our cause it was that came out triumphant under
Constantine.[5]

Let us look at the doings of the Turks. Mahomet and the apostate
monk Sergius lie in the deep abyss, howling, laden with their own
crimes and with those of their posterity. This portentous and
savage monster, the power of the Saracens and the Turks, had it
not been clipped and checked by our Military Orders, our Princes
and Peoples,--so far as Luther was concerned (to whom Solyman the
Turk is said to have written a letter of thanks on this account),
and so far as the Lutheran Princes were concerned (by whom the
progress of the Turks is reckoned matter of joy),--this frantic
and man-destroying Fury, I say, by this time would be
depopulating and devastating all Europe, overturning altars and
signs of the cross as zealously as Calvin himself. Ours therefore
they are, our proper foes, seeing that by the industry of our
champions it was that their fangs were unfastened from the
throats of Christians.

Let us look down on heretics, the filth and fans and fuel of
hell[6] the first that meets our gaze is Simon Magus. What did he
do? He endeavoured to snatch away free will from man: he prated
of faith alone (Clen. lib. i. recog.; Iren. l. 1, c. 2). After
him, Novatian. Who was he? An Anti-pope, rival to the Roman
Pontiff Cornelius, an enemy of the Sacraments, of Penance and
Chrism. Then Manes the Persian. He taught that baptism did not
confer salvation. After him the Arian Aerius. He condemned
prayers for the dead: he confounded priests with bishops, and was
surnamed "the atheist" no less than Lucian. There follows
Vigilantius, who would not have the Saints prayed to; and
Jovinian, who put marriage on a level with virginity; finally, a
whole mess of nastiness, Macedonius, Pelagius, Nestorius,
Eutyc