life, was Pope there, and bare herself as the "head of the
Church:" and after that for two whole years in that holy see she had
played the naughty pack, at last, going in procession about the city, in
the sight of all the cardinals and bishops, fell in travail openly in the
streets.

But what need we rehearse concubines and bawds? as for that is now an
ordinary and a gainful sin at Rome. For harlots sit there now-a-days,
not as they did in times past, without the city walls, and with their
faces hid and covered, but they dwell in palaces and fair houses: they
stray about in court and market, and that with bare and open face: as who
say, they may not only lawfully do it, but ought also to be praised for
so doing. What should we say any more of this? Their vicious and
abominable life is now thoroughly known to the whole world. Bernard
writeth roundly and truly of the Bishop of Rome's house, yea, and of the
Bishop of Rome himself. "Thy palace," saith he, "taketh in good men, but
it maketh none; naughty persons thrive there, and the good appayre and
decay." And whosoever he were which wrote the Tripartite work, annexed
to the Council Lateranense, saith thus: "So excessive at this day is the
riot, as well in the prelates and bishops as in the clerks and priests,
that it is horrible to be told."

But these things be not only grown in ure, and so by custom and continual
time well allowed, as all the rest of their doings in manner be, but they
are now waxen old and rotten ripe. For who hath not heard what a heinous
act Peter Aloisius, Pope Paul the Third's son, committed against Cosmus
Cherius, the Bishop of Fanum; what John, Archbishop of Beneventum, the
Pope's legate at Venice, wrote in the commendation of a most abominable
filthiness: and how he set forth, with most loathsome words and wicked
eloquence, the matter which ought not once to proceed out of anybody's
mouth! To whose ears hath it not come, that N. Diasius, a Spaniard,
being purposely sent from Rome into Germany, so shamefully and devilishly
murdered his own brother John Diasius, a most innocent and a most godly
man, only because he had embraced the Gospel of Jesu Christ, and would
not return again to Rome?

But it may chance to this they will say: These things may sometime happen
in the best governed commonwealths, yea, and against the magistrates'
wills: and besides, there be good laws made to punish such. I grant it
be so: but by what good laws (I wo