Now for their authority, what by auricular confession, satisfaction, penance, Peter’s keys, thunderings, excommunications, &c., roaring bulls, this high priest of Rome, shaking his Gorgon’s head, hath so terrified the soul of many a silly man, insulted over majesty itself, and swaggered generally over all Europe for many ages, and still doth to some, holding them as yet in slavish subjection, as never tyrannising Spaniards did by their poor Negroes, or Turks by their galley-slaves. [6427]"The bishop of Rome” (saith Stapleton, a parasite of his, de mag.  Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 1.) “hath done that without arms, which those Roman emperors could never achieve with forty legions of soldiers,” deposed kings, and crowned them again with his foot, made friends, and corrected at his pleasure, &c. [6428] “’Tis a wonder,” saith Machiavel, Florentinae, his. lib. 1. “what slavery King Henry II. endured for the death of Thomas a Beckett, what things he was enjoined by the Pope, and how he submitted himself to do that which in our times a private man would not endure,” and all through superstition. [6429]Henry IV. disposed of his empire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates of Canossus. [6430]Frederic the Emperor was trodden on by Alexander III., another held Adrian’s stirrup, King John kissed the knees of Pandulphos the Pope’s legate, See.  What made so many thousand Christians travel from France, Britain, &c., into the Holy Land, spend such huge sums of money, go a pilgrimage so familiarly to Jerusalem, to creep and crouch, but slavish superstition?  What makes them so freely venture their lives, to leave their native countries, to go seek martyrdom in the Indies, but superstition? to be assassins, to meet death, murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit, of canonical or blind obedience which they instil into them, and animate them by strange illusions, hope of being martyrs and saints:  such pretty feats can the devil work by priests, and so well for their own advantage can they play their parts.  And if it were not yet enough, by priests and politicians to delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors in his tragedy, more irons in the fire, another scene of heretics, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, schismatics, impostors, false prophets, blind guides, that out of pride, singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in an uproar by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one kingdom to another, commit prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against son, to the ruin and destruction of a commonwealth, to the disturbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates.  How did those Arians rage of old? how many did they circumvent?  Those Pelagians, Manichees, &c., their names alone would make a just volume.  How many silly souls have impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite alienated