darkness? [6445]"If their pastors” (saith Lavater) “have done their duties, and instructed their flocks as they ought, in the principles of Christian religion, or had not forbidden them the reading of scriptures, they had not been as they are.”  But being so misled all their lives in superstition, and carried hoodwinked like hawks, how can they prove otherwise than blind idiots, and superstitious asses? what else shall we expect at their hands?  Neither is it sufficient to keep them blind, and in Cimmerian darkness, but withal, as a schoolmaster doth by his boys, to make them follow their books, sometimes by good hope, promises and encouragements, but most of all by fear, strict discipline, severity, threats and punishment, do they collogue and soothe up their silly auditors, and so bring them into a fools’ paradise. Rex eris aiunt, si recte facies, do well, thou shalt be crowned; but for the most part by threats, terrors, and affrights, they tyrannise and terrify their distressed souls:  knowing that fear alone is the sole and only means to keep men in obedience, according to that hemistichium of Petronius, primus in orbe deos fecit timor, the fear of some divine and supreme powers, keeps men in obedience, makes the people do their duties:  they play upon their consciences; [6446]which was practised of old in Egypt by their priests; when there was an eclipse, they made the people believe God was angry, great miseries were to come; they take all opportunities of natural causes, to delude the people’s senses, and with fearful tales out of purgatory, feigned apparitions, earthquakes in Japonia or China, tragical examples of devils, possessions, obsessions, false miracles, counterfeit visions, &c.  They do so insult over and restrain them, never hoby so dared a lark, that they will not [6447]offend the least tradition, tread, or scarce look awry:  Deus bone ([6448]Lavater exclaims) quot hoc commentum de purgatorio misere afflixit! good God, how many men have been miserably afflicted by this fiction of purgatory!

To these advantages of hope and fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, devices, to batter and enthral, omitting no opportunities, according to men’s several inclinations, abilities, to circumvent and humour them, to maintain his superstitions, sometimes to stupefy, besot them:  sometimes again by oppositions, factions, to set all at odds and in an uproar; sometimes he infects one man, and makes him a principal agent; sometimes whole cities, countries.  If of meaner sort, by stupidity, canonical obedience, blind zeal, &c.  If of better note, by pride, ambition, popularity, vainglory.  If of the clergy and more eminent, of better parts than the rest, more learned, eloquent, he puffs them up with a vain conceit of their own worth, scientia inflati, they begin to swell, and scorn all the world in respect of themselves, and thereupon turn heretics, schismatics, broach new doctrines, frame new crotchets and the like; or else