The Turks at this day count no better of us than of dogs, so they commonly call us giaours, infidels, miscreants, make that their main quarrel and cause of Christian persecution.  If he will turn Turk, he shall be entertained as a brother, and had in good esteem, a Mussulman or a believer, which is a greater tie to them than any affinity or consanguinity.  The Jews stick together like so many burrs; but as for the rest, whom they call Gentiles, they do hate and abhor, they cannot endure their Messiah should be a common saviour to us all, and rather, as [6486]Luther writes, “than they that now scoff at them, curse them, persecute and revile them, shall be coheirs and brethren with them, or have any part or fellowship with their Messiah, they would crucify their Messiah ten times over, and God himself, his angels, and all his creatures, if it were possible, though they endure a thousand hells for it.”  Such is their malice towards us.  Now for Papists, what in a common cause, for the advancement of their religion they will endure, our traitors and pseudo-Catholics will declare unto us; and how bitter on the other side to their adversaries, how violently bent, let those Marian times record, as those miserable slaughters at Merindol and Cabriers, the Spanish inquisition, the Duke of Alva’s tyranny in the Low Countries, the French massacres and civil wars. [6487]_Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum_.  “Such wickedness did religion persuade.”  Not there only, but all over Europe, we read of bloody battles, racks and wheels, seditions, factions, oppositions.

[6488]  ------“obvia signis
Signa, pares aquilas, et pila minantia pilis,”

Invectives and contentions.  They had rather shake hands with a Jew, Turk, or, as the Spaniards do, suffer Moors to live amongst them, and Jews, than Protestants; “my name” (saith [6489]Luther) “is more odious to them than any thief or murderer.”  So it is with all heretics and schismatics whatsoever:  and none so passionate, violent in their tenets, opinions, obstinate, wilful, refractory, peevish, factious, singular and stiff in defence of them; they do not only persecute and hate, but pity all other religions, account them damned, blind, as if they alone were the true church, they are the true heirs, have the fee-simple of heaven by a peculiar donation, ’tis entailed on them and their posterities, their doctrine sound, per funem aureum de coelo delapsa doctrinci, “let down from, heaven by a golden rope,” they alone are to be saved, The Jews at this day are so incomprehensibly proud and churlish, saith [6490]Luther, that soli salvari, soli domini terrarum salutari volunt. And as [6491]Buxtorfius adds, “so ignorant and self-willed withal, that amongst their most understanding Rabbins you shall find nought but gross dotage, horrible hardness of heart, and stupendous obstinacy, in all their actions, opinions, conversations:  and yet so zealous with all, that no man living can be more,