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ANDREAS DVDITHIVS Bishop of Quinquecclesisiae,* 1.1 and Embassador in the Council of Trent, for Maximilian II. Emperor: In an Epistle to the said Emperor (wherein he deli∣vers his Judgment about granting the Cup to the Laity, and the Marriage of Priests) writes thus of the Council of Trent:
WHat good could be done in that Council, where voices were taken by number not by weight? If argument, if reason, might have prevailed, if we had had some, and those not many, to take part with us, though we should have been but a few, yet had we overthrown the great forces of our Adversaries: But when all stood upon number, wherein we were much inferior, we could not get the better, the Pope was able to set an hundred of his against every one of ours: And if an hundred were not sufficient, he could upon a sudden have created a thousand to succour them that were ready to faint and perish. Therefore we might see every day hungry and needy Bishops, and those for the most part beardless yonkers, and wastfully riotous, come in flocks to Trent, hired to give their voices according to the Popes humour: unlearned indeed, and foolish, but of good use to him for their audaciousness and impudency. When these fellows were joined to the Popes old flatterers, then Iniquity got the upper hand and triumphed: neither could any thing be decreed but according to their liking who thought it the highest point of Religion to defend the power and riot of the Pope. There was in the Council a grave and learned man, who could not endure this indignity; but the Council by terror threatning and baiting him, as one that was 〈◊〉〈◊〉 good Catholick, drew him to yield to that which he did no way like of. In a word, things are brought to that pass by their dishonesty who came thither prepared and made for the nonce, that it seemed to be a Council not of Bishops but of Puppies; not of Men but of Images, who (as it is reported of Daedalus statues) were moved not by their own, but by other mens nerves and muscles. Those hireling Bishops most of them were like Country Bag-pipes, which must have breath blown into them before they can sound. The Holy Ghost had nothing to do with that Conventicle all things were argu∣ed by humane policy, which was wholly employed in maintaining the immoderate, and indeed most shameless Lordship and Domination of the Popes. From thence were Answers looked and waited for, as it were from the Oracles of Delphos or Dodona▪ From thence the Holy Ghost, who (as they brag) is President of their Council, was sent shut up in the Carriers budgets and packs, who (a thing worthy to be laught at) when the waters were up (as it falls out many times) was fain to stay till they were down again before he could repair to the Council.
By this it came to pass that the Spirit was not carried upon the waters, as in Genesis, but along beside the waters. O monstrous and incredible madness! nothing that the Bishops, as it were the body of the Church resolved of, could be of any force, un∣less it came first from the Pope as the head of the body.