places at the same time, if the doctrine of transubstantiation require it, though Aristotle deny it. I like not the design of drawing religion into an art, whereas it ought to be a law; and though not the same in all countries, yet in every country indisputable; nor that they teach it not, as arts ought to be taught, by showing first the meaning of their terms, and then deriving from them the truth they would have us believe: nor that their terms are for the most part unintelligible; though, to make it seem rather want of learning in the reader, than want of fair dealing in themselves, they are, for the most part, Latin and Greek words, wryed a little at the point, towards the native language of the several countries where they are used. But that which is most intolerable is, that all clerks are forced to make as if they believed them, if they mean to have any Church preferment, the keys whereof are in the Pope’s hands; and the common people, whatsoever they believe of those subtile doctrines, are never esteemed better sons of the Church for their learning. There is but one way there to salvation; that is, extraordinary devotion and liberality to the Church, and readiness for the Church’s sake, if it be required, to fight against their natural and lawful sovereigns.
B. I see what use they make of Aristotle’s logic, physics, and metaphysics; but I see not yet how his politics can serve their turn.
A. Nor I. It has, I think, done them no good, though it has done us here much hurt by accident. For men, grown weary at last of the insolence of the priests, and examining the truth of those doctrines that were put upon them, began to search the sense of the Scriptures, as they are in the learned languages; and consequently (studying Greek and Latin) became acquainted with the democratical principles of Aristotle and Cicero, and from the love of their eloquence fell in love with their politics, and that more and more, till it grew into the rebellion we now talk of, without any other advantage to the Roman Church but that it was a weakening to us, whom, since we broke out of their net
