Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

And as they were dangerously forward on one side to make every small mistake a Heresy, and cause divisions in the Church by their unjust condemnations; so many on the other hand were as forward to provoke them, by novelties or false conceits, especially about the Trinity, and the person and natures of Christ; So that unquiet spirits knew not when or where to rest: And multitudes of them did turn cheaters and deluders of the vulgar, by pretending to Miracles, and Revelations, and Visions, and drawing the people deeper into superstition by such means, (as Boniface Moguntinus wrote to Pope Zechariah about the hypocritical Saint Aldebert.) And in that age especially when few learned men (as Erasmus complaineth) did escape the suspicion of heresy, and he that was a Mathematician was counted a Magician, it had been more wit to have silenced some unnecessary verities, then to have angered impatient ignorance. Virgilius might have talked more ⟨p. 148⟩of the world above us, and let the world below us alone, rather then to force the learned Pope Zachary to say to his brother Boniface of Mentz: De perversa & iniqua doctrina, quam contra Deum & animam suam locutus est; (a high crime) si clar ficatum fuerit it a eum confiteri, quod alius mundus & alii homines sub terras sint, hunc accito Concilio, ab ecclesia pelle sacerdotii honore privatum. vid. Usher. syllog. Hibernic. Epistle. pag. 49, 50. But to mention the twentieth part of the Proud usurpations, innovations, impositions and sentences of those following times, especially among the Romanists, is fitter for large volumes then a cursory Lamentation of the Churches sins. I will not meddle with the Errors, and cruel blood shed of the Popish Clergy of late, against the Waldenses, and Protestants; nor yet with the sad condition of the rest of the Clergy through the Christian world, in Ethiopia, Muscovia, Greece, &c. For you will think that this is less to us that do disclaim them: But let us come nearer our selves, and we shall find yet matter of further lamentation.

And as they were dangerously forward on one side to make every small mistake a Heresie, and cause divisions in the Church by their unjust condemnations; so many on the other hand were as forward to provoke them, by novelties or false conceits, especially about the Trinity, and the person and natures of Christ; So that unquiet spirits knew not when or where to rest: And multitudes of them did turn cheaters and deluders of the vulgar, by pretending to Miracles, and Revelations, and Visions, and drawing the people deeper into superstition by such means, (as Bonafacius Moguntinus wrote to Pope Zachary about the hypocritical Saint Aldebert.) And in that age especially when few learned men (as Erasmus complaineth) did escape the suspition of heresie, and he that was a Mathematician was counted a Magitian, it had been more wit to have silenced some unnecessary verities, then to have angred impatient ignorance. Virgilius might have talkt more