4. But is this enough for you? what if none were lawful Councils that displease the Pope? Are they therefore no competent witnesses of a matter of fact? In the 1mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. And are not so many hundred Bishops and other Clerks as were at the Councils of Basil, Constance, Pisa, &c. competent Witnesses, that the Pope was a Heretic, Simonist, Murderer, &c. had the Pope but consented these Councils had been the Catholic Church and infallible? And may they not be credible Witnesses against him till he consent? How shall we believe them, when they tell us what was held and done in all the Christian World a thousand or fourteen hundred years ago, if after examination of Witnesses we may not believe them concerning one man, one public sinner, in their own time, and known to many of themselves? What then would the testimony of a Historian or an hundred Historians signify, if the testimony of many hundred Bishops congregate and deliberately examining, consulting and sentencing, be false?
4. But is this enough for you? what if none were lawful Councils that displease the Pope? Are they therefore no competent witnesses of a matter of fact? In the 1mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. And are not so many hundred Bishops and other Clerks as were at the Councils of Basil, Constance, Pisa, &c. competent Witnesses, that the Pope was a Heretick, Simonest, Murderer, &c. had the Pope but consented these Councils had been the Catholick Church and infallible? And may they not be credible Witnesses against him till he consent? How shall we believe them, when they tell us what was held and done in all the Christian World a thousand or fourteen hundred years ago, if after examination of Witnesses we may not believe them concerning one man, one publick sinner, in their own time, and known to many of themselves? What then would the testimony of a Historian or an hundred Historians signifie, if the testimony of many hundred Bishops congregate and deliberately examining, consulting and sentencing, be false?
- 1I said that the charge of Simony made many of them uncapable; to which he giveth no answer, for their most flattering Historians assert it, and lament it.
