A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

It was yet more odd, say you, and strange that all Christendom should calmly submit unto a power set up anew by young converted Pagans: no Prince or Bishop either here or of any either Christian Kingdom either then or ever after to this day excepting against it. Had not all the Bishops and Priests of Africa, Egypt, Syria, Thrace, Greece and all the Christian world acknowledged by an hundred experiments the supreme Spiritual Authority of the Roman Patriarch in all times before this deluge of Goths and Vandals? But why do I expostulate with you, who write these things not to judicious Readers, but to fools and children, who are not more apt to tell a truth, then to believe a lye. But Sir, you shall quickly see whose discourse, yours or mine, stand in need of week and credulous Reader. That which you have in this place to oppose is only this, that your Papal Authority received a signal advancement, by and among the Northern Nations, who after long wars divided the Provinces of the Western Empire among them. Now this is so broad a Truth, that nothing but brutish ignorance, or obstinate perverseness can possibly cause any man to call it into Question. It was not absolutely the setting up ⟨p. 437⟩of the Papacy, but an accession unto the Papal power and authority which I ascribed unto that original. And this if you dare to deny, it were easy out of your own Annalists to overwhelm you with instances in the confirmation of it. But yet neither were your Concessions made, nor his assumptions carried on in that silence which you fancy, when you imagine, that his aspirings were neither taken notice of, nor opposed, but that all Christendom should calmly submit unto them. Where do you think you are, that you talk at this rate? Did you never read of any opposition made in former days unto your pretended Papal Power? none at all? from no Kings, no Princes, no Bishops, no parts of Christendom? happy man, who hath lived so quietly as you seem to have done, and so little concerned in things past or present. Did you never read or hear of the Declarations and Edicts of Emperors and Kings, of Determinations of Councils, Writings of Learned men in all Ages against your Papal Usurpations?

It was yet more odd, say you, and strange that all Christendome should calmly submit unto a power set up anew by young converted Pagans: no Prince or Bishop either here or of any either Christian Kingdom either then or ever after to this day excepting against it. Had not all the Bishops and Priests of Africa, Egypt, Syria, Thrace, Greece and all the Christian world acknowledged by an hundred experiments the supream Spiritual Authority of the Roman Patriarch in all times before this deluge of Goths and Vandals? But why do I expostulate with you, who write these things not to judicious Readers, but to fools and children, who are not more apt to tell a truth, then to believe a lye. But Sir, you shall quickly see whose discourse, yours or mine, stand in need of week and credulous Reader. That which you have in this place to oppose is only this, that your Papal Authority received a signal advancement, by and among the Northern Nations, who after long wars divided the Provinces of the Western Empire among them. Now this is so broad a Truth, that nothing but brutish ignorance, or obstinate perversness can possibly cause any man to call it into Question. It was not absolutely the setting up