prohibiting the reading of the Word, and of books which contain its doctrines; instituting worship by masses destitute of divine truth, in a language unintelligible to the common people. And besides, they fill their world (orbem suum) with falsities, those essential darknesses which remove and dissipate the light. They teach the vulgar, moreover, that they have life eternal in the faith of their priests, consequently not in their own, but in that of other men. They also place all worship in a devout external apart from the internal, making the internal of no account, for they deprive it of the knowledges of good and truth; and yet Divine worship is external only in so far as it is internal, since the external proceeds from the internal.
Besides, they introduce idolatries of various kinds. They make and multiply saints; they see and tolerate the adoration of these saints, and even the prayers put up to them almost as to gods; they expose their idols in all sorts of places; boast of their multitudinous miracles; set them over cities, temples and monasteries: make sacred their bones—their veriest cast-away bones, which have been taken out of sepulchres; thus turning the minds of all from the worship of God to the worship of men.
Moreover, they use much artful precaution lest any one should come out of their darkness into light, from idolatrous to Divine worship. For they multiply monasteries, from which they send out spies and
