[3.] Thirdly, where the two former fail, men that devote themselves to this kind of service _imitate their father the devil, and fall to plain lying and devised fables_. Idolatry was mainly underpropped by fabulous stories; and no wonder, when they esteemed it a pious fraud to nourish piety towards the gods, in which case, as Polybius saith, though their writers speak monsters, and write childish, absurd, and impossible things, yet are they to be pardoned for their good intent.[277] Among the papists what less can be expected, when the same principle is entertained among them? Canus, and Lodovicus Vives mentioned by him,[278] as also some few others, do exceedingly blame that blind piety of coining lies for religion, and feigning histories for the credit of their opinions; but while they with great freedom and ingenuity do tax the fables of their own party, they do plainly acknowledge that they are too much guilty of feigning, insomuch that not only the author of the Golden Legend is branded with the characters of a brazen face and a leaden heart, but also Gregory’s Dialogues and Bede’s History are blamed by him, as containing narrations of miracles taken upon trust from the reports of the vulgar.[279] And indeed the wonders they talk of are so strange, so unlikely, so ridiculous and absurd some of them, that except a man offer violence to his reason, and wilfully shut his eyes against the clear evidences of suspicion, he cannot think they are anything else than dreams and fables, no better than Æsop’s. You may meet with several catalogues of them in protestant writers:[280] as their St Swithins making whole a basket of broken eggs by the sign of the cross; Patricius his making the stolen sheep to bleat in the thief’s belly after he had eaten it; their St Bridget’s bacon, which in great charity she gave to a hungry dog, was found again in her kettle; Dionysius after he was beheaded carried his head in his hand three French miles; St Dunstan took the devil by the nose with his tongs till he made him roar; Dominicus made him hold the candle till he burnt his fingers; St Lupus imprisoned the devil in a pot all night; a chapel of the Virgin Mary was translated from Palestine to Loretto; a consecrated host, being put into a hive of bees to cure them of the murrain, was so devoutly entertained that the bees built a chapel in the hive, with doors, windows, steeple, and bells, erected an altar and laid the host upon it, sung their canonical hours, and kept their watches by night, as monks used to do in their cloisters, &c. Who would ever imagine that men of any seriousness could satisfy themselves with such childish fopperies? These are the usual ways by which men of design have raised the noise of miracles.