Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/34

xxviii Letters of Fathers, and Decretal Epistles, in the name of the first bishops and martyrs of Rome, made five, six, seven hundred years after they were dead, to the utter disguising and defacing of Antiquity for the first four hundred years after our Saviour? 'Tush! these are nothing but lies,' quoth he, whereby the Protestants endeavour to disgrace the Papists. 'Sir,' answered I, you are a scholar, and have heard of Isidore Mercator, James Merlin, Peter Crabbe, Laurentius Surius, Severinus Binius, Labbé and Cossart, and the Collectio Regia, books of vast bulk and price, as well as of great majesty and magnificence. You met me this evening at the library door: if you please to meet me there tomorrow morning at eight of the clock, I will take you in; and we will go from class to class, from book to book; and there I will shew you in your own authors, that you publish such instruments for good records; and then prove, that those instruments are downright frauds and forgeries, though cited by you upon all occasions.' He would not come; but made this strange reply: — '''What if they be forgeries? what hurt is that to the Church of Rome?' "No!' (cried I, amazed.) Is it no hurt to the Church of Rome to be found guilty of forging Canons in the Apostles' names, and Epistles in the Fathers' names, which they never made? Is it nothing in Rome to be guilty of counterfeiting Decrees, and Councils, and Records of''