The “ecclesiastics” take the cream of the land, by donations of ignorant men, that stand in awe of them, and by tithes. So also it is in the fable of “fairies,” that they enter into the dairies, and feast upon the cream, which they skim from the milk.
What kind of money is current in the kingdom of “fairies” is not recorded in the story. But the “ecclesiastics” in their receipts accept of the same money that we do; though when they are to make any payment, it is in canonizations, indulgences, and masses.
To this, and suchlike resemblances between the Papacy and the kingdom of “fairies,” may be added this, that as the “fairies” have no existence but in the fancies of ignorant people, rising from the traditions of old wives, or old poets: so the spiritual power of the Pope, without the bounds of his own civil dominion, consisteth only in the fear that seduced people stand in, of their excommunications; upon hearing of false miracles, false traditions, and false interpretations of the Scripture.
It was not, therefore, a very difficult matter for Henry VIII by his exorcism; nor for Queen Elizabeth by hers, to cast them out. But who knows that this spirit of Rome, now gone out, and walking by missions through the dry places of China, Japan, and the Indies, that yield him little fruit, may not return, or rather an assembly of spirits worse than he, enter, and inhabit this clean swept house, and make the end thereof worse than the beginning? For it is not the Roman clergy only, that pretends the kingdom of God to be of this world, and thereby to have a power therein, distinct from that of the civil state. And this is all I had a design to say concerning the doctrine of the “politics.” Which when I have reviewed, I shall willingly expose it to the censure of my country.