“Aye, and what do we see in Flanders, Gueldre, Frisia, Holland, Zealand? Adamites running naked through the streets; yea, good people, naked in the streets, showing their lean flesh without shame to the passers-by. There was but one of them, say you: aye—let it pass—one is as good as a hundred, a hundred is even as one. And he was burned, say you, and he was burned alive, at the request of the Calvinists and Lutherans. These wolves eat one another, I say unto you!
“Aye, and what do we see in Flanders, Gueldre, Frisia, Holland, Zealand? Free thinkers teaching that all servitude is contrary to the word of God. They lie, the stinking heretics; we must submit to the Holy Mother Church of Rome. And there, in that accursed city of Antwerp, the rendezvous and meeting-ground of all the heretic dogs in the world, they have dared to preach that we prepare and bake the host with dog’s grease. Another saith, ’tis that beggar upon the chamber pot at the corner of the street, ‘There is no God, nor life eternal, nor resurrection of the body, nor everlasting damnation.’ ‘We can,’ saith another yonder, in a whining voice, ‘baptise without salt, or lard, or spittle, without exorcism and without candle.’ ‘There is no purgatory,’ says another. There is no purgatory, good people! Ah! it were better for you to have committed sin with your mothers, your sisters, and your daughters, than to doubt purgatory.
“Aye, and they turn up their nose at the Inquisitor, that holy man, aye. They came to Belem, near this place, as many as four thousand Calvinists, with weaponed men, banners and drums. Aye. And you can smell from here the smoke of their cooking fires. They have taken the Church of Saint Catholyne to dishonour it, profane it, desecrate it by their damnable preachifying.
“What is this impious and scandalous tolerance? By the thousand devils of hell, ye supine, faint-hearted Catholics, why do not ye also take weapons into your hands? Ye have, even as these damned Calvinists, cuirasses, lances, halberds, swords, daggers, arbalests, knives, cudgels, pikes, the town falconets and culverins.
“They are peaceful folk, say you; they desire in all freedom and tranquillity to hear the word of God. That is all one to me. Go forth from Bruges! hunt me, slay me, blow me up all these Calvinists that are without the pale of the Church. Ye are not yet started! Fie on you! Ye are hens trembling with fear on your dunghill. I see the moment when these damned Calvinists will drum on your wives’ and daughters’ bellies, and you will let them, men of tow and putty. Go not over yonder, go not ... ye will get your stockings wet in the battle. Fie upon you, men of Bruges! fie upon you, Catholics! That is well done and like true Catholics, O cowardly poltroons! Shame upon you, ducks and drakes, geese and turkeys that you are!
“Are not they goodly preachers, that you should go in crowds to hearken to the lies they belch forth, that the young girls should go by night to their sermons, aye, and that in nine months the town should be full of little beggar-boys and beggar-girls? There were four of them there, four scandalous vagabonds, that preached in the cemetery of the church. The first of these vagabonds, livid and lean, the ugly loose-belly, had a dirty hat upon his head. Thanks to it his ears were not to be seen. Which of you hath seen the ears of a preacher? He had no shirt, for his bare arms came linenless out through his doublet. I saw it well, though he tries to cover himself up with a dirty little cloak, and I saw, too, all right in his black canvas breeches, full of open work like the spire of Notre Dame, the swinging of his bells and clapper. The other vagabond preached in a doublet, and no shoes. Nobody saw his ears. And he had to stop short in his preachifying, and the boys and girls began to hoot him, crying: ‘Yah! Yah! he doesn’t know his lesson!’ The third of these scandalous vagabonds had on his head a dirty ugly little hat, with a little feather sticking out of the top. And his ears were not to be seen, either. The fourth of the rascals, Hermanus, better arrayed than the others, must have been branded on the shoulder twice by the executioner, aye, verily.
“They all wear under their headgear greasy silk caps that hide their ears. Did you ever see the ears of a preacher? Which of these rogues ever dared to show his ears? His ears! Ah! yes, show his ears; they have all been cut off. Aye, the executioner has cut the ears off every one of them.
“And yet it was round about these scandalous rogues, these cut purses, these cobblers that have run away from their stools, these ragamuffin preachers, that all the whole populace went crying and shouting: ‘Long live the Beggars!’ as if they had all been mad, drunk, or fools.
“Ah, it only remains for us poor Roman Catholics to leave the Low Countries, since there they allow this bawling cry: ‘Long live the Beggars! Long live the Beggars!’ What a millstone of a curse hath therefore fallen upon this bewitched and foolish folk, ah! Jesus! Everywhere, rich and poor, noble and base, young and old, men and women, all cry out: ‘Long live the Beggars!’
“And what are all these lords, these scald leather seats that have come to us from Germany? All their having is gone on harlots, or gaming, lechery, lewdness, long-drawn debauchery, rooted villainies, abominations of dice and ostentation of outward array. They have not even a rusty nail to scratch themselves with where they itch. And now they must needs have the goods and wealth of churches and convents.