"
Before we had gone a rood westward I heard a noise coming from above,
from among the princes, and everybody, great and small, was taking up
arms and donning his armour as if for war, and ere I had time to cast
about me for a refuge, the whole sky became black, and the city darker
than when an eclipse befalls; the thunder roared, the lightning flashed
to and fro, and ceaseless showers of deadly shafts were directed from the
lower gates against the Catholic Church, and had there not been in each
man's hand a shield to receive the fiery darts, and had the foundation
rock not been so strong that nothing could ever harm it, we all would
have become one burning mass. But alack, this was but a prologue or
foretaste of what was to follow; for suddenly the darkness became
sevenfold more intense, and Belial himself advanced in the densest cloud,
and around him his chief officers both earthly and infernal, ready to
receive and accomplish his behest at their several posts. He had
entrusted the Pope and his other son of France {37a} with the destruction
of the Church of England and its queen; the Turks and Muscovites were to
strike at the other sections of the Church, and slay the people, and
especially the queen and the other princes, and above all to burn the
Bible.
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