By Robert Abbot, Bishop of Salisbury, published c. 1609
[Robert Abbot wrote this Defence against the accusations of Catholic priest, William Bishop, who claimed the Great Whore was the Pagan city of Rome, not the Roman Catholic Church.]
“As for that which M. Bishop saith, ‘that M. Perkins seeketh to deceive, in that he applieth to Rome at this day, that which was spoken of Rome 1500 years ago, he is therein much deceived himself, because those things which were spoken of Rome 1500 years ago, were spoken by way of prophecy, to discover Rome unto us as it is at this day.’ M. Bishop’s last rebuttal: ‘the [ancient] Empire slew more saints of God in one year then the Church of Rome hath done of obstinate heretics in 1600 years.’ Where after the manner of the persecutors under the old empire, he calleth them reprobate and obstinate heretics, who were indeed the Saints of God. Of them the Church of Rome slew none at all, until by usurpation of the Pope, she became the seat and kingdom of Antichrist: but how she hath played her part since, it may be esteemed that Bellarmine himself reporteth, that by eight thousand, which as Matthew of Paris noteth, were the Popes crosse-marked soldiers, there were slain at once in France a hundred thousand of the Albigenses, in the time of Innocent III. Matthew Paris again mentioned that not long after, in the time of Pope Gregory IX, there were slain of them in Almaine an infinite number, besides a great multitude of them destroyed in Spain. Now these Albigenses, although Catholics will not have it so taken, were professors of the Gospel, even of the same faith and religion which we now profess, of whom it were infinite to record, how many hundreds and thousands they have slain under the names of Waldenses, Leonists, Lollards, Wyclevists, Hussites, Huguenots, and such like. But of later times Paulus Ʋergerius [the Younger], who himself had been arrested by the Inquisition, & spake upon good knowledge of his own, declared that by the same very Inquisition within the space of thirty years, there had been martyred a hundred and fifty thousand men and women, only for the Gospel’s sake. The French massacres and butcheries will not be forgotten, wherein M. Stow mentions, that the slaughters at Vassey, Paris, Sens, Toulouse, Blois, Tours, Angiers, and other places, by credible estimation reported out of France in the year 1562 were to the number of a hundred thousand persons, within the space of six months. After which about the space of ten years, followed the slaughter of Bartholomew-tide [the season in which St. Batholomew’s Day was celebrated], most barbarous and cruel, wherein some thirty or forty thousand were destroyed in Paris, and other cities of France, within a very short space, and thereupon great congratulations made at Rome, with processions, and other tokens of public joy. Thus, they have made no end of martyring the Saints of Christ, and have equaled the cruelty of the heathen Empire to the uttermost: and yet this hypocrite being instructed by his master Bellarmine, and having sold himself to copy his lies, telleth us, that his Roman Church, or the Pope the head thereof, hath not at all shed so much blood, as the heathen Empire shed within the compass of one year. The blood that they have shed cries for revenge, and they shall receive it in due time.”
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