What use Merlin makes of Isidore, and the Forgeries therein. How much he was approved in the Church of Rome. How some would have Isidore the Bishop to be a Merchant, others, a Sinner.

How false and fraudulent soever the Collection of Isidore be, yet its Title is very Splendid, and its Authority Sacred in the Church of Rome.

All we shall observe upon this Title, is this; If Gregory the Great did Worship and Reverence the Four General Councils, as the Four Gospels, they were the more to blame that added 50 Canons to one of them; and they much more, that stain them all with the Neighbourhood, and Mixture of such hateful Forgeries.

But who could suspect that so much Fraud could be Ushered in with so fair a Frontispiece? or so much Sordid Baseness varnished over with so much Magnificence! I have heard of a Thief that robbed in his Coach, and a Bishops Pontificalibus; of the German Princess, and of Mahomet's Dove: But I never heard of any thing like this, that a Patriarch should trade with Apostles, Fathers, Emperours, Golden Bulls, Kings, and Councils; under the fair pretext of all these, to Cheat the World of its Religion and Glory.

His Grandeur is rendered the more remarkable, and his Artifice redoubted, by the Greatness of his Retinue: Riculphus Archbishop of Mentz, Hincmarus Laudunensis, Benedictus Levita, the Famous Isidore, and his fourscore Bishops, Ivo Cartonensis, Gratian, Merlin, Peter Crab, Laurentius Surius, Carranza, Nicolinus, Binius, Labbè, Cossartius, the COLLECTIO REGIA, Stanislaus Hosius, Cardinal Bellarmine, Franciscus Turrianus, &c.