Of Surius his four Tomes, and how the Forgeries are by him defended. He hath the Rescripts of Atticus and Cyril, by which Pope Zozimus was condemned of Forgery in the sixth Council of Carthage.

Laurentius Surius was a Monk of the Order of the Carthusians: He wrote four Tomes: He pretends to have all the Antiquities of the Church at large, and to mend and restore the defects of the Ancient Manuscripts. What their mending and restoring is, you begin to discern. He dedicates the whole Work to Philip King of Spain, Sicily, and Neapolis, &c. and directeth it in another Epistle to the most August and Invincible Emperour Charles V. It was Printed at Collein by Geruvinus Galenius, and the Heirs of John Quintell, in the year of our Lord 1567.

He has the counterfeit Preface of Isidore Mercator, before detected; The Treatise of the Primacy of the Roman Church, all the 84 Canons of the Apostles, and the Apostolical Constitutions of Pope Clement (newly added to the Tomes of the Councils) for good Records; though Isidore Mercator, some of the Apostles Canons, and Clement's Constitutions, are rejected by some of the best of his most able Followers, (as you shall see hereafter:) not I suppose upon mature deliberation, but inevitable necessity.

The Liber Pontificalis of Pope Damasus, that notorious Cheat, is the groundwork upon which he commenteth. It so exactly containeth the Lives and Acts of the Bishops of Rome, that when I first approached it, I apprehended every Life to have been recorded by some person contemporary with the Pope, of which he was writing: for it nominates the time of their Session to a Year, a Moneth, a Week, and a Day, from S. Peter downward: Which being done for no Episcopal Chair beside, it made the Roman See seem of more Eminent Concernment than the residue from the very first beginning; such a peculiar and extraordinary care being no mean Indication of its High Exaltation above all other Chairs, that were not for a long time together so accurately regarded. But a little after, I found a shrewd sign; for beside the errours and contradictions noted before, in the midst of all this exactness, he misseth sometimes 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 years together. This shall be proved hereafter, with more than we yet say, when we come to Binius.