[106] Smothered.

    [107] Measured.

We went and saw a stately convent the Benedictines ware building, the oldest and richest order of France.  To them it is that Nostre Dame at Saumur belongs; to them belongs the brave bastiments we saw at Tours, in which city as I was on the Loier I told 16 considerable steeples.  We saw the relicts of a old Convent, wheirupon enquiring whow it came to be demolished, he replied it was in Calvines tyme, who studied his Law in Poictiers; and then turning preacher he preached in the same very hall wheir we hear our lessons of Law.  His chamber also is to be sein wheir he studied on the river syde.

I cannot forgett a story of Calvin which Mr. Alex’r told us saying it was in their Histories, that Calvin once gladly desiring to work a miracle suborned a fellow to feigne himselfe dead that so he might raise him to life.  Gods hand was so visible upon the fellow that when he went to do it he verily died and Calvin could not raise him:  this was in Poictiers.  And it minded me first that I had read almost the like cited out of Gregorious Turonensis History by Bellarmine in his treatise de Christo refuting Arianisine of a Arian bischop who just so suborned one to feinge himselfe blind that he might cure him, but God really strake him blind.  Also it minded me of a certain Comoedian (who was to play before the Duc of Florence) who in his part had to act himselfe as dead for a while.  He that he might act himselfe as dead wt the more life and vigeur agitated and stirred or rather oppressed his spirits so that when he sould have risen he was found dead in very truth.  As also 3ly of a certain Italian painter who being to draw our Saviour as he was upon the Cross in his greatest torment and agony (he caused a comoedian whose main talent was to represent sorrow to the life), he caused one come and sit doune before him and feigne one of the dolfullest countenances that he could that he might draw Christ of him; but he tuise sticked it, wt which being angred he drew out a knife and stobbed the person to the heart; and out of his countenance as he was wrestling wt the pangs of death he drow Christ on the cross more lively then ever any had done, boasting that he cared not to dy for his murder since he had Christ beholden to him for drawing him so livelylie.  I remember also of a passage that Howell in a letter he writes from Geneva hes, that Calvin having bein banished once by a praevalent faction from the city again being restored, he sould proudly and blasphemously have applied to himselfe that saying of David, proper to Christ, the stone which the builders refused the same is become the head of the corner.  But granting that all thir to be true, as they are not, they ware but personall escapes, neither make they me to think a white worse of his doctrine.  But as to the point of miracles its notoriously knowen that the Church of Rome abuses the world wt false miracles more then