Of the Pontifical Falsely Fathered upon Damasus, Bishop of Rome, An. 397. How the Popish Collectors use it as their Text, yet confess it to be a Forgery full of Lyes and contradictions.

The Liber Pontificalis is a Legend so stuffed with Lyes, that the very Title of it is notorious: The very first Inscription of the Book miscarries; not so as to need, like the former Counterfeits, either those of the Apostles Canons, or their Council, or the Preface of Isidore, a long Circuit of Deductions to prove the Forgery; Binius, Labbe, and the Collectio Regia, immediately confess it. It beginneth thus.

Upon this Title Binius noteth, Hujus libri Pontificalis Damasus Auctor non est, &c. Damasus is not the Author of this Pontifical: but rather it is patched up of two divers Authors; as may be proved by this, that almost in every Popes Life, it contains things fighting with themselves: And so no account can be given of Things and Writings clashing with one another. And for this be cites Baronius, An. Christ. 69. nu. 35. An. 348. nu. 16 &c 17. Anton. Possevin. Apparat. Sac. on the word Damasus.

Now a man would expect he should lay aside the Book, and refuse to make use of such an odious Pamphlet: But for want of a better he takes it in, as his most Learned Companions do; and so they labour all under the miserable Fate of making a Forgery, the Text upon which their Notes and Volumes are the Commentary.

It is meet before I pass, to make some use of what is given us: for Observation is the Life of History, Reflexions digesting the Objects that are before us, and turning them into nourishment.

What is here said, concerneth not a Page, but a whole Book, stuffed with Legends, and Lives of Popes.