In the sixteenth century there lived in Hungary one Francis David, a man
learned in the arts and languages, but his inconstancy and fickleness of
mind led him into diverse errors, and brought about his destruction. He
left the Church, and first embraced Calvinism; then he fled into the camp
of the Semi-Judaising party, publishing a book _De Christo non invocando_,
which was answered by Faustus Socinus, the founder of Socinianism. The
Prince of Transylvania, Christopher Bathori, condemned David as an impious
innovator and preacher of strange doctrines, and cast him into prison,
where he died in 1579. There is extant a letter of David to the Churches
of Poland concerning the millennium of Christ.

Our next author was a victim to the same inconstancy of mind which proved
so fatal to Francis David, but sordid reasons and the love of gain without
doubt influenced his conduct and produced his fickleness of faith. Antonio
de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, was a shining light of the Roman
Church at the end of the sixteenth century. He was born in 1566, and
educated by the Jesuits. He was learned in history and in science, and was
the first to discover the cause of the rainbow, his explanation being
adopted and perfected by Descartes. The Jesuits obtained for him the
Professorship of Mathematics at Padua, and of Logic and Rhetoric at
Brescia. After his ordination he became a popular preacher and was
consecrated Bishop of Segni, and afterwards Archbishop of Spalatro in
Dalmatia. He took a leading part in the controversy between the Republic
of Venice and the Pope, and after the reconciliation between the two
parties was obliged by the Pope to pay an annual pension of five hundred
crowns out of the revenues of his see to the Bishop of Segni. This highly
incensed the avaricious prelate, who immediately began to look out for
himself a more lucrative piece of preferment. He applied to Sir Dudley
Carleton, the English Ambassador at Venice, to know whether he would be
received into the Church of England, as the abuses and corruptions of the