268 THE HISTORY OE THE ORDER OF [book HI.

both to the flames, if required. It might bepartly age’s feebleness; and piety leaveth to adotard that not warrantable excuse, but unen-viable palliation. At such fearful and extrava-gant iniquities imputed to his venerated order,well might unfortunate Molay, as full of wonder,make a great sign of the cross, and exclaim thatsuch enormous inventors merited what is inflictedon liars and coiners among Saracens and Tartars.What punishment is that? To have their paunchesripped open, and their heads cut off . 1 They hadread what purported to be his avowal, and wasnot. Even his had been constrained under tortui-es;sad tribute to the feebleness of human nature, andhis imagination tried to relieve him from thosehorrible agonies of corporal pain; but still worsewords had been forged afterwards, and feloniouslyinserted into that doleful cry; so he boldly deniedthe whole, retracting what he had pretended, anddeclaring those other fictions too grossly false everto have occurred to his disordered brain, and utterlyand extravagantly untrue, and invented by them-

1 Prima e sccunda Yita di Clemente Y.—Yertot: iv. 132.—Huratori—Platina : iii. 179.—The Templars went by Sicily toGreece, says Bosio. "Why that round-about ? At all events, whattime to get ricchissimi in Greece by their savings d’ogni anno;since they left Cyprus in 1306, and were in Prance in 1307?Bosio : par. ii., lib. 1.