It would take too long to describe in detail the manner in which these same Manichean heretics preach, and teach their followers, but it must be briefly considered here.
In the first place they usually say of themselves that they are good Christians, who do not swear, or lie, or speak evil of others; that they do not kill any man or animal nor any thing having the breath of life, and that they hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel as Christ and His Apostles taught. They assert that they occupy the place of the apostles, and that on account of the above mentioned things those of the Roman Church, namely, the prelates, clerks and monks, persecute them, especially the Inquisitors of Heresy, and call them heretics, although they are good men and good Christians, and that they are persecuted just as Christ and his apostles were by the Pharisees.
They moreover talk to the laity of the evil lives of clerks and the prelates of the Roman Church, pointing out and setting forth their pride, cupidity, avarice and uncleanness of life and such other evils as they know. They invoke with their own interpretation and according to their abilities the authority of the Gospels and the Epistles against the condition of the prelates, churchmen and monks, whom they call Pharisees and false prophets, who say but do not.
Then they attack and vituperate, one after the other, all the sacraments of the church, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ, for had this been as great as the largest mountain Christians would have consumed it entirely before this. They assert that the host comes from straw, that it passes through the tails of horses, to wit, when the flour is cleaned by a sieve [of horse hair]. That moreover it passes through the body and comes to a vile end which, they say, could not happen if God were in it. Of baptism, they assert that water is material and corruptible, and is therefore the creation of the Evil Power and cannot sanctify the soul, but that the churchmen sell this water out of avarice, just as they sell earth for the burial of the dead, and oil to the sick when they anoint them, and as they sell the confession of sins as made to the priests. Hence, they claim that confession made to the priests of the Roman Church is useless, and that, since the priests may be sinners, they can not loose nor bind, and being unclean themselves, cannot make another clean. They assert, moreover, that the cross of Christ should not be adored or venerated, because, as they urge, no one would venerate or adore the gallows upon which a father, relative or friend had been hung. They urge further that they who adore the cross ought for similar reasons to worship all thorns and lances, because as Christ’s body was on the cross during the passion so was the crown of thorns on his head and the soldier’s lance in his side. They proclaim many other scandalous things in regard to the sacraments. They, moreover, read from the Gospels and the Epistles in the vulgar tongue, applying and expounding them in their favor and against the condition of the Roman Church in a manner which it would take too long to describe in detail, but all that relates to this subject may be read more fully in the books they have written and infected, and may be learned from the confessions of such of their followers as have been converted.