call them deserters and apostates, upon any other account so much, as because they departed from their society, and would not observe the custom of their ancestors. And if we be obliged to submit to the judgment of those men who then governed the church, and will regard neither God nor his word, nor any thing else, it cannot be denied, but that the Apostles made defection from the high priests and priests; that is, from the Catholic church, and without and against their wills innovated in many things which pertained to religion, and, consequently, were rightly condemned according to the -law.

And so as they say Antæus was to be lifted by Hercules from the Earth his mother, before he could be conquered by him; so our adversaries are to be lifted up from that mother of theirs, the vain pretence and shadow of the church, or else they will never yield to the word of God. So, as Jeremiah saith, do not so much boast that you have the temple of God with you, that confidence is vain; for these are (saith he, Jer. viii. 4) lying words. And the angel in the Apocalypse, ii. 9: They say that they are Jews, but they are the synagogue of Satan. And when the Pharisees boasted that they were of the stock and blood of Abraham, Christ told them (John, viii. 44), they were of the devil their father, for you do not resemble Abraham your father; as if he should have said, You are not what you so much desire to be called; you impose upon the people by vain titles, and abuse the name of the church to the ruin of the church; and therefore they ought in the first place to prove this truly and plainly to us; viz. that the church of Rome, as it is now managed by them, is the true and orthodox church of God, and that it agrees with the primitive church of Christ and his apostles, and of the

was yet brought to perfection; when the law was not written on the hearts of men, but on tables of stone (though this pretence is very ridiculous); for there was then the same God, the same Christ, the same Spirit, the same doctrine, the same faith, the same hope, the same inheritance, the same covenant, and the same efficacy, in the word of God. And Eusebius saith, that all the faithful from Adam were indeed Christians (though they were not so called). Let no man, I say, speak thus, for St. Paul the Apostle found the same errors and defects under the Gospel, in the highest perfection and the greatest light; so that he was forced to write thus to the Galatians, whom he had just before settled: I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain, and that you have to no purpose heard the Gospel. O my little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. (iv. 11, 19.)

For there is no need of speaking how fearfully the church of Corinth was corrupted. And now could the churches of Galatia and Corinth fall, and is the church of Rome the only church that can neither fall nor err? Certainly Christ long since foretold concerning his church, that there should be a time when the abomination of desolation should stand in the holy place. (Matt. xxiv. 15.) And St. Paul saith (2 Thes. ii. 4), that antichrist shall sit in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (2 Tim. iv. 3, 4.) And the time will come, when men will not endure sound doctrine, but in the church shall be turned unto fables. And St. Peter saith, there shall be in the church false teachers; and Daniel the Prophet saith of the last times, the days of antichrist, the truth shall be cast down, and trodden upon in the earth. And Christ saith, there shall be such great calamities and confusions upon the earth,

that the very elect (if it were possible) shall be deceived. (Matt. xxiv. 24.) Now all these things are to come to pass, not among Pagans and Turks, but in the holy place, the temple of God, in the church, the assembly and society of Christians.

23. And although these things alone are sufficient to forewarn a wise man not to suffer himself easy to be imposed upon by the name of the church, so as not to examine it by the word of God; yet besides all this, many of the fathers and pious learned men have oftentimes grievously complained that these predictions were come to pass in their times. For God, in the midst of that darkness, would that there should be some men who should as sparks be observed by men, though they could not give them a very clear and bright light. Certainly Hilarius, when things were in some sort sincere and uncor rupted, tells them that they did ill in doting upon walls; that they were mistaken in venerating houses and buildings as if they were the church of God, and offering them to us instead of peace. Is it doubtful (saith he) whether antichrist shall sit there? The mountains, woods, lahes, prisons, and gulfs, to me seem safer, because the Prophets of God remaining willingly, or being forcibly put into them, prophe sied by the Spirit of God. Gregory the Great, as if he then perceived and foresaw the ruin that was near at hand, wrote thus to John, Bishop of Constantinople, who first commanded himself to be called by the name of the Universal Bishop: If the church should depend upon one man, it would certainly fall. And who is there that hath not observed that this is come long since to pass? It is a great while since the Bishop of Rome would have the whole church depend upon him only, and therefore it is no wonder if it be long since fallen. St. Bernard, above four hundred years ago, said, there

as the

is nothing sound in the clergy now, therefore there is
nothing remaining but the revelation of the man of
sin; and in his sermon on the conversion of St.
Paul he expresseth himself thus: It may seem,
perhaps, to some, that persecutions are ceased; no
(saith he), they now begin from them who have ob-
tained the primacy in the church; thy friends and
thy neighbours have approached and stood against
thee. From the sole of the foot to the crown of the
head, there is no soundness. Iniquity is proceeded
from thy elders, judges, and vicars, who seemed to
govern thy people.
We cannot now say,
people are, so is the priest; because the people are
not so bad as the priests. Alas! alas! O Lord God!
they are the first in persecuting thee who seem to love
the primacy, and exercise a
a principality in thy
church. And upon the Canticles: All my friends,
and all my enemies, all my acquaintances, and all
my adversaries, the servants of Christ, serve anti-
christ. Behold, in my peace my bitterness is in-
creased! And Roger Bacon, a man of great name,
when he had in a sharp discourse represented the
miserable state of his own times, concludes thus:
Those many and great errors require antichrist as
near at hand.

24. Gerson complains, that in his times all the force of theology was degenerated into a mere contest of wit and sophistry. The Lugdunensian Brothers, a sort of men which were not ill as to their lives, used to affirm that the church of Rome, from whence alone the oracles of faith were then fetched, was the whore of Babylon; concerning which, such clear predictions were in the Revelations; and that she was the assembly of hell. I know that the authority of these men is in no esteem with them; but what now would they say if I should produce witnesses which are of the highest value with them? What if

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I say that Pope Adrian ingenuously confessed that all those mischiefs fell upon the church from the loss of the papal power? Pighius confesseth that they erred in this, that they suffered many abuses to be brought into the mass, though they would have it esteemed most holy: Gerson, that the multitude of light and foolish ceremonies had extinguished all that power of the Holy Spirit which should have flourished in us, and all that was truly pious. All Greece and Asia complained that the Popes of Rome, by their doctrines of purgatory, and sales of indulgences, had both offered violence to the consciences of men and robbed their purses.

25. Laurentius Valla, Marsilius Patavinus, Franciscus Petrarcha, Hieronymus Savanarola, Abbas Joachimus, Baptista Mantuanus, and before them all St. Bernard, have very often grievously complained of the tyranny and Persian pride of the bishops of Rome, and have not obscurely hinted (whether true or falsely I will not inquire), that the Pope was antichrist; not to mention a number of others, who, because they have freely and ingenuously reprehended the vices of the Popes, will, perhaps, be numbered by them amongst their enemies; but all these I have named, lived either at Rome itself, or under the eyes of these most holy fathers, and were intimately acquainted with their way of living, and did never depart from their catholic faith. Neither can any man object that these were Lutherans or Zuinglians, for they lived not only some years, but some entire ages, before the names of these men were heard of in the world; and they saw also, even then, that errors were crept into the church, and desired they might be amended.

And where was the wonder if the church fell into some errors in those times, in which neither the Bishop of Rome, who alone had the chiefest manage

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