Tit. ii. As he is very simple, who, being borne in hand by a sophister, and driven by force of sophistical arguments to grant that he hath horns, thinketh so in deed, and therefore putteth his hand to his forehead; so whosoever through your teaching fall from the catholic church into the errors of our time, from the straitness of christian life into the carnal liberty of this new gospel, from devotion into the insensibility which we see the people to live in, from the fear of God to the desperate contempt of all virtue and goodness; hereby they shew themselves to be such as have unstable hearts, which be given over to the lusts of their flesh, which have no delight ne feeling of God, which, like Turks and epicures seeking only for the commodities and pleasures of this world, have no regard of the life But the godly sort, whose hearts be established with grace, who pant and labour to live after the Spirit, continually mortifying their flesh, whose delight is to serve God, who be kept and holden within the fear of God, though they give you their hearing, and that of constraint, not of will, yet will not they give you their liking nor consenting. to come. Wherefore, M. Jewel, seeing we have performed that which you have over boldly said we were not able to do; seeing for proof of these articles we have brought more than you bare your hearers in hand we had to bring; seeing you perceive yourself herein to have done more than standeth with learning, modesty, or good advice; seeing, in case of any one clause or sentence for our part brought, you have with so many protestations promised to yield and to subscribe unto us; seeing, by performing your promise, you may do so much good to the people and to yourself; seeing, nothing can be justly alleged for keeping of you from satisfying your promise, and returning to the church again; seeing so great respects both of temporal and of heavenly preferments invite you and call you from parts and sects, where you remain with most certain danger of your soul, to the safe port of Christ's church; seeing by so doing you should not do that which were singular, but common to you with many others, men of right good fame and estimation; finally, seeing, if you shall (as always for the most part heretics have done) continue in the profession of your untrue doctrine, and travail in setting forth erroneous treatises for defence of the same, you shall gain thanks of no other but of the lightest and worst sort of the people, and persuade none but such as be of that mark; we trust you will upon mature deliberation in your sadder years change the counsel which you liked in your youth; we trust you will examine better by learning the new doctrine which you with many others were drawn unto by sway of the time, when by course of age you wanted judgment; we trust you will call back yourself from errors and heresies advisedly, which you have maintained rashly, and set forth by word and write1 busily, and therein assured yourself of the truth confidently. Thus shall your error seem to proceed of ignorance, not of malice. Thus shall you make some recompence for hurt done. Thus shall you in some degree discharge yourself before God and men: thus shall you be received into the lap of the church again, out of which is no salvation, whither being restored you may from henceforth, in certain expectation of the blessed hope, lead a life more acceptable to God, to whom be all praise, honour, and glory. Amen. [ Write: used apparently for writing.] AN ANSWER TO M. HARDING'S CONCLUSION. As the rest of your book, M. Harding, may in many respects seem very weak, so is there no part thereof more weak than your triumph at the end, before the conquest. Ye say, ye have fully answered the offer, which you call a challenge, and have avouched the negatives, and have fully proved all that lay in question by scriptures, by examples of the primitive church, by old councils, and by ancient fathers. Whereby it appeareth ye have some good liking in that ye have done. It had been more modesty to have left the commendation and judgment thereof unto your reader; who, comparing your proofs with the answers, and laying the one with the other, might be able to judge indifferently between both. For it may well be thought that while ye ran alone ye were ever the foremost, and that, making your own award, ye would hardly pronounce against yourself. The proofs that ye have shewed us are common and known, often alleged and often answered, and now brought in as a company of maimed soldiers, to make a shew. But from you, and from such conference and help of fellows, your learned friends looked for some fresher matters. That ye charge me with ambition, and self-love, and seeking of praise, although it be the weakest of all other your shifts, yet it is an affection incident unto the children of Adam; and some men suspect that M. Harding is not fully empty of the same. But he that made the heart is only meet to search and to judge the heart. As for me, as I am nothing, so I know nothing. "God forbid that I should glory in any thing, saving only in the Gal. vi. cross of Jesus Christ." But, where it pleaseth you so horribly to pronounce your definitive sentence, that everlasting damnation shall be the end of our game, I might well answer you with St Paul: Nolite ante tempus judicare: "Judge not before the 1 Cor. iv. time." It seemeth overmuch for you so unadvisedly to take upon you the office and person of Christ without commission. For St John saith: "God John v. hath given all judgment (not unto M. Harding, but) unto Christ his Son;" who, no doubt, will inquire further of your judgment. Your own Gelasius saith: Neminem gravare debet iniqua sententia3: "A wrongful sentence may hurt no man." It behoveth us patiently to wait for the judgment-seat of God. "In that day all the secrets of darkness shall be revealed." The wicked and 1 Cor. iv. ungodly cried out against the prophet David: Non est salus ipsi in Deo ejus: "He hath no health, he hath no comfort in his God." But David turned Psal. iii. himself unto God, and said: “O Lord, thou receivest me; thou art my glory; thou liftest up my head." If damnation be the end of all their travails, that seek only the glory of God and the truth of his gospel, where then shall they be that so wilfully have dishonoured the name of God, and have burnt his gospel without cause, and have condemned it as open heresy? Certainly, Rev. xxi. "renegades, infidels, liars, blasphemers, and idolaters shall have their portion in the lake that flameth with fire and brimstone." The Lord's mouth hath spoken it. This doubtless shall be the end of their game. Now, say you, it remaineth that I perform my promise. Yea, verily; but, notwithstanding all that ye have hitherto said, much more it remaineth that you begin again and assay better to prove your purpose; that is, that ye leave your surmises and guesses, and allege one or other sufficient clause or sentence for any of these matters that ye say ye have proved. For that ye have hitherto shewed us, as unto any indifferent reader it may soon appear, is over weak, and will not serve. I grant, ye have alleged authorities, sundry and many, such as I knew long before; with what faith, I doubt not but by conference it may soon appear. [2 To, 1565, 1609.] [3...neminem potest iniqua gravare sententia.— Gelas. Papa in Corp. Jur. Canon. Lugd. 1624. Decret. Gratian. Decr. Sec. Pars, Caus. XI. Quæst. 2 Kings iv. Isai. xl. August. de Art. 17, Div. 4. & 7. Verily, M. Harding, I never denied but you were able to misreport the ancient Ye say, ye have shaken down all the holds of our side; and that whosoever seeth it not, is stark blind and seeth nothing. So easily and with so small ado this whole matter is brought to pass. So Julius Cæsar, sometime to declare the marvellous speed and expedition of his victory, expressed the same briefly in these three words: Veni: vidi: vici: “I came to them: I saw them: I conquered them." Here, in few words to traverse the special points and corners of your whole book, and to shew by what force and engines ye have achieved this enterprise: first, you have proved your private mass by women, boys, children, laymen, fables, dreams, and visions: your half-communion by sick folk, deathbeds, infants, and madmen. Of Christ's institution, of the scriptures, of the certain practice of the apostles, of the general and known use of the primitive church, of the ancient councils, of the old canons, of the holy catholic fathers, saving only your bare guesses, you bring nothing. Of your unfruitful manner of praying in a strange unknown tongue, ye allege neither authority nor example: touching the supremacy of Rome, which is the keep and castle of your whole religion, ye wander far and wide, and many times beside the way; yet have ye not found any ancient father that ever intitled the bishop of Rome either the universal bishop of the whole world, or the head of the universal church. Thus ye proceed with your real presence; and so forth with the rest. You entreat uncourteously the holy fathers with such your translations, expositions, and constructions, not as may best express their meaning, but as may best serve to further your purpose. Ye rack them, ye alter them, ye put to them, ye take from3 them, ye allege sometime the end without the beginning, sometime the beginning without the end: sometime ye take the bare words against the meaning: sometime ye make a meaning against the words. Ye imagine councils that were never holden, and canons of councils that never were seen. Ye bring forged pamphlets under the names of Athanasius, Anacletus, and other godly fathers, by whom you well know, and cannot choose but know, they were never made. Your greatest grounds be surmises, guesses, conjectures, and likelihoods. Your arguments be fallacies, many times without either mood or figure; the antecedent not agreeing with the consequent, nor one part joined with another. Your untruths be so notorious and so many, that it pitieth me in your behalf to remember them. But the places be evident, and cry corruption, and may by no shift be denied. And, to forget all other your inconstancy touching the former times, even now in this selfsame book which ye wish us to receive, and so to receive as the rule and standard of our faith, ye say and unsay, ye avouch and recant; and either of forgetfulness, or for that ye mislike your former sayings, you are often contrary to yourself. Ye have sought up a company of new petit doctors, Abdias, Amphilochius, Clemens, Hippolytus, Leontius, and such others, authors void of authority, full of vanities and childish fables. And no great marvel: for whoso wanteth wood is often driven to burn turfs. It had been good ye had brought some other doctors to prove the credit of these doctors. Ye make no difference between silver and dross, between corn and chaff, between old and new, between true and false. Ye say: Christ shed his blood in deed and verily at his last supper; and that at the same instant of time he offered himself in his body likewise in heaven indeed and verily before God his Father. And these ye call necessary points of the christian faith. These are the contents of your book: this is the substance of your proofs. Thus, I fear me, ye know ye dally, and deal not plainly: thus ye know ye abuse the patience and simplicity of your reader. And did you imagine, M. Harding, that your book should pass only among children, or that it should never be examined and come to trial? or did you think that only with the sound hereof ye should be able to beat down and to vanquish the truth of God? As for your eloquence and furniture of words, as it serveth well to make the matter more saleable in the sight of the simple, so it addeth but small weight unto the truth. Wise men are led with choice of matter, not with noise of words; and try their gold, not only by the sound, which often deceiveth, but also by the touchstone and by the weight. Although your eloquence may work miracles in the ears of the unlearned, that cannot judge, yet it cannot turn neither water into wine, nor darkness into light, nor error into truth. There is no eloquence, there is no colour against the Lord. & xxiii. Whereas it liketh you so bitterly, as your manner is, to call us heretics, and to say, we sit in the chair of pestilence, and that the people learneth of us dissolution of manners and liberty of the flesh, and walketh utterly without sense or fear or care of God; it standeth not with your credit thus with manifest untruths and common slanders to inveigle your reader. Balach, when he saw he Num. xxii. could not prevail against the people of God by force of arms, he began to rail against them, and to curse them, thinking that by such means he should prevail. But it is not always heresy that an heretic calleth heresy. Athalia, when she understood that Joas, the right inheritor of the crown of Juda, was proclaimed 2 Kings xi. king, flew in her fury into the temple, and cried out, "Treason, treason." Yet was it not king Joas, but she herself that had wrought the treason. The Arian heretics called the true Christians, that professed the faith of the holy Trinity, sometime Ambrosians, sometime Johannites, and sometime Homousians; allowing only themselves to be called catholics. The Valentinian heretics condemned all others as gross and earthly, and themselves only they called ghostly. The sheep oftentimes seemeth to stray without the fold, whiles the wolf lurketh and preyeth within. Verily, M. Harding, whoso hateth the intolerable outrage of your abuses, and pitieth the miserable seducing and mocking of the people, and mourneth for the reformation of the house of God, and desireth to tread in the steps of the ancient catholic godly fathers, whose doctrine and ordinances ye have forsaken, and with all submission and humility of mind referreth the whole judgment and order hereof unto the undoubted word of God, he may not rightly be called an heretic. Convers. Touching looseness of life, I marvel ye can so soon forget either your church of Rome, where, as St Bernard said in his time, "from the head to the foot there Bernard. in was no part whole;' or the pope's holiness' own palace, where, as the same Paul. St Bernard saith, mali proficiunt, boni deficiunt, "the wicked grow forward, the De Consid. godly go backward." Lib. iv. Delect. Card. Verily, we have neither stews, nor concubines, nor courtezans set out and decked as ladies, nor priests nor prelates to wait upon them, as, by your own In Concil. friends' confession, there are in Rome. There is no virtue, but we advance it: there is no vice, but we condemn it. To be short, a light wanton amongst us, if she were in Rome, might seem Penelope. Ye say, there are none but a few light unstable persons of our side: and therefore of good-will and friendship ye counsel me to return to you again. But a few, say you? and the same unstable and light persons? Surely, M. Harding, if you could behold the wonderful works that God hath wrought in the kingdoms [See before, pages 713, 8, 9.] [ Bernard. Op. Par. 1690. In Convers. S. Paul. Serm. i. 3. Vol. I. Tom. III. col. 956. See before, page 382, note 10.] [ Id. De Consid. Lib. IV. cap. iv. 11. Vol. I. Tom. II. col. 439. See before, page 382, note 9.] [ Suggest. Delect. Card. in Crabb. Concil. Col. Agrip. 1551. Tom. III. p. 823. See before, page 728.] [ Avaunce, 1565.] Rom. i. Rev. xviii. 2 Pet. ii. of England, France, Denmark, Polonia, Suecia, Bohemia, and Scotland, and in the Whereas you in so earnest sort, and with such protestation of friendship, counsel me to leave Christ and to follow you; as your counsel, joined with truth, were very wholesome, so, standing with manifest untruth, it is full of danger, and the more vehement the more dangerous. Certainly, heretics and infidels, to increase their factions, have evermore used the like persuasions. But we may hear no counsel against the counsel of God. Aristotle sometime said: "Socrates is my friend, and so is Plato; but the friendship of truth is best of all." We cannot bear witness against God: we cannot say good is ill and ill is good, light is darkness and darkness is light. We cannot "be ashamed of the gospel of Christ: it is the mighty power of God unto salvation." And with whom then would ye have us to join? Examine the weight and circumstance of your counsel. Whom should we flee? whom should we follow? Leave affection, leave favour of parts, and judge uprightly. Would ye have us to join with them that have burnt the word of God, and scornfully call it a shipman's hose and a nose of wax? That maintain manifest and known errors? That call God's people dogs and swine? That say: "Ignorance is the mother of true devotion?" That force the people to open idolatry? That forbid lawful marriage, and license concubines and common stews? That have devised unto themselves a strange religion, without either scriptures, or ancient councils, or old doctors, or example of the primitive church? That have turned their backs to God? That have deceived the people? That have made the house of God a cave of thieves? Whom so many kingdoms and countries and infinite thousands of godly people have forsaken? From whom the Holy Ghost by express words hath commanded us to depart? For so it is written: "Come away from her, O my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, lest ye be also partakers of her plagues." Would ye counsel us, M. Harding, to forsake the word of life, and the company of all them that have given their bodies and blood for the testimony of Christ, and to join with these? Ye say: "We may have the example and company of one Staphylus, and Balduinus, and Wicelius, that have done the like." Ye might also have added the example and company of Judas the traitor, of Julianus the renegade, and of others the like, of whom St Peter saith: "They are turned back to feed upon their vomit as shameless dogs, and to wallow again in their mire as filthy swine." I will say nothing of you, M. Harding. Notwithstanding, ye know whose examTertull. de ples ye have followed. Tertullian saith thus: Christus ait, Fugite de civitate in civitatem. Sic enim quidem argumentabatur: sed et ipse fugitivus: "Christ said, Fug. in Persec. [ Falshead, 1565.] [2 Immo, inquit, quia præceptum adimplevit, fugiens de civitate in civitatem. Sic enim voluit qui dam, sed et ipse fugitivus, argumentari.—Tertull. Op. Lut. 1641. De Fug. in Persec. 6. p. 693.] |