2 Kings iv.
Isai. xl.

August. de
Ordine.

Art. 17,
Div. 4. & 7.

Verily, M. Harding, I never denied but you were able to misreport the ancient
learned doctors of the church, and to bring us the names and shadows of
many fathers.
The heretics of all ages were likewise able to do the same.
But what credit may we yield to such allegations? What error was there
ever so plain, what abuse so horrible, but ye have been able to maintain the
same by some colour of scriptures and fathers? Ye have defended your holy
water by the example of Elizeus, and by the words of the prophet Ezechiel;
your pardons by the prophet Esay; the open filthiness and abomination of your
stews by the name and authority of St Augustine1. Such credit ye deserve
to have, when ye come to us in the name of holy fathers.

Ye say, ye have shaken down all the holds of our side; and that whosoever2 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.

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.

& xxiii.

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 Rome7. 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.]

[5 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.]

[7 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
noble states and commonweals of Germany, Helvetia, Prussia, Russia, Lituania,
Pomerania, Austria, Rhetia, Vallis Tellina, &c., ye would not greatly find fault
with the number, nor think that they, whom it hath pleased God in all these
kingdoms and countries to call to the knowledge and feeling of his holy gospel,
are so few. And if ye could also consider the extremity and cruelty of your side,
and the abundance of innocent blood that so constantly hath been yielded for
the testimony of the truth, ye would not so lightly call them either unstable or
light persons. Certainly they whom you seem so lightly to esteem are kings,
princes, magistrates, councillors, and the gravest and greatest learned fathers of
Christendom. If it please God of his mercy to bless and increase that he hath
begun, within few years ye shall find but few that will so lightly be deceived and
follow you.
In all countries they flee from you and forsake you. Ye can no
longer hold them, but either by ignorance or by force and tyranny. The people,
whom it liketh you to call dogs and swine, are neither so beastly nor so unsen-
sible and void of reason, but that they are able now to espy them by whom they
so often have been deceived. They are able now to discern the truth from false-
hood1, and the true Shepherd from a stranger, and lament your pitiful case, that
are so suddenly fallen back, and welter so miserably in your error.

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 mar

riage, 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.]

Flee from city to city: so there is one that used to reason; but he himself was a fugitive."

I consider well their doings, and stand in horror of their ends: some such of your side have died in miserable desperation, with terrible witness against themselves, that they had wrought against their own conscience; as it is faithfully testified unto the world. One of these three, as it is reported and openly published by them that know him best, hath altered his whole faith seven times within the space of seventeen years, and therefore is well resembled to the old apostata Ecebolius3. St Peter saith: "It had been better for them never to have 2 Pet. ii. known the way of righteousness, than, having once received knowledge, afterward to turn away from the holy commandment." "It is an horrible thing to fall Heb. x. into the hands of the living God." St Paul saith: "Whoso hath once received Heb. vi. the light of God, and hath felt the sweetness of the heavenly gift, and hath been partaker of the Holy Ghost, and hath once tasted of the good word of God, and afterward falleth away, it is not possible for such a one to be renewed by repentance." I wish you in God and unfeignedly, M. Harding, to beware hereby. These words and examples are marvellous horrible.

Although these and such others can deny God, yet "God cannot deny him- 2 Tim. ii. self." "What," saith St Paul, "if certain of them be fallen away? Shall their Rom. iii. infidelity make frustrate the faith of God? God forbid. For God is true; and all men are liars."

Of your person, as I promised, I will say nothing. God's works be wonderful. "He calleth whom he will, and whom he will he maketh hard." He called Paul Rom. ix. from his horse, Elizæus from the plough, the apostles from their nets, and the thief on the cross, upon the sudden.

But if some simple one or other of them whom you so uncourteously have despised should say thus unto you: M. Harding, not long sithence ye taught us the gospel, even in like sort and form in all respects as it is taught us now. We remember both your words, and also the manner and courage of your utterance. Ye told us of the paper walls and painted fires of purgatory: ye said Rome was the sink of Sodom: ye said your mass was a heap of idolatry, and the mystery of iniquity: ye wished your voice had been equal with the great bell of Oseney, that ye might ring (as ye then said) in the dull ears of the deaf papists. No man was so vehement and so earnest as you. The whole university and city of Oxford, the cross at Paul's, and other like places of great concourse, can well record it. Ye bade us then believe you upon your credit; and we believed you. The prince died: another was placed. Suddenly ye had quite forgotten all that ye had taught us before, and had as suddenly learned other things, all contrary to the former, which ye told us ye never knew before; and yet, with one face and one conscience, ye required us earnestly to believe you still, even as we had done before. As though your bare word were the rule of our faith, and whatsoever you should say, true or false, we simple people were bound of necessity to believe you. Howbeit, we think, if ye tell us truth now, then ye deceived us before; if ye told us truth before, then ye deceive us now. And thus it cannot be denied but this way or that way ye have deceived

us.

And how may we know whether you speak as you think, or dissemble with us now, as ye did before? Surely St James sheweth us, that "a man of double James i. mind is ever unconstant in all his ways." We marvelled how ye could attain to all this doctrine, specially in so short a time, but most of all in such perfection. For the scriptures are large, and we hear say the councils are sundry, the doctors' volumes are long and many. So suddenly in seven days to read them all, and so to read them, it was not possible. You may by your eloquence persuade us many things. But this one thing ye can never persuade us. You wanted time: it is not credible: it was not possible. Therefore ye must needs say ye were taught these things even as the prophets were, by revelation. any of all your old hearers would thus put you in remembrance, alas! what answer could you make him?

If

[ Socrat. in Hist. Eccles. Script. Amst. 1695-1700. Lib. III. cap. xiii. p. 151.]

[JEWEL, II.]

17

Cypr. Lib. i.
Epist. 3.

But it was not you, M. Harding: it was the time. If the time had been one, you had still continued one. But ye were forced to know that ye knew not, and to think that ye thought not, and so to believe that ye believed not. Howbeit, St Hilary saith: Quæ ex necessitate est, fides non est1: "Forced faith is no faith."

The force of

Ye say, whosoever shall attempt to answer your book shall sweat in vain: his labour shall be as was the commendation of baldness, or of ignorance, or of folly; as a flourish, as a smoke, as a smother, and as I know not what. your eloquence is so invincible, no truth is able to withstand it. ye would seem to have in the beauty of your cause.

Such affiance

Here, I beseech you, give me leave once again to put you in remembrance of the contents and substance of your travails. Think you in sooth, M. Harding, or would ye have us to think, that your maimed allegations, your untrue translations, your wrested expositions, your councils never holden, your canons never not made nor seen, your epistles never written, your Amphilochius, your Abdias, your Clemens, your Leontius, your Hippolytus, and other like fabulous pamphlets and forgeries so lately found out, so long lacked and never missed, your additions, your diminutions, your alterations, your corruptions of the doctors, your contrarieties and contradictions against yourself, your surmises, your guesses, your dreams, your visions, your elenchs3, your fallacies, your silly syllogisms, without either mood or figure or sequel in reason; and, to conclude, your untruths, so plain, so evident, so manifest, and so many, can never be answered? Is simple truth become so weak? Or is error and falsehood1 grown so strong?

O M. Harding, you know right well the weakness of your side. No man seeth it better than yourself. If you will dissemble and say ye see it not, open your eyes; behold your own book, and you shall see it. You have forced the old doctors and ancient fathers to speak your mind, and not their own. And therefore they are now your children: they are no fathers: they are now your scholars: you have set them to school: they are no doctors. You should have brought some truth for proof of your purpose: the world will not now be led with lies.

These be cases, not of wit, but of faith; not of eloquence, but of truth; not invented or devised by us, but from the apostles and holy fathers and founders of the church by long succession brought unto us. We are not the devisers thereof, but only the keepers; not the masters, but the scholars. Touching the substance of religion, we believe that the ancient catholic learned fathers believed: we do that they did: we say that they said. And marvel not, in what side soever ye see them, if ye see us join unto the same. It is our great comfort that we see their faith and our faith to agree in one. And we pity and lament your miserable case, that, having of yourselves erected a doctrine contrary to all the ancient fathers, yet would thus assay to colour the same, and to deceive the people only with the names and titles of ancient fathers.

St Cyprian saith: "Lies can never deceive us long. It is night until the day spring: but, when the day appeareth, and the sun is up, both the darkness of the night, and the thefts and robberies that in the darkness were committed, are fain to give place." Now the sun is up: your smother is scattered. God with his truth will have the victory. The heavens and the earth shall perish; but the word of God shall never perish.

O M. Harding, O fight no longer against God. It is hard to kick against the spur. To maintain a fault known, it is a double fault. Untruth cannot be

['Perhaps the following passage is that intended: Si ad fidem veram istiusmodi vis adhiberetur, episcopalis doctrina obviam pergeret, &c.-Hilar. Op. Par. 1693. Ad Constant. August. Lib. 1. 6. col. 1221. Conf. Tractat. in Psalm. lxv. 24. col. 182; and De Trin. Lib. VIII. 12. cols. 953, 4.]

[ Not, 1611.]

[ Elenchs: proofs.]

[ Falshead, 1565.]

[5 Atque hæc est...vera dementia, non cogitare... quod mendacia non diu fallant; noctem tamdiu esse quamdiu illucescat dies, clarificata autem die, et sole oborto, luci tenebras et caliginem cedere, et quæ grassabantur per noctem latrocinia cessare.- -Cypr. Op. Oxon. 1682. Ad Cornel. Epist. lix. p. 133.]