"Your reverence," I answered, "so say all of their own religion: yet which am I to believe? Think ye 'tis so light a matter for me to entrust my soul's salvation to any one party that doth revile the other two and accuse them of false doctrine? I pray you to consider, with impartial eyes, what Conrad Vetter and Johannes Nas have written against Luther, and also Luther against the Pope, but most of all what Spangenberg hath written against Francis of Assisi, which for hundreds of years hath been held for a holy and God-like man, and all this in print. To which party shall I betake myself when each says of the other that 'tis unclean, unclean? Doth your reverence think I am wrong if I stay awhile till I have got me more understanding and know black from white? Would any man counsel me to plunge in like a fly into hot soup? Nay, nay, your reverence cannot upon his conscience do that! Without question one religion must be right and the other two wrong: and if I should betake myself to one without ripe reflection I might choose the wrong as easily as the right, and so repent of my choice for all eternity. I will sooner keep off the roads altogether than take the wrong one: besides, there be yet other religions besides these here in Europe, as those of the Armenians, the Abyssinians, the Greeks, the Georgians, and so forth, and whichsoever I do choose, then must I with my fellow believers deny all the rest. But if your reverence will but play the part of Ananias for me and open mine eyes, I will with thankfulness follow him and take up that religion to which he belongs." Thereupon, "Your honour," says he, "is in a great error: but I pray God to enlighten him and help him forth of the slough; to which end I will hereafter so prove to him the truth of our Confession that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." I answered I would await such with great anxiety: yet in my heart I thought, "If thou trouble me no more anent my lecheries, I will be content with thy belief." And so can the reader judge what a godless, wicked rogue I then was: for I did but give the good pastor fruitless trouble, that he might leave me undisturbed in my vicious life, and thinks I, "Before thou art ready with thy proofs I shall belike be where the pepper[28] grows." _Chap. xxi._: HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS ALL UNAWARES WAS MADE A MARRIED MAN