Anglican Communion -- Apologetic works; Church of England -- Apologetic works
O immortal God! hath Christ Himself, then, the Apostles, and so many
fathers all at once gone astray? Were then Origen, Ambrose, Augustine,
Chrysostom, Gelasius, Theodoret, forsakers of the Catholic faith? was so
notable a consent of so many ancient bishops and learned men nothing else
but a conspiracy of heretics? or is that now condemned in us, which was
then commended in them? or is the thing now, by alteration only of men's
affections, suddenly become schismatic, which in them was counted
Catholic? or shall that which in times past was true, now by-and-by,
because it liketh not these men, be judged false? let them then bring
forth another Gospel, and let them show the causes why these things,
which so long have openly been observed and well-allowed in the Church of
God, ought now in the end to be called in again. We know well enough
that the same word which was opened by Christ, and spread abroad by the
Apostles, is sufficient both, our salvation and all truth, to uphold and
maintain; and also to confound all manner of heresy. By that word only
do we condemn all sorts of the old heretics, whom these men say we have
called out of hell again. As for the Arians, the Eutychians, the
Marcionites, the Ebionites, the Valentinians, the Carpocratians, the
Tatians, the Novatians, and shortly all them which have a wicked opinion,
either of God the Father, or of Christ, or of the Holy Ghost, or of any
other point of Christian religion, forsomuch as they be confuted by the
Gospel of Christ, we plainly pronounce them for detestable and castaway
persons, and defy them even unto the devil. Neither do we leave them so,
but we also severely and straitly hold them in by lawful and politic
punishments, if they fortune to break out anywhere, and bewray
themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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