Anglican Communion -- Apologetic works; Church of England -- Apologetic works
They have put to death infinite numbers of our brethren, only because
they believed truly and sincerely in Jesu Christ. But of that great and
foul number of harlots, fornicators, adulterers, what one have they at
any time (I say not killed, but) either excommunicated, or once attached?
Why! voluptuousness, adultery, ribaldry, whoredom, murdering of kin,
incest, and others more abominable parts, are not these counted sin at
Rome? Or, if they be sin, ought "Christ's vicar, Peter's successor, the
most holy father," so lightly and slightly to bear them, as though they
were no sin, and that in the city of Rome, and in that principal tower of
all holiness?
O holy Scribes and Pharisees, which knew not this kind of holiness! what
a Catholic faith is this! Peter did not thus teach at Rome: Paul did not
so live at Rome: they did not practise brothelry, which these do openly:
they made not a yearly revenue and profit of harlots: they suffered no
common adulterers and wicked murderers to go unpunished. They did not
receive them into their entire familiarity, into their council, into
their household, nor yet into the company of Christian men. These men
ought not therefore so unreasonably to triumph against our living. It
had been more wisdom for them either first to have proved good their own
life before the world, or at least to have cloaked it a little more
cunningly. For we do use still the old and ancient laws, and (as much as
men may do, in the manners used at these days, all things are so wholly
corrupt) we diligently and earnestly put in execution the ecclesiastical
discipline: we have not common brothel-houses of strumpets, nor yet
flocks of concubines, nor herds of harlot-hunters: neither do we prefer
adultery before matrimony: neither do we exercise beastly sensuality:
neither do we gather ordinary rents and stipends of stews: nor do we
suffer to escape unpunished incest and abominable naughtiness, nor yet
such manquellers as the Aloisians, Casians, and Diazians were. For if
these things would have pleased us, we needed not to have departed from
these men's fellowship, amongst whom such enormities be in their chief
pride and price. Neither needed we, for leaving them, to run into the
hatred of men, and into most wilful dangers. Paul the Fourth, not many
months sithence, had at Rome in prison certain Augustine friars, many
bishops, and a great number of other devout men, for religion's sake. He
racked them and tormented them: to make them confess, he left no means
unassayed. But in the end how many brothels, how many whoremongers, how
many adulterers, how many incestuous persons could he find of all those?
Our God be thanked, although we be not the men we ought and profess to
be, yet, whosoever we be, compare us with these men, and even our own
life and innocency will soon prove untrue and condemn their malicious
surmises. For we exhort the people to all virtue and well-doing, not
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