Anglican Communion -- Apologetic works; Church of England -- Apologetic works
"Our Church," say they, "cannot err." They speak that, I think, as the
Lacedaemonians long since used to say, that it was not possible to find
any adulterer in all their commonwealth: whereas indeed they were rather
all adulterers, and had no certainty in their marriages, but had their
wives common amongst them all: or as the canonists at this day, for their
bellies' sake, used to say of the Pope, that forsomuch as he is lord of
all benefices, though he sell for money bishoprics, monasteries,
priesthood, spiritual promotions, and part with nothing freely, yet,
because he counteth all his own, "he cannot commit simony, though he
would never so fain." But how strongly and agreeably to reason these
things be spoken, we are not as yet able to perceive, except perchance
these men have plucked off the wings from the truth; as the Romans in old
time did prune and pinion their goddess Victoria, after they had once
gotten her home, to the end that with the same wings she should never
more be able to flee away from them again. But what if Jeremy tell them,
as is afore rehearsed, that these be lies? What if the same prophet say
in another place that the selfsame men, who ought to be keepers of the
vineyard, have brought to nought and destroyed the Lord's vineyard? How
if Christ say that the same persons, who chiefly ought to have care over
the temple, have made of the Lord's temple a den of thieves? If it be so
that the Church of Rome cannot err, it must needs follow, that the good
luck thereof is far greater than all these men's policy. For such is
their life, their doctrine, and their diligence, that for all them the
Church may not only err, but also utterly be spoiled and perish. No
doubt, if that church may err which hath departed from God's words, from
Christ's commandments, from the Apostles' ordinances, from the primitive
Church's examples, from the old fathers' and councils' orders, and from
their own decrees, and which will be bound within the compass of none,
neither old nor new, nor their own nor other folks', nor man's law nor
God's law, then it is out of all question that the Romish Church hath not
only had power to err, but also that it hath shamefully and most wickedly
erred in very deed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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