“But,” said I, “seeing thou art a great and leading man among the Papists, and hast been taught and bred up under the Pope, and seeing thou sayest, ‘there is no salvation but in your church,’ I desire to know of thee, what it is that doth bring salvation in your church?” He answered, “a good life.” “And nothing else?” said I. “Yes,” he said, “good works.” “And is this it that brings salvation in your church, a good life and good works? Is this your doctrine and principle?” said I. “Yes,” said he. “Then,” said I, “neither thou, nor the Pope, nor any of the Papists know what it is that brings salvation.” Then he asked me, what brought salvation in our church? I told him, “that which brought salvation to the church in the apostles’ days, the same brought salvation to us, and not another; namely, ‘the Grace of God,’ which, the Scripture says, brings salvation, and hath appeared to all men, which taught the saints then, and teaches us now. This Grace which brings salvation, teaches to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly. So it is not the good works nor the good life that brings salvation, but the Grace.” “What!” said the Papist, “doth this Grace that brings salvation, appear unto all men?” “Yes,” said I. “Then,” said he, “I deny that.” I replied, “all that deny that, are sect-makers, and are not in the universal faith, grace, and truth, which the apostles were in.” Then he spoke to me about the mother church. I told him, “the several sects in Christendom had accused us, and said, ‘we forsook our mother-church.’ The Papists charged us with forsaking their church, saying, ‘Rome was the only mother-church.’ The Episcopalians taxed us with forsaking the old Protestant religion, alleging, ‘theirs was the reformed mother-church.’ The Presbyterians and Independents blamed us for leaving them, each of them pretending, ‘theirs was the right reformed church.’” But, I said “if we could own any outward city or place to be the mother-church, we should own Jerusalem, where the gospel was first preached by Christ himself and his apostles, where Christ suffered, where the great conversion to Christianity by Peter was, where were the types, figures, and shadows, which Christ ended, and where Christ commanded his disciples to ‘wait until they were endued with power from on high.’ If any outward place deserved to be called the mother, that was the place where the first great conversion to Christianity was. But the apostle saith, Gal. iv. 25-27, ‘Jerusalem, which now is, is in bondage with her children; but Jerusalem which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all.’ For it is written, ‘Rejoice, thou barren, that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not; for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.’ The apostle does not say, outward Jerusalem was the mother, though the first and great conversion to Christianity was there.