But what two articles were these? It seems “they wished we had kept confession, which, no doubt, was commanded of God, and praying for the dead, which was one of the ancient things of Christianity.” But which of our thirty-nine articles did they renounce hereby? I think I have read and considered them, as much as this gentleman, and I can find no such articles against confession, and praying for the dead. Our church, as appears by the office of the visitation of the sick, doth not disallow of confession in particular cases; but the necessity of it, in order to forgiveness, in all cases: And if any bishop asserted this, then he exceeded the doctrine of our church, but he renounced no article of it. As to the other point, we have an article against the Romish doctrine of purgatory, article 22d, but not a word concerning praying for the dead, without respect to it: But he, out of his great skill in controversy, believes, that prayer for the dead, and the Romish doctrine of purgatory, are the same; whereas, this relates to the deliverance of souls out of purgatory, by the suffrages of the living, which makes all the gainful trade of masses for the dead, &c; but the other related to the day of judgment, as is known to all who are versed in the writings of the ancient church. But this our church wisely passes over, neither condemning it, because so ancient, nor approving it because not grounded on scripture, and therefore not necessary to be observed. (4.) But his great spite is at the reformation of this church, “which,” he saith, “was erected on the foundation of lust, sacrilege, and usurpation: and that no paint is capable of making lovely the hideous face of the pretended Reformation.” These are severe sayings, and might be requited with sharper, if such hard words and blustering expressions had any good effect on mankind: But instead thereof, I shall gently wipe off the dirt he hath thrown in the face of our church, that it may appear in its proper colours. And now this gentleman sets himself to ergoteering, and looks and talks like any “grim logician, of the causes which produced it, and the effects which it produced. The schism led the way to the Reformation, for breaking the unity of Christ’s church, which was the foundation of it; but the immediate cause of this, which produced the separation of Henry VIII. from the church of Rome, was the refusal of the Pope to grant him a divorce from his first wife, and to gratify his desires in a dispensation for a second marriage.”