Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who according to the riches of His mercy hath preserved in His Church this sacrament at least, untouched and untainted by the ordinances of men, and hath made it free unto all nations and every estate of mankind, nor suffered it to be oppressed by the filthy and godless monsters of greed and superstition. For He desired that by it little children, incapable of greed and superstition, might be initiated and sanctified in the simple faith of His Word; for whom even to-day baptism hath its chief blessing. But if this sacrament were to be given to such as had arrived at man's estate, methinks it could not possibly have retained its power and its glory against the tyranny of greed and superstition which has everywhere laid waste things divine. Doubtless the wisdom of the flesh would here too have devised its preparations and worthinesses, its reservations, restrictions, and I know not what other snares for taking money, until water fetched as high a price as parchment[82] does now. But Satan, though he could not quench the power of baptism in little children, nevertheless succeeded in quenching it in all adults, so that there are scarce any who call to mind their baptism and still fewer who glory in it; so many other ways have they discovered of ridding themselves of their sins and of reaching heaven. The source of these false opinions is that dangerous saying of St. Jerome's[83]--either unhappily phrased or wrongly interpreted--in which he terms penance "the second plank" after the shipwreck; as if baptism were not penance. Accordingly, when men fall into sin, they despair of "the first plank," which is the ship, as though it had gone under, and fasten all their faith on the second plank, that is, penance. This has produced those endless burdens of vows, religious works, satisfactions, pilgrimages, indulgences, and sects[84], whence has arisen that flood of books, questions, opinions and human traditions, which the world cannot contain; so that this tyranny plays worse havoc with the Church of God than any tyrant ever did with the Jewish people or with any other nation under heaven.