y, (for these
Dr. Chedsey alleged as notes and tokens of their religion,) I am
unlearned. I have no sophistry to shift my reasons with; but the truth I
trust I have, which needs no painted colours to set her forth. The
antiquity of our church is not from pope Nicholas, nor pope Joan, but
our church is from the beginning, even from the time that God said unto
Adam, that the seed of the woman should break the serpent's head; and so
to faithful Noah; to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom it was promised,
that their seed should multiply as the stars in the sky; and so to
Moses, David, and all the holy fathers that were from the beginning unto
the birth of our Saviour Christ. All who believed these promises were of
the church, though the number was oftentimes but few and small, as in
Elias' days, who thought he was the only one that had not bowed the knee
to Baal, when God had reserved seven thousand that never had bowed their
knees to that idol: as I trust there be seven hundred thousand more than
I know of, that have not bowed their knee to that idol your mass, and
your God Maozim; in the upholding of which is your bloody cruelty while
you daily persecute Elias and the servants of God, forcing them (as
Daniel was in his chamber) closely to serve the Lord their God; and even
as we by this your cruelty are forced in the fields to pray unto God,
that his holy word may be once again truly preached amongst us, and that
he would mitigate and shorten these idolatrous and bloody days wherein
all cruelty reigns. Moreover, of our church have been the apostles and
evangelists, the martyrs and confessors of Christ, who have at all times
and in all ages been persecuted for the testimony of the word of God.
But for the upholding of your church and religion, what antiquity can
you show? The mass indeed, that idol and chief pillar of your religion,
is not yet four hundred years old, and some of your masses are younger,
as that of St. Thomas a Becket, the traitor, wherein you pray, That you
may be saved by the blood of St. Thomas. And as for your Latin service,
what are we of the laity the better for it? I think if any one were to
hear your priests mumble up their service, although he well understood
Latin, yet he would understand very few words of it, the priests so
champ them and chew them, and post so fast, that they neither understand
what they say, nor they that hear them; and in the mean time the people,
when they should pray with the