h this day to be humbled, both for your own sins and for the
sins of the kingdom which you represent. Although yourselves, whom God
hath placed in this honourable station, and the kingdom which God hath
blessed with many choice blessings, be much and worthily honoured among
the children of men, yet when you have to do with God, and with that
wherein his great name and his glory is concerned, you must not think of
honouring, but rather abashing yourselves, and creeping low in the dust.
Livy tells us,(1376) that when M. Claudius Marcellus would have dedicate a
temple to Honour and Virtue, the priests hindered it, _quod utri deo res
divina fieret, sciri non posset_, because so it could not be known to
which of the two gods he should offer sacrifice. Far be it from any of you
to suffer the will of God and your own credit to come in competition
together, or to put back any point of truth, because it may seem,
peradventure, some way to wound your reputation, though, when all is well
examined, it shall be found your glory.

You are now about the casting out of many corruptions in the government of
the church and worship of God. Remember, therefore, it is not enough to
cleanse the house of the Lord, but you must be humbled for your former
defilements wherewith it was polluted. It is not enough that England say
with Ephraim in one place, "What have I to do any more with idols?" Hos.
xiv. 8. England must say also with Ephraim in another place, "Surely after
that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote
upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the
reproach of my youth," Jer. xxxi. 19. Let England sit down in the dust,
and wallow itself in ashes, and cry out as the lepers did (Lev. xiii. 45),
"Unclean, unclean," and then rise up and cast away the least superstitious
ceremony "as a menstruous cloth; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence,"
Isa. xxx. 22. I know that those who are not convinced of the intrinsical
evil and unlawfulness of former corruptions may, upon other
considerations, go along and join in this reformation; for according to
Augustine's rule,(1377) men are to let go those ecclesiastical customs
which neither Scriptures nor councils bind upon us, nor yet are
universally received by all churches. And according to Ambrose's rule to
Valentinian, epist. 31, _Nullus pudor est ad meliora transive_,--it is no
shame to change that which is not so good for that which is bet