nting of Kings,
witness the Orders of Knighthood and their very mantles, witness
windows, witness coins, witness city gates and city houses,
witness the labours and life of our ancestors, witness all things
great and small, that no religion in the world but ours ever took
deep root there.

These considerations being at hand to me, and so affecting me as
I thought them over that it seemed the part of insolence, nay of
insanity, to renounce all this Christian company and consort
with the most abandoned of men, I confess, I felt animated and
fired to the conflict, a conflict wherein I can never be worsted
until it comes to the Saints being hurled from heaven and the
proud Lucifer recovering heaven. Therefore let Chark, who
reviles me so outrageously, be in better conceit with me, if I
have preferred to trust this poor sinful soul of mine, which
Christ has bought so dearly, rather to a safe way, a sure way, a
royal road, than to Calvin's rocks or woodland thickets, there
to hang caught in uncertainty.

CONCLUSION

You have from me, Gentlemen of the University, this little
present, put together by the labour of such leisure as I could
snatch on the road. My purpose was to clear myself in your
judgment of the charge of arrogance, and to show just cause for
my confidence, and meanwhile, until such time as along with me
you are invited by the adversaries to the disputations in the
Schools, to give you a sort of foretaste of what is to come
there. If you think it a just, safe, and virtuous choice for
Luther or Calvin to be taken for the Canon of Scripture, the Mind
of the Holy Ghost, the Standard of the Church, the Pedagogue of
Councils and Fathers, in short, the God of all witnesses and
ages, I have nothing to hope of your reading or hearing me. But
if you are such as I have pictured you in my mind, philosophers,
keen-sighted, lovers of the truth, of simplicity, of modesty,
enemies of temerity, of trifles and sophisms, you will easily see
daylight in the open air, seeing that you already see the peep of
day through a narrow chink. I will say freely what my love of
you, and your danger, and the importance of the matter requires.
The devil is not unaware that you will see this light of day, if
ever you raise your eyes to it. For what a piece of stupidity it
would be to prefer Hanmers and Charks to Christian antiquity! But
there are certain Lutheran enticements whereby the devil extends
his kingdom, delicate snares whereby