truly
and purely set forth. Neither had we departed therefrom, but of very
necessity, and much against our wills. But I put case, an idol be set up
in the Church of God, and the same desolation, which Christ prophesied to
come, stood openly in the holy place. What if some thief or pirate
invade and possess "Noah's ark?" These folks, as often as they tell us
of the Church, mean thereby themselves alone, and attribute all these
titles to their own selves, boasting, as they did in times past which
cried, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord;" or as the
Pharisees and Scribes did, which craked they were "Abraham's children."

Thus with a gay and jolly show deceive they the simple, and seek to choke
us with the very name of the Church. Much like as if a thief, when he
had gotten into another man's house, and by violence either hath thrust
out or slain the owner, should afterward assign the same house to
himself, casting forth of possession the right inheritor; or if
Anti-Christ, when he had once entered into "the temple of God," should
afterward say, "This house is mine own, and Christ hath nothing to do
withal." For these men now, after they have left nothing remaining in
the Church of God that hath any likeness of this Church, yet will they
seem the patrons and valiant maintainers of the Church, very like as
Gracchus amongst the Romans stood in defence of the treasury,
notwithstanding with his prodigality and fond expenses he had utterly
wasted the whole stock of the treasury. And yet was there never anything
so wicked, or so far out of reason, but lightly it might be covered and
defended by the name of the Church. For the wasps also make honey-combs
as well as bees, and wicked men have companies like to the Church of God:
yet, for all that, "they be not straightway the people of God which are
called the people of God; neither be they all Israelites as many as are
come of Israel the father." The Arians, notwithstanding they were
heretics, yet bragged they that they alone were Catholics, calling all
the rest now Ambrosians, now Athanasians, now Johannites. And Nestorius,
as saith Theodoret, for all that he was an heretic, yet covered he
himself [Greek text]: that is, to wit, with a certain cloak and colour of
the true and right faith. Ebion, though he agreed in opinion with the
Samaritans, yet, as saith Epiphanius, he would needs be called a
Christian. The Mahometists at this day, for all that all hist