ance they have the ancient doctors and the holy fathers with them.
For this is a high brag they have ever made, how that all antiquity and a
continual consent of all ages doth make on their side; and that all our
cases be but new, and yesterday's work, and until these few late years
were never heard of. Questionless, there can nothing be more spitefully
spoken against the religion of God than to accuse it of novelty, as a new
come up matter. For as there can be no change in God Himself, so ought
there to be no change in His religion.

Yet, nevertheless, we wot not by what means, but we have ever seen it
come so to pass from the first beginning of all, that as often as God did
give but some light, and did open His truth unto men, though the truth
were not only of greatest antiquity, but also from everlasting; yet of
wicked men and of the adversaries was it called new-fangled and of late
devised. That ungracious and bloodthirsty Haman, when he sought to
procure the king Assuerus' displeasure against the Jews, this was his
accusation to him: "Thou hast here (saith he) a kind of people that useth
certain new laws of their own, but stiff-necked and rebellious against
all thy laws." When Paul also began first to preach and expound the
Gospel at Athens he was called a tidings-bringer of new gods, as much to
say as of a new religion; "for" (said the Athenians) "may we not know of
thee what new doctrine this is?" Celsus likewise, when he of set purpose
wrote against Christ, to the end he might more scornfully scoff out the
Gospel by the name of novelty: "What!" saith he, "hath God after so many
ages now at last and so late bethought Himself?" Eusebius also writeth
that Christian religion from the beginning for very spite was called
[Greek text], that is to say, new and strange. After like sort, these
men condemn all our matters as strange and new; but they will have their
own, whatsoever they are, to be praised as things of long continuance.
Doing much like to the enchanters and sorcerers now-a-days, which working
with devils, use to say they have their books and all their holy and hid
mysteries from Athanasius, Cyprian, Moses, Abel, Adam, and from the
archangel Raphael; because that their cunning, coming from such patrons
and founders, might be judged the more high and holy. After the same
fashion these men, because they would have their own religion, which they
themselves, and that not long since, have brought forth into