ius also letteth not to say, that without the license of
the Romish Church, we ought not to believe the very plain Scriptures.
Much like as if any of those that cannot speak pure and clean Latin, and
yet can babble out quickly and readily a little some such law Latin as
serveth the court, would needs hold that all others ought also to speak
after the same way which Mammetrectus and Catholicon spake many years
ago, and which themselves do yet use in pleading in court: for so may it
be understood sufficiently what is said, and men's desires be satisfied:
and that it is a fondness now in the latter end to trouble the world with
a new kind of speaking, and to call again the old finesse and eloquence
that Cicero and Caesar used in their days in the Latin tongue. So much
are these men beholden to the folly and darkness of the former times.
"Many things," as one writeth, "are had in estimation oftentimes, because
they have been once dedicate to the temples of the heathen gods." Even
so we see at this day many things allowed and highly set by of these men,
not because they judge them so much worth, but only because they have
been received into a custom, and after a sort dedicate to the temple of
God.

"Our Church," say they, "cannot err." They speak that, I think, as the
Lacedaemonians long since used to say, that it was not possible to find
any adulterer in all their commonwealth: whereas indeed they were rather
all adulterers, and had no certainty in their marriages, but had their
wives common amongst them all: or as the canonists at this day, for their
bellies' sake, used to say of the Pope, that forsomuch as he is lord of
all benefices, though he sell for money bishoprics, monasteries,
priesthood, spiritual promotions, and part with nothing freely, yet,
because he counteth all his own, "he cannot commit simony, though he
would never so fain." But how strongly and agreeably to reason these
things be spoken, we are not as yet able to perceive, except perchance
these men have plucked off the wings from the truth; as the Romans in old
time did prune and pinion their goddess Victoria, after they had once
gotten her home, to the end that with the same wings she should never
more be able to flee away from them again. But what if Jeremy tell them,
as is afore rehearsed, that these be lies? What if the same prophet say
in another place that the selfsame men, who ought to be keepers of the
vineyard, have brought to nought and de