be not the very words of Ambrose, Augustine,
Gelasius, Theodoret, Chrysostom, and Origen: "The bread and wine in the
Sacraments remain still the same they were before:" "The thing which is
seen upon the Holy Table is bread;" "There ceaseth not to be still the
substance of bread, and nature of wine;" "The substance and nature of
bread are not changed;" "The self-same bread, as touching the material
substance, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the privy:" or that
Christ, the Apostles, and holy fathers prayed not in that tongue which
the people might understand: or that Christ hath not performed all things
by that one offering which He once offered: or that the same sacrifice
was unperfect, and so now we have need of another. All these things must
they of necessity say, unless perchance they had rather say thus, that
"all law and right is locked up in the treasury of the Pope's breast,"
and that, as once one of his soothing pages and claw-backs did not stick
to say, "The Pope is able to dispense against the Apostles;" against a
council, and against the canons and rules of the Apostles: and that he is
not bound to stand neither to the examples, nor to the ordinances, nor to
the laws of Christ. We, for our part, have learned these things of
Christ, of the Apostles, of the devout fathers: and do sincerely, with
good faith, teach the people of God the same. Which thing is the only
cause why we at this day are called heretics of the chief prelates (no
doubt) of religion.

O immortal God! hath Christ Himself, then, the Apostles, and so many
fathers all at once gone astray? Were then Origen, Ambrose, Augustine,
Chrysostom, Gelasius, Theodoret, forsakers of the Catholic faith? was so
notable a consent of so many ancient bishops and learned men nothing else
but a conspiracy of heretics? or is that now condemned in us, which was
then commended in them? or is the thing now, by alteration only of men's
affections, suddenly become schismatic, which in them was counted
Catholic? or shall that which in times past was true, now by-and-by,
because it liketh not these men, be judged false? let them then bring
forth another Gospel, and let them show the causes why these things,
which so long have openly been observed and well-allowed in the Church of
God, ought now in the end to be called in again. We know well enough
that the same word which was opened by Christ, and spread abroad by the
Apostles, is sufficient both, our salvat