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 salvation and all truth, to uphold and maintain; and also to confound all manner of heresy.  By that word only do we condemn all sorts of the old heretics, whom these men say we have called out of hell again.  As for the Arians, the Eutychians, the Marcionites, the Ebionites, the Valentinians, the Carpocratians, the Tatians, the Novatians, and shortly all them which have a wicked opinion, either of God the Father, or of Christ, or of the Holy Ghost, or of any other point of Christian religion, forsomuch as they be confuted by the Gospel of Christ, we plainly pronounce them for detestable and castaway persons, and defy them even unto the devil.  Neither do we leave them so, but we also severely and straitly hold them in by lawful and politic punishments, if they fortune to break out anywhere, and bewray themselves.

Indeed, we grant that certain new and very strange sects, as the Anabaptists, Libertines, Menonians, and Zuenckfeldians, have been stirring in the world ever since the Gospel did first spring.  But the world seeth now right well, thanks be given to our God, that we neither have bred, nor taught, nor kept up these monsters.  In good fellowship, I pray thee, whosoever thou be, read our books:  they are to be sold in every place.  What hath there ever been written by any of our company which might plainly bear with the madness of any of those heretics.  Nay, I say unto you, there is no country this day so free from their pestilent infections, as they be, wherein the Gospel is freely and commonly taught.