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 histories make plain mention, and themselves also cannot deny, but they took their first beginning of “Agar the bond-woman,” yet for the very name and stock’s sake, chose they rather to be called Saracens, as though they came of “Sarah the free woman, and Abraham’s wife.”

So likewise the false prophets of all ages, which stood up against the prophets of God, which resisted Esaias, Jeremy, Christ, and the Apostles, at no time craked of anything so much as they did of the name of the Church.  And for no other cause did they so fiercely vex them, and call them runaways and apostates, than for that they forsook their fellowship, and kept not the ordinances of the elders.  Wherefore, if we would follow the judgments of those men only who then governed the Church, and would respect nothing else, neither God nor His word, it must needs be confessed, that the Apostles were rightly and by just law condemned of them to death, because they fell from the bishops and priests, that is, you must think, from the “Catholic Church:”  and because they made many new alterations in religion, contrary to the bishops’ and priests’ wills, yea, and for all their spurning so earnestly against it.  Wherefore, like as it is written that Hercules in old time was forced in striving with Antaeus, that huge giant, to lift him quite up from the earth that was his mother, ere he could conquer him, even so must our adversaries be heaved from their mother, that is, from this vain colour and shadow of the Church, wherewith they so disguise and defend themselves:  otherwise they cannot be brought to yield unto the word of God.  “And therefore,” saith Jeremy the prophet, “make not such great boast that the temple of the Lord is with you.  This is but a vain confidence:  these are lies.”  The angel also saith in the Apocalypse, “They say they be Jews; but they be the synagogue of Satan.”  And Christ said to the Pharisees when they vaunted themselves of the kindred and blood of Abraham, “Ye are of your father, the devil;” for you resemble not your father Abraham; as much to say as ye are not the men ye would so fain be called:  ye beguile the people with vain titles, and abuse the name of the Church to the overthrowing of the Church.