Pope Clement saith it is not lawful for a bishop to deal with both swords:  “For if thou wilt have both,” said he, “thou shalt deceive both thyself and those that obey thee.”  Nowadays, the Pope challengeth to himself both swords, and useth both.  Wherefore, it ought to seem less marvel if that have followed which Clement saith, that is, “that he hath deceived both his own self and those which have given ear unto him.”

Pope Leo saith, “Upon one day it is lawful to say but one mass in one church.”  These men say daily in one church commonly ten masses, twenty, thirty, yea, oftentimes more.  So that the poor gazer on can scant tell which way he were best to turn him.

Pope Gelasius saith, “It is a wicked deed and sibb to sacrilege in any man to divide the Communion, and when he hath received one kind to abstain from the other.”  These men, contrary to God’s Word, and contrary to Pope Gelasius, command that one kind only of the Holy Communion be given to the people, and by so doing they make their priests guilty of sacrilege.

But if they will say that all these things are worn out of ure and nigh dead, and pertain nothing to these present times, yet to the end all folk may understand what faith is to be given to these men, and upon what hope they call together their general councils, let us see in few words what good heed they take to the selfsame thing, which they themselves these very last years (and the remembrance thereof is yet new and fresh), in their own general council that they had by order called, have decreed and commanded to be devoutly kept.  In the last council at Trent, scant fourteen years past, it was ordained by the common consent of all degrees, “that one man should not have two benefices at one time.”  What is become now of that ordinance?  Is the same too soon worn out of mind, and clean consumed?  For these men, ye see, give to one man not two benefices only, but sundry abbeys many times, sometimes also two bishoprics, sometimes three, sometimes four.  And that not only to an unlearned man, but oftentimes also even to a man of war.

In the said council a decree was made that all bishops should preach the Gospel.  These men neither preach nor once go up into the pulpit, neither think they it any part of their office.  What great pomp and crake then is this they make of antiquity?  Why brag they so of the names of the ancient fathers, and of the new and old councils?  Why will they seem to trust to their authority whom when they list they despise at their pleasure?

But I have a special fancy to commune a word or two rather with the Pope’s good holiness, and to say these things to his own face.  Tell us, I pray you, good holy father, seeing ye do crake so much of all antiquity, and boast yourself that all men are bound to you alone, which of all the fathers hath at any time called you by the name of the “highest prelate,” the “universal bishop,” or the “head of the Church”?  Which