Nay, nay, they turn their backs, as we have said already, and flee from their own decrees, and have cut off and abolished again within a short space the same things which, but a few years before, themselves had established for evermore, forsooth, to continue.  How should one, then, trust them in the fathers, in the old councils, and in the words spoken by God?  They have not, good Lord, they have not, I say, those things which they boast they have:  they have not that antiquity, they have not that universality, they have not that consent of all places, nor of all times.  And though they have a desire rather to dissemble, yet they themselves are not ignorant hereof:  yea, and sometime also they let not to confess it openly.  And for this cause they say that the ordinances of the old councils and fathers be such as may now and then be altered, and that sundry and divers decrees serve for sundry and divers times of the Church.  Thus lurk they under the name of the Church, and beguile silly creatures with their vain glozing.  It is to be marvelled that either men be so blind that they cannot see this, or if they see it, to be so patient as they can lightly and quietly bear it.

But, whereas they have commanded that those decrees should be void, as things now waxen too old, and that have lost their grace, perhaps they have provided in their stead certain other better things, and more profitable for the people.  For it is a common saying with them that, “if Christ Himself or the Apostles were alive again, they could not better nor godlier govern God’s Church than it is at this present governed by them.”  They have put in their stead indeed; but it is “chaff instead of wheat,” as Hieremy saith, and such things as, according to Esay’s words, “God never required at their hands.”  “They have stopped up,” saith he, “all the veins of clear springing water, and have digged up for the people deceivable and puddle-like pits, full of mire and filth, which neither have nor are able to hold pure water.”  They have plucked away from the people the Holy Communion, the Word of God, from whence all comfort should be taken; the true worshipping of God also, and the right use of sacraments and prayer; and have given us of their own to play withal in the meanwhile, salt, water, oil, boxes, spittle, palms, bulls, jubilees, pardons, crosses, censings, and an endless rabble of ceremonies, and, as a man might term with Plautus, “pretty games to make sport withal.”  In these things have they set all their religion, teaching the people that by these God may be duly pacified, spirits be driven away, and men’s consciences well quieted.  For these, lo, be the orient colours and precious savours of Christian religion; these things doth God look upon and accepteth them thankfully; these must come in place to be honoured, and put quite away the institutions of Christ and of His Apostles.  And like as in times past, when wicked King Jeroboam had taken from