We truly for our parts, as we have said, have done nothing in altering religion either upon rashness or arrogancy; nor nothing but with good leisure and great consideration.  Neither had we ever intended to do it, except both the manifest and most assured will of God, opened to us in His Holy Scriptures, and the regard of our own salvation, had even constrained us thereunto.  For though we have departed from that Church which these men call Catholic, and by that means get us envy amongst them that want skill to judge, yet is this enough for us, and ought to be enough for every wise and good man, and one that maketh account of everlasting life, that we have gone from that Church which had power to err:  which Christ, who cannot err, told so long before it should err; and which we ourselves did evidently see with our eyes to have gone both from the holy fathers, and from the Apostles, and from Christ His own self, and from the primitive and Catholic Church; and we are come as near as we possibly could to the Church of the Apostles and of the old Catholic bishops and fathers; which Church we know hath hereunto been sound and perfect, and, as Tertullian termeth it, a pure virgin, spotted as yet with no idolatry, nor with any foul or shameful fault:  and have directed, according to their customs and ordinances, not only our doctrine, but also the Sacraments and the form of common prayer.

And, as we know both Christ Himself and all good men heretofore have done, we have called home again to the original and first foundation that religion which hath been foully foreslowed, and utterly corrupted by these men.  For we thought it meet thence to take the pattern of reforming religion from whence the ground of religion was first taken:  because this one reason, as saith the most ancient father Tertullian, hath great force against all heresies, “Look, whatsoever was first, that is true; and whatsoever is latter, that is corrupt.”  Irenaeus oftentimes appealed to the oldest churches, which had been nearest to Christ’s time, and which it was hard to believe had erred.  But why at this day is not the same respect and consideration had?  Why return we not to the pattern of the old churches?  Why may not we hear at this time amongst us the same saying, which was openly pronounced in times past in the council at Nice by so many bishops and Catholic fathers, and nobody once speaking against it [Greek text]:  that is to say, “hold still the old customs!” When Esdras went about to repair the ruins of the Temple of God, he sent not to Ephesus, although the most beautiful and gorgeous temple of Diana was there; and when he purposed to restore the sacrifices and ceremonies of God, he sent not to Rome, although peradventure he had heard in that place were the solemn sacrifices called Hecatombae, and other called Solitaurilia, Lectisternia, and Supplicationes, and Numa Pompilius’ ceremonial books.  He thought it enough for him to set before his eyes, and follow the pattern of the old Temple, which Solomon at the beginning builded according as God had appointed him, and also those old customs and ceremonies which God Himself had written out by special words for Moses.