so just with the things we now see with our eyes have already come to pass, that we may verily think that he meant to foretell, as it were, by the spirit of prophecy, and to paint before our face the universal state of our time; the fall of the most gorgeous harlot Babylon; the repairing again of God’s Church; the blindness and sloth of the bishops, and the good will and forwardness of the people.  For who is so blind, that he seeth not these men be the masters, by whom the people, as saith Hierom, hath been led into error and lulled asleep?  Or who sooth not Rome, that is their Nineveh, which sometime was painted with fairest colours, but now, her vizard being palled off, is both better seen and less set by?  Or who seeth not that good men, being awaked, as it were, out of their dead sleep at the light of the Gospel and at the voice of God, have resorted to the hills of the Scriptures, waiting not at all for the councils of such masters?

But, by your favour, some will say, these things ought not to have been attempted without the Bishop of Rome’s commandment, forsomuch as he only is the knot and band of Christian society.  He only is that priest of Levi’s order whom God signified in the Deuteronomy, from whom counsel in matters of weight and true judgment ought to be fetched; and whoso obeyeth not his judgment, the same man ought to be killed in the sight of his brethren; and that no mortal creature hath authority to be judge over him, whatsoever he do:  that Christ reigneth in heaven, and he in earth; that he alone can do as much as Christ or God Himself can do, because Christ and he have but one council-house; that without him is no faith, no hope, no Church; and whoso goeth from him quite casteth away and renounceth his own salvation.  Such talk have the canonists, the Pope’s parasites, surely, but with small discretion or soberness.  For they could scant say more, at least they could not speak more highly of Christ Himself.

As for us, truly we have fallen from the Bishop of Rome upon no manner of worldly respect or commodity.  And would to Christ he so behaved himself as this falling away needed not; but so the case stood, that unless we left him we could not come to Christ.  Neither will he now make any other league with us than such a one as Nahas the king of the Ammonites would have made in times past with them of the city of Jabez, which was to put out the right eye of each one of the inhabitants.  Even so will the Pope pluck from us the holy Scripture, the Gospel of our salvation, and all the confidence which we have in Christ Jesu.  And upon other condition can he not agree upon peace with us.