1 no, nor yet a bourse for merchants, nor a meeting-place for walking and talking. If a convenient place to meet for honest assemblies cannot be found nor had conveniently other where, a partition might be had to close up and shut the praters from prayers, the walkers and janglers from well disposed persons, that they should not trouble the devout hearers of God's word, so that the one should not hear nor see the other. God has once again with the trumpet of his word, and the glad receiving of the people, thrown down the walls of Jericho, and the pope's bulwark there, by his own might, without the power of man, if man would so consider it and fear the Lord. No place has been more abused than Paul's has been, nor more against the receiving of Christ's gospel wherefore it is more marvel that God spared it so long, rather than that he overthrew it now. From the top of the steeple down within the ground no place has been free. From the top of the spire at coronations, or other solemn triumphs, some for vain glory used to throw themselves down by a rope, and so killed themselves vainly to please other men's eyes. At the battlements of the steeple sundry times were used their popish anthems to call upon their gods with torch and taper in the evenings. In the top of one of the pinnacles is Lollards' tower1, where many an innocent soul has been by them cruelly tormented and murdered. In the midst alley was their long censer reaching from the roof to the ground, as though the Holy Ghost came in their censing down in likeness of a dove. On the arches, though commonly men complain of wrong and delayed judgment in ecclesiastical causes, yet because I will not judge by hearsay, I pass over it, saving only for such as have been condemned there by Annas and Caiphas for Christ's cause, as innocently as any Christians could be. For their images hanged on every wall, pillar, and door, with their pilgrimages, and worshipping of them, I will not stand to rehearse them, because they cannot be unknown to all men that have seen London, or heard of them. Their massing and many altars, with the rest of their popish service, which he so much extols, I pass over, because I answered them afore. [So named from the followers of the truth, called Lollards, confined there. ED.] [The court of arches, the bishop's court, held in the cathedral. ED.] The south alley for usury and popery, the north for simony, and the horse fair in the midst for all kind of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murders, conspiracies, and the font for ordinary payments of money, are so well known to all men as the beggar knows his dish. The popish clergy began and maintained these, and godless worldlings defend them; where the poor protestant laments and would amend them. Judas' chapel3 under the ground, with the apostles' mass so early in the morning, was counted by report as fit a place to work a feat in as the stews or taverns. So that without and within, above the ground and under, over the roof and beneath, on the top of the steeple and spire down to the low floor, not one spot was free from wickedness, as the said bishop did then in his sermon declare; so that we should praise God for his mercy in sparing it so long, and now tremble at his fearful judgment in justly revenging such filthiness. God, for his mercy's sake, grant it may now be amended! the old fathers, and the papists tics. Secondly, where it pleases him to term this church service now used schismatical, it is as true as afore, when he said that We follow no ancient record made mention of any such afore forty years past. Why do ye call it a schismatical? Because it differs be schismafrom the pope's portus? That it differs we deny not, but rejoice and praise God for it: but if it agree with the holy scriptures and the ancient fathers, as I have proved afore, then be ye schismatics in swerving from them, and not we. Prayer. In our morning and evening prayer we agree with the old Common prayers of Salomon's temple, as I proved afore. In baptism Baptism. we follow Christ Jesus, his apostles, Austin and Pauline, whom pope Gregory sent into England, in the chief points; which all christened in unconjured water, without salt, spitting, oil, and chrism, &c. nion. In the Lord's supper we receive together, as St Paul com- Commumanded and pope Gelasius teaches either to receive both parts, or to refrain from both; for it is sacrilege to divide them. De Consecra, distinct. ii. We give the people the cup of Christ's [ "Misnamed on purpose for Jesus' Chapel." Strype, 1. p. 392. En.] [Item Gelasius Papa Majorico et Joanni episcopis: Comperimus autem quod quidam, sumpta tantummodo corporis sacri portione, a calice sacrati cruoris abstineant. Qui proculdubio (quoniam nescio qua superstitione docentur astringi) aut integra sacramenta percipiant, aut ab Lib. i. Ep. 2. blood, as well as to the priests, as Cyprian teaches, saying, "How do we teach or provoke them to shed their blood in confessing his name, if we deny them that shall be Christ's soldiers the blood of Christ? Or how do we make them meet to the cup of martyrdom, if we do not admit them to drink first in the church the cup of the Lord by the right use of communicating?" Again, St Matthew says, "Drink ye all of this :" lest any should think himself exempt from drinking, he says, "Drink ye all." God is the God of the lay-people as well as of the priests, and offers his sacraments and salvation to them as well as to other. We move the people also often, and not once in the year, to receive the communion (as the papists do), following St Austin, who says, "Every day to communicate, I neither praise mat. cap. 53. nor dispraise it; but I counsel and move all men to receive it on the Sunday, if the mind be without desire to sin3." Chrysostom says, that when they ministered the communion in his church, "the deacon stood up, gave warning to the people, and said sancta sanctis, those holy mysteries were ready for them that were holy and had worthily prepared themselves: they that would not Ad Ephes. receive went their ways, would not stand gazing on them that received, but thought themselves unworthy to be partakers of the prayers, which would not communicate." The pope's law De ecclesiast. dog Ad Heb. Hom. 3. integris arceantur; quia divisio unius ejusdem mysterii sine grandi sacrilegio non potest pervenire. Decretum Gratiani, &c. Tertia Pars. De Consecra. Distinct. ii. fo. cccxcvi. Antv. 1573. ED.] [Nam quo modo docemus aut provocamus eos in confessione nominis sanguinem suum fundere, si eis militaturis Christi sanguinem denegamus? aut quo modo ad martyrii poculum idoneos facimus, si non eos prius ad bibendum in ecclesia poculum Domini jure communicationis admittimus? Epist. LVII. p. 253. Ed. Fell. 1700. Lib. 1. Ep. ii. Erasm. ED.] [Quotidie eucharistiæ communionem percipere nec laudo nec vitupero: omnibus tamen dominicis diebus communicandum suadeo et hortor, si tamen mens in affectu peccandi non sit. De Eccles. Dogmatibus Liber Gennadio tributus. Tom. VIII. August. p. 1698. Paris. 1837. ED.] [3 Ὅταν γὰρ εἴπῃ, Τὰ ἅγια τοῖς ἁγίοις, τοῦτο λέγει, Εἴ τις οὐκ EσTIV äɣios, μǹ Tроoiтw. Chrysost. in Hebr. Hom. xvii. Tom. xii. p. 245. Paris. 1838. ED.] [· Οὕτω δὴ καὶ σὺ παραγέγονας· τὸν ὕμνον ᾖσας, μετὰ πάντων ὡμολόγησας εἶναι τῶν ἀξίων τῷ μὴ μετὰ τῶν ἀναξίων ἀνακεχωρη κέναι· πῶς ἔμεινας, καὶ οὐ μετέχεις τῆς τραπέζης; Ανάξιός είμι, φησίν. Οὐκοῦν καὶ τῆς κοινωνίας ἐκείνης τῆς ἐν ταῖς εὐχαῖς. In Ephes. Hom. I. Tom. xi. p. 27. ED.] says, de Consecra. distinct. ii: "The temporal men, which will not communicate at Easter, Whitsunday, and Christmas, are not catholics"." Let papists then note, what their master says to them. Burials. Fabiolæ. In burials we do not assemble a number of priests to sweep purgatory, or buy forgiveness of sins of them which have no authority to sell; but according to St Jerome's example we follow. "At the death of Fabiola," says he, "the people of Rome were gathered to the solemnity of the burial. Psalms Epitaph. were sung, and Alleluia sounding out on height did shake the gilded ceilings of the temple. Here was one company of young men, and there another, which did sing the praises and worthy deeds of the woman. And no marvel if men rejoice of her salvation, of whose conversion the angels in heaven be glad"." Thus Jerome used burials. Likewise Gregory Nazianzene has his funeral sermons and orations in the commendation of the party departed: so has Ambrose for Theodosius and Valentinian the emperors, for his brother Satyrus, &c. Their dirige groats, masses, and trentals, tapers, and ringings, have no foundation on the scripture nor good ancienty to maintain them. Jerome says, that Alleluia was sung so loud, that it made the church roof to shake and our papists will not sing Alleluia at all, neither at burial, in Lent, nor Advent, and say they follow ancienty. Alleluia is as much in English as, “praise ye the Lord;" as though they should say, Praise the Lord that has called his servant out of this misery to himself in hea [Ex Concilio Agatheno: Non habeantur catholici, qui his tribus temporibus communicare desinunt. Seculares, qui in natali Domini, pascha, pentecoste non communicaverint, catholici non credantur, nec inter catholicos habeantur. Decret. Gratian. Tertia Pars. De Consecra. Dist. ii. ED.] [See above, p. 320. Necdum spiritum exhalaverat, necdum debitam Christo reddiderat animam; et jam fama volans tanti prænuncia luctus, totius urbis populum ad exequias congregabat. Sonabant psalmi, et aurata templorum reboans in sublime quatiebat ALLELUIA. Hic juvenum chorus, ille senum, qui carmine laudes femineas et facta ferant. Nec mirum si de ejus salute homines exultarent, de cujus conversione angeli lætabantur in cœlo. Hieronymi Op. Epist. LXXXIV. (xxx.) Tom. IV. Pars ii. p. 662. Paris. 1706. ED.] [The groat was a common charge for a dirige or dirge for the dead. Selden, Table Talk, speaks of "twenty dirgies at fourpence a piece." ED.] Eccles. xii. Marriage. ven: but the desperate papists say, Weep; rejoice not for the dead, but mistrust of their salvation; think that they be gone from one sorrow to another, and therefore buy masses apace; the pope's proctors for money enough will sell that which God cannot, or will not, give freely, as they think. God is weary, as they say, of well-doing, and turned over the matter to these the pope's proctors. But Salomon teaches, that in death "the body turns to earth from whence it came, and the soul to him that gave it." Look how both body and soul is bestowed, whatsoever greedy gaping cormorants do say, to get money withal. "Blessed be the dead that die in the Lord," says St John; "for they rest from their labours:" the popes say, the dead be accursed, and go into purgatory, from sorrows here to greater there: choose whether ye believe. In marriage, as in other things beside, we are but too much like unto them that is our fault generally, that we differ not more from them in all our ministery. We have all in English, where they have but "I, N., take thee, M., &c." And here I would ask master D. a reason, why this piece in marriage is used of them in English, and not more; or the like in other sacraments? Is marriage so holy a thing, that the parties must needs understand in English, what promise the one makes to the other; and other sacraments be not so to be regarded, what we promise unto God? Do we not in baptism and the Lord's supper make as solemn a vow to God, to serve him only and forsake all other, as in marriage the one party does to the other? Seeing then we differ not from the scripture nor ancient fathers, they do us much wrong to charge us with a schism, where they themselves are rather schismatics in swerving from the ancient fathers' steps, than we that would bring home again their old religion. But as hitherto I have answered them out of their own doctors, so in this thing also I will be judged who be schismatics by their own books. Look all the histories and chronicles written within this thousand year, and in religion ye shall find almost none called schismatics, but papists. For when there were two or three popes at once, and some countries followed one pope claiming to be head, and some another, so they made schisms. Papists then are called schismatics com |