that for three years' space they be not able to live out of debt, and get them necessaries. The popish prelates, afore they were bishops, had divers fat benefices and prebends, which they kept still for a commendam: they were stored of all necessaries of household afore they entered; they paid no first-fruits; so that they may do on the first day more than the other can do in seven year. "If ye were of the world," says our Lord, "the John xv. world would love you; but because ye be not of the world, therefore the world hates you." The world loves the papists; therefore they be worldlings, and not of God: the poor protestant, because he will not lie, not flatter, is despised of the world. The world gives to the papist honour, castles, towers, and all that it has: to the protestant if he give any thing, it is thought too much; and of those things that it gives, it gives the worst that can be picked out, and yet thinks it too good. Therefore, surely the one has his reward in this world: the other must look for it at God's hand. For the proud papist there is nothing good enough: for the poor protestant every thing is too good. What can the professors of God's truth therefore look to have here, but to follow the example of the apostles whose doctrine they teach, to suffer wrongs, slanders, contempt, to be counted as outcasts, and sheep appointed to the slaughter? When the pope's butchers are aloft, they broil and brenne, they prison, hang and torment the sely gospeller at their pleasure: when the protestant is at the best, and the world seems to laugh on him, he is scarce able to live, runs in contempt and slander of the world; and the lurking papist, looking for his day when he may run loose again, gapes to satisfy his bloody heart and hands, which never will be satisfied with blood. Divers of these holy prelates, that he cracks so much of, had so leased out their houses, lands and parks, that some of the new bishops had scarce a corner of a house to lie in, and divers not so much ground as to grese [graze] a goose or sheep; so that some were compelled to tether their horse in their orchard: and yet have these holy fathers provided, that if they be restored (as they look for, as many think,) that they shall have all their commodities again. O notable charity, and meet for the children of such a father! The Lord God for his mercy amend this at his good will and pleasure! The people are so blind, that they rather believe him that fills their belly, than him that teaches them Christ; so rude, that they care more for the body than for the soul: even as Christ, when he filled five thousand with five loaves, they would have made him a king; but with2 Thess. iii. in few days after they would have stoned him. Paul wrought for his own living, and would not be a burden to any congregation yet he says, that it was lawful for him to take all his necessaries of them whom he taught. Chrysostom in the eightysixth homily on Matthew, writing, entreats the like question, and tells causes why he and others had lands belonging to their churches. He says, "The unthankfulness of the people was such, that if they had not such provision, they should go a begging'." So surely I think now, if the bishops and ministers had not that provision, they might starve for hunger. Love and duty to God, his word, and ministers, is so decayed, that to get away from them is thought godliness, pastime and profit. Surely God will not have his servants so mocked: God turn from us for Christ's sake that which we deserve and provoke him to in these our doings! Julianus apostata, the emperor that forsaked his faith, hearing that the gospel taught the Christians to live in poverty and suffer persecution, took their goods from them, and punished them, saying, he would help them to heaven, because their gospel taught them to live poor and suffer so our papists, hearing the protestants preach poverty, and condemn their proud prelaty, have leased, granted, and given away their livings, that now the poor gospeller has scarce whereon to live, through their malice. XI. In Christ's church has ever been a succession of bishops from the apostles' time to this day, in every see. Tertullian says: "If in any see there be a bishop that walks not in his father's steps, he is [' Καὶ γὰρ μεθ' ὑμῶν ἡμᾶς καταγελάστους ἡ ἀπανθρωπία αὕτη ποιεῖ, ὅτι τὰς εὐχὰς ἀφέντες καὶ τὴν διδασκαλίαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἁγιωσύνην, οἱ μὲν οἰνοπώλαις, κ. τ. έ.—The passage in the text is rather an allusion to the whole passage, than a direct quotation. In Matth. Homil. LXXXV. (al. LXXXVI.) Tom. vII. p. 915. Paris. 1836. ED.] [Quod Imperator audiens, Christianis videlicet adeuntibus eum, defendere contemnebat, dicens, "Vestrum est ut patientes mala sustineatis ; hoc enim est præceptum vestri Dei." Hist. Tripart. Lib. vi. Cap. 39. p. 436. in Auctores Historiæ Ecclesiast. Basil. 1535. ED.] to be counted a bastard, and no true inheritor in Christ's church3." St Cyprian does say: "They that be made bishops out of the order of the church, and not by tradition and ordinance of the apostles, coming by succession from time to time, are not bishops by the will of God," but thieves and murderers*. A succession of bishops or ministers, we grant, has been in the world, rather than in any one see or country, since Christ which succession we say we have and follow better than they, but not after such sort as he says and means. God is never without his church in the world, although some countries fall; and his church never wants his ministers and true teachers, at the least privily, although in some ages it has them more plenteously than in other some, and sometimes the outward face of the church wants not his errors and blots. But where he says, there has been bishops in every see since the apostles' time, it must needs be false: for here with us unto the time of king Lucius, almost two hundred year after Christ, there were no bishops in this realm at all, but flamines, as Fabian' and Polychronicon" say, [Quos apostoli (al. ab apostolis) in episcopatum constitutos, apostolici seminis traduces habeant, &c. See the whole passage. De Præscript. Hæreticorum, cap. xxxii. Tom. I. p. 31. Magd. 1828. But in this and other instances the author cited is so overlaid by the mass of papistical comment, that it is not easy to identify the passage intended. See what Pilkington says on this practice at the end of his answer to the first question of the papist. ED.] [ Plane episcopi non de voluntate Dei fiunt, qui extra ecclesiam fiunt; sed contra dispositionem et traditionem evangelii fiunt. Epist. LIX. (LV.) p. 261. ed. Fell. Oxon. 1700. ED.] insti [The which Lucie, after the faith thus by him received, tuted and ordained, that all or the more part of arch-flamines and flamines, which is to mean archbishops and bishops of the pagan law, which at that day were in number, as witnesseth Gaufryde and other, three of the arch-flamines and twenty-eight of the flamines, were made and ordained archbishops and bishops of the church of Christ. Fabian, Part III. chap. lix. fin. ED.] [In his time (Lucius') were three archbishops' sees in Britain. To these archbishops' sees were subject eighteen bishops, and were called flamines. Polychron. Lib. 1. chap. lii. init. Here xvi. is apparently a mere error for XXVIII. the number twice given by Fabian, who cites Polychron. as his authority. The Polychronicon, so frequently cited by this author, was originally compiled in Latin by Ranulph, monk of Chester, translated into English by lib. v.1 and heathen priests; and sundry times since divers sees in this realm many years together had no bishops at all, when Polychron. the unchristened Saxons were here; and divers bishopricks here are not half so old as the apostles' time. Yet in all these ages were some that both knew, taught privately, and followed the truth, though they were not horned and mitred bishops, nor oiled and sworn shavelings to the pope. Such popish bishops I am sure no man is able to prove to have been in every see of this realm continually, since the apostles' time, nor elsewhere: when he has proved it, I will say as he does. Does the see make the bishop and his doctrine good or bad? Does the place make him good or bad? If his saying be true, that they have such a succession, the man must needs be good because he is bishop of such a place or such, (for he means to have a continual succession of good bishops everywhere without interruption :) but whether they succeed in agreement of one true doctrine, as they do of one see or place, he cares not. If succeeding in place be sufficient to prove them good bishops, then the Jews and Turks have their good bishops and religion still at Jerusalem, Constantinople, and elsewhere; for there they dwell where the apostles did, and have their synagogues, Levites, priests and bishops after their sort. We do esteem and reverence the continual succession of Succession. good bishops in any place, if they can be found: if they cannot, we run not from God, but rather stick fast to his word. I think there is no place, where evil bishops have not been. If Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippos, Colossa, Thessalonica, Macedonia, where Paul preached, and to whom he wrote his several epistles, might fall and have Turkish prelates; why may not Rome fall too? The same may be said of Jerusalem, where St James was, and of Africk, where Cyprian and Austin were, and of other places where the apostles preached, by "one Trevisa, then vicar of the parish of Barkley," and afterwards continued by William Caxton, "a simple person," as he calls himself, from the year 1357 to the year 1460, in which he complains that he has not " ne can gete no bokes of auctoryte treatynge of such cronycles, except a lytel boke named Fasciculus temporum, and another called Aureus de Universo." ED.] [This is a general reference to the state of things under the Saxons, not to any particular passage. ED.] and now be fallen away. Succession of good bishops is a great God has not promised that every bishoprick, no, nor any one bishoprick, should have always good bishops one after another, no more than one good father should have always good children born of him, nor a good king should have good princes to reign after him. After wise Salomon reigned foolish Roboam: after godly Ezechias reigned wicked Manasses; and after Jesus, the son of Josedec, followed not long after Annas and Caiphas, and many wicked ones afore them. Contrariwise, of sinful ancestors came the innocent Lamb of God, Christ Jesus, and after the traitor Judas followed the good apostle Matthias. So that, both in kingdoms and priesthood, the good has followed the bad, and the bad the good. The gospel says, that "in Matt. xxiii. Moses' chair the scribes and Pharisees sit:" if after Moses followed the wicked scribes and Pharisees, what privilege have our bishops or popes more than Moses, that their successors should continue in pureness of religion, and not fall away as the Pharisees did? Are they better than Moses? Or where is this their promise written in God's book? The glorying of this succession is like the proud brags of the Jews for their |