The Pope confuted The holy and apostolic Church confuting the Pope. The first action.…The Pope confuted The holy and apostolique Church confuting the Pope. The first action.…

On this wise did those ancient Apostles & Apostolic ⟨p. 50⟩fathers train the world at the first, & thereby enlarged the Church daily. To the furtherance whereof it is skarse credible to be spoken, how much availed not only the force of their miracles, but• with a• the sweetness of their demeanour, & uprightness of life, their cheerful courage in afflictions, their lenity in suffering injuries, of mind mild and gentle, imagining no hurt to any, and endeavouring to deserve well of all, raising it self above worldly pomp, making no account of this life, & exempt from all encumbrance of worldly affairs, to the end they might the more freely attend the preaching of the word. So also were the bishops of that most happy age maintained with the only benevolence of the people, contented with the baseness of their own estate: In the mean time if there remained any surplus beyond daily necessities, the same was delivered back to the poor: At what time palaces of prelates were nought else but treasuries of the poor. For as yet the royalties of S. Peter rolled on no mans tongue: what shall we say to this, that of that beadroll of bishops many lived so beggarly, that at the time of their death, skarse one penny could be found to pay for their grave: as we read recorded of Theodoret? But this kind of men are long sithence dead and rotten, yea there remaineth skarse at this day any sparkles of their manners. The Cat is so altogether turned in the pan amongst these Romish revellers, that whoso will now compare these present prelates with the first proportionally, and enter into dew consideration of the licentiousness of these shavelings, of their cruelty, ambition, tyranny, frauds, conspiracies, loftiness, delicacy, idleness, riches, bravery, troupes of attendants, palaces, lavishness of life, greediness of revenge, shall find them more like lordings, then bishops: rather monarchs than monks: & shall scarcely discern whether a man may rightly call them preachers or treachors: Teachers or deceivers: prelates or Pyla•es as Bernard did.¹ And yet after all this how ⟨image 55⟩they blush nothing at all to be deemed their successors, from whom they have so degenerated in all actions of their lives, as that not so much as any memorial at all of that primitive ancient integrity may be found to shine in them,