An apology, or answer in defence of the Church of England concerning the state…An apologie, or aunswer in defence of the Church of England concerninge the state…

There be, saith Solomon, many devises in mans hart, but the counsel of the Lord abideth stable: for there is no knowledge, there is no wisdom, there is no counsel against the Lord. Things, saith Hilary, that are builded up by mans work, do not endure. The Church of God must be otherwise builded, and otherwise conserved. For it is grounded upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, and jointed together with one corner stone Jesus Christ. But S. Hierome of all other speaketh ⟨image 64⟩most plainly and most aptly for these times:¹ Whom soever saith he, the Devil hath deceived, and hath as it were with sweet and impoysened enchantment of the mermaids, enticed to fall a sleep, those the word of God doth awake, and saith: Rise thou that sleepest, stand up, and Christ will give the light. Wherefore at the coming of Christ and of Gods word, and of the doctrine of the Church, & of the utter overthrow of Nineveh, and of that most beautiful harlot: the people that before under schoolmasters was rocked a sleep, shall be raised up, and with haste shall go to the mountains of the Scriptures, there they shall find mountains, Moses, Jesus the son of Nave: mountains the Prophets: mountains of the new testament, the Apostles, the Evangelists: And when they shall flee unto such mountains, and exercise themself in the reading of these kind of mountains: if they find no man to teach them (for the harvest shall be great, and the workmen few) nevertheless both the endeavour of the people, because they flee unto these kind of mountains, shall be allowed, and the negligence of the schoolmasters shall be controlled. These be the words of Hierome, so plain that there needeth no interpreter: so well applied to those things which we see now before our eyes, that he seemeth unto us, to foreshow as it were with the spirit of Prophecy, and to intend to set before our eyes the whole state of our times, and the fall of that most sumptuously attired harlot of Babylon, and the reformation of the Church, & the blindness and loitering of the Bishops, and the endeavour & cheerfulness of the people. For who is so blind, that he seeth not these men to be those schoolmasters, by ⟨p. 64⟩whom the people, as Hierome saith, hath been led into error & therein rocked a sleep?