An apology or answer in defence of the Church of England with a brief…An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande with a briefe…

And like as a small spot is soon spied in the neatest and whitest garment, even so the least stain of dishonesty is easily found out in the purest & sincerest life. Neither take we all them which have at this day embraced the doctrine of the Gospel to be Angels, and to live clearly without any mote or wrinkle: nor yet think we these men either so blind, that if any thing may be noted in us, they are not able to perceive the same even through the least erevie, nor so friendly that they will construe ought to the best: nor yet so honest of nature nor courteous, that they will look back upon themselves, and ⟨image 46⟩weigh our fashions by their own. If so be we list to search this matter from the bottom: we know in the very Apostle times there were Christians, through whom the name of the Lord was blasphemed and evil spoken of among the Gentiles. Constantius the Emperour• be waileth, as it is written in Sos•menus, how that many waxed worse after the• had fallen to the religion of Christ. And Cyprian in a lamentable Oration setteth out the corrupt manners in his time▪ The wholesome discipline,¹ saith he, which the Apostles left unto us, hath idleness and long rest now utterly marred, every one studied to increase his livelihood, and clean forgetting either what they had done before, whiles they were under the Apostles, or what they ought continually to do having received the faith: they earnestly laboured to make great their own wealth with an unsatiable desire of covetousness. There is no devout religion, saith he, in Priests, no sound ⟨image 46⟩faith in ministers, no charity showed in good works, no form of Godliness in their conditions, men are become effeminate, and women's beauty is counterfeited. And before his days, said Tertullian, O how wretched be we which are called Christians at this time? For we live as Heathens, under the name of Christ. And without reciting of many mo writers, Gregory Nazianzene speaketh this of the pitiful state of his own time: We saith he, are in hatred among the Heathen for our own vices sake, we are also become now a wonder not alone to Angels and men, but even to all the ungodly. In this case was the Church of God when the Gospel first began to shine, and when the fury of Tyrants was not as yet cooled, nor the sword taken of from the Christians necks.