A04459:73
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…
An apology or answer in defence of the Church of England with a brief and plain declaration of the true religion professed and used in the same.An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande with a briefe and plaine declaration of the true religion professed and vsed in the same.
Londini: printed by Reginald Wolfe, 1564
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
But what need one rehearse Concubines and Bawds, as for that is now an ordinary, and a gainful sin at Rome. For harlots sit there now a days,1 not as they did in times past without the City walls, and with their faces hid and covered, but they dwell in palaces and fair houses: they stray about in Court and market,2 and that with bare and open face: as who say they, ⟨image 48⟩may not only lawfully do it, but ought also to be praised for so doing. What should we say any more of this? their vicious and abominable life is now thoroughly known to the whole world. Bernard writeth roundly and truly of the Bishop of Romes house,3 yea and of the Bishop of Rome him self. Thy Palace sayeth he, taketh in good men, but it maketh none: naughty persons thrive there, and the good appair and decay. And who soever he were which wrote the Tripartite work annexed to the Council Lateranense, saith thus, So excessive at this day is the riot aswell in the Prelates and Bishops, as in the Clerks and Priests, that it is horrible to be told. But these things be not only grown in ure and so by custom and continual time well allowed, as all the rest of their doings in manner be, but they are now waxen old and rotten ripe. For who hath not heard what a heinous act Peter A•oisius, Pope Paul ⟨image 49⟩the thirds son committed against C•• mus Cherius the Bishop of Favense• what John Casus Archbishop of Beneventanus the Popes Legate at Venice wrote in the commendation of a most abominable filthiness, and how he set forth with most loathsome words & wicked eloquence, the matter which ought not once to proceed out of any bodies mouth. To whose ears hath it not come, that N. Diasius a Spaniard, being purposely sent from Rome into Germany, did shamefully and devilishly murder his own brother John Diasius, a most innocent and a most godly man, only because he had embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and would not return again to Rome?