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…

But least some man should say that the foresaid things happened in the time of the law only, of shadows, and of infancy, when truth lay hid under figures and ceremonies, when nothing as yet was brought to perfection, when the law was not graven in mens hearts but in stone (and yet is that but a foolish saying,) for even at those days was there the very same God that is now, the same spirit, the same Christ, the same faith, the same doctrine, the same hope, the same inheritance, the same league, and the same efficacy and virtue of God's word▪ ¹Eusebius also ⟨image 66⟩saith, all the faithful even from Adam until Christ, were in very deed Christians, though they were not so termed. But as I said, lest men should thus speak still, Paul the apostle found the like faults and falls even then in the prime and chief of the Gospel, in chief perfection, and in light, so that he was compelled to write in this sort to the Galatians, whom he had well before that instructed: I feare me (quod he) leaste I have laboured amongst you in vain, and lest ye have heard the Gospel in vain, O my little Children, of whom I travail a new, till Christ be fashioned again in you: And as for the Church of the Corinthians, how foully it was defiled, is nothing needful to rehearse. Now tell me, might the Churches of the Galatians and Corinthians go amiss, and the church of Rome alone may it not fail nor go amiss? Surely Christ prophesied long before of his church, that the time should come, when desolation should stand in ⟨image 67⟩the holy place.² And Paul saith, that Antichrist should once set up his own tabernacle and stately seat in the temple of God:³ and that the time should be, when men should not away with wholesome doctrine, but he turned back unto fables & lies, and that within the very Church. Peter likewise telleth,⁴ how there should be teachers of lies in the church of Christ: Daniel the Prophet speaking of the later times of Antichrist,