A defence of the Apology of the Church of England containing an answer to…A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande conteininge an answeare to…

M. Harding.

M. Hardinge.

Pardon me, I pray thee, Reader, if I use words some what vehement, the cause so requiring. This Defender crieth out, O ye pillars of Religion. But how much more justly cry we again to him O thou captain liar, O most worthy, not the reward of a whetstone, but the judgement of a backbiter, of a slanderer, a cursed speaker, of a mocker, of the accuser of the brethren, of a Blasphemer: Is this the regard thou haste,¹ I say not to God, or to Christen men, but to thine own estimation, and common honesty of a man? Canst thou persuade thy self to great credit by lying? To seem sober by railing? Honest by villainy? Charitable by slandering? Upright by deceit? Just by impiety? Why sayest thou of us in general, that is to say, of the Catholic Church, that we despise, hate, caste away, and burn the Holy Scriptures? Had we not loved and kept the Scriptures, how couldest thou and thy fellows have come by them? Had ye not them of us? From the Apostles time to this day we have kept them^‡ unspotted and undefiled: and ye within these fifty years have by your vulgar translations ^*corrupted them, that lamentable it is to consider. And when we burned the same corrupt translations or any part thereof, or any of your Heretical treatises, we burned not the Scriptures,^‡ no more then one doth the apple tree, that burneth the caterpillars.

Pardon me, I praie thee, Reader, if I vse woordes some what vehemente, the cause so requiringe. This Defender crieth out, O ye pillours of Religion. But how mutche more iustly crie we againe to him O thou captaine lier, O moste woorthy, not the rewarde of a whetstone, but the iudgemente of abackebiter, of a slaunderer, a cursed speaker, of a mocker, of the accuser of the brethren, of a Blasphemer: Is this the regarde thou haste,