The true copies of the letters between the reverend father in God John Bishop…The true copies of the letters betwene the reuerend father in God Iohn Bisshop…

Steven Gardiner in his book of the devils Sophistry, touching the communion under one kind, imagineth that first sum good devout body, for reverence he had to the Sacrament, thought himself not worthy to receive the cup and so abstained. And then followed another, and so another, & after ano there, and so at length it became, as he saith, a general consent.

Steuen Gardiner in his boke of the deuels Sophistry, touching the communion vnder one kynde, imagineth that first sum good deuout body, for reuerence he had to the Sacrament, thought himselfe not worthy to receyue the cup and so absteined. And then folowed another, and so another, & after ano ther, and so at length it became, as he saith, a generall consent.

Thus he imagineth, only upon •is own guess. For there was never ⟨p. 108⟩any man y• so wrote before him. Nether was he able to show nor whence, nor where this custom […] began, nor how far it went abroad. But if any one man began it first, & so another, why did not y• Priests and Bishops then speak against it? Why did they suffer one singular man, only upon a singular phansy to break the general order, that was given by Christ, & observed by general consent through the hole church? fit it had ben staid at the first in one, it had never past afterward to so many. •f it be a wickedness as ye say, for one man of his own vain phansy to alter the general order of the whole church then ye see, even by Steven Gardiner's confession, that your general consent, whereunto ye lean so much. proceeded at the first only of wickedness: And being so, ye remember ⟨image 118⟩ye have a rule in your own law. Quae à principio malè inchoata fuit institutio, temporis tractu non conualescit, that is, the thing that was naught at the beginning, can not be made good by process of time.