An answer to a certain book, writtenAn answere to a certeine booke, written

IN the beginning of this Chapter M. Rainolds chafeth and layeth about him on every side,¹ striking now at one man, now at another, sometime this way, sometime that, as though he were suddenly fallen into some malady, & great distemperature in his head. The occasion riseth upon my words, in saying our adversaries doctrine ⟨p. 93⟩cannot stand, unless we will allow for good those things that in the writings of the fathers are most faulty. And who knoweth not, if he have read any thing in the fathers,² but that the popish religion for the most part is even a very scum of ancient & new errors, or as it were a body consisting of rottenness and corruption? Their free will, their merit of works, their purgatory, their sacrifice for quick and dead, their transubstantiation, their Popes Supremacy, their superstitious fasts, their worshipping of Images, their praying unto Saints, their praying for the dead, their satisfaction, forgiveness by works of penance, whereof Master Rainolds hath now taken in hand to speak, and other many moe the like points of false doctrine they can as soon prove out of the scriptures, as they can draw a fountain of water out of a flint. And therefore although for a fashion, in defence of some of these, they pretend scriptures, yet being easily beaten from them, they fall at last to rail on them as not containing sufficient doctrine, and rather will be tried and judged by the writings of fathers: at whose hands albeit they find not such relief as they would make ⟨p. 94⟩men believe, in no one controversy between us & them, as hath been oftentimes plainly proved, notwithstanding by reason of the fathers manifold oversights and slips, & the corruptions that daily increased in the Church, they may bring somewhat, such as it is, for their maintenance. wherefore that we will not admit the fathers for judges in matters of Religion, but hold them hard to the trial of the Scriptures, which they cannot abide, this doth put them out of patience, & driveth them into vehement passions. But let them mend themselves where they can: they shall never get at our hands more then this, to receive that which the scripture delivereth, to reject that which the scripture reproveth: to read the fathers with indifferent and free judgement, weighing all their doctrine in the balance of gods word, and thereby either allowing, or refusing the same.