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

All that you allege here out of that worthy servant of Christ M. Luther, ¹I acknowledge for true, seeing it is the very same that the Scriptures them-selves have taught. For this is the voice and doctrine of the gospel, that by faith only in the mediator, who by his sacrifice once offered upon the cross hath reconciled the father unto us, we are justified and saved. Then to live straitly, and to do good works with this purpose and persuasion, that thereby we shall obtain justice or salvation, is contrary to the trueth of Christs gospel, and may not in any be allowed, although otherwise most learned and godly. Will you reason hereby against Luther and me, because we charge the fathers with some oversight in the trueth of this doctrine, in that they thought somewhat too well of their own deeds, we must therefore repute them for wicked men, and make them no better then Papists? They erred not so much as you, they erred not so wilfully as you: and therefore though there besom likeness between their error & yours, yet we account not of ⟨p. 140⟩them, as of you, who besides that you err in this point of justification most damnably, have also multiplied your errors in other articles, & almost left no one ground of pure religion unshaken. And therefore you greatly deceive your own heart M. Rainolds, when you think your self to be in the same case that the fathers were in, because sometime the fathers gave more to their works, then they should have done, you trusting to be justified and saved by the worthiness and merits of your works, which the fathers did not. So between you and them there is a great space of distance: although I grant that some things which they have written of this matter, and practiced in their lives, tendeth somewhat to your heresy of justification by works. For the mystery of iniquity, which in papistry is fully finished, began to work in the Apostles age, & so continued still forward in the fathers days, until it came to his height and perfection in the kingdom of popery. They slipped a little, you are fallen headlong into the pit: they were overseen through infirmity, you are blind of malice: they scattered some darnel in the Lords field, you have plucked up by the roots the good ⟨p. 141⟩corn. They have suffered loss of this building, being not agreeable to the foundation, yet are saved: