A18078:28
A reply to an answer made of M. Doctor Whitgifte Against the admonition to…A replye to an ansvvere made of M. Doctor VVhitgifte Against the admonition to…
A reply to an answer made of M. Doctor Whitgifte Against the admonition to the Parliament. By T.C.A replye to an ansvvere made of M. Doctor VVhitgifte Against the admonition to the Parliament. By T.C.
printed by John Stroud?, 1573
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
❧ To the Church of England, and ALL THOSE THAT LOVE THE TRUETH IN IT, T. C. wisheth mercy and peace / from God our father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
❧ To the Church of England, and ALL THOSE THAT LOVE THE TRVETH IN IT, T. C. wisheth mercy and peace / from God our father, and from our Lord Iesus Christ.
AS our men do more willingly go to warfare / and fight with greater courage against strangers / then against their countrymen: so it is with me in this spiritual warfare. For I would have wished that this controversy had been with the Papists / or with other (if any can be) more pestilent and professed enemies of the church: for that should have been less grief to write / and more convenient to persuade that which I desire. For as the very name of an enemy doth kindle the desire of fighting / and stirreth up the care of preparing the furniture for the war: So I can not tell how it cometh to pass / that the name of a brother staketh that courage / and abateth that carefulness which should be bestowed in defence of the truth. But seeing the truth ought not to be forsaken for any mans cause / I enforced my self / considering that if the Lord might lay it to my charge / that I was not for certain considerations so ready as I ought to have been to publish the truth / he might more justly condemn me / if being oppugned and slandered by others / I should not according to that measure which he hath dealt unto me / and for my small ability defend it / and deliver it from the evil report that some endeavour to bring upon it. And as unto other parts of the gospel / so soon as the Lord openeth a door for them to enter in / there is for the most part great resistance: so in this part concerning the government and discipline of the church / which is the order which God hath left / as well to make the doctrine most effectual / and to give as it were a sharper edge unto the preaching of the word / as also to be a wall to keep it / and make it continue among us / I see there be sundry lets / which do as it were with weapons stand up to stop the passage / and to hinder that it should not be settled amongst us. With the which albeit I wrestle hand to hand in this book / yet for as much as we have all drunk so deep of the cup of untruth / that we do not only stumble at blocks / which other men lay in our way / but oftentimes we gather lets unto our selves in framing a prejudice against the truth: I thought good to note shortly what those stumbling blocks are / and although I can not remove them / yet to give warning of them / and to lend my hand to the weaker and simpler sort to help to overstride them.