The successive visibility of the church of which the Protestants are the soundest members…

But to what purpose should any words be used with men, that have taught so great a part of the world, not to believe their eyes and other senses! Can any writing make any matter plainer to you, then that Bread is Bread, and Wine is Wine, when you see them, and taste, and eat, and drink them? And yet their general Councils approved by the Pope, have made it an Article of their faith, that the whole substance of the Bread and Wine is turned into the Body and Blood of Christ, so that there is left no Bread or Wine, but only that colour, quantity and taste that before belonged to it. And if you know not Bread when you eat it, or Wine when you drink it, and when the senses of all the sound men in the world concur with yours, is it not vain for me, or any man to dispute with you? Can you have any thing brought to a surer judgement then to all your senses? And yet no doubt but your seducers can say something to prove that Bread is not Bread when you see and eat it: No wonder ⟨p. 74⟩then if they can confute me. But do they indeed believe themselves? how is it possible? there is no exercise of reason, and belief that supposeth not the certainty of sense. If I cannot know Bread and Wine when I see, touch, •ast them; then cannot I know the Pope, the Councils, the Scripture, the Priest, or any thing else. If you think to let go this point of Popery and hold the rest, you know not what Popery is: for a Pope and Council having determined it, you are damned by them for denying the faith: and if you depart from the infallibility of their Rule and judge in points of faith, or at least from the obligation of it, in one thing, they will confess to you that you may as well do it in more; False in this, and certain in nothing, is their own conclusion. Sir, I have not been unwilling to know the truth, having a soul to save or lose as well as you, and having as much reason to be loth to perish. If you have so far forfeited the Grace of God, as merely to follow the pride of a pretended Vice-Christ (that hath turned doctrine into error, worship into superstition and dead formality, light into darkness, discipline into confusion mixed with tyranny);

But to what purpose should any words be used with men, that have taught so great a part of the world, not to believe their eyes and other senses! Can any writing make any matter plainer to you, then that Bread is Bread, and Wine is Wine, when you see them, and tast, and eat, and drink them? And yet their general Councils approved by the Pope, have made it an Article of their faith, that the whole substance of the Bread and Wine is turned into the Body and Blood of Christ, so that there is left no Bread or Wine, but only that colour, quantity and tast that before belonged to it. And if you know not Bread when you eat it, or Wine when you drink it, and when the senses of all the sound men in the world concur with yours, is it not vain for me, or any man to dispute with you? Can you have any thing brought to a surer judgement then to all your senses? And yet no doubt but your seducers can say something to prove that Bread is not Bread when you see and eat it: No wonder