The apology of the Church of England, and an epistle to one Seignior Scipio…

5. IT is worth the while to see how rarely these Gentlemen agree in matters of Religion with those ancient Fathers, of whose concurrence they boast so unmeasurably. 1. The ancient Elibertin Council decreed,¹ that what was the Object of Worship should not be painted in Churches. The old Father Epiphanius saith, it is a horrible wickedness, ²and an insufferable villainy, for any man to set up the Picture, even of Christ in Christian Churches: but they have filled all their Churches and every Corner of them with Pictures and Statues, as as if there were no Religion without them. 2. The ancient Fathers,³ Origen and St. Chrysostom, have exhorted the People to the diligent reading of the Scriptures, that they would buy Books, and discourse amongst themselves of holy things in their Families, the Wives with their Husbands, and the Parents with their Children; but our adversaries condemn the Scriptures as dead Elements, and drive the People from them as much as they can possibly. 3. The ancient Fathers, Cyprian, Epiphanius ⟨p. 88⟩and St. Jerome, ⁴if any Person who had vowed to live a single Life, did afterwards fall into impurity, and could not overcome the Rages of his Concupiscence, said, it was better for him to marry, and live chastely in a State of Matrimony; and such a Marriage is by St. Augustine, another ancient Father, adjudged to be valid and good, and that it ought not to be recalled or rescinded; but they, if a man has once bound himself by a Vow, although he is afterwards burnt, although he Whores, although he lives never so lewdly and dissolutely, yet they will never suffer him to marry; or if he does perhaps marry, they deny that it is a lawful Marriage; and they •each, that it is much more holy to keep a Concubine or a Whore, than to live in a state of Matrimony. 4. St. Augustin, an ancient Father, complained of the excessive number of impertinent Ceremonies.⁵ with which the Minds and Consciences of Men were even then oppressed; they, as if God regarded nothing else, have since swelled the number of them to so immense a quantity, that there is scarce any thing else left in their Churches. 5. The same ancient Father denies it to be lawful for a Monk to live lazily in idleness; and under the Show and Pretence of Sanctity,