An account of a disputation at Oxford, anno dom. 1554 with A treatise of…

The Peace which Christ left to his Church, and to every true Member of the same, the Holy Spirit, the Guide of Gods Children, be so ingraft in your Heart, and the Heart of your good Wife, and all my good Brothers and Sisters about you, that unfeignedly you may in respect thereof, contemn all worldly peace, which repugneth that peace I speak of, and driveth it utterly out of the hearts of all them which would patch them both together: For we cannot serve two Masters. No Man can serve God and Mammon. Christs peace cannot be kept with this Worlds peace. God therefore of his mercy give unto you his peace, which passeth all understanding, and so keep your hearts and minds, that they may be pure Habitacles and Mansions for the Holy Spirit; yea, for the Blessed Trinity, who hath promised to come and dwell in all them that love Christ and keep his sayings.

THe Peace which Christ left to his Church, and to every true Member of the same, the Holy Spirit, the Guide of Gods Children, be so ingraft in your Heart, and the Heart of your good Wife, and all my good Brothers and Sisters about you, that unfainedly you may in respect thereof, contemn all worldly peace, which repugneth that peace I speak of, and driveth it utterly out of the hearts of all them which would patch them both together: For we cannot serve two Masters. No Man can serve God and Mammon. Christs peace cannot be kept with this Worlds peace. God therefore of his mercy give unto you his peace, which passeth all understanding, and so keep your hearts and minds, that they may be pure Habitacles and Mansions for the Holy Spirit; yea, for the Blessed Trinity, who hath promised to come and dwell in all them that love Christ and keep his sayings.

My dearly Beloved, the time is now come wherein Trial is made of Men which have professed Christ, and would have been counted keepers of his Testimonies; but, weal away! the tenth person persevereth not. The more part do part stakes with the Papists and Protestants, so that they are become mangy Mongrels to the infecting of all the Company ⟨p. 2⟩with them, to their no small peril; for they pretend outwardly Popery, going to Mass with the Papists, and tarrying with them personally at their antichristian and Idolatrous Service; but with their Hearts, say they, and with their Spirits, they serve the Lord: and so by this means they save their Pigs, which they would not lose, I mean their worldly Pelf. So they would please the Protestants, and be counted with them for Gospellers, yea marry would they. But mine own beloved in the Lord, flee from such persons, as from men most perilous and pernicious, both before God and Men, for they are false to both, and true to neither. To the Magistrates, they are clean contrary to God, they are most untrue, giving him but a piece which should have the whole. I would they would tell me who made their Bodies; Did not God as well as their Spirits and Souls? And who keepeth both? Doth not he still? And alas, shall not he have the service of the Body, but it must be given to serve the new-found God of Antichrist his Inventions? Did not Christ buy both our Souls and Bodies? And wherewith; with any less price than with his Precious Blood? Ah wretches then that we be, if we will defile either part with the rose coloured Whore of Babylon her filthy Mass Abominations. It had been better for us never to have been washed, than so to wallow our selves in the filthy puddle of Popery. It had been better never to have known the Truth, than thus to betray it. Surely, surely, let such men fear that their latter end be not worse than the beginning. Their own Conscience now accuseth them before God, (if so be they have any Conscience) that they are but Dissemblers and Hypocrites to God and Man. For all the Cloaks they make, they cannot avoid this, but that their going to the Church and to Mass is of self-love,