A Brief and Pithy Sum of the Christian Faith

Furthermore we know that the marks and tokens of the true church be not always in one estate, nor they be not always one concerning themselves. But God according to his incomprehensible wisdom, in punishing the ingratitude of the world, sometimes withdraweth and taketh from us part of his light, in such wise, that sometime it seemeth that the Church is at an end or destroyed as we see it happened in Israel in the time that Christ came into this world. (For set the Jews apart, there was not one trace or steppe of the true marks of the Church in the world. And as for Jerusalem, what ignorance, what corruption of doctrine, what wickedness▪ was there when Jesus Christ the true Messiah, had no greater enemies than the blind guides which conducted and taught the other? ^aBut yet the Lord doth never take away the whole foundation of his Church, but always hath a certain flock,^b sometime greater sometime³ smaller, as him self declared to Elijah. ⟨p. 91⟩Also we may see how it is come to pass in our time, that there is no people in the world more abused, than those which would knit and tie the church to a certain place, and to the succession of those, which they call bishops, which in very deed be nothing less, both by the word of God and by the ancient canons. Whereby it is easy to show that from the head of them all to the smallest, they be excommunicated & cut off from the church, if they change not their life and manners. Now the duty of the children of god is not only to serve god, in what place soever they be, or whatsoever ruin or decay there be in the Church, but when it shall please God to establish and build up again her ruins & decays, either here or in any other place, not being bound to any people or Nation, whatsoever they be: but when it pleaseth him to set up again his standard, which is the ministration of his holy word: the duty I say of the children of God, is to join themselves to the true flock, & separate themselves from those which be not. Following