A brief declaration of the universality of the Church of Christ, and the unity…A briefe declaration of the universalitie of the Church of Christ, and the unitie…

The enemy indeed had there sown his tares: but ^bsown them in the LORDS field, and among the LORDS wheat. And a field, we know, may so be ^covergrown with such evil weeds as these; that at the first sight a man would hardly think, that any corn were there at all: even as in the barn it self, the ^dmixture of the chaff with the wheat is sometime such, as a-far off a man would imagine that he did see but a heap of chaff, and nothing else. Those worthy husbandmen that in these last 600. years have taken pains in plucking up those pernicious weeds out of the LORDS field, and severing the chaff from his grain; cannot be rightly said in doing this, either to have brought in another field, or to have changed the ancient grain. The field is the same, but weeded now, unweeded then: the grain the same, but winnowed now, unwinnowed then. We preach no new faith, but the same Catholic faith that ever hath been preached: neither was it any part of our meaning to begin a new Church in these latter days of the world, but to reform the old. A tree that hath the luxurious branches lopped off, and the noxious things that cleave unto it taken away; is not by this pruning and purging of it made another tree than it was before: neither is the Church reformed in our days, another Church than that which was deformed in the days of our fore-fathers; though it hath no agreement, for all that, with Popery, which is the Pestilence that walked in those times of darkness, and the destruction ⟨p. 32⟩that now wasteth at noon day.

The enemie indeed had there sowne his tares: but ^bsowne them in the LORDS field, and among the LORDS wheate. And a field, we know, may so bee ^covergrowne with such evill weedes as these; that at the first sight a man would hardly thinke, that any corne were there at all: even as in the barne it selfe, the ^d