are informed) they impiously and sacrilegiously rejected the Gospel, asserting that they knew both more and better things than either Christ or his Apostles.

What then shall I now say? Oh ye * Pillars of true Faith! Ye Guardians of the Church of Christ! Is this the Reverence and Respect you entertain for the Word of God? Dare you, considering it unworthy your enlightened understandings, ordain and enforce the rejection of that Sacred Volume which St. Paul pronounced to be divinely inspired, which God himself sanctified by such innumerable miracles, in which the footsteps of our Saviour Christ are clearly visible, which all the Holy Fathers, the Apostles, the Angels, nay even Jesus himself the Son of God, when occasion required, avouched to be true ? Or will you impose silence on God himself, who most plainly addresses you in the Holy Scriptures? Or will you call that WORD a mere useless element, by which alone according to St. Paul we are reconciled unto God, and which

* Some read culmina, some calumnia. I prefer however the more ironical reading, which I have here adopted.

the Prophet David declares to be Holy, Pure, and Everlasting? Or will you assert that all our labour is lost which is bestowed on that One Book which Christ enjoins us diligently to search, and evermore keep before our eyes? That when our Saviour and his Apostles exhorted the multitude to read the BIBLE, that they might acquire Wisdom and Knowledge, it was their actual intention to deceive and lead them into error? If these are your Sentiments, if God himself and his unerring Word are so little regarded, it cannot excite astonishment that we and all our proceedings meet with a similar reception. But still it savours strongly of folly in our adversaries to attempt to bring the Word of God into disrepute, in order to annoy and injure us.

* In the Defence of the Apology, the following Paragraph is here inserted, as constituting a part of the Apology itself, and which indeed excited no small indignation in Mr. Harding, and calls forth an elaborate reply from him: as I have been unable to discover it in any of the Latin Apologies, or indeed in any other translation of the work, it is here given verbatim from the Defence.

"But HOSIUS will here make exclamation, and saie, that wee doo him wronge, and that these be not his owne woordes, but the woordes of the Heretique ZUUENKFELDIUS. But how then, if ZUUENKFELDIUS make exclamation on the other side, and

As if this however were insufficient, they commit the Holy Scriptures to the Flames, as the wicked King *Aza, as Antiochus and Maximin, two Heathen Persecutors likewise did, declaring them to be the Books of Heretics. † They appear indeed altogether desirous of imitating Herod in the method he took for establishing his authority in Judæa: who being an Idumæan, unconnected with the Jews by blood or kindred, was still anxious to be considered one of their

saie that the same very woordes be not his, but HOSIUS own woordes? For tel me, where hath ZUUENKFELDIUS ever written them? Or if he have written them, and HOSIUS have judged the same to be wicked, why hath not HoSIUS spoken so mutche as one woorde, to confute them? Howsoever the mater goe, although Hosius peradventure wil not allowe of those woordes, yet he dothe not disallow the meaninge of the woordes. For wel neare in al Controversies, and namely, touchinge the use of the Holy Communion under Bothe Kindes, although the woordes of CHRISTE be plaine and evident, yet dothe HOSIUS disdeinefully rejecte them, as no better than Colde, and Dead Elementes: and commandeth us to geeve Faithe to certaine Newe Lessons, appointed by his Churche, and to, I wote not what, Revelations of the Holy Ghoste. And Pighius saith, Menne ought not to beleve, no not the most cleare and manifeste woordes of the Scriptures, onlesse the same be allowed for good by the Interpretation and Authoritie of the Churche: whereby he meaneth the Churche of Rome." The Defence of the Apologie, fol. p. 470. Ed. Lond. 1567. * Alii Jehoiakim. + Eusebius. Hist. Ecclesiæ. lib. i. сар.

7.

countrymen, that his dominion over them, which had been given him by Augustus, might be more firmly established, and that his descendants might thereby enjoy undisturbed possession of the Throne. To effect this, he commanded all their Genealogies which had been carefully preserved in the Public Registers from the time of Abraham to be burnt or otherwise destroyed; because from these it was not difficult to discover to what tribe any individual might belong, and thus the fact of his being of foreign extraction would become known to posterity. Such is the precise line of conduct pursued by our opponents through anxiety to have all their innovations and decrees stamped with the authority of Christ and his Apostles, and accordingly respected, they either burn or suppress the Sacred Volume, lest any arguments should be found to expose their falsehoods, and the idle dreams in which they indulge.

St. Chrysostom* has admirably exposed the designs of these men. "Heretics," he says, "close the gates of Truth; well knowing, that

* In Opere Imperfecto.

if they are kept open, the Church would be no longer theirs." Theophylact calls "the Word of God, the Candle by which the Thief is discovered and taken;" and Tertullian declares that "the Scriptures convict Heretics of Treachery and Deceit." For what other purpose do they conceal and suppress the Gospel, which Christ commanded his disciples to "publish on the house top?" Why do they hide that Candle under a bushel, which ought to be placed on a Candlestick? Why do they confide in the blind ignorance and folly of an unenlightened multitude, rather than in the goodness and purity of their cause? Can they believe that their arts are still undiscovered; or that, as if they possessed the Ring of Gyges, they walk invisible? No, no; the world knows but too well the secret designs of his HOLINESS. One argument is sufficient to prove that their proceedings are neither conducted with honour nor sincerity for that cause which declines a scrutiny, and fears the Light, justly becomes an object of Suspicion: for as our Saviour says;

every one that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

* St. John iii. 20, 21.