Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/601

 will cease from their spiritual pride, and repent and make satisfaction, then we will help you according to our power, and will compel them, either to join with us, or else we will expel them out of Christendom. And if your bishops and teachers will say, that it is not lawful for laymen to hear such reasoning, or to be present at it; that may you understand to tend to no other end, but that they fear they should be overcome and put to shame in the sight of you. For, if they knew that they should overcome therein, out of doubt they would desire that every man should hear it; and thereby their glory should become the greater, and their fame and praises should be increased upon the earth. And if your bishops and teachers counsel you to come to no hearing with us, then do it, whether they will or no; and suffer not yourselves, at any time, to be so foolishly seduced with their foolish pardons, but tarry at home in your houses with your wives and children. And let the pope of Rome come to us with all his cardinals and bishops, and with all his priests, with his own person and power, to war with us, and let themselves deserve the absolution of sins, grace, and pardon, which they preach to you (for they have great need of forgiveness of sins, grace and pardon), and, by the grace of God, we will give them pardon enough as they shall need. But their subtle excuse is this; they say, that it belongeth not to priests to fight with bodily weapons: and true it is, that belongeth not to them; but it belongeth as little to them to stir up, to counsel, and to fortify others thereto. For Paul saith in Romans i., and Galatians v., detected, that all that do such things are worthy of everlasting death.

And if ye will not determine to do any other thing than to fight against us, then will we take the Lord to our help, and his truth, and we will defend it to the death, and we will not be afraid for the excommunication or curse of the pope, or his cardinals, or of the bishops; because we know that the pope is not where the God, as he maketh himself, that he can curse and excommunicate when he will, or bless when he will; who hath now these many years cursed and excommunicated us, and yet, notwithstanding, God and his gracious blessing have been our help. But, peradventure, ye will say, that though we see that bishops and priests be evil and wicked, yet we cannot lack them; for who should baptize our children, who should hear confessions, and minister the holy sacraments? and then also we should be within the excommunication of the pope, and of his bishops. Well-beloved! ye need to take no care for these matters. The excommunicating of the pope hurteth you nothing. Fear ye the excommunicating of God, and the Lord will provide for those things well enough. If ye would banish evil bishops and priests, ye should have good priests who should baptize your children, hear confessions, and minister the holy mysteries; because when the devil is banished, then place is made for the Holy Ghost: so when ill bishops and priests shall be banished, then place shall be made for good priests and bishops. Also, your bishops and priests say, that we are miscreants and heretics, and that we believe not on purgatory, nor upon the Virgin Mary, nor upon the saints; wherein they say ill, for we will prove, by the holy Scripture, that we know better, by God's grace, how we ought to believe upon purgatory, and upon Mary, the mother of our Lord, and upon his well-beloved saints, than they can tell us. Also they say, that we will not be obedient unto the pope. Truly, when he shall become holy and just, then know well that we ought to be obedient to him in all things, and not before. They say, also, that we destroy God's holy service, in that we destroy monasteries, banishing thence the wicked monks and nuns. Truly we did it, thinking once that they were holy, that they did the reverend service of God; but after that we well perceived and considered their life and works, then we perceived that they were false lowly hypocrites, and wicked builders on high, and sellers of pardons and masses for the dead, and such as devoured in themselves the sins of the people. And whereas they said that they rise at midnight when other men sleep, and pray for the sins of the people—forasmuch as their selling of their prayers and masses for the dead for gifts, is no better than hypocrisy and heresy; therefore, if we do speak against them and destroy their monasteries, we do not therein destroy the service of God, but rather the service of the devil, and the schools of heretics: and if ye knew them as we know them, ye would as diligently destroy them as we do. For Christ our Lord did not ordain any such order, and therefore it must needs come to pass that shortly it shall be destroyed; as our Lord saith in the Gospel