Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/86

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28. The confirmation of young persons, the ordination of the clergy, and the consecration of places, be reserved to the pope and prelates, from a desire of temporal lucre and honour.

29. Graduations and doctorships in universities and colleges as they be used, conduce nothing to the church.

30. The excommunication of the pope and his prelates is not to be feared, because it is the censure of Antichrist.

31. Such as found and build monasteries, do offend and sin, and all such as enter into the same, be members of the devil.

32. To enrich the clergy is against the rule of Christ.

33. Silvester the pope, and Constantine the emperor, erred in enriching the church.

34. A deacon or a priest may preach the word of God without the authority of the apostolic see or that of a bishop.

35. Such as enter into orders, or religion monastical, are thereby unable to keep God's commandments, and also to attain to the kingdom of heaven, except they return from the same.

36. The pope with all his clergy, having those great possessions which they have, be heretics in so having; and the secular powers in so suffering them do not well.

37. The church of Rome is the synagogue of Satan; nor is the pope immediately the vicar of Christ and of the apostles.

38. The letters decretal be apocryphal, and seduce from the faith of Christ; and the clergy that study them be fools.

39. The emperor and secular lords be seduced by the devil, when they enrich the church with temporal goods.

040 [sic]. It is not necessary to salvation to believe the church of Rome to be supreme head over all churches.

41. It is infatuation to believe in the indulgences of the pope.

42. All oaths which be made for any contract or civil bargain betwixt man and man, be unlawful.

43. Augustine, Benedict, Bernard, with all such as have been patrons of private religion, except they have repented, with such also as have entered into the same, be in a damnable state, and so from the pope to the lowest novices, they be altogether heretics.

44. All private rehgions whatsoever, indiscriminately introduced, are not from Christ.

45. That all in the order of mendicants be heretics, and all who give them alms are excommunicate.

Besides these articles, to the number of forty-five, condemned, as is said, by the council of Constance, other articles also I find diversely collected, or rather wrested out of the books and writings