If so be we list to search this matter from the bottom, we know in the very Apostles’ times there were Christians, through whom the Name of the Lord was blasphemed and evil spoken of among the Gentiles.  Constantius the emperor bewaileth, as it is written in Sozomenus, that many waxed worse after they had fallen to the religion of Christ.  And Cyprian, in a lamentable oration, setteth out the corrupt manners in his time:  “The wholesome discipline,” saith he, “which the Apostles left unto us, hath idleness and long rest now utterly marred:  everyone studied to increase his livelihood; and clean forgetting either what they had done before whilst they were under the Apostles, or what they ought continually to do, having received the faith they earnestly laboured to make great their own wealth with an unsatiable desire of covetousness.  There is no devout religion,” saith he, “in priests, no sound faith in ministers, no charity showed in good works, no form of godliness in their conditions:  men are become effeminate, and women’s beauty is counterfeited.”  And before his days, said Tertullian, “O how wretched be we, which are called Christians at this time! for we live as heathens under the Name of Christ.”  And without reciting of many more writers, Gregory Nazianzen speaketh thus of the pitiful state of his own time:  “We,” saith he, “are in hatred among the heathen for our own vices’ sake; we are also become now a wonder, not only to angels and men, but even to all the ungodly.”  In this case was the Church of God, when the Gospel first began to shine, and when the fury of tyrants was not as yet cooled, nor the sword taken off from the Christians’ necks.  Surely it is no new thing that men be but men, although they be called by the name of Christians.

PART IV.

But will these men, I pray you, think nothing at all of themselves, while they accuse us so maliciously?  And while they have leisure to behold so far off, and see both what is done in Germany and in England, have they either forgotten, or can they not see what is done at Rome? or be they our accusers, whose life is such as no man is able to make mention thereof but with shame and uncomeliness?  Our purpose here is, not to take in hand, at this present, to bring to light and open to the world those things which were meet rather to be hid and buried with the workers of them.  It beseemeth neither our religion, nor our modesty, nor our shamefastness.  But yet he, which giveth commandment that he should be called the “Vicar of Christ,” and the “Head of the Church;” who also heareth that such things be done in Rome, who seeth them, who suffereth them (for we will go no further), he can easily consider with himself what manner of things they be.  Let him on God’s Name call to mind, let him remember that they be of his own canonists, which have taught the people that fornication between single folk is no sin (as though they had fette that doctrine