and into most wilful dangers.  Paul the Fourth, not many months sithence, had at Rome in prison certain Augustine friars, many bishops, and a great number of other devout men, for religion’s sake.  He racked them and tormented them:  to make them confess, he left no means unassayed.  But in the end how many brothels, how many whoremongers, how many adulterers, how many incestuous persons could he find of all those?  Our God be thanked, although we be not the men we ought and profess to be, yet, whosoever we be, compare us with these men, and even our own life and innocency will soon prove untrue and condemn their malicious surmises.  For we exhort the people to all virtue and well-doing, not only by books and preachings, but also with our examples and behaviour.  We also teach that the Gospel is not a boasting or bragging of knowledge, but that it is the law of life, and that a Christian man (as Tertullian saith) “ought not to speak honourably, but ought to live honourably; nor that they be the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law, which are justified before God.”

Besides all these matters wherewith they charge us, they are wont also to add this one thing, which they enlarge with all kind of spitefulness:  that is, that we be men of trouble, that we pluck the “sword and sceptre out of kings’ hands;” that we arm the people:  that we overthrow judgment places, destroy the laws, make havoc of possessions, seek to make the people princes, turn all things upside down:  and, to be short, that we would have nothing in good frame in a commonwealth.  Good Lord, how often have they set on fire princes’ hearts with these words, to the end they might quench the light of the Gospel in the very first appearing of it, and might begin to hate the same ere ever they were able to know it, and to the end that every magistrate might think he saw his deadly enemy as often as he saw any of us!

Surely it should exceedingly grieve us to be so maliciously accused of most heinous treason, unless we knew that Christ Himself, the Apostles, and a number of good and Christian men, were in times past blamed and envied in manner for the same faults.  For although Christ taught “they should give unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s,” yet was He charged with sedition, in that He was accused to devise some conspiracy and covet the kingdom.  And hereupon they cried out with open mouth against him in the place of judgment:  “If thou let this man escape, thou art not Caesar’s friend.”  And though the Apostles did likewise evermore and steadfastly teach, that magistrates ought to be obeyed, “that every soul ought to be subject to the higher powers, not only for fear of wrath and punishment, but even for conscience sake;” yet bare they the name to disquiet the people, and to stir up the multitude to rebel.  After this sort did Haman specially bring the nation of the Jews into the hatred of the king Assuerus, because, said he, “they were a rebellious and stubborn people,