the Israelites out of Egypt, Christ from the Jews, and Paul from the Pharisees?  For except it be possible there may be a lawful cause of departing, we see no reason why Lot, Abraham, the Israelites, Christ, and Paul, may not be accused of sects and sedition, as well as others.  And if these men will needs condemn us for heretics, because we do not all things at their commandment, whom, in God’s name, or what kind of men ought they themselves to be taken for, which despise the commandment of Christ, and of the Apostles?  If we be schismatics because we have left them, by what name, then, shall they be called themselves, which have forsaken the Greeks, from whom they first received their faith, forsaken the primitive Church, forsaken Christ Himself, and the Apostles, even as if children should forsake their parents?  For though those Greeks, who at this day profess religion, and Christ’s Name, have many things corrupted amongst them, yet hold they still a great number of those things which they received from the Apostles.  They have neither private masses, nor mangled sacraments, nor purgatories, nor pardons.  And as for the titles of high bishops, and those glorious names, they esteem them so, as whosoever he were that would take upon him the same, and would be called either universal bishop, or the head of the universal Church, they make no doubt to call such a one both a passing proud man, a man that worketh despite against all the other bishops his brethren, and a plain heretic.

Now, then, since it is manifest, and out of all peradventure, that these men have fallen from the Greeks of whom they received the Gospel, of whom they received the faith, the true religion and the Church; what is the matter, why they will not now be called home again to the same men, as it were to their originals and first founders?  And why be they afraid to take a pattern of the Apostles’ and old fathers’ times, as though they all had been void of understanding?  Do these men, ween ye, see more, or set more by the Church of God than they did who first delivered us these things?

We truly have renounced that Church, wherein we could neither have the Word of God sincerely taught, nor the sacraments rightly administered, nor the Name of God duly called upon:  which Church also themselves confess to be faulty in many points; and wherein was nothing able to stay any wise man, or one that hath consideration of his own safety.  To conclude, we have forsaken the Church as it is now, not as it was in old times past, and have so gone from it as Daniel went out of the lions’ den, and the three children out of the furnace:  and to say the truth, we have been cast out by these men (being cursed of them as they used to say, with book, bell, and candle), rather than have gone away from them of ourselves.

And we are come to that Church, wherein they themselves cannot deny (if they will say truly, and as they think in their own conscience) but all things be governed purely and reverently, and, as much as we possibly could, very near to the order used in the old times.