What then shall I say here, O ye principal posts of religion, O ye arch-governors of Christ’s Church! Is this that your reverence which ye give to God’s Word? The Holy Scriptures, which, St. Paul saith, came by the inspiration of God, which God did commend by so many miracles, wherein are the most perfect prints of Christ’s own steps, which all the holy fathers, Apostles, and Angels, which Christ Himself the Son of God, as often as was needful, did allege for testimony and proof; will ye, as though they were unworthy for you to hear, bid them avaunt away? That is, will ye enjoin God to keep silence, who speaketh to you most clearly by His own mouth in the Scriptures? or that Word, whereby alone, as Paul saith, we are reconciled to God, and which the prophet David saith, is “holy and pure, and shall last for ever;” will ye call that “but a bare and dead letter?” or
will ye say that all our labour is lost which is bestowed in that thing which Christ hath commanded us diligently to search, and to have evermore before our eyes? And will ye say that Christ and the Apostles meant with subtlety to deceive the people when they exhorted them to read the Holy Scriptures, that thereby they might flow in all wisdom and knowledge? No marvel at all though these men despise us and all our doings, which set so little by God Himself and His infallible sayings. Yet was it but want of wit in them, to the intend they might hurt us, to do so extreme injury to the Word of God.
But Hosius will here make exclamation, saying we do him wrong, and that these be not his own words, but the words of the heretic Zuenckfeldius. But how then, if Zuenckfeldius make exclamation on the other side, and say, that the same very words be not his, but Hosius’ own words? For tell me where hath Zuenckfeldius ever written them? or, if he have written them, and Hosius have judged the same to be wicked, why hath not Hosius spoken so much as one word to confute them? Howsoever the matter goeth, although Hosius peradventure will not allow of those words, yet he doth not disallow the meaning of the words For well near in all controversies, and namely touching
the use of the holy “communion under both kinds,” although the words of Christ be plain and evident, yet doth Hosius disdainfully reject them, as no better than “cold and dead elements;” and commandeth us to give faith to certain new lessons, appointed by the Church, and to I wot not what revelations of the Holy Ghost. And Pighius saith: “Men ought not to believe, no not the most clear and manifest words of the Scriptures, unless the same be allowed for good by the interpretation and authority of the Church.”
And yet, as though this were too little, they also burn the Holy Scriptures, as in times past wicked King Aza did, or as Antiochus or Maximinus did, and are wont to name them heretics’ books. And out of doubt, to see too, they would fain do as Herod in old time did in Jewry, that he might with more surety keep still his dominion: who being an Idumæan born, and a stranger to the stock and kindred of the Jews, and yet coveting much to be taken for a Jew, to the end he might establish to him and his posterity the kingdom of that country, which he had gotten of Augustus Cæsar, he commanded all the genealogies and pedigrees to be burnt, and made out of the way, so that there should remain no record whereby he might be known to them that came after that he was an
alien in blood: whereas even from Abraham’s time these monuments had been safely kept amongst the Jews, and laid up in their treasury; because in them it might easily and most assuredly be found of what lineage everyone did descend. So (in good faith) do these men, when they would have all their own doings in estimation, as though they had been delivered to us even from the Apostles, or from Christ Himself: to the end there might be found nowhere anything able to convince such their dreams and lies, either they burn the Holy Scriptures, or else they craftily convey them from the people surely.
Very rightly and aptly doth Chrysostom write against these men. “Heretics,” saith he, “shut up the doors against the truth: for they know full well, if the door were open, the Church should be none of theirs.” Theophylact also: “God’s Word,” saith he, “is the candle whereby the thief is espied.” And Tertullian saith, “The Holy Scripture manifestly findeth out the fraud and theft of heretics.” For why do they hide, why do they keep under the Gospel which Christ would have preached aloud from the housetop? Why whelm they that light under a bushel which ought to stand on a candlestick? Why trust they more to the blindness of the unskilful multitude, and to ignorance, than
to the goodness of their cause? Think they their sleights are not already perceived, and that they can walk now unespied, as though they had Gyges’ ring, to go invisibly by, upon their finger? No, no. All men see now well and well again, what good stuff is in that chest of the “Bishop of Rome’s bosom.” This thing alone of itself may be an argument sufficient that they work not uprightly and truly. Worthily ought that matter seem suspicious which flieth trial, and is afraid of the light. “For he that doeth evil,” as Christ saith, “seeketh darkness, and hateth the light.” A conscience that knoweth itself clear cometh willingly into open show, that the works which proceed of God may be seen. Neither be they so very blind but they see this well enough, that their own kingdom straightway is at a point if the Scriptures once have the upper hand: and that, like as men say, the idols of devils in times past, of whom men in doubtful matters were then wont to receive answers, were suddenly stricken dumb at the sight of Christ, when He was born and came into the world: even so they see that now all their subtle practices will soon fall down headlong upon the sight of the Gospel. For Antichrist is not overthrown but by the brightness of Christ’s coming.
As for us, we run not for succour to the fire, as
these men’s guise is, but we run to the Scriptures; neither do we reason with the sword, but with the Word of God: and therewith, as saith Tertullian “do we feed our faith; by it do we stir up our hope, and strengthen our confidence.” For we know that the “Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation;” and that therein consisteth eternal life. And as Paul warneth us, “We do not hear, no, not an Angel of God coming from Heaven, if he go about to pull us from any part of this doctrine.” Yea, more than this, as the holy martyr Justin speaketh of himself, we would give no credence to God Himself, if He should teach us any other Gospel.