ch delight in Christ, Castalio, a
lewd rogue, has reckoned it nothing better than a love-song about
a mistress, and an amorous conversation with Court flunkeys.
Whence drew he that intimation? From the Spirit. In the
Apocalypse of John, every jot and tittle of which Jerane declares
to bear some lofty and magnificent meaning, Luther and Brent and
Kemnitz, critics hard to please, find something wanting, and are
inclined to throw over the whole book. Whom have they consulted?
The Spirit. Luther with preposterous heat pits the Four Gospels
one against another (_Praef. in Nov. Test._), and far prefers
Paul's Epistles to the first three, while he declares the Gospel
of St. John above the rest to be beautiful, true, and worthy of
mention in the first place,--thereby enrolling even the Apostles,
so far as in him lay, as having a hand in his quarrels. Who
taught him to do that? The Spirit. Nay this imp of a friar has
not hesitated in petulant style to assail Luke's Gospel because
therein good and virtuous works are frequently commended to us.
Whom did he consult? The Spirit. Theodore Beza has dared to carp
at, as a corruption and perversion of the original, that mystical
word from the twenty-second chapter of Luke, _this is the
chalice, the new testament in my blood, which_ (chalice) _shall
be shed for you_ [Greek: potaerion ekchunomenon], because this
language admits of no explanation other than that of the wine in
the chalice being converted into the true blood of Christ. Who
pointed that out? The Spirit. In short, in believing all things
every man in the faith of his own spirit, they horribly belie and
blaspheme the name of the Holy Ghost. So acting, do they not give
themselves away? are they not easily refuted? In an assembly of
learned men, such as yours, Gentlemen of the University, are they
not caught and throttled without trouble? Should I be afraid on
behalf of the Catholic faith to dispute with these men, who have
handled with the utmost ill faith not human but heavenly
utterances? I say nothing here of their perverse versions of
Scripture, though I could accuse them in this respect of
intolerable doings. I will not take the bread out of the mouth of
that great linguist, my fellow-Collegian, Gregory Martin, who
will do this work with more learning and abundance of detail than
I could; nor from others whom I understand already to have that
task in hand. More wicked and more abominable is the crime that I
am now prosec