w
horribly was the same Church darkened and decayed! Where was that Church
then, when "all flesh upon earth had denied their own way?" Where was
it, when amongst the number of the whole world there were only eight
persons (and they neither all chaste and good) whom God's will was should
be saved alive from that universal destruction and mortality? when Elie
the prophet so lamentably and bitterly made moan, that "only himself was
left" of all the whole world which did truly and duly worship God? and
when Esay said, "The silver of God's people (that is, of the Church) was
become dross: and that the same city, which aforetime had been faithful,
was now become a harlot: and that in the same there was no part sound
throughout the whole body, from the head to the foot?" or else, when
Christ Himself said, "that the house of God was made by the Pharisees and
priests a den of thieves?" Of a truth, the Church, even as a corn-field,
except it be eared, manured, tilled, and trimmed, instead of wheat it
will bring forth thistles, darnel, and nettles. For this cause did God
send ever among both Prophets and Apostles, and last of all His "own
Son," who might bring home the people into the right way, and repair anew
the tottering Church after she had erred.

But lest some man should say, that the aforesaid things happened in the
time of the law only, of shadows, and of infancy, when truth lay hid
under figures and ceremonies, when nothing as yet was brought to
perfection, when the law was not graven in men's hearts, but in stone:
and yet is that but a foolish saying, for even at those days was there
the very same God that is now, the same Spirit, the same Christ, the same
faith, the same doctrine, the same hope, the same inheritance, the same
league, and the same efficacy and virtue of God's word: Eusebius also
saith: "All the faithful, even from Adam until Christ, were in very deed
Christians" (though they were not so termed), but, as I said, lest men
should thus speak still, Paul the Apostle found the like faults and falls
even then in the prime and chief of the Gospel in chief perfection, and
in the light; so that he was compelled to write in this sort to the
Galatians, whom he had well before that instructed: "I fear me," quoth
he, "lest I have laboured among you in vain, and lest ye have heard the
Gospel in vain." "O my little children, of whom I travail anew till
Christ be fashioned again in you." And as for the Church of th