hough they make decrees expressly against God's Word, and that not in
hucker-mucker or covertly, but openly, and in the face of the world, must
it needs yet be Gospel straight whatsoever these men say? Shall these be
God's holy army? or will Christ be at hand among them there? Shall the
Holy Ghost flow in their tongues; or can they with truth say, "We and the
Holy Ghost have thought good so?" Indeed, Peter Asotus and his companion
Hosius stick not to affirm, that the same council wherein our Saviour
Jesus Christ was condemned to die had both the Spirit of Prophesying, and
the Holy Ghost, and the Spirit of Truth in it; and that it was neither a
false nor a trifling saying when those bishops said, "We have a law, and
by our law He ought to die:" and that they, so saying, did light upon the
very truth of judgment (for so be Hosius' words); and that the same
plainly was a just decree whereby they pronounced that Christ was worthy
to die. This, methinketh, is strange, that these men are not able to
speak for themselves, and to defend their own cause, but they must also
take part with Annas and Caiaphas. For if they will call that a lawful
and a good council wherein the Son of God was most shamefully condemned
to die, what council will they then allow for false and naught? And yet
(as all their councils, to say truth, commonly be) necessity compelled
them to pronounce these things of the council holden by Annas and
Caiaphas.

But will these men (I say) reform us the Church, being themselves both
the persons guilty and the judges too? Will they abate their own
ambition and pride? Will they overthrow their own matter, and give
sentence against themselves that they must leave off to be unlearned
bishops, slow bellies, heapers together of benefices, takers upon them as
princes and men of war? Will the abbots, the Pope's dear darlings, judge
that monk for a thief which laboureth not for his living? and that it is
against all law to suffer such a one to live and to be found either in
city or in country, or yet of other men's charges? or else that a monk
ought to lie on the ground, to live hardly with herbs and pease, to study
earnestly, to argue, to pray, to work with hand, and fully to bend
himself to come to the ministry of the Church? In faith, as soon will
the Pharisees and Scribes repair again the temple of God, and restore it
unto us a house of prayer instead of a thievish den.

There have been, I know, certain of t