ion and all truth, to uphold and
maintain; and also to confound all manner of heresy. By that word only
do we condemn all sorts of the old heretics, whom these men say we have
called out of hell again. As for the Arians, the Eutychians, the
Marcionites, the Ebionites, the Valentinians, the Carpocratians, the
Tatians, the Novatians, and shortly all them which have a wicked opinion,
either of God the Father, or of Christ, or of the Holy Ghost, or of any
other point of Christian religion, forsomuch as they be confuted by the
Gospel of Christ, we plainly pronounce them for detestable and castaway
persons, and defy them even unto the devil. Neither do we leave them so,
but we also severely and straitly hold them in by lawful and politic
punishments, if they fortune to break out anywhere, and bewray
themselves.

Indeed, we grant that certain new and very strange sects, as the
Anabaptists, Libertines, Menonians, and Zuenckfeldians, have been
stirring in the world ever since the Gospel did first spring. But the
world seeth now right well, thanks be given to our God, that we neither
have bred, nor taught, nor kept up these monsters. In good fellowship, I
pray thee, whosoever thou be, read our books: they are to be sold in
every place. What hath there ever been written by any of our company
which might plainly bear with the madness of any of those heretics. Nay,
I say unto you, there is no country this day so free from their pestilent
infections, as they be, wherein the Gospel is freely and commonly taught.
So that if they weigh the very matter with earnest and upright
advisement, this thing is a great argument, that this same is the very
truth of the Gospel of Christ, which we do teach. For lightly neither is
cockle wont to grow without the wheat, nor yet the chaff without the
corn. For from the very Apostles' times, who knoweth not how many
heresies did rise up even together so soon, as the Gospel was first
spread abroad? Who ever had heard tell of Simon, Menander, Saturninus,
Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion, Valentinus, Secundus,
Marcosius, Colorbasius, Heracleo, Lucianus, and Severus, before the
Apostles were sent abroad? But why stand we reckoning up these?
Epiphanius rehearseth up fourscore sundry heresies; and Augustine many
more, which sprang up even together with the Gospel? What then? Was the
Gospel therefore not the Gospel, because heresies sprang up withal? or
was Christ therefore not Christ? An