d yet, as we said, doth not this
great crop and heap of heresies grow up amongst us, which do openly,
abroad, and frankly teach the Gospel. These poisons take their
beginnings, their increasings, and strength, amongst our adversaries, in
blindness and in darkness, amongst whom truth is with cruelty and tyranny
kept under, and cannot be heard but in corners and secret meetings. But
let them make a proof: let them give the Gospel free passage: let the
truth of Jesu Christ give his clear light, and stretch forth His bright
beams into all parts: and then shall they forthwith see how all these
shadows straight will vanish and pass away at the light of the Gospel,
even as the thick mist of the night consumeth at the sight of the sun.
For whilst these men sit still, and make merry and do nothing, we
continually repress and put back all those heresies which they falsely
charge us to nourish and maintain.

Where they say, that we have fallen into sundry sects, and would be
called some of us Lutherians, and some of us Zuinglians, and cannot yet
well agree among ourselves touching the whole substance of doctrine: what
would these men have said, if they had been in the first times of the
Apostles and holy fathers, when one said, "I hold of Paul;" another, "I
hold of Cephas;" another, "I hold of Apollo;" when Paul did so sharply
rebuke Peter; when, upon a falling out, Barnabas departed from Paul;
when, as Origen mentioneth, the Christians were divided into so many
factions, as that they kept no more but the name of Christians in common
among them, being in no manner of thing else like unto Christians; when,
as Socrates saith, for their dissensions and sundry sects they were
laughed and jested at openly of the people in the common game-plays;
when, as Constantine the emperor affirmeth, there were such a number of
variances and brawlings in the Church, that it might justly seem a misery
far passing all the former miseries; when also Theophilus, Epiphanius,
Chrysostom, Augustine, Ruffine, Hierom, being all Christians, being all
fathers, being all Catholics, did strive one against another with most
bitter and remediless contentions without end; when, as saith Nazianzen,
the parts of one body were consumed and wasted one of another; when the
east part was divided from the west, only for leavened bread and only for
keeping of Easter Day; which were indeed no great matters to be strived
for; and when in all councils new creeds and new dec