Contents

Chapter VII. A Brief Antithesis of the Papacy and Christianity

Theodore Beza · The Christian Faith

Signature passages, the lines readers know this work by, are set in a pale wash.

Article 1. That the Papists worship, in place of the true God, a fictitious and imaginary deity, which is neither perfectly just nor perfectly merciful.

From the things which we have hitherto expounded, it can easily be judged by any attentive reader that we have, for most just causes, departed from the Papist Church to the Christian way; and how greatly those hallucinate who think that we contend over slight and indifferent matters, when on the contrary we differ from the Papists diametrically in the very sum of the doctrine of salvation.

For this I affirm (and would that I could not, for such just causes, affirm it): that white does not more oppose black than Papism opposes Christianity; which I have now resolved to prove in a few words. Nor do I here dispute about their crimes and most abandoned morals, but I aim at the very throat of the cause, namely their doctrine, than which I affirm that nothing more impure or corrupt can even be feigned.

I omit also this (which yet, even alone, sufficiently proves the Papist kingdom to be nothing else than the kingdom of darkness): that they will not have their mysteries lie open to anyone, but will have all things performed in an unknown tongue, nor do they dread anything so much as this one thing, lest the Word of God, translated into the language of each nation, be understood by anyone.

This now I press, and I descend to the parts of Christian doctrine.

And in the first place I say that the deity which the Papists worship, under that highest and most glorious name of God, is imaginary and fictitious. For it is agreed among all that the true God is supremely and perfectly just and merciful. But neither is that justice perfect which rests in human satisfactions, nor is that mercy perfect which only supplies what is lacking to the merits of men.

Let the Papists go, then, and boast that they worship the true God.

Article 2. That the doctrine of the Papists destroys Christ and forsakes man, and so makes our hope altogether vain.

In Jesus Christ, in whom alone the Father is truly worshiped, two things especially stand out: the person and the office; in each of which the Papists tear him up from the very foundations, as we shall explain severally. For as concerns the person: although in word they confess that Christ is both God and man, yet in fact they deny it, with Eutyches, since they attribute to him an invisible, immense, and altogether infinite body, inasmuch as they make it present at the same time in infinite places.

For if it is proper to the nature of the one God to be everywhere, since he is one and infinite, it follows that the human nature in Christ has been turned into the divine, if we acquiesce in their tenets; for to be everywhere, and in many places at once, are things proper to God alone. Nor does this concern the omnipotence of God, since here we treat of the will of God, and not of his power.

And that God did not will what they affirm he willed is plain from this, that he willed his Son to assume a true human nature inseparably, and with the property of the nature kept distinct. Now the glorification of Christ’s body did not take away the nature of the flesh, but removed its infirmity; and it is in vain that they treat of glorification.

For when Christ said, THIS IS MY BODY, his flesh was not yet glorified; nor is this proposition any other now than it was then, concerning which we have disputed at length in its place. But how it comes about that the faithful who are now on earth nevertheless truly become, in the receiving of the Sacrament, through faith, partakers of the flesh and blood of the Lord, who are now in heaven and nowhere else, we have explained in its place, lest anyone think that we empty the Sacraments.

Now as concerns the unity of the person, which some teach is torn apart unless, wherever the divinity is, there also the humanity be (and so that Christ’s flesh be everywhere), I answer briefly thus. First, I ask whether Christ’s flesh was in heaven before he ascended into heaven. If they affirm this, and take properly that place of John, “No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, namely the Son of Man who is in heaven,” how is the ascension to be explained at all?

What else will the ascension be than a phantom, if Christ merely disappeared, and did not even change place? For surely change of place does not fall upon that which is everywhere. But the ascension is openly described in the Scriptures with a change of place, so that it declares a change of the body (since it is said of a true body); while the session at the right hand of the Father declares the fellowship of an infinite dominion.

Then, indeed, shall we place Christ’s flesh at the same time dead in the tomb and alive in heaven? For it would be shameful, I think, to place it dead in heaven. And what will Christ’s resurrection itself be, if Christ’s flesh never left the tomb? For surely it never truly left it, nor even now is absent from the tomb, if by the conjunction of the two natures there was a wonderful ubiquity of the divinity, and there the flesh was.

It will not, therefore, simply have risen, but only in respect of our eyes; whereas the angel says, “He is risen, he is not here.” All which things, since they are most absurd, and lay a certain foundation for the heresy of those who attribute to Christ an imaginary body, or one of a spiritual nature, and therefore overthrow all our hope, it follows that the dogma concerning the ubiquity of Christ’s flesh is also most false and most absurd.

But, you will say, the knot is not yet untied: how the natures are not separated, if each is not everywhere. I, indeed, would believe that this can be explained by a certain gross similitude, which, although it does not answer in all respects (for to whom shall we liken the Most High?), yet seems to me somehow fitted for perceiving in some way the matter of which we treat.

Let us suppose the sun to consist of two conjoined and most diverse natures: the one solid and visible, and fixed to its own orb; the other most subtle and invisible, diffused through the hemisphere by its rays, truly reaching even to our eyes. Let the body of the sun also be snatched from our sight by most dense interposed clouds, whose rays nevertheless strike our eyes.

I ask: will not the sun truly be said by us to be absent as to its body, although it be in the heavens, and not able to be seen by us even from afar? Yet its rays will be so present to us that they even strike our eyes. But will the sun on that account separate its rays from its body? By no means, surely, since they are conjoined with the body of the sun itself.

Wherever, therefore, the body of the sun is, there are its rays; but not, on the contrary, with us, since the nature of the body does not allow it. Nor yet shall we say that only half the sun is present to us, as can and ought to be said when it has only half risen; but the whole and entire sun (so to speak), that is, whatever is of the sun, is not present to us.

So also we affirm that the humanity of Christ (which answers to the body) and the divinity (which answers to the rays of the sun) in this similitude are, as is right, inseparably and hypostatically conjoined, since otherwise our hope would be vain, as we declared in its place. We confess also that wherever the flesh of Christ is, there is the divinity of the eternal Word; but not on the contrary, since the distinct property of the true flesh does not permit this, which is carried above the heavens, out of our sight, although sometimes it has pleased him, the heavens being cleft, to show himself truly to certain persons beyond the ordinary manner.

Yet we say that the whole Christ is present to us, not the half; but we deny that the whole of Christ is present, since the flesh is now above the heavens, but we on earth; nor do we thereby tear the unity of the person.

Article 3. That the Papacy enervates the one oblation of Christ.

We must now treat of the office of Christ, since this too is utterly taken from him by the Papists. And it is placed in three things, namely in the Priesthood, the Prophecy, and the Kingdom, of which we shall treat severally. There are, then, two parts, as it were, of the priesthood of Christ: namely, the oblation of himself once made, and not to be repeated, since it is in every way perfect; and the intercession with the Father, which still remains.

But each is so taken away by the Papists that I cannot sufficiently wonder at their stupidity, or rather their impiety. First, as concerns the oblation: if it be repeated, as those will have it who say that Christ is to be offered in the Mass for the living and the dead, it follows that the oblation once made by Christ is imperfect, as the Apostle rightly concludes concerning the Levitical sacrifices, manifestly contending that the oblation of Christ is one, not only in kind but even in number, and that the very act of the oblation is to be regarded as once made.

But (they say) they use the name of sacrifice and oblation. I grant it; but in another respect, namely of prayers and thanksgivings, and of the gifts which were offered, in the name of God and in living faith, for the refreshing of the living, and not for the redeeming of the souls of the dead. For we are not to approach the sacred mysteries that we may sacrifice or offer Christ to the Father, but that we may receive him, once offered, by faith.

Secondly, if priests are to be ordained who may daily offer Christ to God the Father for the remission of sins, then Christ is not the one priest for reconciling the Father, according to the order of Melchizedek; whereas there will be only one host. Thirdly, if the oblation of Jesus Christ, and made by Jesus Christ, is in every way whole and perfect (as it is, if Christ is truly Jesus, that is, a Savior), what is it that they are not ashamed to teach, that Christ has satisfied for sins only up to Baptism?

And as for the sins that follow Baptism, that only the guilt is remitted through the passion of Christ, but the penalty made finite, from infinite, which is paid in purgatory (as they call it) for a time, until the souls, singed, be freed by our satisfactions before God? Such things, since they are most false, and altogether impious against the priesthood of Christ, are their indulgences.

For if a purgatory remains for all who die, whence they cannot be freed otherwise than by the merits of the living, what becomes of the merits of the saints, which these men sell so dearly, since the very saints (as they call them), that is, those enrolled, by their own authority, among the blessed who reign with Christ, would be freed by the prayers of the living?

It is false, then, that they affirm, that purgatory is set before all who depart from this world, on the ground that Christ has abolished only the guilt.

Nay, what kind of God will this be, who so severely punishes the guiltless, that is, until they have satisfied to the last farthing who owe nothing? But since these men flee to the Fathers, let us hear what Ambrose testifies: “He who shall not here have received the remission of sins shall not be there” (namely, in the communion of saints); “and shall not be there, because he could not attain to eternal life, since eternal life is the remission of sins.”

And Cyprian, against Demetrian: “When there shall be a departure hence, there is no longer any place for repentance, nor any effect of satisfaction. Here life is either lost or kept; here eternal salvation is provided for by the worship of God and the fruit of faith.” And elsewhere: “Even under the very departure, and the setting of temporal life, if you pray to God, who is true and good, and implore the confession of his knowledge, pardon is given to the one confessing, and saving indulgence is granted, from the divine mercy, to the one believing, and he passes over to immortality under the very moment of death.”

And what does Jerome say? “The time,” he says, “is the present time”; and then he subjoins many things, by which he would be judged a most arch-heretic by the Papists. And lest there be anything which these men do not cavil at, I will bring forward the open testimony of Augustine, and that of Gregory, who otherwise, it is certain, did very much to confirm the purgatorial fire.

Thus, then, Augustine: “First, the Catholic faith, by divine authority, believes that the kingdom of heaven is the first place; the second, Gehenna, where every apostate, or one alien from the faith of Christ, shall make trial of it. A third place we utterly know not, nor do we find that it is in the holy Scriptures.” And the same elsewhere writes that those who suppose there is a purgatorial fire are deceived by a certain human benevolence.¹

Finally, let us hear Gregory himself, whom, if we believe, the purgatorial fire will not indeed be wholly extinguished (built rather for purging purses than souls); yet no great use of it will be left, and it will be destined rather for venial than for mortal sins.

For thus he writes, in just so many words: “It is established that everyone, such as he goes hence, so is he presented in the judgment; but yet it must be believed that, before the judgment, there is a purgatorial fire for certain light faults.” And presently: “As, for example, there is assiduous idle talk, immoderate laughter, or the sin of the care of family affairs, which is scarcely carried on without fault even by those who know how it ought to be avoided, or non-grave error of ignorance: all which things burden even after death, if they were not relaxed while we were still placed in life.”

Now, therefore, the Papists have from their own Gregory that the purgatorial fire serves only for cooking out the least sins; and that with an exception, “if they were not forgiven.” All which things, though they are inept and false, yet show what was then the opinion concerning purgatory in the very Papacy over which that man presided. But let us hear something further still.

For immediately he subjoins these words: “Since Paul says that Christ is the foundation, and yet subjoins, ‘If anyone build upon’ it, and so forth; although this can be understood of the fire of tribulation applied to us in this life, yet if anyone take it of the fire of the future purgation, it must be carefully weighed; because he said that he can be saved through fire, not he who builds upon this foundation iron, brass, or lead (that is, the greater sins, and therefore the harder, and now insoluble), but wood, hay, stubble (that is, the smallest and lightest sins, which the fire easily consumes).”

Thus far Gregory, openly indeed wresting that place of Paul, but sufficiently declaring what was then the doctrine concerning purgatory. Finally, if the one oblation of Christ made us holy, to what end is salt water said to wash away sins, to omit others of which there is neither end nor number?

Article 4. That the Papists abolish the intercession of Christ.

As concerns the other part of the priesthood, namely the intercession, the Papists for the most part attribute the first place to Christ; yet do they not strip him of this office of his, when they join other colleagues to him? Nay, when, invoking the virgin Mary, they say, “By the right of a mother, command,” do they not prefer her to Christ, as a mother to a ward?

And when they cry her “Queen of heaven, gate of paradise, their life and their sweetness, treasurer of grace, refuge of sinners, mediatrix of men,” what more do they leave to Christ? And lest I seem to feign anything, I will subscribe the very blasphemies, that the Papacy may stink to all the pious. Thus, then, it is sung in the Paris Missal, in the prose of the Mass of the Annunciation: “Hail, glory of virgins, Mediatrix of men, child-bearer of salvation.”

Likewise, in the prose of the Mass of the Conception, these things are sung: “You, the sure hope of the wretched, truly the mother of orphans, you the relief of the oppressed, the medicine of the sick; to all you are all things.” What is it, I ask, to exclude Christ, if this is not it? But let us hear what surpasses the blasphemies of all men of all ages.

For these things also stand in the prose which begins “By the praise of Mary”: “O happy child-bearer, expiating our sins, by a mother’s right command the Redeemer.”² Of horrible impieties, more than enough. And yet, to these men, we are impious, and despisers of the virgin Mary.

Article 5. That the Papists deny Christ to be the one Prophet.

As concerns the prophetic office of Christ (whose herald the Prophets spoke by the Spirit, until he himself should come and lay open to us the whole will of the Father, and who delivered to his Apostles all truth, and to us afterward, through the Apostles, the whole counsel of God most fully): whom at last have the Papists persuaded that they admit him as the one and perfect Prophet, that is, the interpreter of the Father?

For whence that infinite heap of traditions and laws daily emerging, if Christ once delivered, first by his voice, then by the Scriptures, all things necessary for salvation and for the perfecting of the man of God? And if it is otherwise, how did he satisfy his prophetic office? For what the authority of Synods is in establishing ecclesiastical laws, we have abundantly explained. And even if it were as great as these men contend, how at last will they prove that the Spirit of God presided over those Synods which differ diametrically from the Word of God?

Whence so great a repugnance among them? Whence this power of the Pope, to rescind at his pleasure whatever the Synods established? But (they say) the Pope is the mouth of the Lord. Indeed, O most impure Antichrist? Why, then, so many ages ago, when you were beginning to be the mystery of iniquity, did the whole African Synod condemn you as a manifest forger?

And if your keys cannot err, why do you not admit at least the doctrine of your own Great Gregory, who testified that the very name of universal Bishop befits only Antichrist?

Article 6. That the Papacy strips Christ of his kingdom.

If all power in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ, as to the one head of the Catholic Church (which, present, he governs by his life-giving Spirit, and alone commands consciences): whence this power of the Pope, to bind the conscience by laws? For not even Christ himself, while he dwelt bodily among us, added anything to his Gospel, or took anything from it, since he testified that it comprehends the full and perfect doctrine of salvation.

And to what end is there, for a Christ present and omnipotent, any vicarious head, repugnant to the Word of God, and to all that old description of the Metropolitans which stands in the Nicene Synod and has been confirmed by so many subsequent Synods? And who, finally, shall be called the vicar of Christ, who, as often as it pleased him, rescinds both the Word of God and the doctrine of the Apostles, and tears up all the authority of Peter himself, whose successor he falsely boasts himself to be?

If they require examples, I will bring forward at least two which they cannot themselves deny: namely, the law of celibacy, and the administration of the Sacrament under one kind only; which are established to repugn diametrically, not only the Word of God, but also the decrees and the morals of all that ancient and purest Church. Yet I confess that the Pope has succeeded Peter in one thing, namely in the denial of Christ.

But Peter immediately repented of this crime; whereas that lost man will not have repented of his blasphemies even after so many ages, until the Lord destroy him with the breath of his mouth, and the brightness of his coming.

Article 7. That the Papacy is ignorant how wretched the condition of man is.

It is no small evil, that the benefit of Christ is ignored, or even trampled under foot, by those who utterly do not know themselves, nor know how deadly is the disease which we carry about with us from our very conception. For first, since by nature we are all sons of wrath, and not even fit to think anything good as concerns the worship of God, and are finally wholly dead in sins, these men on the contrary teach that the understanding and the will are only injured, so far only that, without the help of preventing grace, they cannot, on account of their weakness, emerge.

For they know not what the Flesh is, which comprehends the whole unregenerate man, whom the Scripture does not say ought to be helped by the Spirit of God, but on the contrary rather to be slain and abolished. They are ignorant also what the Spirit is, and what the New Man, who surely is not new if he is in any part old, that is, if even a little of true good can be found in man before regenerating grace.

For as concerns the natural knowledge of God, so far is it from helping us, that on the contrary it condemns us, as the Apostle cries, declaring all to be without God before the knowledge of Christ, which flesh and blood does not reveal. Where, then, are those remnants of free will which these men dream of, that from its concurrence with grace they may establish their merits of congruity and of condignity?

Nor, when we reprehend these things, do we make men stocks or stumps; but we say that they cast themselves wholly into evil by a spontaneous and voluntary motion, since by the fault of corrupt nature it comes about that they are sold under sin, slaves of sin, and free from righteousness.

What of the fact that the same Papists think there is some natural preparation in man for receiving the first grace, and that God is provoked by our merits to grant the second?

And of what kind is that, that they will that original sin is, in Baptism, not only as concerns its imputation, but also as concerns the thing itself, in one moment utterly washed away, and that the remaining depraved motions in us are not in themselves sins, unless consent be added? But if this is so, where is that sin which sins, and gradually dies daily even in the most holy men?

Whence the flesh lusting against the Spirit? Whence those bitter fruits, if that root is utterly dead? But, that these men may betray their own ignorance, and may extenuate that deadly disease which we can never sufficiently understand and abhor, they teach that there are certain venial sins, that is, sins which do not merit death. For they know not what the majesty and the justice of God is, what it is for sin to be imputed, what, finally, that saying of Paul is: “Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the likeness of Adam’s transgression.”

Those who speak thus of the disease of sin: is it any wonder that they are ignorant how great the benefit of Christ is?

Article 8. That the Papists are ignorant what faith is, and therefore how the benefit of Christ can be applied to wretched and lost men.

As there is one righteousness of Christ, by whose free imputation we are righteous, so also there is one faith by which Christ can be applied to his elect, as we declared at length in its place. And we showed also that the faith of which we here treat is not a certain historical knowledge of the things revealed by God, but a sure testimony which the Spirit bears to the hearts of the several elect, that they may know what the Father has given them in Christ, since they are chosen by God before the foundations of the world were laid; with which testimony of the Holy Spirit there necessarily coheres the mortification of the old man and the creation of the new man, whence flow the fruits of righteousness.

But the wretched Papists think that faith is nothing else than to believe to be true the things that are said in the Scriptures, and that in a general and implicit way only (as they speak), whereas the Devil himself knows those things severally, and yet cannot be called faithful; to which they then add whatever it has pleased anyone to devise, provided it be approved by custom, or by the consent of him who calls himself a terrestrial God.

For they think it wicked to permit the Word of God to be read by the Laity (as they call them), and bid them believe what they do not know. Nay rather, how few of their little priests are there who can, I do not say interpret, but even readily read the Word of God? And the confidence of salvation they call arrogance, while meanwhile they suspend the salvation of men on their own merits and those of the saints.

And the death of Christ, tell me, in what way is it applied to the sick? Namely, by auricular confession, by a foreign pilgrimage, by certain fasts, by the distinction of days and foods, by a cowl, by counted prayers, but above all by the oblation of Christ himself in the Mass, and that by the work worked, as they speak. Behold into what precipices they are carried who wander from the way of truth.

Article 9. That the Papists know the use neither of the Law nor of the Gospel.

We have shown that the Law of God is the one and perfect rule of righteousness, and that it is lawful for the one God alone to set laws upon consciences. But what do these men not dare? They daily heap up laws. Out of the very Ten Commandments, that one in which all worship of images is so expressly forbidden, that commandment, I say, than which none is more frequently inculcated in the Scriptures, they have utterly expunged; and, the names only of the old gods being changed, they have filled their temples with every kind of idol.

They have represented God himself by every figure, and have loaded their altars not only with men of all ages and orders, and with goddesses of every kind, fashioned with a harlot’s worship, but even with horses, asses, wolves, stags, dogs, swine, dragons, and finally with devils; and they have filled all things with rotten carcasses, and have placed the sum of piety in the worship of all these things.

We have taught that the yoke of the ceremonial law was shaken off at the coming of Christ. But what does the religion of these men comprehend, other than an infinite and inexplicable medley of ceremonies, which they have partly devised, and partly taken from Judaism and Paganism and transferred into the Church of God, Christ and the Apostles vainly forbidding it? Besides, since (as we declared in its place) the Law was never delivered for our saving, but on the contrary for our conviction, that, our minds being wounded by the sense of sin, we may run to Christ alone, who takes our burden upon himself: these men, on the contrary, not only seek salvation in the Law (that is, life in death), but also, being the least sane of all men, do not cease daily to cast new snares upon wretched consciences, as though the Law of the Lord did not suffice to condemn all.

And in the other kind of the Word of God, which we said is called the Gospel, the error of the Papists is no less pernicious. For since the Gospel (set forth by Moses under legal figures, and promised through the Prophets, exhibited by Christ, and comprehended in the books of the New Testament) was therefore laid open to the world that, in Christ apprehended by faith, we might be freely justified and sanctified, as we showed copiously in its place: these men, on the contrary, think that the Gospel doctrine is nothing else than a certain Law more perfect than the Mosaic.

But if this were so, it would teach us to place our hope, not in Christ (who would have died in vain), but in our own righteousness; and therefore, as Paul says, it would make the promise void. For the Law never justifies before God, except those by whom it is most perfectly performed; which condition, if men could fulfill it, there would be need neither of Christ nor of the Gospel, that we might be redeemed from the curse of the Law.

But I ask you, reader: is he who thinks thus of the Gospel worthy to be reckoned a Christian? But this error is followed by another stupidity. For they have no care of preaching the Gospel, but, as though there were a certain magical power in the very syllables, of reciting it in an unknown tongue and piecemeal, of adoring it with much fumigation, and finally of hanging it about the neck, as sorcerers are wont.

And if at any time, at intervals, sermons are held, with what inventions and sacrileges are they polluted by those who live by nothing else than the huckstering of the Gospel and the ruin of wretched men?

Article 10. That the Papacy is ignorant what good works are, and what their fruits are.

We have explained severally, in its place, the controversies about good works, and have dissolved the calumny of those who cry out that good works are condemned by us, when on the contrary (the Apostle being witness) the doctrine of free justification through faith in Christ establishes the Law, which otherwise would be overthrown. And from the things which we have explained elsewhere on this argument, I say it can be plain to anyone that to the mercenary patrons of works it is no more clear than of old to those blind Pharisees, neither from what fountain good works are to be sought, nor what they are, nor in what respect any are called ours; so that the disputation about good works no more pertains to them than the disputation about modesty and chastity pertains to the most notorious harlots.

But it must above all be considered with what horrible sacrileges they contaminate that most excellent work of prayer, or the invocation of God. For besides that they are wont to mingle feigned merits, when it pleases them, with the blood of Christ, by a most manifest impiety; to sew together centos of Scripture by no method; to hire certain men for praying; to babble, in an unknown tongue, I know not what disorderly thing, nay, open blasphemies: that I may pass over these things, I say, what is it to hold God up to mockery, if this is not it, which they openly practice when they will, when they profess to deserve God by counted prayers, and that the sins both of the living and of the dead are redeemed by this composition?

Article 11. That the Papists do not hold what the sacraments are, how many they are, and to what use they were instituted.

Whoever compares the things we said about the sacraments with the Papist traditions will easily recognize how horrible is the profanation of the sacraments among the Papists. But since it would be very laborious to explain it part by part, I will touch only the chief points. First, then, these great Theologians, not content to have polluted Baptism in countless ways, and utterly abolished the Lord’s Supper (as we shall show in its place), afterward made, out of the one simple ceremony of the laying on of hands, four sacraments: Confirmation, Penance, Order, and Extreme (as they call it) Unction.

Then, since they are wonderfully delighted with the number seven, they reckoned Matrimony also among the sacraments, that they might fill up that number. But how great their stupidity is (to say nothing harsher), who defend these monstrous things, let us now consider.

On Papist Baptism.

As concerns Baptism, although it is established that the Lord (by a singular benefit preserving the remnants of his Church in the midst of the Papacy) willed not to allow Satan so much as that Baptism should there be utterly destroyed, but that there too one is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and that the efficacy of Baptism does not depend on the person of the minister; yet the minds of the pious cannot but utterly shudder, as often as they seriously consider with what blasphemies that Sacrament of our initiation is contaminated in the Papacy.

First: where there is no knowledge, there is no faith; but Baptism is no less unworthily received, or sought, without faith than is the Lord’s Supper. And what knowledge can there be where all things are performed in a foreign and (to most) unknown tongue? Next, even if a common language, or one known to all, were there used, what profit would thence accrue toward knowing the institution and use of Baptism, and apprehending the promises through it, since in that formula of baptizing which the Papists use, nothing of the kind is expressed, except utterly meagerly?

Secondly, how many signs and rites have they joined to the simple ordinance of God, at which men are stupefied rather than profited, in the Symbols constituted by the Son of God? But since no thing underlies those signs (because it belongs to the one God to promise, and to set his seal to his promises), it follows that all those inventions, those empty masks, deceive wretched men by a vain opinion with the signs set before them.

And to dare to mingle their inventions with the truth of God, and not to rest in the simplicity of which the Son of God is the author, is it not, I ask, a sacrilege? Yet we are not ignorant that these things are wont to be defended under the pretext of antiquity. But, I ask, who is more ancient than John the Baptist and the Apostles?

Why, then, do we not rather imitate them? Why are we not content with the authority of Christ alone? For as to the fact that some refer the chrism, and other such things, to Moses himself, this can be refuted from the very history of Luke. And as for the old fathers, whose attention in matters of this kind (be it said with their peace) was not great enough, it is established that they never held rites of this kind in the same place as the very ordinance of Christ.

And so the very superstition alone, which, proceeding from these beginnings, now occupies all minds and has utterly obscured the benefits of Christ, ought altogether to bring it about that, all these being abrogated, that pristine simplicity be left to Baptism, lest men any longer be stupefied at outward signs, whereas, on the contrary, the Sacraments were instituted to carry men from earth to heaven.

Thirdly, since grace is not bound to the Sacraments, but rests upon the promise and truth of God, so that (where contempt does not intervene) the promise apprehended by faith, which sanctifies the fathers and their offspring, suffices for salvation: these men, on the contrary, attribute to the signs, and to the work worked (as they speak), what belongs to the Spirit alone; and they make Baptism so necessary to salvation that they even grant to women the office of baptizing, a necessity being pretended which they themselves have devised.

Yet we confess that this latter error rests on no common authors; but since the very Scripture refutes that custom everywhere, to what end is the boldness of men against the truth of God? And baptism by women is certainly no more tolerable than if it were permitted them to speak in the Church, since he abuses Baptism who does not join the doctrine to it; and this very custom was long ago deservedly condemned in the Carthaginian Council.

Fourthly, since Baptism seals to us the remission of sins, and the sanctification begun in us, in which we ought daily to advance: these men so disturb all things that they will have original sin (whose magnitude of evil they do not understand) at once and utterly washed away in us by a little water, and teach that its remnants are not to be reckoned as sin, unless consent be added; which doctrine we affirm to be utterly diabolical.

On the Papist Sacrament of the Altar.

We have shown Baptism to be miserably polluted in the Papacy, yet not utterly taken away, since it pleased the Lord to keep the building of his Church safe under that roof, among those ruins.

But the Lord’s Supper I affirm to be not only contaminated by them with horrible sacrileges, but even changed into an execrable idol, which they call the Sacrament of the altar, and which they worship under the name they give it, the Mass. Of this nefarious crime I will now touch only the chief heads. First, then, since in the Sacraments two things are necessarily regarded, namely the sign and the thing signified (as the very name Sacrament declares), these men, to render their mysteries more august, teach that the signs, that is, the bread and wine, are utterly abolished, and that only the accidents (such as whiteness and taste) are left.

But by what reasoning will these be able to be called Sacraments, and what will become of that analogy of the signs and the thing signified? Secondly, the conjunction of the thing with the signs rests on the ordinance of God, and does not require a corporeal or natural position, but looks only to this, that we may know that what the symbols truly signify (that is, the body and blood of the Lord) is truly to be apprehended by us in a spiritual manner through faith.

But these men will have it that, by a certain secret pronunciation of the words which they call sacramental, the bread and wine are transubstantiated and transelemented into the real body and substantial blood of Christ; all which is magical, not Christian, to say nothing of what we expounded before, that Christ is in this way stripped of his humanity.

Thirdly, the ordinance of God, and the explanation of the mysteries, ought to be declared plainly and clearly to the people, that they may understand the whole action, and that faith may have its object on which it is borne, namely the promise comprehended in the written and explained Word of God, and applied with the corporeal symbols, for the sake of greater efficacy, as it were clothed.

But these men, good God, how unworthily have they profaned this institution by that foul and execrable canon of theirs! And is this a portion of the action of the Mass, the very form of the Lord’s institution? Then, to what end is that recitation, even if it were otherwise pure, when it is done in a foreign and unknown tongue, and it is even wicked for them to pronounce those most sacred syllables with a clear voice?

Behold that excellent consecration, on account of which the mass-priests cry out that they are holier than the very virgin Mary! For, they say, Mary only conceived Christ, whom we create. But Mary could at least except this, that she carefully nourished him whom these men cruelly devour. Fourthly, the Lord’s Supper is the Sacrament of the communion of the faithful, joined with Christ and among themselves.

But these men, against the nature of this Sacrament (which is therefore called a gathering), and against all the ancient custom of the Church, have changed the public action into their private Masses; whence afterward arose those troops of mass-priests, for whose belly the resources, and for whose lust the women, of the whole world do not now suffice.

Fifthly, we come to the Supper that we may become partakers of the body and blood of the Lord through faith, which body each one receives bodily by the command of the Lord, TAKE, EAT (which words these asses still pronounce, so that they cut their own throats with their own sword); yet these men, in their Mass, offer neither bread nor wine to anyone, but feast alone.

And where at last will they find that it is lawful to receive the Sacraments by a proxy? And in what place will they reckon Gelasius, who expressly excommunicates all those who are present at the sacred rites and do not receive the Sacraments? Sixthly, the foundation of that whole action is that oblation of Christ once made, whose memory we celebrate with the greatest fruit; but these men, on the contrary, teach that they daily offer Christ to the Father for the living and the dead, which abominable error we refuted in its place.

Seventhly, God in these mysteries instituted two symbols distinctly, for the sake of greater efficacy, and expressly provided for the taking of the cup; nor was it ever done otherwise in the ancient Church, so that even Gelasius excommunicated all those who took only one symbol. But these men, relying on their sacrilegious audacity, have interdicted the use of the cup to all the Laity (as they call them), and are so impudent that even now they dare to defend that sacrilege of theirs.³

Eighthly, the Lord appointed that the bread should be broken separately, and the broken bread distributed, which ceremony of breaking we declared in its place to be by no means empty; but these men break their bread to be distributed to no one, and, like drunkards, soak it in wine.

If you ask the cause of this, you will presently understand the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, not of Christ, which it is shameful to touch; certainly they cannot deny that at least Julius (whom they number among their Popes) forbade it. Ninthly, the Sacraments were instituted to rouse all the senses to the apprehension of heavenly things, that we may be brought, as it were, into the very presence of the thing; of which there ought to have been a testimony even in that solemn “Lift up your hearts,” which these men also chant, so that they betray both their ignorance and their impudence.

But these men, on the contrary, testify that they transubstantiate the bread and wine by a magical whisper, and (O idol-madness, execrable even to the most ancient idolaters!) bid the little crust, which they display with impure hands, to be adored as the very Christ himself, until at last they cruelly devour it. Surely the authority at least of Cicero, an otherwise profane writer, ought to have recalled them from this insanity, since indeed they will not hear Christ crying that he goes away into heaven, and will not return thence until he judge the world.

For, Cicero says somewhere, “whom can we think so mad as to believe that to be a god which he eats?” Thus he; who, if he were alive today, would rightly convict these men as mad who believe this, and would condemn as monstrous those who defend this insanity of theirs by sword and flames.

Tenthly, since the Sacraments are destined for a certain use, for whose sake alone they are called Sacraments, it altogether follows that outside the action itself there is no Sacrament.

But these men worship their magical little crust as a thing most holy in itself, nay, as the very Christ, the author of all holiness; they shut it up in a cupboard, carry it about, and finally do everything to testify that they acknowledge no other God, and that especially on that solemn feast day which Urban the Fourth first instituted in the year 1264.

But why do they not also reserve the blood for this pomp? Is it lest it dry up? But it is no longer wine, if we believe them, but the glorious and incorruptible blood of the Lord. Or is it lest perchance it be spilled? But Jerome did not fear this, when he praised the frugality of Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, who kept the blood of the Lord in a glass cup, and the body in a wicker basket (that is, the symbols of the blood and body), without any pomp.

And what hinders us from believing that the ancient Church, which these men charge as not religious enough, did not of old put the bread into the mouth (as these men do), but gave it into the hand? For that this is so is plain at least from that canon of the Carthaginian Synod, in which it is forbidden that the Eucharist be given to the bodies of the dead: “since,” it says, “it is written, Take, eat; but the bodies of the dead can neither take nor eat.”

Where, then, was that great religiousness about touching, I do not say the bread, but not even the cup? Where, finally, all that idol-madness which has long since given even to the profane occasion to deride the Christian religion?

Eleventhly, since the truth of the Sacrament depends on the ordinance of God, and not on men, these men, on the contrary, suspend their consecration upon the intention of the one consecrating (as they speak).

But who will be a fit judge of that intention? So it comes about that the wretched Papists, by their own tenets, are either idolaters (for they themselves will not deny that the worship of bread is idolatry), or else can adore that bran-deity of theirs only on this condition, “IF PERCHANCE IT IS,” since they cannot be certain of the mind of the one consecrating.

Twelfthly, the Thing of the Sacrament, that is, Christ himself, faith alone receives, as we declared in its place; but these men will have it received with the teeth, which is no less inept than if they should say that the blind see without eyes, or the lame walk without feet. Finally, what at last is the agreement of the Lord’s Supper (which, the simpler it is, is also the purer and the more divine) with that theatrical apparatus?

That, namely, which light has with darkness, and Christ with Belial. And yet, to these men, we are execrable Sacramentarians, because we cannot endure the sacramental action to be polluted with so many sacrileges.

On the utterly false Papist sacraments; and first, concerning Confirmation.

It is established that the ancient Bishops, or pastors of the Churches, diligently took care that the children of the faithful, baptized in infancy, and whoever also as adults came to the knowledge of Christ, should first of all be instructed in Christian doctrine, whence they were also called Catechumens, from the Greek word.

And before either the former were admitted to the gathering, or the latter to Baptism, a public confession of faith was required of both, that, so far as could be done, they might avoid the profanation of the sacraments. Those, therefore, whom they found in this inquiry to have so progressed that they seemed worthy to be joined to the sacred assembly, these, being confirmed in the faith, with hands laid on, they publicly commended to God and to the Church by their prayers.

The same was wont to be done also in the case of those who, having defected to the heretics, or having been cast out of the communion, returned to the bosom of the Church, and, with the laying on of hands applied, after diligent and ardent admonition, returned into favor with the assembly of the Church. This rite of catechizing, therefore, as altogether necessary, we have restored in our Churches by the singular benefit of God.

But these asses, fitter for the plow-handle than for holding the helm of the Church, do not know catechism even by name. They admonish that infants, baptized by them (not without horrible pollution), be diligently guarded from fire and water; and finally, in the Latin tongue, without any interpretation at all, that the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed (yet not without the Angelic Salutation added, and the invocation of the virgin Mary) be taught at home or in school.

By a very few, some precepts of the Decalogue are added, depraved into a most inept vulgar rhyme, and curtailed by the removal of the commandment about not worshiping images; but to which they must needs attach the “precepts of the Church” (as they call them), that is, the sum of the Antichristian doctrine. This is the Catechism of the Papist Church, until the butchery of auricular Confession succeed, of which we shall speak hereafter.

But in place of that inquiry which we expounded, they substituted that excellent sacrament of Confirmation, without the Word, without any promise, without any command of God. And since the laying on of hands seemed too slight, they added also their most sacred Chrism, and whatever old-wives’ trifles and theatrical ceremonies they pleased. Behold that excellent Sacrament of Papist Confirmation, so greatly extolled by them that they have even dared, under the name of Fabian, the Roman Bishop, and of a certain other Melchiades, to prefer it to Baptism.

On Papist Penance.

What we teach from the Word of God concerning Penance, or rather repentance, what its seat is, what its use, and what its parts, we explained in its place.

But these men, confounding with that correction of life which is common and perpetual to all the faithful the public discipline of the Church (which was exercised upon the lapsed by the laying on of hands, and the public seeking of pardon for sin, and the other external satisfactions, as we showed elsewhere), have devised yet again a new Sacrament of Penance, of which they constitute three parts: namely, Contrition of heart, Confession of mouth (and that secretly deposited with the priest), and finally Satisfaction for the remission of sins.

But in this truly diabolical doctrine we chiefly reprehend these things. First, that they too openly abuse the name of Sacrament, when they transfer it to these rites, even if we granted them that nothing here is done by them which is not prescribed by God. Secondly, that they require all those things, in all adults, as necessary to salvation; in which matter they declare themselves to be, not physicians of consciences, but most cruel butchers, as we shall presently say.

Thirdly, that they will have those three perfectly fulfilled, whence it follows that it is a ready way to despair. Fourthly, that they teach that the remission of sins is placed in these things, with signal insult to Christ. And let these things be said in general. But what we determine concerning each of those parts of penance, I thus explain.

On Contrition.

We acknowledge that true repentance begins from a serious sense of sin, or a sorrow according to God, as the Apostle speaks; but we add that this contrition, or wounding of the heart, is only a way to the free mercy of God, and that not simply, but by accident, since, namely, the more sharply the disease pricks, the more ardently is the physician sought, by those at least who have not despaired of salvation.

For in others, as appeared in Judas, that contrition is so far from being salutary that on the contrary it is utterly deadly. And so we reprehend the doctrine of the Papists as blasphemous in this, that they teach contrition itself to be a part of satisfaction for our sins before God, and so transfer to men what is proper to Christ alone. Besides, I ask, what can they aptly enough prescribe concerning contrition of heart, who, besides that they do not hold what the fault of origin is, and how great the force of all sins is to destroy us, do not only not reprehend the most certain sins, and the greatest of all (such as idolatry, the invocation of the dead, and other infinite things), but even (O unheard-of impudence!) propose them to wretched mortals as sure remedies against eternal damnation?

On Confession.

We urge six kinds of confession from the Word of God, yet not as though any satisfaction for sins were in any part placed in them, but because true repentance is followed by such fruits.

The first confession, then, is the public one, of the whole Church, professing itself a sinner before God in the common assembly, and, the minister of the Word going before, seriously seeking pardon from the heavenly Father in the name of the one Savior, Christ. And so we execrate, with our whole heart, the Papist formula of Confession, with which they are wont to begin their execrable rites, and which is commonly called CONFITEOR, not only as inept (since it is conceived in a foreign and unknown tongue), but even as openly blasphemous against the Son of God, since it requires the intercession of the dead, and of the saints, whereas there is one mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ, in whose name alone the Father is to be invoked, as the Holy Spirit suggests to us from the Word.

The second confession is private, when each one, at home or abroad, pours out his heart before God and prays for pardon, as each must diligently do at all moments, after the example of David and of the Publican, and of all the saints. The third confession is indeed private, but different from the former, when, namely, someone, inflamed with the true zeal of God, openly betrays himself a sinner, and implores the mercy of God; which, however, is to be done neither everywhere nor rashly, as can be understood even from this, that there is no way more certain and compendious for deceiving the simple, for devouring and subverting whole houses, and finally for ruining the Church with all kinds of superstitions.

The fourth kind of Christian confession pertains to the discipline of the Church, to which there is place then only, when those whose excommunication was publicly laid open, by the authority of the Presbytery, openly acknowledge their sin, that they may remedy the public offense and be reconciled to the Church. And this confession, in most Papist Churches, is so utterly taken away that it is not known even by name.

But the remnants of it, preserved in certain Churches, what at last do they have in common with true ecclesiastical discipline, or what else do they testify than the miserable ruin of the Church? For, to omit indulgences and other things of that kind, what is more ridiculous than that pomp? On a certain day before Easter there are present, in the Cathedral Church (as they call it), those they call Penitents, poor and obscure men, with veiled face lest they can be recognized; before them goes the penitentiary priest, sufficiently declaring his feigned sorrow both by face and by belly, and muttering those seven penitential Psalms; they follow with sad face, and on their knees, from the doors of the Church to the high altar.

There an execrable Litany is recited, in which there are almost as many blasphemies against the Son of God as there are syllables; a little sermon is held for establishing all the abuses of true penitence; and at last the sacred rite is celebrated, in which Christ is again offered. Behold Papist holiness and penitence, by which they teach that sins are redeemed! The fifth kind of confession is that of all those who have offended their neighbor, and who therefore are bound, by the rule of Christian charity, to acknowledge their fault, and to seek pardon first of all from him whom they offended.

And the sixth, finally, pertains to those who, that they may provide for the peace of their consciences, communicate what presses them, either with the brethren from whom they expect solace, or with the pastors, and deposit their sorrow, as it were, in their bosom, that they may be helped by their counsel and prayers; which confession James deservedly commends.⁴

But to what end is this for that whispering Papist confession?

For first, whence the necessity of that confession for salvation? Whence those more-than-tyrannical laws about the enumeration of single sins, in which its remission is placed? For what the Roman Church especially once practiced (a Presbyter being chosen, who might hear the confession of the penitents, that is, of those to whom a public penalty had been prescribed by the authority of the Presbytery, in the place of the whole Church, that their shame might be spared) was far different from that intolerable butchery.

For this custom did not pertain to all, nor was it deservedly done there of single sins, nor was the depraved doctrine of the free remission of sins added, so that men should hope by this means to obtain it. For that excellent Pontiff Innocent the Third had not yet arisen, who oppressed consciences with this intolerable yoke, and abolished the benefit of Christ. And they are too ridiculous, even by the testimony of the Canonists themselves, who think that auricular confession is constituted from the Word of God.

For (to omit that the writers of ecclesiastical history openly say that that penitentiary Presbyter was first instituted in the Roman Church for the sake of the Novatians, in the times of the Emperor Decius, which custom most other Churches afterward followed of their own accord): if that confession (although much different from that which Innocent introduced) was constituted by the express Word of God, by what right did Nectarius, Bishop of the Church of Constantinople in the times of Theodosius the Great, abolish it?

And lest anyone calumniate that he did this beyond his office, the history relates that the Churches of the East followed his example; and Chrysostom, the successor of Nectarius, in many places sufficiently expressly approved this deed. These, then, are the kinds of Christian confessions, in this argument at least. For otherwise it is established that the name of Confession is sometimes used, throughout the sacred writings, for the profession of Christianity, and likewise for the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; whence the adversaries are plainly ridiculous, who, as often as they hear the name of confession, think that their auricular confession is named.

On Satisfaction.

In the controversy about Satisfaction, these asses plainly betray their ears, since here it is necessary that Satan declare himself Satan.

No one of sound mind ever doubted of these two things: namely, that satisfaction must be made to the justice of God (since he cannot forget his own justice), and that penitence is feigned which does not draw with it the amendment of life, and therefore the acknowledgment and the recompense of the fault. But since men could never know how great the justice of God is, nor how great their own impotence, unless instructed in the school of God, therefore they have gathered most false conclusions, utterly repugnant to those true principles.

For they thought that they could satisfy the justice of God by a certain compensation; in which matter they plainly and clearly declared themselves to be at once utterly stupid and endowed with intolerable arrogance. For what stupidity is that, to bring it into one’s mind that one can not only bear the weight of God’s wrath, but even deserve well of God? And what madness is it to prefer to please a poor man, in his extreme want, from one’s own, rather than freely from another’s?

But how incredible the arrogance, that anyone should dare to come into a dispute with God, and to oppose to him those satisfactions which he imagines!

But this infamy betrays itself much more when it comes to the thing itself, and it is asked by what things men trust. For what would the Papists here bring forward (to omit the rest)? Blessed water, temples built, prayers counted before this or that carcass, this or that stone, blind lamps, cowls; and finally (to come to the gravest), fasts, hair-shirts, alms, pilgrimages, Masses, and at last bought indulgences, sealed with the ring of the fisherman.

But what if the Lord answer: “O souls bowed down to earth, and empty of heavenly things, what do you bring me but what is impure? To what end these things, which I have partly expressly testified that I execrate, and partly never required to that end? And how long shall I bear your follies, who make me like to yourselves?” Surely wretched mortals would have nothing to mutter.

And yet these are the satisfactions by which sins are remitted before God, if we believe those great Theologians. But we have learned from the Word of God that, as concerns God, our salvation rests on the one satisfaction of Christ, which alone is in every way perfect and complete, and is imputed to us by faith. Yet meanwhile we teach that no one is justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ but that he is at the same time sanctified by his Spirit, and therefore that true and serious repentance necessarily coheres with faith.

And from this it follows that, to the sinner who truly embraces Christ by faith (and therefore repents through the same faith), nothing is dearer than that, as the express Word of God commands and the rule of charity prescribes, he satisfy to the utmost all those whom he has offended, whether his business be with one privately, or with the whole assembly of the Church.

These, then, are the satisfactions, expressly prescribed by the old Canons, that hypocrites might be discerned from the truly penitent, that offenses might be removed, and finally that the contumacy of some might be overcome at least by shame itself; not that satisfaction might be made to God for sins. But these men, because they understand none of these things, disturb all, and yet do not cease to boast of their satisfactions.

On Papist Orders.

The Papists call “Orders” the rites and ceremonies, partly devised by themselves, partly received from their forefathers, by which they consecrate their ecclesiastical ministers.

And even if we granted them that nothing is done by them in this part except rightly and holily, they would not cease to betray their utmost ignorance in this, that they apply the name of Sacraments to these rites. For it is certain, in this argument, that not any signs whatever of sacred things are called Sacraments, but those to which is annexed a promise of the free remission of sins, and of our sanctification in Christ; by which, finally, our coalescing with Christ is ratified and sealed; for which cause we have numbered only two Sacraments, namely Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

And if these men answer that they use the name of Sacrament more generally, I ask, what do they gain? For if it is so, why at last do they reckon only seven Sacraments, when the multitude of signs of this kind in their Church is infinite and innumerable? Nay, will not their very mass-priests be wholly composed of sacraments, if we believe them, since there is no part of the histrionic garments with which they clothe their buffoons under which they do not testify that some great and heavenly mysteries lie hidden?

But to come to the thing itself (lest we seem to contend about names only): it is beyond controversy that all things in the house of God ought to be done rightly and in order. But whence is the reckoning of this order rightly to be taken, except from the householder himself? Let them, then, produce the command of the householder; and since it is established enough that the Apostles were his stewards, let them show either that they received these things from the Apostles, or that the successors of the Apostles could constitute anything fuller and better than the Apostles constituted.

But come, let us consider each thing severally.

On the clerical tonsure, as they call it.

That the “Clerics” were of old peculiarly those who were nourished at public expense in the several Churches for the ministry, as it were the seminaries of the Churches, is more clearly perceived, from all the old canons and from the Novels of the Christian Emperors, than that anyone could deny it.

But let the Papists produce even the slightest remnants of that most praised custom. Who, then, are the Papist Clerics? Namely, whoever and as many as it pleased, provided they did not displease the Lord Bishop or his suffragan. And for what are they made? That they may be exempted from the cognizance of the secular judge (as they call him), or that they may buy some ecclesiastical benefice, since they have the beast’s mark.

But tell me, what examination precedes? Whether they were begotten of lawful matrimony. To what end? That otherwise they may buy a privilege, which they call a dispensation. What else? Whether they are bigamists, that is (as they interpret it), whether they have taken a widow to wife, or, the first wife being dead, have become husbands again. A great sacrilege indeed! The Apostle bids bishops be content with one wife; but to these men a repeated marriage, after the death of the first wife, is numbered among crimes, and indeed far greater than if anyone had lived at once with twenty harlots.

But what ceremony is here used? Prayers, or the laying on of hands? Away! these are too simple. Rather, some hairs are shaved on the crown, that they may be Nazarites of the Lord; a linen garment is put on the head, but presently taken off, since it is still lawful for them to pass over to the Laity. They make a splendid profession of their clericate, in an unknown tongue, out of the Psalms: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup; thou art he who shalt restore my inheritance to me.”

Namely, because they are called Clerics from the Clergy, that is, from the inheritance which falls by lot. But what? Are certain Churches assigned to them? By no means, for the Canons have occupied their place; but they are bidden to recite the canonical hours, or at least the penitential Psalms, daily, in a foreign and barbarous tongue. At last, with a light blow of the palm impressed, they are dismissed, that they may remember they are addicted to ecclesiastical discipline.

Behold the excellent foundation of the Roman Hierarchy!

On the four minor Papist orders.

We have given the reason elsewhere why the ancient Churches used, even in the lightest matters, the work of Clerics rather than of any others: namely, that their disposition, industry, and will might gradually be perceived. Nor do I doubt that, when they were chosen by the authority of the Presbytery to discharge these offices, they were admonished of their duty, and those things were publicly delivered to them which might admonish them of their office, that in the house of God there is no calling light or to be neglected.

To the Doorkeepers, therefore, the keys of the temple were delivered; to the Readers, the book of the Bible; to the Exorcists, certain forms of adjuration; to the Acolytes, candles (whence also they are called candle-bearers by some old writers), unless perhaps there was some difference among these too. And there was some use of candles and lamps for the nocturnal vigils, and the morning and evening prayers and sermons; which things afterward passed into Jewish and Pagan superstition.

But our Papist apes here fabricate for us so many sacraments, and have not only retained, tooth and nail, those ceremonies in which they are wholly absorbed, but have even adorned them, to the utmost, with their specious inventions. But, to omit the rest, what madness is this, to make Doorkeepers, to whom no temple is committed to be shut or opened? Readers, to whom no book to be read, no Church, no reading, is assigned?

Exorcists, finally, when the gift of miracles is taken away from the Church? Acolytes, that is, attendants of the bishop, who neither know the bishop, nor will ever have any business at all with the bishop? Why, then, do they retain these things? someone will say. Namely, because it is provided by the old Canons that men, approved in the lower grades, be promoted to ecclesiastical offices; therefore these religious men will not omit any of these sacred ceremonies.

But they have found a shortcut which never came into the mind of the ancients. For they are so diligent that, in one day or two, they discharge all these offices together, that they may presently be found worthy to whom the greatest things may be committed.

On the major Papist orders.

But in the major Orders (as they call them), that is, the Subdiaconate, the Diaconate, and the Presbyterate, both their greater impudence and their ignorance can be clearly demonstrated even to the blind, I think.

For whereas, in the ancient Church, both Presbyters and Pastors and Deacons, rightly elected, and approved by the votes of the whole Church after a diligent inquiry into doctrine and morals, were publicly consecrated to God by the laying on of hands: to which of the Papists will it not seem monstrous, if anyone affirm that a public and lawful election ought to precede consecration?

Nor ought this to seem a wonder, since those bare and naked names alone have remained among them, the things themselves being utterly taken away, so that there might remain whence they could the more easily be convicted. But come, let us consider this also more closely: how that most simple ceremony of the laying on of hands (of which Luke and Paul are witnesses) is supposed to have been adulterated by them with Oil.

That the Apostles used oil as a kind of symbol at the beginning, when they healed the sick, not as physicians, but as Apostles endowed with the gift of healings, Mark is witness; and that others, endowed with the same gift, followed the custom of the Apostles, James declares. But hence, how many superstitions Satan brought into the Church, having got occasion from the sloth of the pastors, the thing itself lays open.

For first, some had a scruple to omit anything which those former men had done; others, pride impelled to the same rock, lest they should seem inferior to them. And so, the gift of healing being taken away, the symbol nevertheless remained. And this access being opened, what did Satan not attempt, or rather what did he not accomplish? For, since that oil had to be distinguished from common and profane oil, a consecration was devised, and one of such a kind that the Devil himself might almost be ashamed of it.

For, with infinite more-than-magical rites applied, the oil itself is adored a thousand times, and they are not ashamed to pray, in express words, that the Holy Spirit may be poured into that fatness. Then, indeed, it seemed unfitting that the ministers of the Christian Church should be consecrated without unction, since they are named from Christ, and that they should be inaugurated less solemnly than of old the successors of Aaron, and the Kings and Prophets, were wont to be.

And so a second oil was devised, which they call Chrism, and a third, which they call Holy; nor is any sacred mystery performed among them without that magical oil. So it came about, at last, that the Church had its perfumers and ointment-makers, who, under this pretext, not only anointed the wretched sheep, but also fleeced them. But come, let us emerge at last from this workshop of filth.

The office of the Deacons (to whom Subdeacons were afterward joined) was, as we expounded in its place, to attend to the ministry of the tables, namely in those love-feasts which preceded the Lord’s Supper, and to administer the oblations and the whole ecclesiastical treasury, by the authority of the Presbytery. And so, when they were chosen and consecrated by the laying on of hands, there were delivered to them the things that pertained to their office, namely pitchers, towels, cups, and other such things.

But now, since those love-feasts have long been taken away, since the Deacons handle no treasury, since the whole Liturgy has been changed into the execrable dance of the Mass, to what end are there Deacons or Subdeacons in the Papacy? But it is worthwhile to hear at least some part of those ceremonies which these men call Sacraments. On the Deacons is put the stole (which they call by a barbarous and unknown name), and that on the left side; then is delivered to them the book of the lections, that the office of the reader may be confounded with the Diaconate.

At last, that the Lord Suffragan may seem to have retained something of the Apostolic rite, he lays on hands, and mutters some magical I-know-not-what song. The Subdeacons receive the cup and the paten (as they call it) from the hands of the bishop or the suffragan, and from the archdeacon the pitchers with water. But besides that all these things are performed with no election going before, not in the public assembly, but in the bishop’s private house, in a foreign tongue, with insane idolatry mixed in throughout: what madness is this, the things themselves being utterly removed from the memory of men, not only to retain the signs of them, but even to place in them the sum of piety?

But as concerns the Presbyters, what ever existed among men joined with so great ignorance, impudence, and impiety? For it is established that, if you ask the Papists what it is to be a Presbyter, scarcely one out of a hundred thousand will answer otherwise than that Presbyters are those to whom it is lawful to sing Mass. But let them see how that singing agrees with private Masses, which is nevertheless the cause that so many troops of pseudo-presbyters daily emerge.

But what is it to sing Mass? To offer Christ for the living and for the dead. Tell me, then: for this crime, than which the Sun never beheld, nor will hereafter behold, anything more foul, with what Sacraments at last are they inaugurated? With shaved head, and anointed fingers; namely, that they may have neither the hair of good men, nor pure hands. And will Satan himself any longer endure these monsters?

On Matrimony.

How much we attribute to lawful Matrimony, and in what manner it is wont to be promulgated in our Churches and confirmed publicly, with prayers added, by the laudable custom of the Church; and how greatly there is condemned by us, not only adultery, but every kind of fornication, can clearly be established (by the benefit of God), both from our writings, and from the edicts of our Magistrates, and from the very formula of matrimonies which is printed and stands for sale in the booksellers’ shops.

Too great, therefore, is the impudence of those who dare to traduce even us as favorers of fornications, and to reproach us with those old slanders, that is, to rub up again those rancid calumnies which their very antiquity ought to have obliterated. As though, indeed, if fornication were approved by us, the Papacy must be deserted, in which who at last is ignorant that that crime is not even numbered among the lightest vices?

But to the matter. The Papists number Matrimony among the Sacraments as often as it pleases them; but under what pretext? Namely, because the old interpreter of Paul translated the Greek “mystery” into “Sacrament,” in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where marriage is treated. But what ignorance is this, not rather to hear Paul himself speaking than that Latin interpreter? For surely no one is ignorant that “mystery” among the Greeks extends no less widely than “secret” among the Latins.

Let them confess, then, that all secrets are Sacraments, if marriage is a Sacrament. And lest we seem to do them injury, behold, we offer them that same interpreter as judge: let us, then, number the will of God as an eighth Sacrament, and the calling of the Gentiles as a ninth Sacrament, for so the interpreter, in the same epistle, interpreted that same Greek word.

Nay, does not Paul himself expressly remedy this error, when he testifies that in that very place he uses the name of mystery to designate the conjunction of Christ and the Church, and not of husband and wife? Let those asses, therefore, at last be ashamed to laugh at men endowed with reason and judgment. But even if we grant them what they ask, by what right at last, I ask, will they approve the perverse vow by which someone has deprived himself of the benefit of the ecclesiastical Sacrament?

And by what right do they teach that it is not lawful at the same time to discharge the ecclesiastical ministry and marriage, that is, to enjoy one of the Sacraments of the Church? Nay (to make an end at last of wishing to wash Ethiopians), how will they reconcile these two: that Matrimony is one of the seven Sacraments, and that, as their most impure Pope Siricius says, what Paul writes (that those who are in the flesh cannot please God) is to be understood of marriage?

For one of the two must be false; or else they must concede, by the opinion of their own Pope, that some Sacraments not only do not confer grace, but even bring it about that we are hateful to God. This knot, therefore, I leave to them to untie. But as concerns their benedictions, by which those chaste pontiffs consecrate both the spouses, and the ring, and the bed, I had rather not touch them now, than infect my paper with these filths.

On Extreme Unction.

If the Minister is bound to feed the healthy sheep, much more surely must he labor for their salvation as often as they are seized with a disease, whether of body or of mind; nor is he worthy of the name of pastor who negligently cares for this part of his office.

But the remedy which is to be applied by pastors is one only, namely the Word of God, accommodated to the use of the sick. For some need doctrine, others exhortation, others consolation, and others, finally, reproof and rebuke. And all these things prayers follow, which James testifies are by no means vain. They also make mention of oil, but applied for the healing of the sick, at the time when the gift of healing flourished (which we showed before to have been temporary in the Church), and, even were we silent, the thing itself cries out.

But the wretched Papists, since they are wonderfully delighted with the masks of ceremonies, were not content (the thing itself being taken away) to retain that empty and vain and now utterly superstitious rite, but thought that the oil also must be enchanted by them with magical songs, which (by the work worked, as they speak) can wash away sins, to omit the other most impious follies of that unction.

But it is well that these apes betray themselves to be beasts at least in this, that they apply that oil only to the dying, whereas the Apostles applied it only when they were about to restore someone to health. That oil, therefore, was to the Apostles a symbol of life, which these excellent imitators of the Apostles call Extreme, that is, the unction of death.

And if it please anyone to believe even that excellent writer Dionysius, that unction, at that time, was applied not to the dying, but to the corpses of the dead. What, then? Namely, let these dead bury their dead; but let us rest in the one Word of life.

Article 12. That there is no legitimate ministry of the Word in the Papist Synagogue.

It is sufficiently apparent, I think, from the things we have said, that the Word of the Lord, and prayers, and the Sacraments, are polluted and destroyed in the most unworthy ways in the Papist Synagogue, which falsely claims for itself the name of the Catholic Church. But since they are wont to object to us that they are the successors of the Apostles, and therefore have the Church among them, it remains that we see what agreement there is between the Papist Hierarchy (of which they so greatly boast) and the ecclesiastical government constituted from the Word of God through the Apostles, and diligently kept by their true successors, until, by the just judgment of God, a horrible confusion invaded both the East and the West.

First, then, I say that these men, in this argument, lay a foundation by no means firm. For they think the truth of God to be bound to a certain nation and seat (namely the Roman), and so to certain persons; against which most false dogma not only the whole Scripture fights, but even the very magic of fools. For as concerns the Word of God, where at last is found anything at all granted utterly to any city or nation, much less to Rome?

For surely the things that are said of the earthly Jerusalem were temporary, and shadowed forth the spiritual Jerusalem, to be diffused through the whole world, as all know who have, even from the threshold, saluted theology. And since it can be clearly understood, from the things we have more exactly inquired, where the true Church is (namely, pure doctrine and pure morals), with which of the two will the Roman harlot adorn herself?

For that the doctrine there is most impure, we have demonstrated through its several parts. But if it is asked about morals, come, let the very histories of the Roman pontiffs (which the parasites of the pontiffs wrote) be compared with whatever monsters of men ever existed from the founding of the world, and it will be found that in this one seat more was permitted to Satan than in any tyranny that ever oppressed the world.

Then, what does it profit them to boast that they have succeeded into the place of the ancient Bishops, unless they have entered through the same door? For the Son of God does not hold for pastors those who, having entered through the window, or through the broken-down walls of the house of God, devour the wretched sheep, but calls them robbers and wolves, and bids them be guarded against.

Nay, Paul goes so far as to pronounce Anathema even upon the angels themselves, if they should announce another Gospel. And will you not be ashamed, O Roman harlot, with your catamites, to boast of apostolic succession, when Paul does not acknowledge even the angels themselves for successors, but execrates them as enemies of God, and would have them execrable to all, if they should do that very thing on which you alone rely?

Finally, lest we could be deceived, that same Apostle foretold that the son of perdition, who vends himself for God, would sit in the temple of God. And John openly says that the beast, which has the names of blasphemy inscribed upon its forehead, would sit upon the seven-hilled city. But what is that name? Let the most holy Pope Gregory himself answer, crying out that the name of universal Bishop, that is, of the head of the Church, befits no one (if you except Christ alone) but Antichrist.

But (he says) on the contrary he calls himself the servant of the servants of God. An excellent fraud, indeed! as though we regarded the names, and not the thing itself. Julius the Third, Roman pontiff, struck coins with this inscription: THE NATION WHICH SHALL NOT SERVE THEE SHALL PERISH. And will not this most impudent of all Tyrants be ashamed, at last, to mock the whole world by calling himself the servant of servants?⁵

And these things concerning the very head of the Antichristian Church.

But as concerns his creatures, this I say, this I cry out: that all those provisions, presentations, collations, signatures, bulls, mandates, “graces given,” consents, exchanges, concordats, resignations, “devolutions,” pensions, vacant annates, “fulminated processes,” and dispensations, are so many windows through which they break by force into the sheepfold of the Lord, and so many mines by which, so far as in them lay, they have undermined the house of God; since neither in the Word of God, nor in any writing of the purer Church, whether Greek or Latin, is the slightest mention made of these things, which Satan alone has vomited forth to infect the purity of the Church; and therefore all pious men must seriously think, not of the reformation of things of this kind, but of their casting out, their abolition, and their utter extermination.

I number, then, in the first class, the universal Pope (although of old the name of Pope was common to all Bishops), the Cardinals, the Suffragans, the Officials, the Procurators of the ecclesiastical curia, the Vicars, the Chaplains, the Prefects, the Priors, with the whole rabble of such monsters, which the ancient Church utterly knew not. But in the second class I reckon the Archbishops, the Curates, the Canons, the Presbyters, the Deacons, the Subdeacons, the Clerics, and all that crew, whose names these men so impudently abuse that it is certain that light is not more contrary to darkness than they are repugnant to those whose names they borrow.

First of all, then, as concerns that head of the Roman Synagogue, into whose place have they succeeded? “Into Peter’s and Paul’s,” he says. Truly so. For the Roman pontiff being feigned, the Christian Church was forsooth two-headed, since either, by their own confession, Paul was not less than Peter, or else Peter is branded with signal injury, when Paul is joined to him as a colleague by the Roman pontiff.

It remains, therefore, that those two heads were at length at Rome welded into one. But what if that one head was, on the contrary, again divided into two, even by the consent of the Roman see itself? For if the Ecclesiastical history is to be believed, at Rome, at one and the same time, sat Liberius and Felix, to say nothing of the Antipopes.

Where, then, was that single head? where the perpetual course of the succession?

But lest we seem to play in a serious matter, can these men deny that the Roman Bishop is, by the witness of Jerome himself, the pastor of the least of any see whatever, and that the same man affirms that of old there was no difference between a Presbyter and a Bishop?

Can they be ignorant that the Roman Bishop is numbered among the Metropolitans, and that his jurisdiction is bounded, like that of the others? Be it so; let the Roman Bishop, on account of the dignity of the city of Rome, be reckoned the first of all, and let honor be given him in universal Synods: shall we therefore say that any authority over the Churches of another’s jurisdiction was attributed to him?

Did not Irenaeus sharply rebuke Victor, and Cyprian, together with the African Bishops, sharply rebuke Cornelius, the Roman Bishops? or do they call them anything else than brothers and co-bishops? Where, then, was that most sacred holiness? where our most holy Lord? where the buying and selling? Nay, Gregory, whom these men adore among their saints, by what name does he call the Emperor but his Lord? does he not testify that he is Bishop by the Emperor’s own will?

For even many ages after, the imperial Majesty confirmed the Roman Pontiffs elected by the votes of the people; so far was it from any right being granted them over the kingdoms and empires of this world, when they were not even lords of the city. Where, then, were those famous epistles of the Pseudo-Clement and the Pseudo-Anacletus? where the fable of the donation of Constantine? where the guards, the tiara, the slippers, the cap, the chair, the armies, the bombards of our most holy lord the Pope?

And those ecumenical Synods, which they, when it pleases them, compare in mockery with the four Gospels, who convoked them? was it not one Emperor? nay, who else commanded the Roman Bishops themselves to assemble there? to whom Leo the First excuses himself, and from whom he begs that it may be permitted, through his vicars, to be present at the Synod. And yet it is established, from Leo’s own Epistles, that even then the antichristian arrogance of the Roman see plainly breathed.⁶

I will say something more, which these men now pretend not to understand.

In the times of Constantine, in the cause of Caecilian (which Augustine often urges against the Donatists), the Roman Bishop was made judge, with certain other Bishops. O horrible deed! to be delegated by the Emperor? does the Apostolic See endure this? Yet so it is. Nor does the Roman Bishop murmur, nor protest concerning the primacy of his see; for this right was not yet known in the world.

What more? Appeal is made from the cognizance of the judges, and the Bishop of Arles is again appointed to judge of the appeal. Good God, what monstrous thing do we hear! these best and most holy defenders of the primacy of Peter will say. But what would you do? So the matter was transacted by the Christian Emperor, no one contradicting, no one tumultuating, or on that account crying out that it concerned the Christian Church.

And what, when Leo blustered arrogantly much about the excellence of his see, was he not sharply restrained by the Council of Chalcedon? And in the Synod of Milevis, at which Augustine was present, is not appeal across the sea expressly forbidden? and three Roman pontiffs, Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine, refuted as hirelings? Nay, after the African Council, writing to Celestine the Roman Pope, it shows, for many reasons, how intolerable is the arrogance of the Roman Bishop who usurps this jurisdiction over the African Churches; and it adds this also: “If,” it says, “any, as if sent from the side of your holiness, we find established by no Synod.

And as for executors, even clerics, do not send them at the request of any, lest we seem to bring the smoky pride of the world into the Church of Christ, which, to those desiring to see God, sets forth the light of simplicity and the day of humility.” These the words of those of whom one was Augustine. And yet what was at issue?

About this one thing only: that Apiarius, a certain presbyter whom the Africans had condemned, relying on the authority of the Roman see, should be received again.

All which being so, what just title at last will that Tyrant pretend, and by what right will he claim this for himself as the successor of Peter and Paul, from usurping which they were so far that, on the contrary, they both foretold this coming Tyranny and expressly condemned it?

He will run, then, forsooth, to the Emperor Phocas, that most impure and foul monster, and an author altogether worthy of establishing the Papist Tyranny; from whom, namely, Boniface the Third, about the year of the Lord 607, purchased the name of universal Bishop and head of the Church. He will bring forward, besides, what Zacharias and Stephen the Second obtained by their treasons, about the year of the Lord 752.

For as for the counterfeit Epistles of many, and the false canons, partly forged by the Roman Popes themselves, partly tyrannically constituted to their own advantage, who of sound judgment would think them worthy even of refutation, since both the express Word of God, and the authority of the whole purer ancient Church, fights against this Antichrist hitherto?

Now let us proceed to the CARDINALS, and let us stir up this Camarina too, since it must needs be done.

These men, then, whose successors will they at last boast themselves to be? Of the seventy-two disciples, forsooth. But it is a wretched marvel that no writer of the purer Church makes any more mention of Cardinals than of things that nowhere existed in the nature of things. There is published, indeed, a fable of a Roman Synod under Sylvester, in the times, namely, of Constantine the Great.

But what does that profit them, since only seven Cardinals are there constituted, and are shut up within the walls of the city of Rome? But if there was then even the least authority of theirs in the Church, how is it that, for so many ages afterward, not even the slightest mention is made of them? This, therefore, can be established: that the Cardinals were not then employed for the ministry of the word, or for the office of guarding ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but were only Deacons (who, as of old, presided over the several regions as their own guardians), distributed through the wards (cardines) of the city, that they might discharge their office, that is, the office of Deacons; of what kind that was, we have expounded in its place.

But afterward, the power of the Roman Bishop increasing, the dignity of the whole college increased, namely, that these plunderers might divide the Church of Christ among themselves. And so the name of Cardinals also was made more august, and was communicated to Bishops and Presbyters, to whom, forsooth, the true name of Presbyters and Deacons was vile. And lest this sordid origin should lie hidden from posterity, an etymology of this new appellation was devised, as though, namely, they were the hinges (cardines) of the Church.

But it is well that, partly, they retained the old titles named from these or those temples, and, partly, devised new ones, from which is understood what they wish to conceal. These, then, are the beginnings of the Cardinalate. But yet, for many ages afterward, it was a thing like a monster that a Cardinal should be at once both a Cardinal and a Bishop; since the Cardinals had to remain at Rome, and to discharge their office, namely of the Diaconate or the Presbyterate; and the Bishops were not permitted, by the Word of God and the ancient canons, to be any longer absent from their flocks, or not to feed their sheep.

But our men now are not Cardinals, but Carnals; of what kind, at last, are these beasts?

These are they through whom that most impure harlot turns at her pleasure the minds of Kings and princes, and of the senates of any cities whatever, so that, as often as it pleases her, she now sets her own rivals against one another, now joins them again, now soothes them with her pleasant little gifts, now terrifies them with threats, and compels them to be the ministers both of her insatiable avarice and of her cruelty.

But if they carry off this wage of their pandering, that, decked with the fattest bishoprics and abbacies, they go headlong, together with their creator, into the lake of fire and brimstone: for what crime is so great, what villainy so monstrous, by which this college of catamites and hermaphrodites is not, now long since, execrable to the whole world? so much so, indeed, that, as of old the slaves who were being set free were said to be called to the cap, so the Pope rightly presents these catamites with the cap, as the pledge and symbol of their infinite license and truly carnal liberty.

Behold the disciples of Christ! behold the hinges of the catholic Church, of whom the very devils themselves are ashamed! But as for the procurators of the ecclesiastical court, the apostolic notaries, the promoters, the auditors of the Rota, the bullists, the copyists, the couriers, the datary-men, the vicars, the chaplains, the priors, and the infinite filth of this kind: it would be as easy, in truth, to find devils in the heavens, sitting upon the thrones of the Angels, as any, even the slightest, mention of these, either in the Word of God, or in the ancient Synods, or in any pure writer, whether Greek or Latin.

Nay, whoever should wish to reconcile these things with the morals of the Christian Church would do just as if he wished to compound light with darkness, and truth with falsehood.

But now I come to those who seem to have some show of Apostolic succession, if you regard the names, and not the thing itself. We have shown that there were constituted in the Churches Pastors and Doctors, to announce the word of God and to administer the Sacraments.

For so the Lord commanded, and it is certain that the ancient Church diligently observed this. For as to the fact that the Pastors, in the progress of time, were distinguished into Metropolitans, Bishops, and those whom they now call Curates (that is, set over the several parishes), this was done least of all in respect of the ministry of the word, but rather having regard to ecclesiastical jurisdiction and discipline.

And so, as concerns the office of preaching the word and of administering the Sacraments, there is no distinction between Archbishops, Bishops, and Curates; for all are bound to feed their flocks with the same food, and therefore, by a common name, are called Pastors and Bishops in the Scriptures. But what impudence is this, to usurp the sacred names, and on that account to boast of the succession of the Apostles and of the true Bishops?

For, I pray, if I should wish to clothe a pig, or an ape, in the dress of a king, and to call it king, would it on that account be called king, and the successor of true kings? Away with you! you will say; are these dogs and pigs? Surely they are, if we believe the Word of God, which calls the pseudo-prophets and the haters of the truth by no other names, and warns us to flee them with all our strength.

Nor are these of whom we treat any more like true pastors than dogs and pigs would be like true kings, if they bore a crown and a scepter.

For, first, who created these men Bishops and Pastors? through what door did they enter? who called them? where was the examination of doctrine and morals? where the election of the Presbytery? where the votes of the people?

Nay, will even one in a hundred be found who has so much as greeted the Word of God from the threshold? who is fitted to feed the flock? who, finally, cares even the least for the flock? But, on the contrary, if there is any who now and then holds a little sermon, what doctrine does he set before the wretched sheep but poison instead of food? does he not flay the sheep?

And how, at last, do they administer the Sacraments? To pollute these, the provincial Synods have conspired. But by whom are these convoked? and how few of the Bishops are fit to take care of these things? how few of the Curates understand what this matter is? Finally, that I may dispatch it in few words, I ask two things of them. The one: whether he who is excommunicated ought to be reckoned for a member of the Church, much less for a pastor.

The other: whether those are not, by the very law, sufficiently excommunicated, whom Christ bids us flee as thieves, as robbers, as pigs, as dogs; who, against the express disposition of the Word of God, and the authority of the whole ancient Church, have invaded the sheepfold of God, and defend their tyranny by open force alone. But that all may discern whether these are of such a kind, who nevertheless boast with full cheeks of the Apostolic succession, let the Word of God first of all be consulted; then (that, out of infinite testimonies, I may mention a few) let there be inspected the fifth and fourth Epistles of the first book of the Epistles of Cyprian, and his third treatise, On the Simplicity of Prelates; likewise, Leo the First, Epistle 85; the Canons of the Council of Nicaea, the fourth and sixth; of Antioch, the twenty-third and twenty-fifth; of Sardica, the fourteenth and fifteenth; and likewise the canons of the ancient discipline; for there, and in countless other places, it will be found how truly these men call themselves Bishops and Curates, and of what kind is the Papist hierarchy.

Article 13. That there is no diaconate in the Papist Synagogue.

And let these things have been said of those whose duty it was to devote themselves wholly to the preaching of the word and the administration of the Sacraments. Now let us proceed to those by whom the treasury of the Church ought to have been administered. The Papists have, indeed, Archdeacons, but in name only; for what these things mean which they claim for themselves, they no more hold than they hold Indian or Arabic letters.

For the things that they hold, the Roman pontiff makes such, because there is some prey lurking there. But what need is there of Archdeacons where there is no Deacon? Yet in the visitation of the Archdeacons, I confess, there appear some traces of the ancient custom, from which can be gathered something to convict these men. For they are wont, at certain seasons of the year, to run through the parishes; which thing shows that the Archdeacons were not of old empty masks, as now they are, but diligently inquired into the Deacons of their region.

And this is the more clear from the very form of inquiry which these men, all unwitting, observe; for they are not wont to inquire into doctrine or morals, but whether the buildings of the temples are in good repair, whether the most sacred little crust is conveniently laid up, whether the cups are clean enough, and other things of the kind. And here, as it were in a mirror, one may behold how greatly the customs of the ancient Church have been changed.

For as to the fact that these men do, in respect of the Curates, more than belongs to their office (since that matter pertains to the Bishop): it was, namely, the office of the Deacons, when the temples were now appointed for holding the assemblies of the Christians, to provide, out of the public funds, that the buildings should be kept in good repair; and so this burden lay upon the Archdeacons, that they might refer to the Presbytery the accounts of those expenses received from the Deacons.

Hence that inquiry which we said is observed by the Papists; but, good God, how perversely, when their temples are fitted to anything else rather than to the hearing of the Word of God! Nay, if they require even this of the Deacons, they nowhere require it of the Curates, who, having forsaken the office of preaching, have so far returned to the Diaconate that they had rather discharge that than feed the flock with the Word.

But this also is established: that, since the Deacons had to serve the tables, with them also were laid up the vessels which had been consecrated to that ministry. But what has this to do with the cupboard of that execrable crusty idol, and with those most impure cups, consecrated to those catamites and fornicators alone, to those slaughterers, I say, of the Son of God?

But that the Archdeacons take diligent care even of these things may be understood even from the common proverb, by which the Archdeacons’ luncheons are celebrated no otherwise than the suppers of the ancient pontiffs. But to the wretched Deacons and Subdeacons nothing is left but the emptiest of names. For to what end are Deacons and Subdeacons? That, in the high (as they call them) Masses, that is, in the Megalensian games, in histrionic garb, they may minister to the table from which the sacrificer alone feeds; that is, that they may serve the repeated oblation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ; that they may chant some little scrap of the Gospel and of the Epistles of Paul, in a foreign tongue, and without any interpreter; that they may furnish the cup, the cruets, and the towel to the sacrificer; that they may receive the oblation, of which not even the least particle falls to the poor; that, finally, they may sing TE IGITUR.

But in what temple? In whatever shall seem good, and only for so long until they are promoted to the major orders. For this was enacted by the ancient Canons, that none should be called to the Presbytery save those who had approved their diligence and integrity in the lower ecclesiastical functions; and therefore these apes, that they may seem assertors of the ancient Canons (although they have utterly taken away the thing itself, as we showed in its place), nevertheless wish, in their own most disordered orders, to seem to retain accurately the grades of the ancient ecclesiastical functions; which when they do, what else do they betray, even to boys themselves, but their own ignorance and impudence?⁷

For what have these men retained of the offices of the Deacons? where is that distribution of the ecclesiastical treasury into four quarters, of which we made mention before? where that quarter which was committed to the Bishop?

Nay, of these revenues panders, harlots, confectioners, cooks, tailors, dogs, horses, and hawks would sooner render account than either Bishops, or Presbyters, or Deacons. But where is the quarter destined for nourishing the Clerics? nay, where is there any Clergy at all? Let the Canons be asked, who divide the prey among themselves. Where is the quarter destined for nourishing the poor? It has vanished, forsooth, in these ages; for that the charges of the orphanages and hospitals come from elsewhere, there is no one who is ignorant.

And yet here too it is shameful to recall what sacrileges are committed, these harpies so swooping down upon this also that there is scarcely anything which escapes their talons. And this, indeed, is, among the Papists, the administration of the ecclesiastical goods.

Article 14. On the false Presbytery of the Papist Synagogue.

As concerns the comparison of the Christian Presbytery with the Papist, what more unlike could be feigned? For, first, by what right have they confounded the jurisdiction of the spiritual Church with the authority of the Civil magistrate? Secondly, to what end are so many troops of Presbyters in the Papacy? Is it that they may guard the discipline of the Church? Nothing less; but that they may sacrifice Christ for the living and for the dead, that is, that they may despoil Christ of his priesthood, and, with all their force, pluck up the foundations of our salvation.

And there are many kinds of these. For some are beneficed, fattening themselves abundantly, namely, with the revenues, not of one Church, but of as many Churches as they can get; others are starvelings, and of all men the most miserable Mass-mongers, who either live from day to day by gnawing their little crust, or hire out their vicarious labor to those fat pigs, only until they themselves may seek their food from the flame.

Others gather gain for themselves and for the Bishop out of various things. For the Officials, the Vicars of the lord Bishop, the Promoters, and the rest of that kind have, in some part, occupied the place of the Levitical priests. The Canons, or Domherren, have substituted themselves into the place of the Clerics: men plainly religious, and worthy to be called to the helms of the Churches, if only they would first demonstrate to us what difference there is between themselves and two-footed pigs.

But among all these, or rather Mass-priests, is there any one who discharges the office of a Presbyter? Do these men think of that which is chief, namely, of purging the doctrine of the Christian religion from so many corruptions? Surely this is no office of priests, but rather of our Masters; for to these men it is a far different thing to be a theologian than to be a Mass-priest, or sacrificer.

And yet, when it comes to a Synod, the deliberative vote is granted to the Bishops alone. What, then, if anything else has come into the bishops’ mind than that they should give their labor to theology? what will their deliberation be in deciding controversies of such moment? Namely, they will seek aid from the doctors of the Sorbonne and of the other schools. Is the Christian Church, then, fallen so low that, when there is question of plucking up some heresy, and of composing the dissensions in religion, the cognizance of these matters lies not with the Pastors (who are none), but with the impure Sophists, with the sinks of the monasteries (that is, of Sodom), with the dung of hell?

For at this very time in which I was writing these things, between the Sorbonnists and the Bishop of Paris a great controversy had arisen, which raged about the judgments (as they call them) of heresies and of heretics. As though, indeed, in the Church there were any other judge of doctrine than the Word of God; or as though those are to be held for doctors of the Church who are conversant in the dust of the school, and to whom no Church has yet been assigned to be taught.

For it is established that schools were instituted that thence both Pastors and Doctors might be taken up to rule the Churches. There is, therefore, a great difference between the Masters of the school, by whom the Clerics ought to be instructed, and the doctors of the Church, concerning whose office we have discoursed more fully elsewhere. But what have these things to do with the Papist workshops, not of Theology, but of folly-mongering, of vanity, of impudence, of sophistry?

Now, as concerns the correction of morals, and the removing of offenses, we showed that the college of the Presbyters had charge of this matter; in what manner, at last, were they fit for performing it, who have so filled heaven and earth, and even hell itself, with every kind of baseness that they stink, with the stench of their own deeds, even to their own household gods and to the very devils?

But as concerns Elections, how long since have they been abolished, and changed into that most foul market-trafficking! And those which, in the Monasteries and in the Chapter-Churches (as they call them), still somewhere survive, what have they in common with those old elections, pure and sincere? And what else are their Confirmations but certain histrionic actions? Finally, if there is question of the discussion of ecclesiastical causes, and especially of the discipline of correction, where, I pray, in the Papacy will you find a college of Presbyters? where the lawful form of judgments, by which the unlearned may be instructed, and sinners brought to repentance? where the Word of God? where the ancient Synods and Canons for convicting heretics? with whom is the power of excommunicating, and for what causes? what form of ecclesiastical absolutions and satisfactions?

This, then, is the dignity of that Papist Hierarchy; this is plainly their Babylonian chaos.

On the Monks.

To convict the Monks, than whom nothing today appears more frequently at all the crossroads, there is need of the very name of Monks alone, that it may be understood that they have nothing in common with the true Monks. But this will be far better known from the thing itself than from the name.

It is established that the use of monasteries is very ancient, but one which soon degenerated utterly into insane superstition, as appears from the canons of the Synod of Gangra, against those very things in which the pseudo-monks today glory. Yet by many great and good men the solitary kind of life was embraced, chiefly for two causes: namely, that with greater quiet they might give their labor to the knowing of the Scriptures, and that they might accustom themselves to patience, and to the bearing of the cross, by a certain most severe kind of life.

But meanwhile they were not wont to bind themselves by a perpetual vow to this or that solitude, but there, as in more tranquil schools, they prepared themselves for the ecclesiastical functions, as appears from the examples of Nazianzen, Basil, Augustine, and others; unless, perhaps, that perpetual solitude was pleasing to some, whose institution, however, seems to agree too little with the rule of Christian charity, and to nourish the disease of melancholy.

To idleness no place was there left, so that they nourished both themselves and the poor by the labor of their own hands, and a Monk not laboring with his hands was held for a robber. Most sparingly, indeed, and most frugally they lived; but neither did they place any part of their salvation in their abstinences, when one was pressed beyond his strength; rather, if any had not a great enough discretion of abstaining, they were fraternally admonished that they should not, by vain superstition, become weaker rather than sounder.

Marriage they did not condemn as an evil thing, but, as utterly repugnant to that solitary life, they did not embrace it. But meanwhile the vow of perpetual continence, which Satan afterward introduced, was not in use even in the convents of the Nuns, as is clear from these words of Cyprian: “If,” he says, “they have dedicated themselves to Christ from faith, let them persevere modestly and chastely, without scandal, and so, strong and stable, let them await the reward of virginity.

But if they will not, or cannot, persevere, it is better that they should marry than fall into the fire by their delights.” Thus he; who, if he were alive today, there is no doubt that he would be condemned as a heretic. Such, then, was of old the rule of the true Monks; to which if we should recall our gratuitous Monks, I pray, what more unlike could be feigned?

Those sought a peaceful and tranquil solitude; these seek nothing rather than the most populous cities, not only to dwell there, but even to devour whole cities. Those poor men lived sparingly by their own labors in their little huts; these inhabit most proud palaces, possess cities, villages, whole regions, so shunning all labors that they place their welfare even in idleness, so given to gluttony, and especially to wine, that they represent wine-jars rather than men, and exhibit such a gluttony of this kind as neither our forefathers from the founding of the world have seen, nor will posterity to come seem likely to feel.

Virgins were those, and rare examples of the virtues; but the life of these, the whole world being witness, what else is it than a workshop of superstition, of impiety, of blasphemy, of ambition, of extortions, of drunkenness, of murders, and of the foulest and most monstrous lusts of every kind, or rather a most filthy sewer, whose stench not even the devils themselves can any longer endure?⁸

But, in the first place, those four mendicant orders, what else are they, beyond the rest, than a useless burden of the earth, gluttons, and idle bellies?

And surely, unless the desperate hypocrisy of these men were already sufficiently known, all might deservedly marvel that the Pope at least does not trust his own creatures. For, to omit the judgments of all the schools, and especially of the Parisian, published against those harpies and crowned locusts in the year of the Lord 1385, not so long ago, that is, in the year of the Lord 1538, the Cardinals chosen and consulted by Paul the Third, then pontiff, expressly answered, among other things, that all the Conventual orders seemed fit to be abolished.

Why, then, was credit not given at least to these? why did that most impure Julius the Third afterward, the successor of Paul, and indeed one of those chosen Cardinals, not embrace that sentence? or why did he not at least shut up those monsters within their own cages (which, a year ago, Paul the Fourth vainly attempted), that they might rather consume one another than devour all, the living and the dead?

Namely, because this is, as it were, the fatal ruin of the Church, that the sheep be devoured by the wolves; and at Rome nothing at all is obtained except by the mediation of Pluto, because Satan agrees excellently well with Satan. But of these filths enough, or even too much.⁹

Yet one thing besides I would ask of these most perfect cowl-bearers: that (unless perhaps it is troublesome to them) they would answer to these things, while we prepare others.

One: whether it is not most true that the Monks, so long as the Church was not most impure, were held for Laymen (as they call them). The second: whether, even in the times of Gregory the Great himself, it was not a thing like a monster that a Cleric should be at once both a Cleric and a monk, much less a Deacon or a Presbyter.

The third: whether they are not expressly bidden to be subject to their ordinaries, by the express canons of the universal Council of Chalcedon, and by what right it has been lawful for anyone to pluck up the authority of that most celebrated Synod, the Church at least being unconsulted. The fourth: whether all the idle Monks who live today (that is, all who renounce the labor of their hands) are not, by the very tenor of their own rules, so many perjurers and Apostates.

When they have explained these things to us, we will give our effort (God favoring) that they may sweat in explaining other and harder knots, and so at least learn to labor spiritually.

Article 15. That the Papists most manifestly despise the Magistrate.

It must be a marvelous and incredible impudence of the Papists, at least in this, that they dare to accuse us before Kings and princes as perfidious and rebellious. For how honorably we think and speak concerning the command of the Magistrates, and how much we attribute to them, we testify not only by our writings, but even by the thing itself; which not even those can be ignorant of who persecute us with every kind of cruelty.

But the furies of the Anabaptists, of the Libertines, and of others of that kind, we are so far from approving that we even judge that they ought to be punished by the Magistrate. But, to use rather a comparison among the Papists, since no kind of men is more openly rebellious to the Magistrate: for who has subjected to himself, beneath his feet, the Kings and the empires of the earth? who has gone so far as to trample the neck of the Emperor with his feet? who has snatched from Caesar the most flourishing part of Italy, and Rome itself? was it not the Roman Antichrist?

All the dignities of this age, do not the Abbots and Bishops there claim them today? Nay, is there any, even the vilest Monk, or the most impure Mass-priest, who does not exempt himself from the jurisdiction of the secular Magistrates? Let these men, then, declare the cause of their manifest rebellion, rather than accuse us. For we profess, before God and men, that we follow the example of Jesus Christ, and obey the admonitions of Paul and of Peter; and we say that Jude prophesied of the Papists, where he treats of those who abolish dominions and dignities, and assail them with revilings.

But if these men refuse to answer us when we accuse them, come, we will furnish them with two accusers whose authority it is necessary that they reverence: namely, Chrysostom and Bernard. Thus, then, Chrysostom (although he had to do with that foolish Emperor Arcadius, and his most proud wife Eudoxia), thus, I say, he, expounding that place of Paul where every soul is bidden to be subject to the higher powers: “To all,” he says, “are these things enjoined, to priests also and to Monks, and not to seculars alone.

The Apostle declares it from the very preface,” he says: “Let every soul be subject to the supereminent powers, even if thou be an Apostle, even if an Evangelist, even if a Prophet, or any other whatever. (For subjection does not overthrow the worship of God.)” Thus he. But now let us hear Bernard, plainly agreeing, when he wrote to the Pope Eugenius himself: “By what right,” he says (speaking of temporal dominion), “does the Pope claim these things to himself?

Surely not by Apostolic right. For Peter could not give what he did not have; but he gave to his successors what he had, the care of the Churches. Likewise: In crimes, he says, not in possessions, is your power; since for the sake of those, not for the sake of these, you received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Which seems to you the greater dignity, to forgive sins, or to divide estates?

There is no comparison: these lowest and earthly things have their own judges, the kings and princes of the earth. Why do you invade the bounds of others? Likewise: Learn that you have need of a hoe, not of a scepter, that you may do the work of a Prophet. Likewise: It is plain, dominion is forbidden to the Apostles. Go, then, you also, and dare to usurp to yourself either, while lording it, the Apostolate, or, as an Apostle, dominion.”

These things Bernard, in so many words, even long ago.¹⁰

But I, besides (that the matter may be transacted before heaven and earth), bring forward the epistles of Pope Gregory to the Emperor Maurice, and the rescript of Pope Pelagius to Childebert, and the rescript of Leo the Fourth. What will the Papists say to these things, which have now for so many years been inculcated upon them?

Namely, they have hardened their brow, and will oppose to us the Council of Arles, the donations of Kings (partly false, partly forged), and, finally, the prescription of long time. But to what end are these things against the express Word of God? Let these men, then, at last cease to calumniate us, and let them think rather of clearing away the crimes objected to them than of charging us with crimes.

Let the Kings of the earth also lift up their eyes, and, kissing the Son of God, assert their own dignity from the Tyranny of these men.¹¹

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The Conclusion of the Whole Work.

We hope it will come to pass that whoever shall diligently and attentively read the foregoing things will at the same time easily understand, from the comparison of our doctrine with the Word of God and with the Papist impiety, on which side the truth stands, and by what calumnies we are undeservedly overwhelmed. And so, by the name of God, we beseech all those who, to this very day, have persecuted the eternal Gospel of the Son of God, that henceforth they would think of their own salvation, and of the judgment to come. Let the Kings, then, and the princes, listen with more attentive minds to him speaking from whom they profess to have received their kingdoms and empires; and let them beware of those who, under the pretext of religion, have subjected their crowns and scepters to their own tiaras and slippers, and abuse them no otherwise than as executioners and ministers of their own crimes.

Let the Judges also, and the other Magistrates, consider what they will answer before that supreme Judge, if they lend the hand of executioners for the shedding of the blood of the pious. Let them, finally, at last understand that, where there is no knowledge or science of the Word of God, there is no zeal that is approved by God, but only a madness and a bloody insanity, of which, at length, some day, an account must be rendered before God and his Angels. For he, in his own time, will judge the living and the dead, not according to the prescript of human opinions, or traditions, or customs, but according to his eternal Gospel, which they so execrate. But let them at last be ashamed, professing the name of Christ, to be ignorant of the doctrine of Christ, and not to give even some part of their time to the knowing of the doctrine and the life of those whom they undeservedly persecute with sword and flames.

But as concerns those Epicureans and Apostates, who, knowing and willing, fight against the truth of God, and cease not to incite the minds of princes to every cruelty: it belongs to the one God to guard and preserve his Church (as he has done hitherto, and as we hope he will do) against their madness. Let them, then, attempt whatever they please; let them lie, let them rave, let them rage as they will: what else will they do but profit us most greatly, if their cruelty shall have driven us out of this world, even into heaven, and into the bosom of our Christ, to obtain that perpetual felicity? Yet meanwhile not even this life will be taken from us, unless our God be willing; and so long as we shall survive, we will not cease to amplify the Gospel, they being unwilling and gnashing in vain. Their flames, I say, we will overwhelm at least by the multitude of our papers; their swords we will blunt with our pens; finally, with patience, God leading, we will assault all their cruelty, and overcome it; and those unhappy men shall at last, some day, behold with their own eyes the truth triumphing and their own empire overthrown. For it is necessary that that saying of Christ be fulfilled, whether they will or not: Every plant that my Father has not planted shall be rooted up. This is our faith, this is our hope, for which we are afflicted, in which we now live, and in which we hope to die, that we may live the everlasting life.

AMEN.

End of the Confession.

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Footnotes

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A note on this translation. This English text was prepared for Reformed Dogmatika directly from Beza’s Latin (Confessio Christianae Fidei, London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1575; first published in French, 1558) with the help of AI (Anthropic’s Claude); no copyrighted English translation was consulted, and in particular nothing is drawn from James Clark’s 1992 version. It is offered for unhurried reading rather than scholarly citation; for academic work, cite that published edition. The Fathers, councils, and liturgy that Beza quotes are translated from his own sixteenth-century Latin and identified as his citations; Scripture is given in the ESV; and difficulties in the Latin are flagged in the footnotes rather than smoothed over. Corrections from readers of the Latin are warmly welcomed.

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