they are to be lighted with wax candles, both within the church and
without the church, yea, and at noon days; as who should say, here no
cost can be too great; whereas in the mean time we see Christ's faithful
and lively images, bought with no less price than with his most precious
blood (alas, alas!) to be an hungred, a-thirst, a-cold, and to lie in
darkness, wrapped in all wretchedness, yea, to lie there till death take
away their miseries: while they preached these will-works, that come but
of our own devotion, although they be not so necessary as the works of
mercy, and the precepts of God, yet they said, and in the pulpit, that
will-works were more principal, more excellent, and (plainly to utter
what they mean) more acceptable to God than works of mercy; as though now
man's inventions and fancies could please God better than God's precepts,
or strange things better than his own: while they thus preached that more
fruit, more devotion cometh of the beholding of an image, though it be
but a Pater-noster while, than is gotten by reading and contemplation in
scripture, though ye read and contemplate therein seven years' space:
finally, while they preached thus, souls tormented in purgatory to have
most need of our help, and that they can have no aid, but of us in this
world: of the which two, if the one be not false, yet at the least it is
ambiguous, uncertain, doubtful, and therefore rashly and arrogantly with
such boldness affirmed in the audience of the people; the other, by all
men's opinions, is manifestly false: I let pass to speak of much other
such like counterfeit doctrine, which hath been blasted and blown out by
some for the space of three hours together. Be these the Christian and
divine mysteries, and not rather the dreams of men? Be these the
faithful dispensers of God's mysteries, and not rather false dissipators
of them? whom God never put in office, but rather the devil set them over
a miserable family, over an house miserably ordered and entreated. Happy
were the people if such preached seldom.