affirmed it, nor disproving that because Calvin hath dis-
avouched it. I condemn not all things in the council
of Trent, nor approve all in the synod of Dort.<3> In
brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is my
text; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment;<4> where
there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of
my religion from Rome or Geneva, but from the dictates
of my own reason. It is an unjust scandal of our ad-
versaries, and a gross error in ourselves, to compute the
nativity of our religion from Henry the Eighth; who,
though he rejected the Pope, refused not the faith of
Rome,<5> and effected no more than what his own pre-
decessors desired and essayed in ages past, and it was
conceived the state of Venice would have attempted in
our days.<6> It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall
upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of
the Bishop of Rome, to whom, as a temporal prince, we
owe the duty of good language. I confess there is a
cause of passion between us: by his sentence I stand
excommunicated; heretic is the best language he affords
me: yet can no ear witness I ever returned to him the
name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon.
It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction:
those usual satires and invectives of the pulpit may per-
chance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears
are opener to rhetoric than logic; yet do they, in no
wise, confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know
that a good cause needs not be pardoned by passion,
but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute.