a heretic whose error they could not evidently and apparently reprove by
the self-same Scriptures. And we verily do make answer on this wise, as
St. Paul did: "According to this way which they call heresy we do worship
God, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and do allow all things
which have been written either in the law or in the Prophets," or in the
Apostles' works.

Wherefore, if we be heretics, and they (as they would fain be called) be
Catholics, why do they not, as they see the fathers, which were Catholic
men, have always done? Why do they not convince and master us by the
Divine Scriptures? Why do they not call us again to be tried by them?
Why do they not lay before us how we have gone away from Christ, from the
Prophets, from the Apostles, and from the holy fathers? Why stick they
to do it? Why are they afraid of it? It is God's cause. Why are they
doubtful to commit it to the trial of God's word? If we be heretics,
which refer all our controversies unto the Holy Scriptures, and report us
to the self-same words which we know were sealed by God Himself, and in
comparison of them set little by all other things, whatsoever may be
devised by men, how shall we say to these folk, I pray you what manner of
men be they, and how is it meet to call them, which fear the judgment of
the Holy Scriptures--that is to say, the judgment of God Himself--and do
prefer before them their own dreams and full cold inventions; and, to
maintain their own traditions, have defaced and corrupted, now these many
hundred years, the ordinances of Christ and of the Apostles?

Men say that Sophocles, the tragical poet, when in his old days he was by
his own sons accused before the judges for a doting and sottish man, as
one that fondly wasted his own substance, and seemed to need a governor
to see unto him; to the intent he might clear himself of the fault, he
came into the place of judgment; and when he had rehearsed before them