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I haue added to the Authors Reply, but without his know∣ledge, the advertisement following; to fill up this page, which without some purpose had otherwise been left blank.
WHEN you finde, good Reader, any straggling testimonies of some few forraine Divines al∣ledged by the formalists, which seeme to sa∣vour of toleration, consider first that some did write in the dawning of the day of reformation, and therefore could not so soone see distinctly and clearly every corruption which was in the Church, 2. That notvvithstanding of greater light shining in the Church, after the rising of the Sun aboue our Horizon, the Divines treating upon many poynts, could not bee exact in everie one, or intending principally to beat downe such corruptions as did most assault their owne Churches, no vvonder that there fell from their pens some sentences not ripely digested concerning other poynts. 3. That howbeit these had purposely set themselues to consider the controversies of our Churches, yet not being throughly acquainted with the particular state of the same, might giue their iudgment in the generall case, but could not so vvell in the particular, as many worthy Divines in England haue done. 4. They vvere but men, and might erre in judgement, and so appeareth by the vveak reasons subjoyned somtimes to their o∣pinions. And living in Churches vvhere some corruptions doe re∣maine, they might the more readily stumble at the like in others. 6. It hath been the practise of the English Prelates from time to time, and is at this present houre, not onely to offer preferment to Divines at home, but also to send gifts to forraine Divines, to blunt at least the edge of their zeale, if they could not make them alto∣gether their own, as they haue done some. For proofe of this their old practise I haue here subjoyned a few lines taken out of the friendly caveat to B. Sands, then Bishop of London, vvritten ann••. 1567. extant in the book intituled, The Register.
Although you haue, as much as in you lieth, gone about to win credit, and as it were to tie the tongues of Bullinger, Gualter, Zanchius, and others with your bribes, which you haue divers times sent them under the name of friendly tokens and remembrances, yet when they shal be informed better of more then they were the last time, and confirmed in the former satisfaction of these two last set forth bookes, as well these that I haue na∣med, as divers more wil not bee ashamed, like true and constant professors of the truth, to answer your L. as Aristotle did Plato, when he said, Amicus Plato, sed magis amica viritas, that is to say, openly to confesse, not in privat meeting onely, but in print also, that English ti••ne, English cloathes,