48 OF CHURCH CONTROVERSIES. 



The other part, which maintaineth the present 

 government of the Church, hath not kept one tenor 

 neither. First, those ceremonies which were pre 

 tended to be corrupt, they maintained to be things 

 indifferent, and opposed the examples of the good 

 times of the Church to that challenge which was 

 made unto them, because they were used in the later 

 superstitious times. Then were they also content 

 mildly to acknowledge many imperfections in the 

 Church : as tares come up amongst the corn ; which 

 yet, according to the wisdom taught by our Saviour, 

 were not with strife to be pulled up, lest it might 

 spoil and supplant the good corn, but to grow on 

 together till the harvest. After, they grew to a 

 more absolute defence and maintenance of all the 

 orders of the Church, and stiffly to hold, that no 

 thing was to be innovated ; partly because it needed 

 not, partly because it would make a breach upon 

 the rest. Hence, exasperated through contentions, 

 they are fallen to a direct condemnation of the con 

 trary part, as of a sect. Yea, and some indiscreet 

 persons have been bold in open preaching to use 

 dishonourable and derogatory speech and censure of 

 the churches abroad ; and that so far, as some of our 

 men, as I have heard, ordained in foreign parts, have 

 been pronounced to be no lawful ministers. Thus 

 we see the beginnings were modest, but the extremes 

 are violent ; so as there is almost as great a distance 

 now of either side from itself, as was at the first of 

 one from the other. And surely, though my mean 

 ing and scope be not, as I said before, to enter into 



