“IT is a wonderful thing and full of scandal, that from the time when the pure doctrine was first called to light, the world should daily grow worse and worse. …. The world becomes every day worse, men are now more vindictive, more avaricious, less inclined to mercy, more immodest and undisciplined, and much worse than they were in the times of the papacy.”
— Martin Luther in Post. Evan. Dom. i. post Adv.
‘”Formerly, when we were seduced by the pope, men willingly followed good works; but now all their study is to get everything to themselves by exactions, pillage, theft, lying, usury.”
— Luther, Serai, in Dom. 26, post Trin.
“The greater part of the people seem only to have embraced the Gospel in order to shake off the yoke of discipline, and the obligation of fasting, penance, etc, which lay upon them in the time of popery, and to live at their pleasure, enjoying their lust and lawless appetites at their content. They therefore lent a willing ear to the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone, and not by good works, having no relish for them.”
— Martin Bucer, de Regn. Christi, 1. i. c. 4.
“Those whom I once knew to have been chaste, sincere, and without fraud, I found after they had embraced this sect to be licentious in their conversation, neglectful of prayer, passionate, vain, as spiteful as serpents, and lost to the feelings of human nature. I speak from experience.”
— Erasmus, ad Frat. Infer. Germ.
“What an evangelical generation is this! Nothing was ever more licentious and more seditious — nothing is less evangelical than these pretended gospellers.”
— Erasmus, Ep. i. 6, 4.
“Take notice of this evangelical people, and show me one individual amongst them all, who, from being a drunkard has become sober, from being a libertine has become chaste. I, on the other hand, can show you many who have become worse by the change.”
— Erasmus Spong. advers.
“Of so many thousands seemingly eager in embracing the Gospel, how few have since amended their lives! Nay, to what else does the greater part pretend, except by shaking off the yoke of superstition, to launch out more freely into every kind of wickedness?”
— John Calvin, lib. vi. de Scandalo
“I am sure that charity was never so faint among you, and virtue and godliness was never less used, nor God Himself amongst Christians was never less reverenced, honoured, or served.”
— King Henry VIII, Stow’s Annals, 1546.
