Note 75 — Introductory material

The Roman Catholics were considered by the Reformers to have added to the simple doctrines of Christianity inventions of their own, and to have laid especial stress on the adoption of them. Upon Swift’s saying of the three brothers, “Now the coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides so neatly sewn that you would swear they were all of a piece, but, at the same time, very plain, with little or no ornament,” W. Wotton observes: “This is the distinguishing character of the Christian religion. Christiana religio absoluta et simplex, was Ammianus Marcellinus’s description of it, who was himself a heathen.” But the learned Peter argues that if a doctrine cannot be found, totidem verbis, in so many words, it may be found in so many syllables, or, if that way fail, we shall make them out in a third way, of so many letters.