Epistle to a Good Friend in Italy

because, in my own judgment, I believe I am doing you a pleasant thing, and doing others a fruitful and useful thing, by stepping into the role of an explainer: if I also kindle a small light in this thick and dark forest of those who love the night. But so that I may explore the matter more thoroughly, listen—

II. That the learned men in Holland also note that it is nearly finished with the provinces of the States The United Provinces of the Netherlands and that the Reformed religion—namely, that of the Protestants—is collapsing altogether, not only because of reasons that have led even the most prominent among the States to doubt, such as: private opinion, which in matters of the importance of faith and religion is always rightly suspected; the obscured origin of the church; the disrupted order of bishops; a self-assumed preaching office without authority or commission; the shameful and blasphemous life of the Reformed; the poverty of miracles; palpable errors in doctrine; the falsification of the Holy Divine Scriptures; vain and inconstant fickleness; contempt for the Holy Fathers and for antiquity; the strange obstinacy, sophistry deceptive reasoning, and scorn; and the origin of the Reformed, whose arrogance, contentiousness, and audacity—for all these pieces have been common to the Dutch, along with other pastors and doctors in Germany, France, Britain, Hungary, Bohemia, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, under the Emperor, kings, and princes, and other common estates in Europe that are attached and devoted to the Reformed sect.

III. But also, and principally, because of the highest and