Antoine Marcourt
Romanism
I invoke heaven and earth in witness of the truth against that proud and pompous Papal Mass by which {if God remedy not speedily the evil} the world will be wholly desolated, destroyed, and ruined. For therein is our Lord so outrageously blasphemed and the people so blinded and seduced, that it must no longer to be suffered or endured. It is and ought to be very certain to all Christian faithful that our Lord and only Saviour Jesus Christ, as the great Bishop and Pastor eternally appointed by God, gave his body, soul, life, and blood for our sanctification in perfect sacrifice. Every Christian must needs be assured that the One Sacrifice of Christ, being perfect, demands no repetition. That sacrifice cannot and ought not ever be repeated by any visible sacrifice as though the original sacrifice were of no value or power, insufficient and incomplete; or that Jesus Christ had not fully satisfied God, his Father's justice for us, and that he is not the true Christ, Savior, Pastor, Bishop and Mediator. Still the world has long been, and now is, flooded with wretched sacrificing priests, who yet proclaim themselves liars, inasmuch as they chant every Sunday in their vespers, that Christ is a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. Wherefore not only every man of sound understanding, but they themselves, in spite of themselves, must admit that the Pope and all his brood of cardinals, bishops, monks, and other sanctimonious Mass-sayers, with all who consent thereunto, are false prophets, damnable deceivers, apostates, wolves, false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars and execrable blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus Christ, of his death and passion; false witnesses, traitors, thieves, and robbers of the honor of God, and more detestable than devils. I demand then of all sacrificing priests, whether their sacrifice be perfect or imperfect? If imperfect, why do they deceive the poor people? If perfect, why need it be repeated? Come forward, priests, and reply if you can! --- The body of Christ cannot, it is argued, be contained in the host. It is above, whither also we are bidden raise our hearts and look for the Lord. To breathe or mutter over the bread and wine, and then adore them is idolatry. To enjoin this adoration on others is a doctrine of devils. But these impudent heretics, not ashamed of attempting to imprison the body of Jesus in their wafer, have even dared to place this caution in the rubric of their missals, "If the body of our Lord, being devoured of mice or spiders, has been destroyed or much gnawed, or if the worm be found altogether within, let it be burned and placed in the reliquary." O Earth! How dost thou not open and swallow up these horrible blasphemers! Wretched men, is this the body of the Lord Jesus, the true Son of God? Doth he suffer himself to be eaten of mice and spiders? He who is the bread of angels and of all the children of God, is he given to us to become the food of animals? Will ye make him who is incorruptible at the right hand of God to be the prey of worms and corruption? Were there no other error than this in your infernal theology, well would ye deserve the fagot! Light then your fires to burn yourselves, not us who refuse to believe in your idols, your new gods, and new Christs that suffer themselves to be eaten indifferently by animals and by you who are no better than animals! --- By the Mass all knowledge of Christ is erased, the preaching of the Gospel is rejected and impeded, the time is occupied in bells, howls, chants, vain rituals, lights, incense, disguises and all kinds of sorceries. In this way the poor world {like lamb and sheep} is miserably deceived, diverted, and misled, and consumed, preyed upon, and devoured by these ravaging wolves. Antoine Marcourt {French Placards Respecting the Horrible, Great and Insupportable Abuses of the Papal Mass, 1534}