Where Was Your Religion Before Luther?

To this the answer will be very short and easy, but then it will cast the whole stress of the business upon the later question. I say then, that our religion, as to the rules and principles of it, was before Luther, where it has been ever since, in the Scriptures: and as to the profession of it, it has been owned and maintained by the faithful in all ages, namely, such as have been kept by the power of God through faith to salvation, against whom the gates of Hell and Rome have not been able to prevail. The Protestant religion, we contend for, is nothing else, but Christianity uncorrupted, which was in its greatest purity before ever the Pope was heard of in the world. And Popery, that we oppose, is Christianity adulterated, or rather Paganism Christianized, which was in the cradle when the mystery of iniquity began to work, and grew up to be the man of sin, when Popes had gulled the world into so much slavery, as to endure their trampling upon princes. And this truth, as it appears in great measure from the fathers and historians of the Church, and from all antiquity, that has had the good fortune to escape the Expurgatory Index; so it is more especially, and most evidently manifest from the Scriptures, which makes way for the second question, which is the main subject of this epistle, namely,