J. Chaucer

Bp. Jeremy Taylor on the decline of Christian piety since the early church: “Christianity, while pure and zealous, kept its laws for about three hundred years; for so long the Church remained a virgin. During that time, believers were still warmed with their first fires and kept under discipline by the rod of persecution. But for near fourteen hundred years she has declined. Prosperity and pride, luxury and wealth, ambition and self-interest, false doctrine—whether through ignorance or design—the malice of the devil, the sloth of men, corrupt examples, and the loss of reverence for piety, have all brought a grievous decay of holiness and holy living. Jean Papire Masson, one of their own, said of the popes of Rome, “No man looks for holiness in the bishops of Rome; the best are thought to be those who are not extremely wicked, or only a little less good than ordinary men.” The same, alas, is too true of most Christians: a man is now considered excellent if he is not a traitor, or an adulterer, or an oppressor, or a drunkard, or scandalous—if he is not as bad as the publican, as the vilest among those with whom he associates.” (Discourses vol. 2, Sermon XIV.)