it is argued that disobedience to authority is more likely to lead the simple astray. Further, as items conducive to order and decency, vestments are part of the church's general task as defined by Saint Paul, though they are not expressly mandated. Appended to the main argument are five translated letters exchanged under Edward VI between Bucer and Cranmer (one has a paragraph omitted that expresses reservations about vestments causing superstition) and between Hooper, a Lasco, Bucer and Martyr. Following this retort came another nonconformist pamphlet, which J. W. Martin speculatively attributes to Crowley: An answere for the Tyme, to the examination put in print, without the author's name, pretending to the prescribed against the declaration of the of London (1566). Nothing new is said, but vestments are now emphatically described as idolatrous abuses with reference to radically iconoclastic Old Testament texts. By this point, the idea that vestments are inherently indifferent had been virtually abandoned and seems to be contradicted at one point in the text. The contradiction is resolved, tenuously, with the point that vestments do possess a theoretical indifference apart from all practical considerations, but their past usage (i.e. their abuse) thoroughly determines their present and future evil and non-indifference. The author declares that vestments are monuments "of a thing that is left or set up for a remembraunce, which is Idolatry, and not onely remembraunce, but some aestimacion: therefore they are monumentes of idolatry." The argument in A Brief Examination for the church's prerogative in establishing practices not expressly mandated in scripture is gleefully attacked as an open door to papistry and paganism: the mass, the pope, purgatory, and even the worship of Neptune are not expressly forbidden, but that does not make them permissible. It becomes clear in the development of this point that the nonconformist faction believed that the Bible always had at least a general relevance to every possible question and activity: "the scripture hath left nothing free or indifferent to mens lawes, but it must agree with those generalle condicions before rehearsed, and such like." On the issue of authority and obedience, the author grants that one should often obey even when evil is commanded by legitimate authorities, but such authority is said not to extend beyond temporal (as opposed to ecclesiastical) matters—a point in which we may see a clear origin of English anti-prelatical/anti-episcopal sentiment and separatism. The author regards it