Awake thou that sleepest, and stand up from death, and Christ shall give thee light. Eph. v.
THE grace of our Lord, the light of his Spirit to see and M. c. to judge, true repentance towards God’s law, a fast faith in the merciful promises that are in our Saviour Christ, fervent love toward thy neighbour after the ensample of Christ and his saints, be with thee, 0 reader, and with all that love the truth, and long for the redemption of God’s elect2. Amen.
Our Saviour Jesus in the sixteenth of John at his last John xvi. supper, when he took his leave of his disciples, warned them, saying, “The Holy Ghost shall come and rebuke the world of xheHoiy judgment.” That is, he shall rebuke the world for lack of true rebuke the
Jo … world for judgment, and discretion to judge ; and shall prove that the legmen™6 taste of their mouths is corrupt, so that they judge sweet to M. c. iv-vi. be sour, and sour to be sweet ; and the3 eyes to be blind, so that they think that to be the very service of God, which is
[! The letters M. C. in the margin will indicate the passages which Sir Thomas More has commented upon in his Confutation.]
[2 More begins his Confutation with a comment on this prayer, in the following terms. ” Tyndale here beginneth with an holy salutation, and so doth Luther too, and so doth friar Huskyne [CEcolampadius] too, and so doth every fond fellow of any of their sects. But when men consider that where he prayeth ‘God send them a fast faith,’ him self teacheth a false faith against the sacraments, and meaneth that they should be fast in the same, there will no good Christian man can thank him for that holy prayer. And where he prayeth here so holily for the love of the neighbour, if men look on the love that is used among all the masters of that holy sect, and consider their livings, and look upon friar Luther, the very father of their holy sect, and see him run out of religion” [that is, quit a monastery], “and fallen to flesh and carrion, and live in letchery with a nun under name of wedlock, and all the chief heads of them, late monks and friars, and now apostates and living with harlots under the name of wives ; he that looketh on this, and then seeth them and their scholars, as Tyndale here &c.”J
[3 So D. but Sir T. More prints it tlieir in his Confutation.]
6 ANSWER TO SIR THOMAS MORE’s DIALOGUE.
but a blind superstition, for zeal of which yet they persecute the true service of God ; and that they judge to be the law of God, which is but a false imagination of a corrupt judgment, for blind affection of which yet they persecute the true law of God, and them that keep it.
And this same it is that Paul saith in the second of the i cor. ii. first epistle to the Corinthians, how that .the natural man that is not born again, and created anew with the Spirit of God,
M.c.vi-viii. be he never so great a philosopher, never so well seen in the law, never so sore studied in the scripture, as we have
The spiritual ensamples in the Pharisees, yet he cannot understand the
Sings things of the Spirit of God. But saith he, ” The spiritual judgeth all things, and his spirit searcheth the deep secrets of
God;” so that whatsoever God commandeth him to do, he never leaveth searching till he come at the bottom, the pith, the quick, the life, the spirit, the marrow, and very cause
Matt’ Sif3*’ wky) an(^ judgeth all thing. Take an ensample in the great
M. c.x— xiv. commandment, ” Love God with all thine heart :” the spiritual searcheth the cause, and looketh on the benefits of God, and
Rom. xiii. so conceiveth love in heart. And when he is commanded to
M. c. xiv-xv. obey the powers and rulers of the world, he looketh on the
M. c. xv. benefits which God sheweth the world through them, and
Matt. xxii. therefore doth it gladly. And when he is commanded to love
The spiritual m .-I/.T
Shnouetathe~ nis neighbour as himself, he searcheth that his neighbour ought To Lvl is created of God, and bought with Christ’s blood; and so bourse.lgh forth : and therefore he loveth him out of his heart ; and if he be evil, forbeareth him, and with all love and patience draweth him to good : as elder brethren wait on the younger, and serve them and suffer them ; and when they will not come, they speak fair, and flatter, and give some gay thing, and promise fair, and so draw them and smite them not; but, if they may in no wise be holp, refer the punishment to the father and mother ; and so forth. And by these judgeth he all other laws of God, and understandeth the true use and meaning of them. And by these understandeth he, in the laws Jx’x0’ xix~~ °f manJ which are right and which tyranny.
If God should command him to drink no wine, as he com manded in the old Testament that the priests should not, when they ministered in the temple, and forbade divers meats ; Man is lord the spiritual (because he knoweth that man is lord over all over all the r thlaeturtehof otner creatures, and they his servants, made to be at his
PREFACE TO THE READER. 7 pleasure, and that it is not commanded for the wine or meat itself, that man should be in bondage unto his own servant, the inferior creature) ceaseth not to search the cause : and when he findeth it, that it is to tame the flesh and that he be alway sober, he obeyeth gladly ; and yet not so superstitiously, that the time of his disease he would not drink wine in the way of a medicine to recover his health ; as David ate of the hallowed bread ; and as Moses for necessity i sam. XXL left the children of Israel uncircumcised forty years, where of circumcision likelihood some died uncircumcised, and were yet thought to be in no worse case than they that were circumcised ; as the children that died within the eighth day were counted in as good case as they that were circumcised : which ensamples M. c. might teach us many things, if there were spirit in us. And likewise of the holy-day : he knoweth that the day is servant to man; and therefore, when he findeth that it is done because he should not be let from hearing the word of God, he obey-eth gladly ; and yet not so superstitiously, that he would not help his neighbour on the holy-day, and let the sermon alone for one day ; or that he would not work on the holy-day, need requiring it, at such time as men be not wont to be at church: and so throughout all laws. And even likewise in The si all ceremonies and sacraments, he searcheth the significations, and will not serve the visible things. It is as good to him, that the priest say mass in his gown as in his other apparel, jfg; xxxiii if they teach him not somewhat, and that his soul be edified ~xlL thereby. And as soon will he gape while thou puttest sand ceremonies as holy salt in his mouth, if thou shew him no reason thereof. £(*)& docHe had as lief be smeared with unhallowed butter as anointed with charmed oil, if his soul be not taught to understand somewhat thereby ; and so forth1.
But the world captivateth his wit2, and about the law of M. c. God maketh him wonderful imaginations, unto which he so V1’ fast cleaveth that ten John Baptists were not able to dispute them out of his head. He believeth that he loveth God, because he is ready to kill a Turk for his sake, that believeth M. c. better in God than he; whom God also commandeth us
[* In p. xli. of his Confutation, More turns away from this preface to quote and controvert different passages in The Obedience, and so proceeds to p. Ixxiv.]
[2 That is, the natural man’s.]