[Scotus examines the question, Utrum beata virgo fuerit concepta in]
[originali peccato. He begins the discussion with observing, Circa]
[primum arguitur quod sicut in Adam omnes peccaverunt (Rom. v.)]
pope, for the devotion of that the grey friars gave him, ye may well think, made an article of the faith.
And finally, as for the miracles, they are to make a man astonied and to wonder, and to draw him to hear the word earnestly, rather than to write it in his heart. For whosoever hath no other feeling of the law of God, that it is good, than because of miraeles, the same shall believe in Christ as did Simon Magus and Judas, and as they that came out of Egypt with Moses, and fell away at every temptation; and shall have 800d Works like unto our popes, bishops, and cardinals. And God. therefore, when the scripture is fully received, there is no need of miracles: insomuch that they which will not believe Moses and the prophets, when the scripture is received, the same will be no true believers by the reason of miracles, though one arose from death to life to preach unto them, by the testimony of Christ.
And again, how doth St Jerome, Augustine, Bede!, and many other old doctors, that were before the pope was crope up.into the consciences of men, and had sent forth his damnable sects, to preach him under the name of Christ, as Christ prophesied it should be, expound this text, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church;” and this text, “Peter, feed my sheep;” and, “All power is given mein heaven and in earth;” and innumerable such texts clean contrary unto all those new old holy doctors, that have made the pope a god? They knew of no power that man should have in the kingdom of Christ, but to preach Christ truly. They knew of no power that the pope should have, to send to pur- — gatory or to deliver thence; neither of any pardons, nor of any such confession as they preach and teach; neither were many that are articles with you, articles of their faith. They all preached forgiveness of sins through repentance toward the law, and faith in our Saviour Christ: as all the scripture plainly doth, and can no otherwise be taken, and as all the hearts of as many as love the law of God, do feel, as surely as the finger feeleth the fire hot.
[non nisi quia fuerunt in eo secundum rationem seminalem, ita fuit in]
[€o beata virgo; ergo, &c. But he proceeds to set aside this and every -]
[other argument and authority; and determines the question in the]
[negative. Lib. mr. Dist. 3. qu. 1.] [1 See Vol. 1. notes to pp. 217, 218.]]
An answer unto Master More’s Third Book
In his third book he proceedeth forth as before, to prove that the opinions which the popish teach without scripture are of equal authority with the scripture. He asketh, What if there had never been scripture written?’ I answer, God careth for his elect; and therefore hath provided them of scripture, to try all things, and to defend them from all false prophets. And I say moreover, that if there had been no scripture written, that God, for his mercy and fatherly love and care towards his elect, must have provided, that there should never have been heresies, or, against all times when sects should arise, have stirred up preachers to confound the heresies with miracles, Take this example: the Greeks have the scripture, and serve God therein, much more diligently than we. Now let us give that there were no scripture, but that we received all our faith by the authority of our elders, and the Greeks by the authority of their elders. When I shall dispute with a Greek about the articles of the faith which my elders taught me, and his elders deny, as ear-confession, the holy pardons of the pope, and all his power that he hath above other bishops, and many other things beside the scripture, which we hold for articles of our faith, and they deny; if there be no other proof of either part than to say, My elders, which cannot err, so affirm;’ and that he should answer, His elders, which cannot err, so deny;’ what reason is it, that I should leave the authority of my elders, and go and believe his; or that he should leave the authority of his elders, and come and believe mine? None at all, verily. But the one party must shew a miracle, or else we must refer our causes unto authentic scripture, received in old time, and confirmed with miracles, and therewith try the controversy of our elders.
And when he asketh, whether there were no true faith from Adam to Noe?’ I answer, that God partly wrote their faith in their sacrifices, and partly the patriarchs were full of miracles, as ye may see in the bible.
And when More, to utter his darkness and blind ignorance saith, that they which were overwhelmed with Noe’s flood had a good faith, and bringeth for him Nicolas de Lyra?; I
[[? Now as for the days, quod I, of Noe himself, though there were]
answer, that Nicolas de Lyra delirat. For it is impossible to have a faith to be saved by, except a man consent unto God’s law with all his heart and all his soul, that it is righteous, holy, good, and to be kept of all men, and thereupon repent that he hath broken it, and sorrow that his flesh moveth unto the contrary; and then come and believe that God for his mercy will forgive him all that he hath done against the law, and will help him io tame his flesh, and suffer his weakness in the mean season, till he be waxed stronger: which faith if they that perished in Noe’s flood had had, they could not but have mended their livings, and had not hardened their hearts through unbelief, and provoked the wrath of God, and waxed worse and worse an hundred and twenty years, which God gave them to repent; until God could no longer suffer them, but washed their filthiness away with the flood, (as he doth the pope’s shameful! abominations with like inundations of water,) and destroyed them utterly.
[few saved alive, yet proveth not that the people to be all miscreants]
[and without faith. For it fared by them as it fareth now by us, that]
[there were many that believed the truth and had a faith; but they]
[followed the flesh, and sank for their sin. And albeit that in the first]
[epistle of St Peter it might seem some ineredulity in them, yet may]
[it be that it stretched no further than to the lack of fear in the cre-]
[dence of God’s commination, and overmuch hope and boldness of]
[God’s further favour and sufferance; whereof they repented after, too]
[late for this present life, and yet many through God’s mercy not too]
[late for the final salvation of their souls (as appeareth by the good]
[and great clerk, Nicolaus de Lyra, upon the same place), which could.]
[in no wise have been so if they had lacked faith.” Mores Works,]
[p.205. The passage referred to in N. de Lyra is: Potest dici proba-]
[biliter quod, videntes diluvium increscere secundum quod preedixerat]
[Noe, crediderunt multi, qui prius erant increduli, et penituerunt de]
[peccatis suis, et sic descenderunt ad limbum cum patribus aliis. Si]
[autem contra hoc dicatur quod diluvium venit sic subito quod non]
[potuerunt penitere; secundum quod videtur Salvator dicere, Edebant]
[et bibebant &c. et venit diluvium et perdidit omnes; Dicendum quod]
[licet subito venerit in vallibus et plana terra, non tamen sic in montibus,]
[quia aqu: in augmento suo posuerunt quadraginta dies et quadraginta]
[noctes. Et sic habitantes in locis arduis videntes aquas increscere,]
[sicut dixerat Noe, potuerunt penitere; et forte de aliis sieut de istis]
[dicitur, Qui in creduli fuerant aliquando; scilicet ante inundationem’]
[diluvii, sed tune crediderunt. Part. vi. 221. D. Basil. 1508. Postill. in.]
[1 Pet. iii. 19.] [1 So D., but C. U. L. ed. has same.]]
And when he asketh, whether Abraham believed no more than was written for him?’ I ask him how he will prove that there was no writing in Abraham’s time, and that Abraham wrote not? And again, as for Abraham’s person, he received his faith of God; which to confirm unto others, miracles were shewed daily.
And when he feigneth forth, that they believed only because they knew their elders could not err: how could they know that without miracles, or writing confirmed with miracles, more than the Turk knoweth that his elders, so many hundred years, in so great a multitude cannot err; and teach false doctrine, to damn the believers? And the contrary doth Master More see in all the bible, how after all was received in seripture, confirmed with miracles, and though miracles ceased not, but were shewed daily, yet the elders erred and fell to idolatry, an hundred for one that bode in the right way; and led the younger into error with them so sore, that God, to save the younger, was fain to destroy the elders, and to begin his testament afresh with the new generation.
He seeth also that the most part were alway idolaters, for all the scripture and true miracles thereto, and believed the false miracles of the devil, because his doctrine was more agreeable unto their carnal understanding than the doctrine of God’s Spirit; as it now goeth with the pope. Did not scribes, Pharisees, and priests, which were the elders, err?
And when he asketh, who taught the church to know the true scripture from false books’? Ianswer, true miracles, that confounded the false, gave authority unto the true scripture. And thereby have we ever since judged all other books and doctrine; and by that we know that your legends be corrupt with lies: as Erasmus hath improved many false books, which ye have feigned and put forth in the name of St Jerome, Augustine, Cyprian, Dionyse, and of other, partly with authentic stories, and partly by the style and Latin, and like evident tokens.
And when M, More saith, unto them that believe nought but the scripture he will prove with the scripture, that we be bound to believe the church in things, wherefor they have no scripture; because God hath promised in the scripture that the Holy Ghost shall teach his church all truth: nay, that text will not prove it. For the first church taught nought,
but they confirmed it with miracles, which could not be done.bubof God, till the scripture was authentically received. And the church following teacheth nought that they will have beand ]ieved, as an article of the faith, but that which the scripture proveth and maintaineth: as St Augustine protesteth of his works, that men should compare them unto the scripture, and thereby judge them, and cast away whatsoever the scripture did not allow!. And therefore they that will be believed without scripture are false hypocrites, and not Christ’s church. For though I know that that messenger which Christ sendeth cannot lie; yet in a company where many liars be, I cannot know which is he, without a token of scripture or of miracle.
And when he saith the scripture itself maketh us not to believe the scripture, but the church teacheth us to know the ^ scripture; for a man might read it, and not believe 105 τ and go T say, that a man might hear you preach, and yet believe you not also. And I say thereto, that your church teacheth not to know the scripture, but hideth it in the Latin from the. common people; and from them that understand Latin they — hide the true sense with a thousand false glosses. And I say — moreover, that the scripture is the cause why men believe the scripture; as well as a preacher is the cause why men behis preaching. For as he that first told in England that the Rhodes was taken, was the cause why some believed. it; even so might writing, sent from those parts, be the cause that some men which read it believed it. M. More will say, that letter had his authority of the man that sent it; and so hath the scripture her authority of the church. Nay, the scripture hath her authority of him that sent it, that is to wete, of God, which thing the miracles did testify; and not of the man that brought it.
He will say, thou knowest the scripture by their shewing. T grant, at the beginning I do. Then will he say, Why should ye not believe them, in all their other doctrine besides the-seripture, and in all their expositions of the scripture, as
[1 Noli meis literis quasi scripturis canonicis inservire: sed in illis]
[et quod non credebas cum inveneris, incunctanter crede; in istis]
[autem quod certum non habebas nisi certum intellexeris, noli firmiter]
[retinere.—Aug. de Trinit. Lib. rrr. Procem.] [? More’s Works, p. 206.]]
2 ali uU THE THIRD BOOK. 137 well as ye believe them, when they tell you that such and such books are the scripture? May they not shew you a false book?’ Yes, and therefore at the beginning I believe all alike. Every lie that they tell, out of their own brains, we believe to be scripture; and so should I believe them if they shewed me a false book: but when I have read the scripture, and find not their doctrine there, nor depend? thereof, I do not give so gréat credence unto their other doctrine, as unto the scripture. Why? For I find more witnesses unto the scripture than unto their other doctrine. I find whole nations and countries that receive the scripture, and refuse their other doctrine, and their expositions in many places. And I find the scripture otherwise expounded of them of old time, than they, which now will be the church, expound it: whereby their doctrine is the more suspect. I find mention made of the scripture in stories, that it was, when I can find no mention or likelihood, that their doctrine was. I find in all ages that men have resisted their doctrine with the scripture, and have suffered death by the hundred thousands in resisting their doctrine. I see their doctrine brought in and maintained by a contrary way to that by which the scripture was brought in. 1 find by the self-same scripture, when I look diligently thereon, that their other doctrine cannot stand therewith. I find in the scripture that they which have not Christ’s Spirit, to follow the steps of his living, pertain not unto Christ (Rom. viii.). I find in the scripture, that they which walk in their carnal birth, after the manner of the children of Adam, cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. ii.). 1 find in the scripture that they which seek glory cannot believe Christ (John v.) I find in the scripture, that they which submit not themselves to do the will of God, cannot know what doctrine is of God, and what not (John vii) I find in the scripture, (Jer. xxxi. and Heb. viii), that all the children of God, which only are the true members of his church, have every one of them the law of God written in their hearts; so that if there were no law to compel, they would yet naturally, out of their own hearts, keep the law of God; yea, and against violence compelling to the contrary.
And I see that they which wil be the church, (and to
[3 Depend, for to depend.]
prove it, have! not so great trust in the scripture as in their sophistry, and in the sword which they have set up in all lands, to keep them with violence in the room,) are so far off from having the laws of God written in their hearts, that they fom neither by God’s law, nor man’s, refrain from their open outward wicked living. Look in the chronicles, what blood it hath cost England, to attempt to bring them under the law! Yea, and see what business the realm hath had to keep the prelates within the realm from taking the benefices with them, and lying at Rome, and yet scarcely brought it to pass, for all that the pope hath the stint of every bishoprick and of every great abbey thereto, as oft as any is void, ere a new be admitted to the room. And I see them bond unto their own will, and both to do, and to consent unto other to do, all that God hath forbidden. I see them, of all people, most vain-glorious. I see them walk after their fleshly birth. I see them so far off from the image of Christ, that not only they will not die for their flock after his ensample, but also ere they would lose one town, or village, any polling, or privilege which they have falsely gotten, bringing themselves into good pastures with wiles, and shutting their flock without, they would cast away an hundred thousand of them in one day, and beggar their realms, yea, and interdict them, and bring in strange nations, though it were the Turks, to conquer them and slay them up, so much as the innocent in the cradle. And I see that their other doctrine is for their vantage only, and that therewith they have gotten all that they have.
And I find in the scripture that the Jews, before the coming of Christ, knew that those books were the scripture by — the seribes and the Pharisees. And yet as many as believed — their other doctrine, and many expositions of the seripture, were deceived, as ye see; and how Christ delivered them out of error. And I see again (which is no small miracle), that the merciful care of God to keep the scripture to be a testimony unto his elect is so great, that no men be more jealous over the books, to keep them, and shew them, and to allege that they be the scripture of God and true, than they which, when it is read in their ears, have no power to believe it; as the Jews and the popish. And therefore, because they neither. ean believe it false, neither consent that it is true as it sound-
So but Aath.]
ἡ eth plainly in their ears, in that it is so contrary unto their fleshly wisdom, from which they cannot depart; they seek a thousand glosses, to turn it into another sense, to make it agree unto their beastliness; and where it will receive no such glosses, there they think that no man understandeth it.
Then in the end of the chapter M. More cometh unto his wise conclusion, and proveth nothing, save sheweth his ignorance, as in all things. He saith, We believe the doctrine of the scripture without scripture, as for an ensample, the pope’s pardons, because only that the church so teacheth, though no scripture confirmeth it Why so? Because,’ saith he, the Holy Ghost by inspiration, if I do my endeavour, and captivate mine understanding, teacheth me to believe the church concerning God’s word, taught by the church and graven in men’s hearts without scripture, as well as he teacheth us to believe words written in the scripture.” Mark where he is now. Afore he saith, the scripture causeth us not to believe the scripture; for a man may read it and believe it not. And much more the preacher maketh us not to believe the preacher; for a man may hear him and believe him not also: as we see the apostles could not cause all men to believe them. For though the scripture be an outward instrument, and the preacher also, move men to believe, yet the chief and principal cause why a man believeth, or believeth not, is within: that is, the Spirit of God teacheth his children to believe; and the devil blindeth his children, and keepeth them in unbelief, and maketh them to consent unto lies, and think good evil, and evil good: as the Acts of the apostles say in many places, “There believed as many as were ordained unto everlasting life.” And Christ saith (John viii.), “They that be of God hear God’s word.” And unto the wicked Jews he saith, “Ye cannot believe, because ye be not of God.” And in the same place saith he, “Ye be of your father the devil, and his will ye will do; and he bode not in the truth,” and therefore will not suffer his children to consent to the truth. And (John in the xth) saith Christ, “All that came before me be thieves and murderers, but my sheep heard not their voices:” that is, all that preach any salvation save in Christ, murder the souls. Howbeit, Christ’s sheep could not consent to their lies, as the rest cannot but believe lies; so that there is ever a remnant kept by grace. And of this I have seen divers examples. I have known as
But M. More peppereth his conclusion, lest men should feel the taste, saying, If we endeavour ourselves, and captive our understanding to believe! Ο how beetle-blind is fleshly reason! ‘The will hath none operation at allin the working of faith in my soul, no more than the child hath in the begetting of his father: for, saith Paul, It is the gift of God,” and ποῦ of us, My wit must conclude good or bad, ere my will — can love or hate. My wit must shew me a true cause, or an apparent cause why, ere my will have any working at all. And of that peppering it well appeareth what the pope’s faith
[1 “As when we hear the scripture or read it, if we be not re-]
[bellious, but endeavour ourselves to believe, and captive and subdue]
[our understanding to serve and follow faith, praying for his gracious]
[aid and help, he then worketh with us, and inwardly doth incline our]
[heart into the assent of that we read, and after a little spark of our]
[faith increaseth the credence in our incredulity; so doth his good-]
[ness, in like wise, incline and move the mind of every like toward and]
[like well-willing body, to the giving of fast and firm credence to the]
[faith that the church teacheth him, in such things as be not in the]
[scripture, and to believe that God hath taught his church those things]
[without writing.” More’s Dial. Works, p. 206.]]
is; even a blind imagination of their natural wit, wrought without the light of the Spirit of God, agreeing unto their voluptuous lusts, in which their beastly will so delighteth, that he will not let their wits attend unto any other learning, for unquieting himself, and stirring from his pleasure and delectation.
And thus we be as far asunder as ever we were, and his mighty arguments prove not the value of a poding-prick? M. More feeleth in his heart by inspiration, and with his endeavouring himself and captivating his understanding to believe it, that there is a purgatory as hot as hell; wherein if a silly soul were appointed by God to lie a thousand years, to purge him withal, the pope, for the value of a groat, shall command him thence full purged in the twinkling of an eye; and by as good reason, if he were going thence, keep him there still. He feeleth by inspiration, and in captivating his wits, that the pope can work wonders with a calf’s skin; that he can command one to eat flesh, though he be never so lusty, and that another eat none on pain of damnation, though he should die for lack of it; and that he can forgive sin and not the pain, and as much and as little of the pain, or all if he lust, and yet can neither help him to love the law, or to believe, or to hate the flesh, seeing he preacheth not. And such things innumerable M. More feeleth true; and therefore believeth that the pope is the true church.
And I clean contrary feel, that there is no such worldly and fleshly imagined purgatory. For I feel that the souls be purged only by the word of God, and doctrine of Christ; as it is written (John xv.), Ye be clean through the word,” saith Christ to his apostles. And I feel again, that he which is clean through the doctrine needeth not but to wash his feet only, for his head and hands are clean already (John xiii.); that is, he must tame his flesh, and keep it under, for his soul is elean already through the doctrine. I feel also that bodily pain doth but purge the body only; insomuch that the pain not only purgeth not the soul, but maketh it more foul, except that there be kind learning by, to purge the soul: so that the more a man beateth his son, the worse he is, except he teach him lovingly, and shew him kindness besides; partly to keep him from desperation, and partly that he fall not into
[2 Or pudding-fork. More in this same book of his Dialogue speaks]
[of a great post well thwyted to a pudding-prick.”]]
” ES 142 ANSWER TO SIR THOMAS MORE’S DIALOGUE. [CHAP.-hate of his father and of his commandment thereto, and think that his father is a tyrant and his law but tyranny. is M. More feeleth, with his good endeavour and inspiration together, that a man may have the best faith coupled with the worst life and with consenting to sin. And I feel that jit is impossible to believe truly, except a man repent; and that it is impossible to trust in the mercy that is in Christ, or to feel it, but that a man must immediately love God and his ‘ commandments, and therefore disagree and disconsent unto La flesh, and be at bate therewith, and fight against it. And 1 feel that every soul that loveth the law, and hateth his flesh, and believeth in Christ’s blood, hath his sins which he com- mitted, and pain which he deserved, in hating the law and / consenting unto his flesh, forgiven him by that faith. And I feel that the frailty of the flesh, against which a believing soul fighteth to subdue it, is also forgiven, and not reckoned or imputed for sin, all the time of our curing: as a kind father and mother reckon not, or impute the impossibility of their young children to consent unto their law; and as when the children be of age and consent, then they reckon not nor impute the impossibility of the flesh to follow it immediately, but take all aworth, and love them no less, but rather more tenderly than their old and perfect children that do their commandments, so long as they go to school, and learn such things as their fathers and mothers set them to.
And I believe that every soul that repenteth, believeth, and loveth the law, is through that faith a member of Christ’s church, and pure, without spot or wrinkle, as Paul affirmeth (Eph. v): And it is an article of my belief, that Christ’s elect church is holy and pure without sin, and every member of “the same, through faith in Christ; and that they be in the and full favour of God. And I feel that the uncleanness of the soul is but the consent unto sin and unto the flesh. And therefore I feel that every soul that believeth, and consenteth unto the law, and here in this life hateth his flesh and the lusts thereof, and doth his best to drive sin out of his flesh, and for hate of the sin gladly departeth from his flesh; when he is dead, and the lusts of the flesh slain with death, needeth not as it were bodily tormenting, to be purged of that whereof he is quit already. And therefore, if aught remain, it is but to be taught, and not to be beaten. And I feel that every
soul, that beareth fruit in Christ, shall be purged of the Father to bear more fruit day by day, as is written (John xv.) not in the pope’s purgatory, where no man feeleth it, but here in this life such fruit as is unto his neighbour’s profit; so that he which hath his hope in Christ purgeth himself here, as Christ is pure (1 John iii); and that ever yet the blood of Jesus only doth purge us of all our sins, for the imperfectness of our works. And I feel that the forgiveness of sins is to remit mercifully the pain that I have deserved. And I do believe that the pain that I here suffer in my flesh is to keep the body under, and to serve my neighbour, and not to make satisfaction unto God for the fore sins.
And therefore, when the pope describeth God after his covetous complexion, and when Master More feeleth by inspiration, and captivating his wits unto the pope, that God forgiveth the everlasting pain, and will yet punish me a thousand years in the pope’s purgatory, that leaven savoureth not in my mouth. I understand my father’s words as they sound, and after the most merciful manner; and not after the pope’s leaven and M. More’s captivating his wits, to believe that every poet’s fable is a true story. There is no father here that punisheth his son to purge him, when he is purged already, and hath utterly forsaken sin and evil, and hath submitted himself unto his father’s doctrine. For to punish a man that has forsaken sin of his own accord, is not to purge him, but to satisfy the lust of a tyrant: neither ought it to be called purgatory, but a jail of tormenting, and a satisfactory. And when the pope saith itjsb is done to satisfy the righteousness, as a judge, I say we that believe have no judge of him, but a father; neither shall we come into judgment, as Christ hath promised us, but are received under grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Shew the pope a little money, and God is so merciful that there is no purgatory And why is not the fire out as well, if I offer for me the blood of Christ? If Christ hath deserved all for me, who gave the pope might to keep part of his deservings from me, and to buy and sell Christ’s merits, and to make merchandise over us with feigned words? And thus, as M More feeleth that the pope is holy church, I feel that he is antichrist; and as my feeling can be no proof to him, no more can his, with all his captivating his wits to believe
phantasies, be unto me. Wherefore, if he have no other probation, to prove that the pope is holy church, than that his heart so agreeth unto his learning, he ought of no right to compel with sword unto his sect. Howbeit there are ever two manner people that will cleave unto God, a fleshly and a spiritual. The spiritual, which be of God, shall hear God’s word; and the children of the truth shall consent unto the truth. And contrary, the fleshly and children of falsehood and of the devil, whose hearts be full of lies, shall naturally consent unto lies: as young children, though they have eat themselves as good as dead with fruit, yet will not, nor cannot, believe him that telleth them that such fruit is naught; but him that praiseth them will they hear, and eat themselves stark dead, because their hearts be full of lies, and they judge all things as they appear unto the eyes. And the fleshly-minded, as soon as he believeth of God as much as the devil doth, he hath enough; and goeth to, and geryeth God with bodily service, as he before served his idols, and after his own imagination; and not in the spirit, in loving his laws and believing his promises, or longing for them: no, if he might ever live in the flesh, he would never desire them. And God must do for him again, not what God hath! promised, but what he lusteth. And his brother that serveth God in the spirit, according to God’s word, him will the carnal beast persecute: so that he which will godly live, must suffer persecution unto the world’s end, according to the doctrine of Christ and of his apostles, and according unto the ensamples that are gone before.
And finally, I have better reasons for my feeling that the pope is antichrist, than M. More hath for his endeavouring himself, and captivating his wits, that he is the true Church. For the church that was the true messenger of ”^ God, hath ever shewed a sign and a badge thereof, either a ὦ present miracle or authentic scripture; insomuch that Moses, when he was sent, asked, How shall they believe me?” And God gave him a sign, as ever before and since. — Neither was there any other cause of the writing of the new and the last and everlasting Testament, than that when miracles ceased, we might have wherewith to defend ourselves against false doctrine and heresies; which we could not do, if we
So has had.]
were bound to believe that were nowhere written. And again, if the pope could not err in his doctrine, he could not sin of purpose and profession, abominably and openly, above the Turks and all the heathen that ever were; and defend it so maliciously as he hath, eight hundred years long; and wil not be reformed; and maketh them his saints and his defenders, that sin as he doth. He persecuteth as the carnal church ever did, when the scripture is away; he proveth his doctrine with the scripture, and as soon as the scripture cometh to light, he runneth away unto his sophistry and unto his sword. We see also by stories how your confession, penance, and pardons, are come up; and whence your purgatory is sprung. And your falsehood in the sacraments we see by open scripture. And all your works we rebuke with the scripture; and therewith prove that the false belief, that ye couple to them, may not stand with the true faith that is in our Saviour Jesus.
The Second Chapter
In the end of the second chapter he bringeth in Eutychus, that fell out at a window, (Acts xx.) whom,” saith he, St Paul’s merits did recover.” Verily, Paul durst not say so; but that Christ’s merits did it. Peter saith, (Acts iil), Ye men of Israel, why gaze ye and stare upon us, as though we by our power and godliness had made this man go?” Nay, the name of Jesus, and faith that is in him, hath given him strength and made him sound. And even here it was the name of Jesus, through Paul’s faith, that did that miracle; and not Paul’s merits, though he were never so holy.
The Third Chapter
In the third chapter he saith, that “Bilney’s judges, (which he yet nameth not, for fear of slandering them) were indifferent.” Nay, they that take rewards be not indifferent: for rewards and gifts blind the eyes of the seeing, and pervert the words of the righteous” (Deut. xvi) Now all they that be shorn take great rewards to defend pilgrimages, purgatory, and praying unto saints: even the third part, I trow, of all Christendom. For all they have, they have received in the name of purgatory and of saints; and 10
[Tyndale, 111]
is on that foundation be all their bishopricks, abbeys, colleges, and cathedral churches built. If they be indifferent judges, they must be made servants, and do service as their duty is. And when they have done a quarter’s service, then give them wages, as right is: unto every man that laboureth in Christ’s harvest a sufficient living, and no more; and that in the name of his labour, and not of saints, and so forth. And then they shall be more indifferent judges, when there cometh no vantage to judge more on one side than another.
The Fourth Chapter
Τὴ the end of the fourth he saith, The man! took an oath secretly, and was dismissed with secret penance.” O hypocrites! why dare ye not do it openly?
The Fifth Chapter
In the fifth, the messenger asketh him whether he were present? And he denieth and saith ever, He heard say.’ Alas, sir! why take you bribes to defend that you know not?- Why suffer you not them that were present, and to whom the matter pertaineth, to lie for themselves? is Then he jesteth out the matter with Wilkin and Simkin, and a as he doth Hunne? and every thing; because men should not consider their falsehood earnestly. Wherein behold his subtle conveyance. He asketh, What, if Simkin would have sworn that he saw men make those prints?” Where- 1 unto M. More answereth under the name of quod he,” that he would swear that, besides the loss of the wager, he had lost his honesty and his soul thereto.” Behold this man’s gravity: how could you that do, when the case is possible? You should have put him to his proofs, and bid him bring record?,
Then saith he, the church receiveth no man convict of heresy unto mercy; but of mercy receiveth him to open shame.” Of such mercy, God give them plenty that are so merciful.
[[! That is, Bilney.] [2 In the fifteenth chapter, yet to be noticed. ] j [3 It would require the insertion of a tedious poor jest of More’s, —]
[to make all the clauses of this paragraph thoroughly intelligible to the]
[reader.]]
Then he sheweth “how merciful they were, to receive the man to penance, that abode still in perjury and deadly sin.” O shameless hypocrites! how can ye receive into the congregation of Christ an open obstinate sinner, that repenteth not, when ye are commanded of Christ to cast all such out? And again, O scribes and Pharisees, by what example of Christ and of his doctrine can ye put a man that repenteth unto open shame; and to that thing whereby ever after he is had in derision among his brethren, of whom he ought to be loved, and not mocked? Ye might enjoin honest things, to tame his flesh, as prayer and fasting; and not that which should be to him shame ever after, and such as ye yourselves would not do.
The Seventh Chapter
In the seventh chapter, he maketh much to do about swearing, and that for a subtle purpose. Notwithstanding, the truth is, that no judge ought to make a man swear against his will, for many inconvenients. If a man receive an office, he that putteth him in the room ought to charge him to do it truly, and may, and haply ought, to take an oath of him. If a man offer himself to bear witness, the judge may, and of some haply ought, to take an oath of ihem; but to compel a man to bear witness, ought he not.
And moreover, if a judge put a man to an oath, that he shall answer unto all that he shall be demanded of, he ought to refuse, Howbeit, if he have sworn, and then the wicked judge ask him of things hurtful unto his neighbour, and against the love that is in Christ, then he must repent that he hath sworn; but not sin again to fulfil his oath. For it is against God’s commandment, that a man should hurt his neighbour that hath not deserved it.
The Eighth Chapter
Unto church, priest, charity, grace, confession and penance, is answered him in the beginning of the book. And when he saith “Tyndale was confederate with Luther,” that is not truth.
The Ninth Chapter
Than his ninth chapter, is there nothing more foolish. 10—2
For if he would have any wise man to believe that my translation would destroy the mass, any otherwise than the Latin or Greek text, he should have alleged the place, and how.
The Eleventh Chapter
In the eleventh chapter, M. More will not defend the living of our spiritualty; because it is so open that he can- Πού, And as little should he be able to defend their lies, if the light were abroad that men might see. And as he cannot deny them abominable, so cannot he deny them obstinate and indurate therein; for they have been oft rebuked with God’s word, but in vain. And of such the text is plain, that they cannot understand the scripture. And yet M. More will receive rewards, to dispute against the heresies of some such as be cast out of Christ’s churches by such holy patriarchs, whose livings he himself cannot praise: as holy Judas, though the prelates of his church, that is the Pharisees, were never so abominable, yet because Christ’s doctrine was condemned of them, as of God’s church that could not err, and all that believed on him excommunicate, he was bold to say, Quid vultis mihi dare, et ego tradam eum vobis? that is, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you?”
The Twelfth Chapter
of an In the twelfth he hath one conclusion, that the prayers of an evil priest profit not.” Which though it be true, yet the contrary is believed among a great many in all quarters of England; so blind be the people, and wot not what prayer ^1 meaneth. I have heard men of no small reputation say, ere this, in great audience, that it maketh no matter whether the priest were good or bad, so he took money to pray, (as they seldom pray without;) for he could not hurt the prayer, were he never so naughty. ^ And when he saith that “the evil priest hurteth us not so much with his living, as he profiteth us with ministering the sacraments;” O worldly wisdom! if a man lead me through a jeopardous place by day, he cannot hurt me so greatly as by night. The Turk seeth that murder, theft, extortion, oppression, and adultery be sin. But when he leadeth me by the
darkness of sacraments without signification, I cannot but catch harm, and put my trust and confidence in that which is neither God nor his word. As for an ensample, what trust put the people in anoiling, and how they ery for it, with no other knowledge than that the oil saveth them; unto their damnation, and denying of Christ’s blood!
And when he saith, “the priest offereth, or sacrificeth Christ’s body;” I answer, Christ was offered once for all,” as it is to see in the epistle to the Hebrews. As the priest slayeth Christ, breaketh his body, and sheddeth his blood, so he sacrificeth him and offereth him. Now the priest slayeth him not actually, nor breaketh his body actually, nor sheddeth his blood actually, neither scourgeth him, and so forth, throughout all his passion; but representeth his slaying, his bodybreaking, and blood-shedding for my sins, and all the rest of his passion, and playeth it before mine eyes only: which signification of the mass because the people understand not, therefore they receive no forgiveness of their sins thereby; and thereto cannot but catch hurt in their souls, through a false faith, as it well appeareth how every man cometh thereto for a sundry imagination, all ignorant of the true way.
Let no man beguile you with his juggling sophistry. Our offering of Christ is to believe in him, and to come with a repenting heart unto the remembrance of his passion; and to desire God the Father, for the breaking of Christ’s body on the cross, and shedding of his blood, and for his death, and all his passions, to be merciful unto us, and to forgive us, according to his testament and promise: and so we receive forgiveness of our sins. And other offering or sacrificing of Christ, is there now none. Walk in the open light and feeling; and let not yourselves be led with juggling words, as mules and asses in which there is none understanding.
More:— Deacons were had in price in the old timel,”
[[! “The time hath been when there were very few [priests] in a]
[great city; and in a monastery of 500, in one house, scantly would]
[there four monks be bold to be priests. Then was all holy orders]
[in high honour. Then find we that the degree of a deacon was a]
[great thing; and of such dignity that when one of them went some-]
[time in pilgrimage, he would not be aknowen of his order,” [See Vol.]
[I. p. 465], “because he would not that folk should do him worship by]
[ihe way.” Dial. p. 227.]]
Tyndale:—For the deacons then took the care of all the poor; and suffered none to go a begging, but provided a living dea- for every one of them: where now they that should be the. deacons make themselves priests, and rob the poor of lands, rents, offerings and all that was given them, devouring all themselves, and the poor dying for hunger.
More:—“Priests be despised because of the multitude.” Tyndale:—1f there were but one in the world, as men say of the phoenix, yet if he lived abominably, he could not but be despised.:
More:—A man may have a good faith coupled with all manner sinl,”
Tyndale:—A good faith putteth away all sin: how then can all manner of? sin dwell with a good faith? I dare say, that M. More durst affirm, that a man might love God and hate his neighbour both at once; and yet St John, in his epistle, will say that he saith untruly. But Master More meaneth of the best faith that ever he felt. By all likelihood he knoweth of none other, but such as may stand with all wickedness, neither in himself nor in his prelates: wherefore inasmuch as their faith may stand with all that Christ hateth, I am sure he looketh but for small thanks? of God for his defending of them; and therefore he playeth surely, to take his reward here of our holy patriarchs.
More:—‘Few durst be priests in the old time.”
T’yndale:—Then they knew the charge, and feared God, But now they know the vantage, and dread him not.
More:— 1f the laws of the church were executed, which Tyndale and Luther would have burnt, it would be better.” Tyndale:—If the testament of our Saviour might be known, for blind wretches and covetous tyrants, it would write the law of God in all men’s hearts that believed it; and then should men naturally, and without compulsion, keep all
[ΤΙ Though no such affirmation appears in this chapter of the Dia-]
[logue, as printed in 1557, More does not charge Tyndale, in his Con-]
[futacyon, with having misrepresented him in this instance. In fact,]
[he had taught this doctrine, in what he had said about the sinners]
[drowned by the flood. See p. 134.] [2 So D., but C. U. L. has alway sin.] [3 So D., but C. U. L. has thanges.] [ An allusion to Luther’s burning the pope’s decretals.] 3]
honesty. ἀπά again, though the pope’s law could help, yet is no law as good as a law unexecuted.
The Thirteenth Chapter
In the thirteenth he rageth, and fareth exceeding foul with himself. There he biteth, sucketh, gnaweth, towseth and mowseth Tyndale. There he weeneth that he hath won his spurs, and that it is not possible to answer him. And yet there, because he there most standeth in his own conceit, I doubt not, unto them that be learned in Christ, to prove him most ignorant of all, and clean without understanding of godly things.
And I say yet, that as no woman ought to rule a man’s office, where a man is present, by the order of nature; and as a young man ought not to be chosen to minister in the church, where an old, meet for the room, may be had, by the order of nature; even so it was Paul’s meaning to prefer the married before the unmarried, for the inconveniences that might chance by the reason of unchastity: which inconveniences M. More might see, with sorrow of heart, (if he had as great love to Christ as to other things,) to happen daily unto the shame of Christ’s doctrine among priests, friars, and monks, partly with open whores, partly with their sodomitry, whereof they cast each other in the teeth daily in every abbey, for the least displeasure that one doth to another. M. More might see what occasions of unchastity be given unto the curates? every where, by the reason of their office and daily conversation with the married,:
And when he saith, never man could find that exposition
[5 So D., but C. U. L. has is not yet no, and puts the clause inter-]
[rogatively. ] [6 Such is Tyndale’s notice of More’s language in the following]
[passage: “Tyndale (whose books be nothing else in effect but the]
[worst heresies picked out of Luther’s works, and Luther’s worst words]
[translated by Tyndale, and put forth in Tyndale’s own name) doth in]
[his frantic book of Obedience (wherein he raileth at large against all]
[popes, against all kings, against all prelates, all priests, all religious,]
[all the laws, all the saints, against the sacraments of Christ’s church,]
[against all virtuous works, against all divine service, and finally against]
[all thing that in effect good is), in that book, I say, Tyndale holdeth]
[that priests must have wives.” Dial. p. 228.] [7 Persons having the care of souls. ]]
till now; there he saith untrue. For St Jerome himself saith that he knew them that so expounded the text; and rebuked them of Rome, because they would not admit into the clergy them that had had two wives, the one before baptism, and the other after, saying: If a man had killed twenty men before his baptism, they would not have forbidden him; and why then should that which is no sin at all be a let unto him!?’ But the god of Rome would not hear him. For Satan began then to work his mysteries of wickedness.
And when he saith, he that hath ten wives hath but one wife?; I say that one is taken, by the use of speaking, for one only: as when I say, ‘I am content to give thee one,’ meaning one only; and, Unto him that hath no help, is there one help,—to look for no help: where one help is taken for one only; and many places else.
And when M. More saith, “He that hath had two wives, one after another, may not be priest;” and that, If a priest’s wife die, he may not have another;” or that, If he were made priest, having no wife, he might not after marry, if he burnt;” desire a reason of him. If he say, It hath been so the use:’ uy Then, say I, an whore is better than a wife; for that hath been the use of our holy father many hundred years. But
[[! More speaks of the text, in 1 Tim. iii. 2. “A bishop then must]
[be blameless, the husband of one wife”—and he then says, By these]
[words doth Tyndale, after Luther, conclude for a plain matter, that]
[priests must needs have wives, and that St Paul would there should]
[in no wise be none other priests but married folk.—There was never]
[none that had either the wit or the grace to perceive that great special]
[commandment this 1500 year till now,” ὅσο. InJerome’s Epistle to Oceanus, he says: Siquis et ante baptismum]
[habuerit concubinam, et illa mortua baptizatus uxorem duxerit; utrum]
[clericus fieri debeat, an non? Respondebis, posse fieri; quia concu-]
[binam habuerit, non uxorem. Conjugales ergo tabula et jura dotalia,]
[non coitus ab apostolo condemnatur. He had said before, after quoting]
[1 Tim. iii. 2. and Titus 1.: In utraque epistola, sive episcopi, sive pres-]
[byteri (quanquam apud veteres idem episcopi et presbyteri fuerint, quia]
[illud nomen dignitatis est, hoc zetatis), jubentur monogami in clerum]
[eligi.— Hieron. Op. Basil. 1537. Tom. 1v. p. 320 and 321.] [2 More has said, Paul saith no more, but that the bishop must be]
[the husband of one wife. Which words Tyndale may tell us be veri-]
[fied, if he be the husband of ten wives: for the husband of ten wives]
[were the husband of one, as the father of ten children is the father]
[of one.” Works, p. 229.]]
I affirm unto M. More the contrary. And I say first with Paul, that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” and by the same reason neither husband or wife, but the keeping of the commandments, and to love every man his neighbour as himself. And therefore as meat and drink were ordained for man’s necessity, and as a man may eat and drink at all needs in all degrees, so far as it letteth him not to keep the commandments and to love his neighbour as himself; even so was the wife created for the man’s necessity, and therefore may a man use her at all his need in all degrees, as far as she letteth him not to keep God’s law: which is nothing else by Paul’s learning, than that a man love his neighbour as himself. Now I desire a reason of Master More’s doctrine: what doth my second wife, or my third, hinder me to love my neighbour as myself, and to do him service, against I come to be priest? What let is your second wife to you, to serve our holy father the pope, more than your first would have been? And in like manner, if my first wife die when I am a priest, why may I not love my neighbour, and do him as good service with the second as with the first? And again, if I be made priest, having no wife, and after burn, and therefore marry; why may I not love my neighbour, and serve him with that wife, as well as he that brought a wife with him?
It was not for nought that Paul prophesied, that “some 1 should depart from the faith, and attend unto deceivable spirits, and devilish doctrine; forbidding to marry and to eat meats, which God hath created to be received with thanks of them that know the truth:” to buy dispensations to use lawful meat and unlawful wives.
And I ask M. More, why he that hath the second wife, or hath had two wives, may not be a priest; or why, if a priest’s first wife die, he may not marry the second. He will answer, Because the priest must represent the mysteries, or secret properties, and union of Christ, the only husband of his only wife, the church or congregation that believeth in him only.’ That is, as I have in other places said, the scripture describeth us in matrimony the mysteries and secret benefits which God the Father hath hid in Christ, for all them that be chosen and ordained to believe and put their trusts in him to be saved. As when a man taketh a wife, he giveth her himself, his honour, his riches, and all that he hath, and maketh her of
equal degree unto himself; if he be king and she before a beggar’s daughter, yet she is not the less queen, and in honour above all other; if he be emperor, she is empress, and honoured of men as the emperor, and partaker of all: even so, if a man repent, and come and believe in Christ, to be saved from the damnation of the sin of which he repenteth, Christ is his own good immediately; Christ’s death, pain, prayer, passion, fasting, and all his merits, are for that man’s sins a full satisfaction, and a sacrifice of might and power to absolve him a pana et a culpa. Christ’s inheritance, his love and favour, that he hath with God his Father, are that man’s by and by!; and the man, by that marriage, is pure as Christ, and clean without sin, and honourable, glorious, well-beloved, and in favour, through the grace of that marriage. And because that the priest must represent us this signification, is the cause why a priest may not have the second wife, say they: which popish reason hath deceived many wise; as who can be but deceived in some thing, if he receive all his doctrine by the authority of his elders?——-except he have an occasion, as we have, to run to Moses and the prophets, and there hear and see with our own eyes, and believe no longer by the reason of our forefathers; when we see them so shamefully beguiled themselves, and to beguile us in a thousand things which the Turks see.
Now to our purpose: if this doctrine be true, then must every priest have a wife, or have had a wife: for he that never had a wife cannot represent us this. And again, he that hath an whore, or another man’s wife, hath lost this property, and therefore ought to be put down.
And again, the second marriage then of no man is, or can be, a sacrament by that doctrine. And yet I will describe you the marriage of Christ, as well by his marriage that hath had nine wives, and hath now the tenth, as by his that hath now the first. Oh,’ will they say, his wife was no — virgin, or he, when they were married.” Sir, the signification ^ standeth not in the virginity, but in the actual wedlock. We were no virgins, when we came to Christ; but common whores; believing in a thousand idols. And in the second marriage, or tenth and ye will, the man hath but one wife, and all his are hers; and his other wives be in a land where is no
[1 That is, immediately.)
husband or wife. I say therefore with Paul, that this is a devilish doctrine, and hath a similitude of godliness with it, but the power is away. The mist of it blindeth the eyes of the simple, and beguileth them, that they cannot see a thousand abominations wrought under that cloak.
And therefore I say still, that the apostle’s meaning was, that he should have a wife, if haply his age were not the greater; and that by one wife he excludeth them that had two, and them that were defamed with other save their own wives; and would have them to be such as were known of virtuous living, for to do reverence and honour unto the doctrine of Christ: as it appeareth by the widows, which he excludeth before sixty years for fear of unchastity, and admitteth yet none of that age, except she were well known, of chaste, honest, and godly behaviour, and that to honour God’s word withal, than which the pope hath nothing more vile. And when M. More, to mock, bringeth forth the text of the widow, that she must be the wife of one man:” I answer, for all his jesting, that Paul excludeth not her that had ten husbands one after another, but her that had two husbands at once. And when More laugheth at it, as though it had never been the guise, I would to God, for his mercy, that it were not the guise at this day; and then I am sure his wrath would not be so great as it is. Paul meaneth only that he would have no defamed woman chosen widow, for dishonouring the word of God and the congregation of Christ; and therefore excludeth common women, and such as were defamed besides their husbands, and haply the divorced thereto. And that I ~ prove by the same doctrine of Paul, that the kingdom of God is no such business, but the keeping of God’s commandments only, and to love one another. Now, look on the thing and on the office of the widow. It was but to wait on the sick and poor people, and to wash strangers’ feet. Now the widows of ten husbands must have been found of the cost of the congregation, if they were destitute of friends, as all other poor were, though in time past they had been defamed persons. But under sixty would Paul let none minister, for fear of occasions of unchastity; and thereto none but such as were well known, of honest living and of good report. Now, inasmuch as the widow of ten husbands must be found of the common cost at her need, what uncleanness is in her by the
of reason of her second husband, that she is not good enough to
be a servant unto the poor people, to dress their meat, wash their clothes, to make their- beds, and so forth, and to wash strangers’ feet, that came out of one congregation unto another about business, and to do all manner service of love unto her poor brethren and sisters? To have had the second husband, is no shame among the heathen: it is no shame among the. Christians: for when the husband is dead, the wife is free to marry to whom she will in the Lord, and by as good reason the husband; and, of right, who more free than the priest? And therefore they shame not our doctrine nor our congregation, nor dishonour God among the heathen or weak Chris- tjans. Now when we have a plain rule, that he which loveth his neighbour as himself keepeth all the laws of God, let him tell me for what cause of love toward his neighbour a widow of two lawful husbands may not do service unto the poor people. Why may not a widow of fifty do service unto the poor? Paul which knitteth no snares, nor leadeth us blind, nor teacheth us without a reason-giving of his doctrine, answereth, For fear of occasions of evil; lest she be tempted, or tempt other; and then, if she be taken in misdoing, the doctrine of Christ be evil spoken of thereto, and the weak offended.
And when M. More mocketh with my reason, that I would have every priest to have a wife, because few men can live chaste;’ I answer, that if he loved the honour of Christ and his neighbour, as he doth his own covetousness, he should — find that a good argument. Paul maketh the same, and much to more slenderly than I, after your sophistry. For he disputeth thus: Some young widows do dishonest the congregation of Christ, and his doctrine; therefore shall no young widow at all minister in the common service thereof; but shall all be married, and bear children, and serve their husbands. And it is a far less rebuke to the doctrine of Christ and his congregation, that a woman should do amiss, than the bishop or priest. I am not so mad to think that there could no priest at all live chaste. Neither am I so foolish to think that there be not as many women that could live chaste at fifty, as priests at twenty-four. And yet, though of a thousand widows of fifty years old nine hundred and ninety-nine could live chaste; Paul, because he knoweth not that one, will let none at all minister in the common service, among
occasions of unchastity. Christ’s apostles considered all infirmities, and all that might hinder the doctrine of Christ, and therefore did their best to prevent all occasions. Wherefore, as fish is no better than flesh, nor flesh better than fish, in the kingdom of Christ; even so virginity, wedlock, and widowhead!, are none better than other, to be saved by, in their own nature, or to please God withal; but with whatsoever I may best serve my brethren, that is ever best, according unto the time and fashion of the world. In persecution it is good for every man to live chaste, if he can, and namely for the preacher. In peace, when a man may live quietly, and abide in one place, a wife is a sure thing to cut off occasions.
Then he would make it seem, that priests’ wives were the occasions of heresies in Almany.” Nay, they fell first to heresies, and then took wives; as ye fell first to the pope’s holy doctrine, and then took whores.
More:—- The church bindeth no man to chastity.”
Tyndale:—Of a truth; for it giveth licence to whosoever will to keep whores, and permitteth to abuse men’s -wives, and suffereth sodomitry; and doth but only forbid matrimony.
And when he saith, “Chastity was almost received by general custom, before the law was made;” one lie: and, Good fathers did but give their advice thereto;” another lie: and, It was ratified and received with the consent of all Christendom;” the third lie.
They did well to choose a poet to be their defender. First, it was attempted in general council, and resisted by holy fathers, which yet themselves were never married; saying that men might not knit a snare for their weak brethren, against the doctrine of Christ and his apostles?. Neither could it-be brought to pass, until the pope had got ihe emperor’s sword out of his hand. The Greeks, which
[An old form of widowhood. The old editions here have widowed.] [? “The church, quod I, bindeth no man to chastity. That is truth,]
[quod he, except a priest be a man. Ye mistake the matter, quod I,]
[as I shall shew you after. When every man is at his liberty, not to]
[be priest but at his pleasure, how can any man say that the church]
[layeth a bond of chastity on any man’s neck against his will?” More’s]
[Works, p. 232.]]
[8 Such was the language held by Paphnutius in the first Nicene]
[council: of whom Tyndale soon makes further mention.]]
were the one half of the Christendom then, I suppose, would never admit it.
Now, godly love would never suffer them to consent that we should be bound unto that burden, which they themselves could not bear; as M. More in another place affirmeth that they did. And again, we have manifest stories that 1t was brought in with violence of sword, and that all the priests of Germany were compelled to put away their wives. And we find that wheresoever the pope reigneth, he came in with deceiving the king of the country, and then with his sword compelled the rest. The pope came but now late into Wales, to reign there over the bishops and priests!, and that with the sword of the king of England.
And yet, though all the clergy of Christendom had granted it, all the chureh had not made it, nor yet the tenth part of the church. The lay people be as well of the church as the priests; neither can all the priests in the world, of right, make any law wherein their part lieth, without their consent. Now it pertaineth unto the common people, and most of all unto the weakest, that their priests be endued with all virtue. and honesty. And the chastity of his wife, daughter, and Servant, pertaineth unto every particular man; which we see by experience defiled daily by the unchaste chastity of the spiritualty.
Wherefore if the parishes, or any one parish, after they had seen the experience, what inconveniences came of their chastity, would have no curate except he had a wife, to cut off occasions; as Paul, when he had seen that proof, would have no young widows minister; who, save a tyrant, should be against them?
Moreover, the general councils of the spiritualty are of no other manner, since the pope was a god, than the general parliaments of the temporalty; where no man dare say his
[1 For proofs that the British churches in parts unsubdued by the]
[Saxons did not aeknowledge any subjection to the see of Rome, the]
[reader may see Spelman’s Concilia, &c., Orbis Britannici, pp. 109, 110,]
[and p. 414, which seems to close their independence with the date of]
[940 See also Stillingfleet’s Orig. Britannicee. It is probable, however,]
[that Tyndale would not consider the bishoprick of St David’s as subject]
[to papal law, till its bishop, Bernard, submitted himself and his see]
[to that of Canterbury, about 353 years before Tyndale’s birth. Hey-]
[lyn’s Help to English Hist. p. 65. Lond. 1773.]]
mind freely and liberally, for fear of some one and of his flatterers. And look in what captivity the parliaments be under the private councils of kings, so are the general councils under the pope and his cardinals. And this is the manner of both: some one two or three wily foxes, that have all other in subjection, (as ye have seen in my lord cardinal) imagine not what ought to be, but what they lust to have, and conceive in their own brains, and go with child, sometimes a year, two, three, four, five, six, or seven, and sometimes twenty and above, casting, canvassing, and compassing for the birth, against opportunity; opening the matter privily, under an oath, a little and a little unto certain secretaries whose part is therein, as they find men of activity and of courage, prepared to sell soul and body for promotion. And the matter in the mean time is turmoiled and tossed among themselves; and persuasions and subtle reasons are forged, to blind the right way and to beguile men’s wits. And whom they fear to have adversaries, able to resist them, for such means are sought, to bring them in unto their party, or to convey them out of the way. And when opportunity is come, they call a council, or parliament, under a contrary pretence. And a mass of the Holy Ghost, whom they desire as far away as were possible, is sung; and a goodly sermon is made, to blear men’s eyes withal. And then suddenly, other men unprovided, the matter is opened after the most subtle manner. And many are beguiled with subtle arguments and crafty persuasions. And they that hold hard against them are called aside, and reasoned with apart, and handled after a fashion, and partly enticed with fair promises, and partly feared with cruel threatenings: and so some are overcome with silver syllogisms; and other for fear of threatenings are driven unto silence. And if any be found at the last, that will not obey their falsehood and tyranny, they rail on him, and jest him out of countenance; and call him opinative, self-minded, and obstinate; and bear him in hand that the devil is in him, that he so cleaveth unto his own wit, though he speak no syllable but? God’s word; and is asked whether he will be wiser than other men? And in the spiritualty they excommunicate him, and make an heretic of him. And this to be true, in the clergy’s chastity, is as clear as the day by manifest chronicles: insomuch that the prelates of Rome were a brewing it above ed [2 So D., the C. U. L. ed. has than.]
an hundred years, and I wot not how long longer, ere they could bring it to pass; and yet in vain, till they had got the emperor’s sword, to prove that it was most expedient so to be. And for what intent? To bring all under the pope; and that WT. the prelates of all lands might, as the old manner was, come and wait on the pope at Rome, where he prepared them whores enough; and that his sworn prelates in every land might the more conveniently wait in kings’ courts, to minister the commonwealth unto the pope’s pleasure and profit. For had the clergy kept their wives, they could never have come unto this where they now be, and to these pluralities, unions and totquots. For there is no lay-man, though he were never so evil disposed, that could, for his wife and children, have leisure to contrive such mischief, and to run from country to country to learn falsehood and subtilty, as our spiritualty do; which without fear of God and shame of man keep whores wheresoever they come. And thus ye see that the clergy’s chastity pertaineth as much unto the temporalty as unto the spiritualty.,
And another is this, no power, among them that profess the truth, may bind where God looseth; save only where love and my neighbour’s necessity requireth it of me. Neither can any power now bind them to come; but they may freely keep or break, as the thing is hurtful or expedient. Neither can there be any bond, where love and necessity requireth the contrary: so that this law, Love thy neighbour, to help him as thou wouldest be holp, must interpret all man’s laws: as, if I had sworn, young or unwisely, that I would live chaste, and all the world had bound me; if afterward I burnt, and could not overcome the passion, I ought to marry. For I must condition my vow, and shew a cause of it thereto. I may not vow for the chastity itself, as though it were Sacrifice, to please God in itself; for that is the idolatry of heathen. I must therefore vow, to do my neighbour service (which in that case he may not require), or to give myself more quietly to prayer and study (which is not possible as long as I burn, and the mind will not be quiet), or that I may the better keep the laws of God, which if I burn I stand through my chastity in more jeopardy to break, and to hurt my neighbour, and to shame the doctrine of Christ. And in like manner, if I had forsworn flesh, and all the world had
bound me; yet if necessity required it of me, to save my life or my health, I ought to break it. And again, though I had sworn chastity, and the commonwealth or the necessity of another required the contrary, I must break it. But on the one side, of all that ever burnt in the pope’s chastity, he never gave priest licence to take wife, but to keep whores only: and on the other side, all that vow any vow do it for the thing itself; as though it were, as I said, service or sacrifice to God, that had delight in the deed, as young children have in apples; and that for that deed they shall have an higher room in heaven than their neighbours, which is the idolatry of the heathen: when he ought to bestow his vow upon his neighbour, to bring him to heaven, and not to envy him and to seek thereby an higher room, not caring whether his neighbour come thither or no. And finally, to burn, and not to use the natural remedy that God hath made, is but to tempt God, as in all other things. But and if God have brought thee into a strait, and have thereto taken the natural remedy from thee; then to resist and cry unto God for help, and to suffer, is a sign that thou lovest God’s laws: and to love God’s law is to be sure that thou art God’s child, elect to mercy; for in all his children only he writeth that token.
And then he saith, “Every man hath his choice, whether he will be priest or no.” But what nets and snares doth antichrist lay for them!
First his false doctrine; wherewith the elders beguiled compel their children, and sacrifice them to burn in the pope’s chastity, with no other mind than those old idolaters sacrificed their children unto the false god Moloch; so that they think by the merits of their children’s burning, after the pope’s false doctrine, to please God and to get heaven, clean ignorant of the testament made in Christ’s blood.
Then what a multitude are blinded, and drawn into the net, with the bait of promotion, honour, dignity, pleasures, freedom, and liberty to sin, and to do all mischief unpunished; things which all evil, that fear not God, do desire!
And what a number brought up idly, unto twenty and above, then put their heads in his halter, because they have no other craft to get their livings; and not because they can live chaste!
. Also some live chaste at twenty-four, which same burn at 11
[Tyndale, 111]
thirty. And that to be true, daily experience teacheth, and good natural causes there be.
And then look on the apostle’s learning and ordinance. When one or two young widows had broken their chastity, he would never after let any more be chosen of the same age. How cometh it then that the pope, for so many hundred thousands that miscarry, will neither break the ordinance, or mitigate it, or let any go back; but, if any burn, sendeth them unto the shame of Christ’s doctrine, and offending and hurt of his church, and never unto the lawful remedy of marriage?
mouth, nor chammeth it with his teeth, nor drinketh his blood with his lips; for Christ is impassible. But he that repenteth toward the law of God, and at the sight of the sacrament, or of the breaking, feeling, eating, chamming, or drinking, calleth to remembrance the death of Christ, his body-breaking and blood-shedding for our sins, and all his passion; the same eateth our Saviour’s body and drinketh his blood through faith only, and receiveth forgiveness of all his sins thereby, and other not. And all that have not this doctrine of the sacrament come thereto in vain. ~ And therefore there is no more cause that he which saith the mass should live chaste, than he that heareth it; or he that ministereth the sacrament, than he that receiveth it. It is to me great marvel, that unlawful whoredom, covetousness, and extortion cannot defile their hands, as well as lawful matrimony. Cursed therefore be their devilish doctrine, with false appearing godliness, the fruit and power away, out of the hearts of all christian men.
And when he bringeth the ensample of the heathen, I praise him. For the heathen, because they could not understand God spiritually, to serve him in the spirit, to believe in him, and to love his laws, therefore they turned his glory unto an image, and served him after their own imagination with bodily service, as the whole kingdom of the pope doth, having less power to serve him in spirit than the Turks, For when the heathen made an image of the aches or fevers, and sacrificed thereto, they knew that the image was not the fever; but under the similitude of the image they worshipped the power of God, which plagued them with the fevers, with bodily service, as the pope doth above all the idolaters that ever were in the world: as when we paint St Michael weighing the souls, and stick up a candle to flatter him, and to make him favourable unto us, and regard not the testament of Christ nor the laws of God, because we have no power to believe nor to love the truth. And even so, to refer virginity unto the person of God, to please him therewith, is false sacrifice and heathenish idolatry. For the only service of God is to believe in Christ, and to love the law. Wherefore thou must refer thy wedlock, thy virginity, and all thy other deeds, unto the keeping of the law, and serving thy neighbour only. And then, when thou lookest with a loving heart on 11—2
the law, that saith, Break not wedlock, keep no whore,’ and so forth, and findest thy body weak, and thine office such that thou must have conversation with men’s wives, daughters and - servants, then it is better to have a wife than to be without. And again, if thou see service to be done that thou canst not so well do with a wife as without, then if thou have power to be without, it is best so to be, and in such like: and else the one is as good as the other, and no difference; and to take a wife for pleasure is as good as to abstain for displeasure.
And when M. More seeth “no other cause, why it is not best that our spiritualty were all gelded, than for loss of merit in resisting;” besides that that imagination is plain idolatry, I hold M. More beguiled, if all we read of gelded men be true, and the experience we see in other beasts. For then the gelded lust in their flesh as much as the ungelded: which if it be true, then the gelded, in that he taketh such great pain in gelding, not to minish his lusts, but, if lusts overcome him, yet that he have not wherewith to hurt his neighbour, deserveth more than the ungelded. And then it were best that we did eat and drink, and make our flesh strong, that we burned, to deserve in resisting; as some of your holy saints have laid virgins in their beds, to kindle their courage, that they might after quench their heat in cold water, to deserve the merit of holy martyrs.
And when he saith, “The priests of the old law abstained from their wives, when they served in the temple:” many things were forbidden them, to keep them in bond and servile fear, and for other purposes. And yet I trow he findeth it not in the text, that they were forbidden their wives. And when he imagineth so, because Zacharias, when his course was out, gat him home to his house; I think it was better for him to go to his house, than to send for his house to him: he was also old, and his wife too. But and if they were forbidden, it was but for a time, to give them to prayer; as we might do Lev. x. right well, and as well as they. But I read, that they were forbidden to drink wine and strong drink when they ministered; of which ours pour in without measure.
M. More:—’ Christ lived chaste, and exhorted unto chastity.”
Tyndale:—We be not all of Christ’s complexion; neither exhorteth he to other chastity than wedlock, save at a time
to serve our neighbours. Now the pope’s chastity is not to serve a man’s neighbour, but to run to riot, and to carry away with him the living of the poor and of the true preacher, even the tithes of five or six parishes, and to go, and either dwell by a stews, or to carry a stews with him, or to corrupt other men’s wives.
Paphnutius, a man that never proved marriage, is praised in the stories for resisting such doctrine with God’s word in a general council, before the pope was a god’. And now M. More, a man that hath proved it twice, is magnified for defending it with sophistry. And again meseemeth that it is a great oversight of M. More, to think that Christ, though he were never married, would not more accept the service of a married man that would more say truth for him than they that abhor wedlock; inasmuch as the spiritualty accept his humble service, and reward his merits with so high honour, because he can better feign for them than any of their unchaste (I would say own chaste) people, though he be bigamus?, and past the grace of his neck-verse?,
And finally, if M. More look so much on the pleasure that is in marriage, why setteth he not his eyes on the thanksgiving for that pleasure and on the patience of other displeasures?
The Fourteenth Chapter
More:— Wicliffe was the occasion of the utter subversion of the realm of Boheme, both in faith and good living, and of the loss of many a thousand lives.”
[[! It was at the first general council, held under Constantine at]
[Niceea, in 325, that Paphnutius successfully resisted an endeavour to]
[procure the passing of a canon to compel married priests, &c. to]
[leave their wives. The story is told in Sozomen, Lib. 1. cap. xx] [? More had been twice married, and his second wife was a widow.]
[By the papal law he would be styled bigamus, notwithstanding his]
[first wife’s having died previous to his second marriage, and would be]
[held to have so desecrated himself that he could not be admitted into]
[holy orders. De bigamis presbyteris, says Celestine IIL, et viduarum]
[maritis idem sancimus omnino, ut nec viventibus uxoribus nec de-]
[funetis ad divinorum debeant celebrationem admitti: maxime cum a]
[doctrina sit apostoli et institutionibus ecclesie alienum.’— Decretal.]
[Gregor. 1x. Lib, 1. Titul. xxr. Corp. Juris Canon. Lugduni, 1622. [3 See Vol. 1. p. 180. n. 1.]]
: eds 166 ANSWER TO SIR THOMAS MORE’S DIALOGUE. [CHAP. Tyndale:—The rules of their faith are Christ’s promises; and the rule of their living, God’s law. And as for loss of lives, it is truth that the pope slew, I think, an hundred thousand of them, because of their faith, and that they would no longer serve him: as he slew in England many a thousand, and slew the true king and set up a false,. unto the effusion of all the noble blood and murdering up of the commonalty, because he should be his defender.
More:— The constitution of the bishops is not that the scripture shall not be in English, but that no man may translate it by his own authority, or read it, until they had approved itl”
Tyndale:—1If no translation shall be had, until they give licence or till they approve it, it shall never be had. And so it is all one in effect, to say there shall be none at all in English, and to say, till we admit it; seeing they be so malicious that they will none admit, but feign all the cavillations they can, to prove it were not expedient: so that if it be not had spite of their hearts, it shall never be had. And thereto, they have done their best to have had it enacted by parliament, that it should not be in English.
[The Fifteenth Chapter.]
[Hunne. He jesteth out Hunne’s death? with his poetry, where-]
[with he built Utopia. Many great lords came to Baynard’s]
[castle,” (but all nameless) “to examine the cause:” as the]
[credible prelates, so well learned, so holy, and so indifferent,]
[which examined Bilney and Arthur, be also all nameless.]
[Horsey. More:— Horsey took his pardon, because it is not good]
[to refuse God’s pardon and the king’s?.” [! See Vol. 1. p. 132.] [? The depositions of the witnesses and other documents relating]
[to the death of Richard Hunne, a London tradesman, who was found]
[dead in a chamber within the towers of the old cathedral of St Paul’s,]
[having been imprisoned there under a charge of heresy by bishop]
[Fitzjames, may be seen in Foxe, Acts and Mon. Vol. 1v. p. 183, &c.]
[Lond. ed. 1837. “The clergy attributed his death to suicide; but the]
[coroner’s jury returned for their verdict that he had been murdered]
[by Dr Horsey, the bishop’s chancellor, with the aid of his servants.] [8 At the intercession of Fitzjames, Henry VIII. granted Horsey -]
[his pardon, but recorded his conviction in a mandate requiring him]
[to indemnify the heirs of Hunne for the expenses they had incurred]
[in the course of the proceedings. Foxe, p. 187.]]
Tyndale:—God’s pardon can no man have, except he knowledge himself a sinner. And even so he that receiveth the king’s yieldeth himself guilty. And moreover it is not possible that he which putteth his trust in God, should for fear of the twelve men or of his judges receive pardon for that he never was faulty, unto the dishonouring of our Saviour Jesus; but would have denied it rather unto the death. And thereto, if the matter were so clear as ye jest it out, then lam sure the king’s grace’s both courtesy and wisdom would have charged the judges to have examined the evidence laid against him diligently; and so to have quit him with more honesty than to give him pardon of that he never trespassed in, and to have rid the spiritualty out of hate and all suspicion.
Then saith he, Hunne was sore suspect of heresy, and convict.” And after he saith, Hunne was an heretic indeed, and in peril so to be proved.” And then, how was he convict? I heard say, that he was first convict when he was dead; and then they did wrong to burn him, till they had spoken with him, to wete whether he would abjure or ποῦ.
More:— The bishop of London was wise, virtuous, and cunning 6,”
[4 More has indeed endeavoured to turn into ridicule all the evidence offered for the discovery of Hunne’s murderers; interlarding his account of the investigation with frequent mention of the laughter of their lordships at the absurdity of the witnesses, as set forth by him- 3 More says, “Myself was present in Paul’s when the bishop, in self.
[the presence of the mayor and the aldermen of the city, condemned]
[him for an heretic after his death. And then were there read openly]
[the depositions, by which it was well proved that he was convict as]
[well of divers other heresies, as of misbelief toward the holy sacra-]
[ment of the altar. And thereupon was the judgment given, that his]
[body should be burned; and so was it. Now this is, quod I, to me a]
[full proof: for I assure you the bishop was a very wise man, a vir-]
[tuous, and a cunning.” After this More tells his friend that, six or]
[seven years after, the examination of a person, charged with intending]
[a robbery, led him to discover that certain, whom he calls heretics,]
[were wont to meet and read in a cbamber at midnight, and that]
[Richard Hunne had been one of them; and he then goes on to tell]
[how he tried to ensnare some of the persons thus wont to meet.—]
[Dial. Works, pp. 239-40.] [6 Cunning, knowing, well instructed.]]
Tyndale:—For all those three, yet he would have made colet. the old dean Colet of Paul’s an heretic, for translating the Paternoster in English, had not the bishop of Canterbury holp the dean’.
The Sixteenth Chapter
is made your glosses agree with the text in every place. And What can you say to this, how that, besides they have done their best to disannul all translating by parliament, they have disputed before the king’s grace, that it is perilous and not meet, and so concluded that it shall not be, under a pretence of deferring it of certain years: where M. More was their special orator, to feign lies for their purpose?.
More:— Nothing discourageth the clergy so much, as that they of the worst sort most calleth after it.”
Tyndale:—It might well be, Pharisees full of holiness long not after it; but publicans, that hunger after mercy, might sore desire it. Howbeit, it is in very deed a suspect thing, and a great sign of an heretic, to require it.
Then he juggleth with allegories. Sir, Moses delivered [! An account of dean Colet, the founder of St Paul’s school, may be seen in Foxe, Vol. rv. p. 246. See also his life by Erasmus.]
[2 The interlocutor in More’s Dialogue was supposed to come to him with a message of inquiry from a friend.]
[3 Here Tyndale again refers to the proceeding and document noticed in Vol. 1. pp. 34-5.]
them all that he had received of God, and that in the mother tongue; in which all that had the heart thereto studied, and not the priests only, as thou mayest see in the scripture. And the apostles kept nothing behind; as Paul testified (Acts xx.) how he had shewed them all the counsel of God, and had kept nought back. Should the lay people less hearken unto the expositions of the prelates in doubtful places, if the text were in their hands when they preached?
More:— The Jews gave great reverence unto the bible, and we sit on it%.” Tyndale:—The pope putteth it under his feet, and ireadeth on it; in token that he is lord over it, that it should serve him, and he not it.
JMore:—God hath ordained the ordinaries for chief physicians.”
Tyndale:—They be lawyers ordained of the pope, and can no more skill of the scripture than they that never saw it; yea, and have professed a contrary doctrine. They be right hangmen, to murder whosoever desireth for that doctrine, that God hath given to be the ordinary? of our faith and living.
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