[2 So Scoloker and Seres, ed. Day omits a.]]
[3 So Marburg ed. and Day; S. and 8. ed. has but.] [4 So both the older edd. Day has the.] [5 So M. ed; S. and S. has No.] 16 [TYNDALE, 11]]
the wrath of God upon them, and was cause of their utter destruction.
Even so our scribes and Pharisees, now that their hypod crisy is disclosed, and their falsehood so brought to light that it can no longer be hid, get them unto the elders of the people, the lords, gentlemen, and temporal officers, and to all that love this world as they do, and unto whosoever is great with the king, and unto the king’s grace himself; and after the same ensample, and with the same persuasions, cast them into like fear of losing of their worldly dominions, and roar unto them, saying, Ye be negligent, and care nothing at all, but have a good sport that the heretics rail on us. But give them space a while, till they be grown unto a multitude, and then ye shall see them preach as fast against you, and move the people against you, and do their best to thrust you down also, and shall cry havoe, and make all common. Ὁ generation of serpents, how well declare ye that ye be the right sons of the father of all lies! For they, which ye call hereties, preach nothing save that which our Saviour Jesus Christ preached, and his apostles; adding nought thereto, nor plucking aught therefrom, as the seripture commandeth; and teach all men repentance to God and his holy law, and faith unto our Saviour Jesus Christ, and the promises of mercy made in him, and obedience unto all that God commandeth to obey. Neither teach we so much as to resist your most cruel tyranny with bedily violence, save with God’s word only; intending nothing but to drive you out of the temple of Christ, the hearts, consciences, and souls of men (wherein with your falsehood ye sit), and to restore again Jesus our Saviour unto his possession and inheritance bought with his blood, whence ye have driven him out with your manifold wiles and subtilty. ad. Take heed, therefore, wicked prelates, blind leaders of — the blind; indurate and obstinate hypocrites, take heed. For if the Pharisees for their resisting the Holy Ghost, thatis to say, persecuting the open and manifest truth, and slaying the preachers thereof, escaped not the wrath and vengeance of God; how shall ye escape, which are far worse than the Pharisees? For though the Pharisees had shut up the scripture, and set up their own professions; yet they kept their own professions, for the most part. But ye will
be the chiefest in Christ’s flock, and yet will not keep one jot of the right way of his doctrine. Ye have thereto set up wonderful professions, to be more holy thereby than ye think that Christ’s doctrine is able to make you, and yet keep as little thereof, except it be with dispensations; insomuch that if a man ask you, what your marvellous fashioned playing coats and your other puppetry mean, and what your disfigured heads and all your apish! play mean, ye know not: and yet are they but signs of things which ye have professed. Thirdly, ye will be papists and hold of the pope; and yet, look in the pope’s law, and ye keep thereof almost nought at all. But whatsoever soundeth to make for your bellies, and to maintain your honour, whether in the scripture, or in your own traditions, or in the pope’s law, that ye compel the lay-people to observe; violently threatening them with your excommunications and curses, that they shall be damned, both body and soul, if they keep them not. And if that help you not, then ye murder them mercilessly with the sword of the temporal powers; whom ye have made so blind that they be ready to slay whom ye command, and will not yet hear his cause examined, nor give him room to answer for himself.
. And ye elders of the people, fear ye God also. For as the elders of the Jews, which were partakers with the scribes and Pharisees in resisting the Holy Ghost, and in persecuting the open truth, and slaying the witnesses thereof, and in provoking the wrath of God, had their part with them also in the day of wrath and sharp vengeance, which shortly after fell upon them, (as the nature of the sin against the Holy Ghost is, to have her damnation, not only in the world to come, but also in this life, according unto all the ensamples of the bible and authentie stories since the world began;) even likewise ye, if ye will wink in so open and clear light, and let yourselves be led blindfold, and have your part with the hypocrites in like sin and mischief, be sure ye shall have your part with them in like wrath and vengeance, that is like shortly to fall upon them.
And concerning that the hypocrites put you in fear of the rising of your commons against you, I answer: If ye
[1 has apes.]
16—2
fear your commons, so testify ye against yourselves, that ye hy- are tyrants. For if your consciences accused you not of evil doing, what need ye to fear your commons? What commons were ever so evil, that they rose against their heads for welldoing? Moreover, ye witness against yourselves also that ye have no trust in God: for he hath promised the temporal officers assistance, if they minister their offices truly; and to care for the keeping of them, as much as they care for to keep his laws.
The hypocrites haply bid you take an ensample of the uplandish people of Almany, which they lie that Martin Luther stirred up. For first, what one sentence in all the writing of Martin Luther find they, that teacheth a man to resist his superior? Moreover, if Martin Luther and the preachers had stirred up the common people of Germany, how happened it that Martin Luther and other like preachers had not perished likewise with them; which are yet all alive at this hour!? Ye will ask me, Who stirred them up then? I ask you, Who stirred up the commons of the Jews to resist the emperor, after that the scribes and Pharisees, with the elders of the people, had slain Christ and his apostles? of Verily, the wrath of God. And even so here, the wrath of