ready to put out the eyes of those who are content to become blind. Then we have Tyndale's Book of Obedience, by which we are taught to disobey the teaching of Christ's Catholic Church and set His holy Sacraments at naught. Then we have from Tyndale the First Epistle of Saint John, expounded in such wise that I dare say that blessed Apostle had rather his Epistle had never been put in writing than that his holy words should be believed by all Christian people in such a sense. Then we have the Supplication of Beggars, a piteous beggarly book, in which he would have all the souls in Purgatory beg all about for nothing. Then we have from George Joye, otherwise called Clarke, a Goodly Godly Epistle, wherein he teaches divers other heresies, but specially that men's vows and promises of chastity are not lawful, and can bind no man in conscience not to wed when he will. And this man, considering that when a man teaches one thing and does another himself, the people set less value by his preaching, determined therefore with himself, that he would show himself an example of his preaching. Therefore, being a priest, he has beguiled a woman and wedded her; the poor woman, I ween, being unaware that he is a priest. Then you have also an Exposition on the Seventh Chapter of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, by which exposition also priests, friars, monks, and nuns are taught the evangelical liberty that they may run out a-caterwauling and wed. That work has no name of the maker, but some think it was Friar Roy who, when he had fallen into heresy, then found it unlawful to live in chastity and ran out of his Order. Then have we the Examinations of Thorpe put forth as it is said by George Constantine (by whom I know well there has been a great many books of that sort sent into this realm). In that book, the heretic that made it as (if it were) a communication between the bishop and his chaplains and himself, makes all the parties speak as he himself likes, and sets down nothing as spoken against his heresies, but what he himself would seem solemnly to answer.

When any good Christian man who has either learning or any natural wit reads this book, he shall be able not only to perceive him for a foolish heretic and his arguments easy to answer, but shall also see that he shows himself a false liar in his rehearsal of the matter in which he makes the other part sometimes speak for his own convenience such manner of things as no man who was not a very wild goose would have done.

"Then have we Jonas made out by Tyndale, a book that whosoever delight therein shall stand in such peril, that Jonas was never so swallowed up by the whale, as by the delight of that book a man's soul may be so swallowed up by the devil that he shall never have the grace to get out again. Then, we have from Tyndale the answer to my Dyalogue. Then, the book of Frith against Purgatory. Then, the book of Luther translated into English in the name of Brightwell, but, as I am informed, it was translated by Frith; a book, such as Tyndale never made one more foolish nor one more full of lies. . . Then, we have the Practice of Prelates, wherein Tyndale intended to have made a special show of his high worldly wit, so that men should have seen therein that there was nothing done among princes that he was not fully advertised of the secrets. Then, we have now the book of Friar Barnes, sometime a doctor of Cambridge, who was abjured before this time for heresy, and is at this day come under a safe conduct to the realm. Surely, of all their books that yet came abroad in English (of all which there was never one wise nor good) there was none so bad, so foolish, so false as his. This, since his coming, has been plainly proved to his face, and that in such wise that, when the books that he cites and alleges in his book were brought forth before him, and his ignorance showed him, he himself did in divers things confess his oversight, and clearly acknowledged that he had been mistaken and wrongly understood the passages.

"Then, we have besides Barnes's book, the ABC for

children. And because there is no grace therein, lest we should lack prayers, we have the Primer and the Ploughman's Prayer and a book of other small devotions, and then the whole Psalter too. After the Psalter, children were wont to go straight to their Donat and their Accidence, but now they go straight to Scripture. And for this end we have as a Donat, the book of the Pathway to Scripture, and for an Accidence, the Whole sum of Scripture in a little book, so that after these books are learned well, we are ready for Tyndale's Pentateuchs and Tyndale's Testament, and all the other high heresies that he and Joye and Frith and Friar Barnes teach in all their books. Of all these heresies the seed is sown, and prettily sprung up in these little books before. For the Primer and Psalter, prayers and all, were translated and made in this manner by heretics only. The Psalter was translated by George Joye, the priest that is wedded now, and I hear say the Primer too, in which the seven Psalms are printed without the Litany, lest folks should pray to the saints; and the Dirge is left out altogether, lest a man might happen to pray Iwith it for his father's soul. In their Calendar, before their devout prayers, they have given us a new saint, Sir Thomas Hytton, the heretic who was burned in Kent. They have put him in on St. Matthew's Eve, by the name of St. Thomas the Martyr.

"It would be a long work to rehearse all their books, for there are yet more than I have known. Against all these the king's high wisdom politically provided, in that his proclamation forbade any manner of English books printed beyond the sea to be brought into this realm, or any printed within this realm to be sold unless the name of the printer and his dwelling-place were set upon the book. But still, as I said before, a few malicious, mischievous persons have now brought into this realm these ungracious books full of pestilent, poisoned heresies that have already in other realms killed, by schisms and war, many thousand bodies, and by sinful errors and abominable heresies many more thousand souls.

1

"Although these books cannot either be there printed without great cost, nor here sold without great adventure and peril, yet, with money sent hence, they cease not to print them there, and send them hither by the whole sacks full at once; and in some places, looking for no lucre, cast them abroad at night, so great a pestilent pleasure have some devilish people caught with the labour, travail, cast, charge, peril, harm, and hurt of themselves to seek the destruction of others."1

In his introduction to the Confutation of Tyndale's answer, from which the foregoing extracts are taken, Sir Thomas More gives ample evidence that the teaching of "the New Learning" was founded entirely upon that of the German Reformer Luther, although on certain points his English followers had gone beyond their master. He takes, for example what Hytton, "whom Tyndale has canonised," had been teaching "his holy congregations, in divers corners and luskes lanes." Baptism, he had allowed to be " a sacrament necessary for salvation," though he declared that there was no need for a priest to administer it. Matrimony, he thought a good thing for Christians, but would be sorry to say it was a sacrament. Extreme Unction and Confirmation, together with Holy Orders, he altogether rejected as sacraments, declaring them to be mere ceremonies of man's invention. "The

mass," he declared, "should never be said," since to do so was rather an act of sin than virtue. Confession to a priest was unnecessary, and the penance enjoined was "without profit to the soul." Purgatory he denied, “and said further, that neither prayer nor fasting for the souls departed can do them any good." Religious vows were wrong, and those who entered religion "sinned in so doing." He held further, that "no man had any freewill after he had once sinned;" that "all the images of Christ and His saints should be thrown out of the

English Works, pp. 341-344.

Church," and that whatsoever laws "the Pope or a General Council might make beyond what is expressly commanded in Scripture" need not be obeyed. "As touching the Sacrament of the Altar, he said that it was a necessary sacrament, but held that after the consecration, there was nothing whatever therein, but only the very substance of material bread and wine." ""1

Now, it was to defend these points of Catholic faith, as More, in common with the most learned in the land, believed them to be, that he took up his pen against Tyndale and others. I wish, he says, to second "the king's gracious purpose, as being his most unworthy chancellor," since "I know well that the king's highness, for his faithful mind to God, desires nothing more effectually than the maintenance of the true Catholic faith, whereof is his no more honourable than well-deserved title, 'defensor.' He detests nothing more than these pestilent books which Tyndale and others send over into the realm in order to set forth their abominable heresies. For this purpose he has not only by his most erudite famous books, both in English and Latin, declared his most Catholic purpose and intent, but also by his open proclamations divers times renewed, and finally in his own most royal person in the Star Chamber most eloquently by his mouth, in the presence of his lords spiritual and temporal, has given monition and warning to all the justices of peace of every quarter of his realm then assembled before his Highness, to be declared by them to all his people, and did prohibit and forbid under great penalties, the bringing in, reading, and keep of those pernicious poisoned books."

The other writers of the time, moreover, had no doubt whatever as to the place whence the novel opinions had sprung, and they feared that social disturbances would follow in the wake of the religious teaching of the sectaries as they had done in the country of their birth. Thus