exceeded other. Wherefore if God gave his mercy that another woman were in those two points equal with her, why were she not like great, and her prayers as much heard? MORE. Item that men should not worship the holy More. cross. Cross. TYNDALE. With no false worship and superstitious Tyndale. faith, but as I have said, to have it in reverence for the memorial of Him that died thereon. MORE. Item, Luther hateth the feasts of the cross, More. and of Corpus Christi. TYNDALE. Not for envy of the cross, which sinned Tyndale. not in the death of Christ, nor of malice toward the blessed body of Christ, but for the idolatry used in those feasts. MORE. Item, that no man or woman is bound to keep More. any vow. Vow. TYNDALE. Lawful vows are to be kept until neces- Tyndale. sity break them. But unlawful vows are to be broken immediately. More. MORE. Martin appealed unto the next general council that should be gathered in the Holy Ghost, to seek a Martin. long delay. TYNDALE. Of a truth that were a long delay. For Tyndale. should Martin live till the pope gather a council in the Martin. Holy Ghost, or for any godly purpose, he were like to be for every hair of his head a thousand years old. Then bringeth he in the inconstancy of Martin, because he saith in his latter book, how that he seeth farther than in his first. Peradventure, he is kin to our doctors which when with preaching against pluralities they have got them three or four benefices, allege the same excuse. But yet, to say the truth, the very apostles of Christ learned not all truth in one day. For long after the Ascension they wist not that the heathen should be received unto the faith. How then could Martin (brought up in the blindness of your sect above forty years) spy out all your falsehood in one day? VOL. III. All falsehood is not espied out in one day. More. Tyndale. More. MORE. Martin offered at Worms before the emperor and all the lords of Germany, to abide by his book and to dispute, which he might well do, sithens he had his safe conduct that he should have no bodily harm. TYNDALE. O merciful God, how foam ye out your own shame! ye cannot dispute except ye have a man in your own danger to do him bodily harm, to diet him after your fashion, to torment him and to murder him. If ye might have had him at your pleasure, ye would have disputed with him: first, with sophistry and corrupting the Scripture: then with offering him promotions: then with the sword. So that ye would have been sure, to have overcome him with one argument or other. MORE. He would agree on no judges. TYNDALE. What judges offered ye him, save blind bishops and cardinals, enemies of all truth, whose promotions and dignities they fear to be plucked from them, if the truth came to light, or such Judases as they had corrupt with money to maintain their sect? The apostles might have admitted as well the heathen bishops of idols to have been their judges, as he them. But he offered you authentic Scripture and the hearts of the whole world. Which two judges, if ye had good consciences and trust in God, ye would not have refused. THE FOURTH CHAPTER. THE fourth chapter is not the first poetry that he hath feigned. THE FIFTH CHAPTER, In the end of the fifth he untruly reporteth, that Martin saith, no man is bound to keep any vow. Lawful pro mises are to be kept, and unlawful to be broken. THE SIXTH CHAPTER. In the beginning of the sixth he describeth Martin after the example of his own nature, as in other places he describeth God after the complexion of popes, cardinals, and worldly tyrants. More. Martin. MORE. Martin will abide but by the Scripture only. TYNDALE. And ye will come at no Scripture only. Tyndale. And as for the old doctors ye will hear as little, save where it pleaseth you, for all your crying, Old holy fathers. For tell me this, why have ye in England condemned the union of doctors, but because ye would not have your Union. falsehood disclosed by the doctrine of them? MORE. They say, that a Christian man is discharged More. of all laws spiritual and temporal, save the gospel. How far a TYNDALE. Ye juggle: we say that no Christian man Tyndale. ought to bind his brother violently, unto any law whereof he could not give a reason out of Christ's doctrine, and out of the law of love. And on the other side we say, that a Christian man is called to suffer wrong and tyranny (though no man ought to bind him) until God rid us thereof; so far yet as the tyranny is not directly against suffer. the law of God and faith of Christ, and no farther. Christian man is bound to MORE. Martin was the cause of the destruction of the More. uplandish people of Germany. TYNDALE. That is false, for then he could not have Tyndale. escaped himself. Martin was as much the cause of their confusion, as Christ of the destruction of Jerusalem. The duke elector of Saxony came from the war of those uplandish people, and other dukes with him, into Wirtemburg, where Martin is, with fifteen hundred men of arms, so that Martin if he had been guilty, could not have gone quit. And thereto all the dukes and lords that cleave unto the word of God this day, were no less cumbered with their common people than other men. Then after the loudest manner he setteth out the cruel More: Tyndale. More. Tyndale. Tyndale. More. Tyndale. More. Tyndale. ; ness of the emperor's soldiers which they used at Rome but he maketh no mention of the treason which holy church wrought secretly, wherewith the men of war were so set on fire. THE EIGHTH CHAPTER. MORE. WHAT good deed will he do, that believeth Martin, how that we have no freewill to do any good with the help of grace? TYNDALE. O poet, without shame! MORE. What harm shall he care to forbear, that believeth Luther, how God alone, without our will, worketh all the mischief that they do? TYNDALE. O natural son of the father of all lies! MORE. What shall he care, how long he live in sin that believeth Luther, that he shall after this life feel neither good nor evil in body nor soul until the day of doom? TYNDALE. Christ and his apostles taught no other, but warned to look for Christ's coming again every hour. Which coming again, because ye believe will never be, therefore have ye feigned that other merchandise. us. MORE. Martin's books be open, if ye will not believe TYNDALE. Nay, ye have shut them up, and therefore be bold to say what ye lust. MORE. They live as they teach, and teach as they live. TYNDALE. But neither teach nor live as other lie on them. More. THE NINTH CHAPTER. MORE. Though the Turk offer pleasures unto the receivers, and death unto the refusers of his sect (as the pope doth) yet he suffereth none to break their promises of chastity dedicated to God (though haply they use no such vows, and as the pope will not, except it be for money) but Luther teacheth to break holy Unlawful Vows are TYNDALE. Luther teacheth that unlawful vows, Tyudale. grounded on a false faith unto the dishonouring of God, are to be broken, and no other. And again, constrained not to be service pleaseth not God. And thirdly, your pope giveth licence and his blessing to break all lawful vows, but with the most unlawful of all will ye not dispense. observed; Then he bringeth forth the ensample of the heathen, to confirm the pope's chastity. And no wrong, for the same false imagination that the heathen had in theirs, hath the pope in his. Understand therefore, if thou vow any in- Vows, different thing to please God in his own person, he receiveth not thine idolatry; for his pleasure and honour is that thou shouldest be as he hath made thee, and should receive all such things of his hand and use them so far forth as they were needful, and give him thanks, and be bound to him; and not that thou shouldest be as thou hadst made thyself: and that he should receive such things of thee, to be bound to thee to thank thee, and reward thee. And again, thou must give me a reason of thy vow out of the word of God. Moreover when thou vowest lawfully, thou mayest not do it precisely, but alway, except if thine own or thy neighbour's necessity required the contrary. As if thou hadst vowed never to eat flesh, or drink wine, or strong drink, to tame thy flesh, and thou afterward fellest in disease, so that thy body in that behalf were too tame, or that there could no other sustenance be gotten; that thou must interpret such cases except, though thou madest no mention of them at the making of thy vow. Some man would say, other shift might be made: What then? If other drink as hot as wine and of the same operation, We must and other meat of the same power and virtue as flesh is must be had, why shouldest thou forswear wine or flesh, seeing it is now no longer for the taming of thy body? And so forth of all other, as I have above declared. And when he bringeth in the apostles, martyrs, confes All vows made with are to be. great ad visement. use God's creatures for our ne cessity. |