all saints were purged and were taught so to be. And Tyndale marvelleth what secret pills they take to purge themselves, which not only will not purge here with the cross of Christ, but also buy out their purgatory there of the pope, for a groat or sixpence.

THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER.

MORE. The clergy doth nothing unto the heretics, but More. as the holy doctors did.

Clergy.

TYNDALE. Yes, ye put them in your prisons, and Tyndale. diet them, and handle them after your fashion as temporal tyrants, and dispute with them secretly, and will not come at light. And ye slay them for rebuking you with God's Note. word, and so did not the old holy doctors. If a man slay his father, ye care not. But if any man touch one of you, though he have never so great an occasion given him, ye curse him, and if he will not submit himself unto your punishment, ye leave him unto the temporal power, whom ye have hired with the spoil of his goods to be your hangman, so that he must lose his life, for giving one of you but a blow on the cheek.

MORE. Saint Paul gave two heretics unto the devil, More. which tormented their flesh, which was no small punishment, and haply he slew them.

Paul did

excommu

nicate, but

our bishops do

TYNDALE. O! expounder of the Scripture, like Hugo' Tyndale. Charensis which expoundeth, hæreticum hominem devita, take the heretic out of his life. We read of no pain that he had whom the Corinthians excommunicated and gave to Satan, to slay his flesh, save that he was ashamed of himself and repented, when he saw his offence so earnestly burn. taken and so abhorred. But ye, because ye have no power to deliver them to Satan to blind their minds, ye deliver them to the fire to destroy their flesh, that no more is seen of them after than the ashes.

WHICH THREE CHAPTERS ARE THE KEY AND THE DOOR OF THE SCRIPTURE,
AND THE RESTORING AGAIN OF MOSES' LAW, CORRUPT BY THE

SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. AND THE EXPOSITION IS THE
RESTORING AGAIN OF CHRIST'S LAW CORRUPT

BY THE PAPISTS.

VOL. III.

¶Item, before the book, thou hast a Prologue very necessary, containing the whole sum of the covenant made between God and us, upon which we be baptized to keep it.

THE PROLOGUE.

HERE hast thou, dear reader, an exposition upon the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh chapters of Matthew, wherein Christ, our spiritual Isaac, diggeth again the wells of Abraham: which wells the scribes and pharisees, those wicked and spiteful Philistines, had stopped and filled up with the earth of their false expositions. He openeth the kingdom of heaven, which they had shut up that other men should not enter, as they themselves had no lust to go in. He restoreth the key of knowledge which they had taken away, and broken the wards with wresting the text contrary to his due and natural course with their false glosses. He plucketh away from the face of Moses, the veil which the scribes and pharisees had spread thereon, that no man might perceive the brightness of his countenance. He weedeth out the thorns and bushes of their pharisaical glosses, wherewith they had stopped up the narrow way and strait gate, that few could find them.

The wells of Abraham are the Scripture. And the Scripture may well be called the kingdom of heaven, which is eternal life, and no