In this opinion, we are told, all in the assembly concurred. At the same time, however, the king promised that he would have the New Testament “faithfully and purely translated by the most learned men,” ready to be distributed when circumstances might allow.

Sir Thomas More plainly states the reason for this prohibition. “In these days, in which Tyndale (God amend him) has so sore poisoned malicious and new-fangled folk with the infectious contagion of his heresies, the king’s highness, and not without the counsel and advice, not only of his nobles with his other counsellors attending upon his Grace’s person, but also of the most virtuous and learned men of both universities and other parts of the realm, specially called thereto, has been obliged for the time to prohibit the Scriptures of God to be allowed in the English tongue in the hands of the people, lest evil folk … may turn all the honey into poison, and do hurt unto themselves, and spread also the infection further abroad … and by their own fault misconstrue and take harm from the very Scripture of God.”[258]

Early in 1534 Tyndale took up his abode once more in Antwerp at the house of an English merchant, and busied himself in passing his revised New Testament through the press. This was published in the following November. To it he prefixed a second prologue dealing with the edition just published by George Joye. This he declares was no true translation, and charges his former assistant with deliberate falsification of the text of Holy Scripture in order to support his errors and false opinions. The edition itself manifests many changes in the text caused by the criticism to which the former impression had been subjected, whilst many of the marginal notes “exhibit the great change that had taken place in Tyndale’s religious opinions, and show that he had ceased to be an Episcopalian.”[259]

Having given a brief outline of the history of Tyndale’s Testament, we are now in a position to examine into the grounds upon which the ecclesiastical authorities of England condemned it. For this purpose, we need again hardly go beyond the works of Sir Thomas More, who in several of his tracts deals specifically with this subject. “Tyndale’s false translation of the New Testament,” he says, “was, as he himself confesses, translated with such changes as he has made in it purposely, to the intent that by those changed words the people should be led into the opinions which he himself calls true Catholic faith, but which all true Catholic people call very false and pestilent heresies.” After saying that for this reason this translation was rightly condemned by the clergy and openly burnt at Paul’s Cross, he continues: “The faults are so many in Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, and so spread throughout the whole book, that it were as easy to weave a new web of cloth or to sew up every hole in a net, so would it be less labour to translate the whole book anew than to make in his translation as many changes as there needs must be before it were made a good translation. Besides this, no wise man, I fancy, would take bread which he well knew had once been poisoned by his enemy’s hand, even though he saw his friend afterwards sweep it ever so clean.… For when it had been examined, considered, and condemned by those to whom the judgment and ordering of the thing belonged, and that false poisoned translation had been forbidden to the people,” it would be the height of presumption for any one to encourage the people boldly to resist their prince and disobey their prelates, and give them, as some indeed have, such a poor reason as this, “that poisoned bread is better than no bread.”[260]

Further, in speaking with sorrow of the flood of heretical literature which seemed ever growing in volume, Sir Thomas More writes: “Besides the works in Latin, French, and German, there are made in the English tongue, first, Tyndale’s New Testament, father of them all, because of his false translations, and after that the five books of Moses, translated by the same man, we need not doubt in what manner, when we know by whom and for what purpose. Then you have his introduction to St. Paul’s Epistle, with which he introduces his readers to a false understanding of St. Paul, making them, among many other heresies, believe that St. Paul held that faith alone was sufficient for salvation, and that men’s good works were worth nothing and could deserve no reward in heaven, though they were done in grace.”[261]

Again, he says: “In the beginning of my Dyalogue, I have shown that Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament deserved to be burnt, because itself showed that he had translated it with an evil mind, and in such a way that it might serve him as the best means of teaching such heresies as he had learnt from Luther, and intended to send over hither and spread abroad within this realm. To the truth of my assertion, Tyndale and his fellows have so openly testified that I need in this matter no further defence. For every man sees that there was never any English heretical book sent here since, in which one item of their complaint has not been the burning of Tyndale’s Testament. For of a surety they thought in the first place that his translation, with their further false construction, would be the bass and the tenor wherever they would sing the treble with much false descant.”[262]

To take some instances of the false translations to which More reasonably objects: First, Tyndale substitutes for Church the word Congregation, “a word with no more signification in Christendom than among the Jews or Turks.” After protesting that Tyndale has no right to change the signification of a word, as, for example, to speak of “a football,” and to mean “the world,” More continues: “Most certainly the word Congregation, taken in conjunction with the text, would not, when he translated it first, have served to make the English reader understand by it the Church any more than when he uses the word idols for images, or images for idols, or the word repenting for doing penance, which he also does. And indeed he has since added to his translation certain notes, viz., that the order of the priesthood is really nothing, but that every man, woman, and child is a priest as much as a real priest, and that every man and woman may consecrate the body of Christ, and say mass as well as a priest, and hear confessions and absolve as well as a priest can; and that there is no difference between priests and other folks, but that all are one congregation and company without any difference, save appointment to preach.”

This enables men to understand “what Tyndale means by using the word Congregation in his translation in place of Church. They also see clearly by these circumstances that he purposely changed the word to set forth these his heresies, though he will say he takes them for no heresies. But, on the other hand, all good and faithful people do, and therefore they call the Church the Church still, and will not agree to change the old Church for his new Congregation.”[263]

In reply to Tyndale’s claim to be able to use the word Congregation to signify the Church, More declares that words must be used in their ordinary signification. “I say,” he writes, “that this is true of the usual signification of these words in the English tongue, by the common custom of us English people that now use these words in our language, or have used them before our days. And I say that this common custom and usage of speech is the only way by which we know the right and proper signification of any word. So much so that if a word were taken from Latin, French, or Spanish, and from lack of understanding the tongue from which it came, was used in English for something else than it signified in the other tongue; then in England, whatsoever it meant anywhere else, it means only what we understand it. Then, I say, that in England this word Congregation never did signify the body of Christian people … any more than the word assembly, which has been taken from French … as congregation is from the Latin.… I say now that the word Church never has been used to signify in the ordinary speech of this realm, any other than the body of all those that are christened. For this reason, and more especially because of Tyndale’s evil intent, I said, and still say, that he did wrong to change Church for Congregation; a holy word for a profane one, so far as they have signification in our English tongue, into which Tyndale made his translation.…[264]

“If Tyndale had done it either accidentally, or purposely merely for pleasure, and not with an evil intent, I would never have said a word against it. But inasmuch as I perceive that he has been with Luther, and was there at the time when he so translated it, and because I knew well the malicious heresies that Luther had begun to bring forth, I must needs mistrust him in this change. And now I say that even from his own words here spoken, you may perceive his cankered mind in his translation, for he says that Demetrius had gathered a company against Paul for preaching against images. Here the Christian reader may easily perceive the poison of this serpent. Every one knows that all good Christian people abhor the idols of the false pagan gods, and also honour the images of Christ and our Lady, and other holy saints. And as they call the one sort images, so they call the other sort idols. Now, whereas St. Paul preached against idols, this good man comes and says he preached against images. And as he here speaks, even so he translates, for in the 15th chapter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, where St. Paul says, ‘I have written to you that ye company not together … if any that is called a brother be … a worshipper of idols’—there Tyndale translates worshipper of images. Because he would have it seem that the Apostle had in that place forbidden Christian men to worship images.… Here you may see the sincerity and plain meaning of this man’s translation.”[265]…

“As he falsely translated Ecclesia into the unknown word congregation, in places where he should have translated it into the known word of holy Church, and this with a malicious purpose to set forth his heresy of the secret and unknown church wherein is neither good works nor sacraments, in like manner is it now proved, in the same way and with like malice, he has translated idols into images … to make it seem that Scripture reprobates the goodly images of our Saviour Himself and His holy saints.… Then he asks me why I have not contended with Erasmus whom he calls my darling, for translating this word Ecclesia into the word congregatio.… I have not contended with Erasmus, my darling, because I found no such malicious intent with Erasmus, my darling, as I found with Tyndale; for had I found with Erasmus, my darling, the cunning intent and purpose that I found with Tyndale, Erasmus, my darling, should be no more ‘my darling.’ But I find in Erasmus, my darling, that he detests and abhors the errors and heresies that Tyndale plainly teaches and abides by, and therefore Erasmus, my darling, shall be my darling still.… For his translation of Ecclesia by congregatio is nothing like Tyndale’s, for the Latin tongue had no Latin word used for Church, but the Greek word, Ecclesia, therefore Erasmus, in his new translation gave it a Latin word. But we in our English had a proper English word for it, and therefore there was no cause for Tyndale to translate it into a worse. Erasmus, moreover, meant therein no heresy, as appears by his writings against heretics, but Tyndale, intended nothing else thereby, as appears by the heresies that he himself teaches and abides by. Therefore, there was in this matter no cause for me to contend with Erasmus, as there was to contend with Tyndale, with whom I contended for putting ‘congregation’ instead of ‘Church.’”[266]

Further, More blames Tyndale’s translation in its substitution of senior or elder for the old-established word priest. This word, presbyter, in the Greek, he says, “as it signifies the thing that men call priest in English, was sometimes called senior in Latin. But the thing that Englishmen call a priest, and the Greek church called presbyter, and the Latin church also sometimes called senior, was never called elder either in the Greek church, or the Latin or the English.”[267] He considers, therefore, the change made by Tyndale, in the second edition of his translation, from senior into elder was not only no improvement, but a distinct and reiterated rejection of the well-understood word of priest.… “I said and say,” he continues, “that Tyndale changed the word priest into senior with the heretical mind and intent to set forth his heresy, in which he teaches that the priesthood is no sacrament … for else I would not call it heresy if any one would translate presbyteros a block, but I would say he was a blockhead. And as great a blockhead were he that would translate presbyteros into an elder instead of a priest, for this English word no more signifies an elder than the Greek word presbyteros signifies an elderstick.”[268] “For the same reason he might change bishop into overseer, and deacon into server, both of which he might as well do, as priest into elder; and then with his English translation he must make us an English vocabulary of his own device, and so with such provision he may change chin into cheek, and belly into back, and every word into every other at his own pleasure, if all England like to go to school with Tyndale to learn English—but else, not so.”[269]

In the same way More condemns Tyndale for deliberately changing the word “Grace,” the meaning of which was fully understood by Catholic Englishmen, into “favour,” “thinking that his own scoffing is sufficient reason to change the known holy name of virtue through all Scripture into such words as he himself liketh.”[270] He says the same of the change of the old familiar words Confession into knowledge, and penance into repentance. “This is what Tyndale means: he would have all willing confession quite cast away and all penance doing too.”[271] And “as for the word penance, whatsoever the Greek word be, it ever was, and still is, lawful enough (if Tyndale give us leave) to call anything in English by whatever word Englishmen by common custom agree upon.… Now, the matter does not rest in this at all. For Tyndale is not angry with the word, but with the matter. For this grieves Luther and him that by penance we understand, when we speak of it … not mere repenting … but also every part of the Sacrament of Penance; oral confession, contrition of heart, and satisfaction by good deeds. For if we called it the Sacrament of repentance, and by that word would understand what we now do by the word penance, Tyndale would then be as angry with repentance as he is now with penance.”[272]

Speaking specially in another place about the change of the old word charity into love in Tyndale’s translation, More declared that he would not much mind which word was used were it not for the evident intention to change the teaching. When it is done consistently through the whole book “no man could deem but that the man meant mischievously. If he called charity sometimes by the bare name love, I would not stick at that. But since charity signifies in Englishmen’s ears not every common love, but a good virtuous and well-ordered love, he that will studiously flee from the name of good love, and always speak of ‘love,’ and always leave out ‘good,’ I would surely say he meant evil. And it is much more than likely. For it is to be remembered that at the time of this translation Huchins (or Tyndale) was with Luther in Wittenberg, and put certain glosses in the margins, made to uphold the ungracious sect.”… And “the reason why he changed the name of charity and of the church and of priesthood is no very great difficulty to perceive. For since Luther and his fellows amongst their other damnable heresies have one that all salvation rests on Faith alone—therefore he purposely works to diminish the reverent mind that men have to charity, and for this reason changes the name of holy virtuous affection into the bare name of love.”

In concluding his justification of the condemnation of Tyndale’s Testament and his criticism of the translator’s Defence, Sir Thomas More says: “Every man knows well that the intent and purpose of my Dyalogue was to make men see that Tyndale in his translation changed the common known words in order to make a change in the faith. As for example: he changed the word Church into this word congregation, because he would raise the question which the church was, and set forth Luther’s heresy that the church which we should believe and obey is not the common known body of all Christian realms remaining in the faith of Christ and not fallen away or cut off with heresies.… But the church we should believe and obey was some secret unknown kind of evil living and worse believing heretics. And he changed priest into senior, because he intended to set forth Luther’s heresy teaching that priesthood is no sacrament, but the office of a layman or laywoman appointed by the people to preach. And he changed Penance into repenting, because he would set forth Luther’s heresy teaching that penance is no sacrament. This being the only purpose of my Dyalogue, Tyndale now comes and expressly confesses what I proposed to show. For he indeed teaches and writes openly these false heresies so that he himself shows now that I then told the people the truth … his own writing shows that he made his translation to the intent to set forth such heresies as I said he did.”[273]

John Standish in the tract on the vernacular Scriptures, published in Queen Mary’s reign, uses in some places the same language as Sir Thomas More in condemning the translations which had been later in vogue. “At all times,” he writes, “heretics have laboured to corrupt the Scriptures that they might serve for their naughty purposes and to confirm their errors therewith, but especially now in our time. O good Lord, how have the translators of the Bible into English purposely corrupted the texts, oft maliciously putting in such words as in the readers’ ears might serve for the proof of such heresies as they went about to sow. These are not only set forth in the translations, but also in certain prologues and glosses added thereunto, and these things they have so handled (as indeed it is no great mastery to do) with probable reasons very apparent to the simple and unlearned, that an infinite number of innocents they have spiritually poisoned and corrupted within this realm, and caused them to perish obstinately.”[274]

If further proof were wanting that the New Testament as set forth by Tyndale was purposely designed to overthrow the then existing religious principles held by English churchmen, it is furnished by works subsequently published by the English Lutherans abroad. The tract named The Burying of the Mass, printed in Germany shortly after the burning of Tyndale’s Testament, was, as Sir Thomas More points out, intended as a direct attack upon the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacramental system. In it the author poured out the vials of his wrath upon all those who caused Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament to be destroyed, saying that they burned it because it destroyed the Mass. “By this,” adds More, “you may see that the author accounted the translation very good for the destruction of the Mass.”[275] Moreover, in a book called The Wicked Mammon, published by Tyndale himself shortly after this, although he blames the style of the author of The Burying of the Mass, he tacitly accepts his assertion that his translation of the New Testament was intended to bring about the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass.[276]

In later times, after the experience of the religious changes in the reign of Edward VI., some writers pointed to the evils, religious and social, as evidence of the harm done by the promiscuous reading of the Scriptures. In their opinion, what More had feared and foretold had come to pass. “In these miserable years now past,” says Standish of Mary’s reign, in this tract on the vernacular Scriptures: “In these miserable years now past, what mystery is so hard that the ignorant with the Bible in English durst not set upon, yea and say they understood it: all was light! They desired no explanation but their own, even in the highest mysteries.… Alas! experience shows that our own men through having the Bible in English have walked far above their reach, being sundry ways killed and utterly poisoned with the letter of the English Bible.”[277]

The spirit in which the study of Sacred Scripture was taken up by many in those days is described by the Marian preacher, Roger Edgworth, already referred to. “Scripture,” he says, “is in worse case than any other faculty: for where other faculties take upon them no more than pertaineth to their own science, as (for example) the physician of what pertains to the health of man’s body, and the carpenter and smith of their own tools and workmanship—the faculty of Sacred Scripture alone is the knowledge which all men and women challenge and claim to themselves and for their own. Here and there the chattering old wife, the doting old man, the babbling sophister, and all others presume upon this faculty, and tear it and teach it before they learn it. Of all such green divines as I have spoken of, it appeareth full well what learning they have by this, that when they teach any of their disciples, and when they give any of their books to other men to read, the first suggestion why he should labour (at) such books is ‘because of this,’ say they, ‘thou shalt be able to oppose the best priest in the parish, and tell him he lies.’”[278]

The result is patent in the history of the religious confusions which followed, for this much must be allowed, whatever view may be taken of the good or evil which ultimately resulted. Dr. Richard Smith, in 1546, then states the position as he saw it: “In old times the faith was respected, but in our days not a few things, and not of small importance, but (alack the more the pity) even the chiefest and most weighty matters of religion and faith, are called in question, babbled about, talked and jangled upon (reasoned, I cannot and ought not to call it).”[279]

Although the cry for the open Bible which had been raised by Tyndale and the other early English reformers generally assumed the right to free and personal interpretation of its meaning, no sooner was the English Scripture put into circulation than its advocates proclaimed the need of expositions to teach people the meaning they should attach to it. In fact, the marginal notes and glosses, furnished by Tyndale chiefly from Lutheran sources, are evidence that even he had no wish that the people should understand or interpret the sacred text otherwise than according to his peculiar views. Very quickly after the permission of Henry VIII. had allowed the circulation of the printed English Bible, commentators came forward to explain their views. Lancelot Ridley, for example, issued many such explanations of portions of the Sacred Text with the object, as he explains, of enabling “the unlearned to declare the Holy Scriptures now suffered to all people of this realm to read and study at their pleasure.” For the Bible, “which is now undeclared (i.e. unexplained) to them, and only had in the bare letter, appears to many rather death than life, rather (calculated) to bring many to errors and heresies than into the truth and verity of God’s Word. For this, when unexplained, does not bring the simple, rude, and ignorant people from their ignorant blindness, from their corrupt and backward judgments, false trusts, evil beliefs, vain superstitions, and feigned holiness, in which the people have long been in blindness, for lack of a knowledge of Holy Scripture which the man of Rome kept under latch and would not suffer to come to light, that his usurped power should not have been espied, his worldly glory diminished, and his profit decayed.”[280]

Again, in another exposition made eight years later, the same writer complains that still, for lack of teaching what he considers the true meaning of Scripture, the views of the people are still turned towards the “old superstitions” in spite of “the open Bible.” “Although the Bible be in English,” he says, “and be suffered to every man and woman to read at their pleasures, and commanded to be read every day at Matins, Mass, and Evensong, yet there remain great ignorance and corrupt judgments … and these will remain still, except the Holy Scriptures be made more plain to the lay people who are unlearned by some commentary or annotation, so that lay people may understand the Holy Scripture better.”[281] Commentaries would help much, he says in another place, “to deliver the people from ignorance, darkness, errors, heresy, superstitions, false trusts, and from evil opinions fixed and rooted in the hearts of many for lack of true knowledge of God’s Holy Word, and expel the usurped power of the bishop of Rome and all Romish dregs.”[282]

It is interesting to find that from the first, whilst objecting to the interpretation of the old teachers of the Church, and claiming that the plain text of Scripture was a sufficient antidote and complete answer to them and their traditional deductions, the “new teachers” found that without teaching and exposition on their part, the open Bible was by no means sufficient to wean the popular mind from what they regarded as superstitious and erroneous ways. Their attitude in the matter is at least a confirmation of the contention of Sir Thomas More and other contemporary Catholic writers, that the vernacular Scriptures would be useless without a teaching authority to interpret their meaning.

A brief word may now be said as a summary of the attitude towards the vernacular Bible taken up by the ecclesiastical authorities on the eve of the Reformation. The passages quoted from Sir Thomas More make it evident that no such hostility on the part of the Church, as writers of all shades of opinion have too hastily assumed, really existed.[283] In fact, though those responsible for the conduct of affairs, both ecclesiastical and lay, at this period objected to the circulation of Tyndale’s printed New Testament, this objection was based, not on any dread of allowing the English Bible as such, but on the natural objection to an obviously incorrect translation. It is difficult to see how those in authority could have permitted a version with traditional words changed for the hardly concealed purpose of supporting Lutheran tenets, with texts garbled and marginal explanations inserted for the same end. Those who hold that Tyndale’s views were right, and even that his attempt to enforce them in this way was justifiable, can hardly, however, blame the authorities at that time in England, secular or lay, who did not think so, from doing all they could to prevent what they regarded as the circulation of a book calculated to do great harm if no means were taken to prevent it. Men’s actions must be judged by the circumstances under which they acted, and it would be altogether unjust to regard the prohibition of the Tyndale Scriptures as a final attempt on the part of the English Church to prevent the circulation of the vernacular Scriptures. To the authorities in those days at least, the book in question did not represent the Sacred Text at all. That it was full of errors, to say the least, is confessed by Tyndale himself; and as to the chief points in his translation which he defended and which Sir Thomas More so roundly condemned, posterity has sided with More and not with Tyndale, for not one of these special characteristics of the translation in which so much of Tyndale’s Lutheran teaching was allowed to appear, was suffered to remain in subsequent revisions. From this point of view alone, those who examine the question with an unbiassed mind must admit that there was ample justification for the prohibition of Tyndale’s printed Testament. If this be so, the further point may equally well be conceded, namely, that the Church on the eve of the Reformation did not prohibit the vernacular Scriptures as such at all, and that many churchmen in common with the king, Sir Thomas More, and other laymen, would, under happier circumstances, have been glad to see a properly translated English Bible.

CHAPTER IX
TEACHING AND PREACHING

At the outset, it should be remembered that the questions at issue in the sixteenth century were not, in the first place at least, connected with the influence of religious teaching on the lives of the people at large. No one contended that the reformed doctrines would be found to make people better, or would help them to lead lives more in conformity with Gospel teaching. The question of what may be called practical religion never entered into the disputes of the time. Mr. Brewer warns the student of the history of this period that he will miss the meaning of many things altogether, and quite misunderstand their drift, if he starts his inquiry by regarding the Reformation as the creation of light to illuminate a previous period of darkness, or the evolution of practical morality out of a state of antecedent chaotic corruption. “In fact,” he says, “the sixteenth century was not a mass of moral corruption out of which life emerged by some process unknown to art or nature; it was not an addled egg cradling a living bird; quite the reverse.” For, as the historian of the German people, Janssen, points out, the truth is that the entire social order of the Middle Ages “was established on the doctrine of good works being necessary for the salvation of the Christian soul.” Whilst, as Mr. Brewer again notes, Luther’s most earnest remonstrances were directed not against bad works, but against the undue stress laid by the advocates of the old religion upon good works. Moreover, an age which could busy itself about discussions of questions as to “righteousness,” whether of “faith or works,” “is not a demoralised or degenerate age. These are not the thoughts of men buried in sensuality.”

Two questions are contained in the inquiry as to pre-Reformation religious teaching, namely, as to its extent and as to its character. There can hardly be much doubt that the duty of giving instruction to the people committed to their charge was fully recognised by the clergy in mediæval times. In view of the positive legislation of various synods on the subject of regular and systematic teaching, as well as of the constant repetition of the obligation in the books of English canon law, it is obvious that the priests were not ignorant of what was their plain duty. From the time of the constitution of Archbishop Peckham at the Synod of Oxford in 1281, to the time of the religious changes, there is every reason to suppose that the ordinance contained in the following words was observed in every parish church in the country: “We order,” says the Constitution, “that every priest having the charge of a flock do, four times in each year (that is, once each quarter) on one or more solemn feast days, either himself or by some one else, instruct the people in the vulgar language simply and without any fantastical admixture of subtle distinctions, in the articles of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Evangelical Precepts, the seven works of mercy, the seven deadly sins with their offshoots, the seven principal virtues, and the seven Sacraments.”

This means that the whole range of Christian teaching, dogmatic and moral, was to be explained to the people four times in every year; and in order that there should be no doubt about the matter, the Synod proceeds to set out in considerable detail each of the points upon which the priest was to instruct his people. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the great number of manuals intended to help the clergy in the execution of this law attest the fact that it was fully recognised and very generally complied with. When at the close of the latter century, the invention of printing made the multiplication of such manuals easy, the existence both of printed copies of this Constitution of Archbishop Peckham, and of printed tracts drawn up to give every assistance to the parochial clergy in the preparation of these homely teachings, proves that the law was understood and acted upon. In the face of such evidence it is impossible to doubt that, whatever may have been the case as to set sermons and formal discourses, simple, straightforward teaching was not neglected in pre-Reformation England, and every care was taken that the clergy might be furnished with material suitable for the fundamental religious teaching contemplated by the law. As late as 1466, a synod of the York Province, held by Archbishop Nevill, not only reiterated this general decree about regular quarterly instructions of a simple and practical kind, but set out at great length the points of these lessons in the Christian faith and life upon which the parish priests were to insist.

Even set discourses of a more formal kind, though probably by no means so frequent as in these times, when they have to a great extent superseded the simple instructions of old Catholic days, were by no means neglected. Volumes of such sermons in manuscript and in print, as well as all that is known of the great discourses constantly being delivered at St. Paul’s Cross, may be taken as sufficient evidence of this. For the conveyance of moral and religious instruction, however, the regular and homely talks of a parish priest to his people were vastly more important than the set orations, and it is with these familiar instructions that the student of this period of our history has chiefly to concern himself. All the available evidence goes to show that the giving of these was not only regarded as an obligation on the pastor; but attendance at them was looked upon as a usual and necessary portion of the Christian duty. For example, in the examinations of conscience intended to assist lay people in their preparation for the Sacrament of penance, there are indications that any neglect to attend at these parochial instructions was considered sufficiently serious to become a matter of confession. It is, of course, hardly conceivable that this should be so, if the giving of these popular lessons in the duties of the Christian life was neglected by the priests, or if they were not commonly frequented by the laity. To take a few instances. “Also,” runs one such examination, “I have been slow in God’s service, and negligent to pray and to go to church in due time … loth to hear the Word of God, and the preacher of the Word of God. Neither have I imprinted it in my heart and borne it away and wrought thereafter.”[284] Again: “I have been setting nought by preaching and teaching of God’s Word, by thinking it an idle thing.”[285] And, to take an example of the view taken in such documents as to the priest’s duty: “If you are a priest be a true lantern to the people both in speaking and in living, and faithfully and truly do all things which pertain to a priest. Seek wisely the ground of truth and the true office of the priesthood, and be not ruled blindly by the lewd customs of the world. Read God’s law and the Expositions of the Holy Doctors, and study and learn and keep it, and when thou knowest it, preach and teach it to those that are unlearned.”[286]

Richard Whitford, the Monk of Sion, in his Work for Householders, published first in 1530, lays great stress upon the obligation of parents and masters to see that those under their charge attended the instructions given in the parish church. Some may perhaps regard his greater anxiety for their presence at sermons rather than at Mass, when it was not possible for them to be at both, as doubtful advice. In this, however, he agrees with the author of what was the most popular book of instructions at this period, and the advice itself is proof that the obligation of attending instructions was regarded as sufficiently serious to be contrasted with that of hearing Mass. Speaking of the Sunday duties, Whitford says: “At church on Sundays see after those who are under your care. And charge them also to keep their sight in the church close upon their book and beads. And whilst they are young accustom them always to kneel, stand, and sit, and never walk in the church. And let them hear the Mass quietly and devoutly, much part kneeling. But at the Gospel, the Preface, and at the Paternoster teach them to stand and to make curtesy at the word Jesus, as the priest does.… If there be a sermon any time of the day let them be present, all that are not occupied in needful and lawful business; all other (occupations) laid aside let them ever keep the preachings, rather than the Mass, if, perchance, they may not hear both.”

Nothing could possibly be more definite or explicit upon the necessity of popular instructions and upon the duty incumbent upon the clergy of giving proper vernacular teaching to their flocks than the author of Dives et Pauper, the most popular of the fifteenth-century books of religious instruction. In fact, on this point his language is as strong and uncompromising as that which writers have too long been accustomed to associate with the name of Wycliffe. No more unwarranted assumption has ever been made in the name of history than that which classed under the head of Lollard productions almost every fifteenth-century tract in English, especially such as dealt openly with abuses needing correction, and pleaded for simple vernacular teaching of religion. This is what the author of Dives et Pauper says about preaching: “Since God’s word is life and salvation of man’s soul, all those who hinder them that have authority of God, and by Orders taken, to preach and teach, from preaching and teaching God’s word and God’s law, are manslayers ghostly. They are guilty of as many souls that perish by the hindering of God’s word, and namely those proud, covetous priests and curates who can neither teach, nor will teach, nor suffer others that both can and will and have authority to teach and preach of God and of the bishop who gave them Orders, but prevent them for fear lest they should get less from their subjects, or else the less be thought of, or else that their sins should be known by the preaching of God’s word. Therefore, they prefer to leave their own sins openly reproved generally, among other men’s sins. As St. Anselm saith, God’s word ought to be worshipped as much as Christ’s body, and he sins as much who hindereth God’s word and despiseth God’s word, or taketh it recklessly as he that despiseth God’s body, or through his negligence letteth it fall to the ground. On this place the gloss showeth that it is more profitable to hear God’s word in preaching than to hear a Mass, and that a man should rather forbear his Mass than his sermon. For, by preaching, folks are stirred to contrition, and to forsake sin and the fiend, and to love God and goodness, and (by it) they be illumined to know their God, and virtue from vice, truth from falsehood, and to forsake errors and heresies. By the Mass they are not so, but if they come to Mass in sin they go away in sin, and shrews they come and shrews they wend away.… Nevertheless, the Mass profiteth them that are in grace to get grace and forgiveness of sin.… Both are good, but the preaching of God’s word ought to be more discharged and more desired than the hearing of Mass.”[287]

In the same way the author of a little book named The Interpretatyon and Sygnyfycacyon of the Masse, printed by Robert Wyer in 1532, insists on the obligation of attending the Sunday instruction. “On each Sunday,” he says, “he shall also hear a sermon, if it be possible, for if a man did lose or omit it through contempt or custom, he would sin greatly.”[288] And in The Myrrour of the Church, the author tells those who desire “to see the Will of God in Holy Scripture,” but being of “simple learning” and “no cunning” cannot read, that they may do so “in open sermon, or in secret collation” with those who can. And in speaking of the Sunday duties he tells his readers not to lie in bed, “but rising promptly you shall go to the church, and with devotion say your matins without jangling. Also sweetly hear your Mass and all the hours of the day. And then if there is any preacher in the church who proposes to make a sermon, you shall sweetly hear the Word of God and keep it in remembrance.”[289] And lastly, to take one more example, in Wynkyn de Worde’s Exornatorium Curatorum, printed to enable those having the cure of souls to perform the duties of instruction laid down by Archbishop Peckham’s Provincial Constitution, whilst setting forth a form of examination of conscience under the head of the deadly sins, the author bids the curate teach his people to ask themselves: “Whether you have been slothful in God’s service, and specially upon the Sunday and the holy day whether you have been slothful to come to church, slothful to pray when you have been there, and slothful to hear the Word of God preached. Furthermore, whether you have been negligent to learn your Pater Noster, your Ave Maria, or your Creed, or whether you have been negligent to teach the same to your own children or to your god-children. Examine yourself also whether you have taught your children good manners, and guarded them from danger and bad company.” The same book insists on the need of such examination of conscience daily, or at least weekly.[290]

The following in this connection is of interest as being a daily rule of life recommended to laymen in the English Prymer printed at Rouen in 1538: “First rise up at six o’clock in the morning at all seasons, and in rising do as follows: Thank our Lord who has brought you to the beginning of the day. Commend yourself to God, to Our Lady Saint Mary, and to the saint whose feast is kept that day, and to all the saints in heaven. When you have arrayed yourself say in your chamber or lodging, Matins, Prime, and Hours, if you may. Then go to the church before you do any worldly works if you have no needful business, and abide in the church the space of a low mass time, where you shall think on God and thank Him for His benefits. Think awhile on the goodness of God, on His divine might and virtue.… If you cannot be so long in the church on account of necessary business, take some time in the day in your house in which to think of these things.”… Take your meal “reasonably without excess or overmuch forbearing of your meat, for there is as much danger in too little as in too much. If you fast once in a week it is enough, besides Vigils and Ember days out of Lent.” After dinner rest “an hour or half-an-hour, praying God that in that rest He will accept your health to the end, that after it you may serve Him the more devoutly.”

“… As touching your service, say up to Tierce before dinner, and make an end of all before supper. And when you are able say the Dirge and Commendations for all Christian souls, at least on holy days, and if you have leisure say them on other days, at least with three lessons. Shrive yourself every week to your curate, except you have some great hindrance. And beware that you do not pass a fortnight unless you have a very great hindrance. If you have the means refuse not your alms to the first poor body that asketh it of you that day. Take care to hear and keep the Word of God. Confess you every day to God without fail of such sins you know you have done that day.” Think often of our Lord’s Passion, and at night when you wake turn your thoughts to what our Lord was doing at that hour in His Passion. In your life look for a faithful friend to whom you may open “your secrets,” and when found follow his advice. No doubt this “manner to live well” will perhaps hardly represent what people at this time ordinarily did. But the mere fact that it could be printed as a Christian’s daily rule of life as late as 1538, is evidence at any rate that people took at the least as serious a view of their obligations in religious matters as we should.[291] In the same way The art of good lyvyng, quoted above, suggests as the proper way to sanctify the Sunday: Meditations on death, the pains of hell, and the joys of Paradise. Time should be given to reading the lives of the saints, to saying Matins, and studying the Paternoster and the Creed. Others should be exhorted to enter into God’s service, and fathers of families are bound to see that “their children, servants, and families go to church and hear the preachings.”[292]

By far the most interesting and important part of any inquiry on the subject of pre-Reformation instructions, regards of course their nature and effect. We are asked to believe that the people were allowed to grow up in ignorance of the true nature of religion, and with superstitions in their hearts which the clergy could easily have corrected; but which they, on the contrary, rather fostered as likely to prove of pecuniary value to themselves. To keep the people ignorant (it is said) was their great object, as it was through the ignorance of the lay folk that the clergy hoped to maintain their influence and ascendency, and, it is suggested, to draw money out of the pockets of the faithful. The reverence which was paid at this time to images of the saints, and in an especial manner to the crucifix, is often adduced as proof that the people were evidently badly instructed in the nature of religious worship; and the destruction of statues, paintings, and pictured glass by the advanced reformers is thought to be explained, if not excused, by the absolute need of putting a stop once for all to a crying abuse. The explanation given to the people by their religious teachers on the eve of the religious changes on this matter of devotion to the saints, and of the nature of the reverence to be paid to their representations, may be taken as a good sample of the practical nature of the general instructions imparted in those times. The question divested of all ambiguity is really this: Were the people taught to understand the nature of an image or representation, or were they allowed to regard them as objects of reverence in themselves—that is, as idols? The material for a reply to this inquiry is fortunately abundant. The Dyalogue of Sir Thomas More was written in 1528, in order to maintain the Catholic teaching about images, relics, and the praying to saints. To this, then, an inquirer naturally turns in the first place for an exposition of the common belief in these matters; for Sir Thomas claims that in his tract he is defending only “the common faith and belief of Christ’s Church.” “What this is,” he says, “I am very sure; and perceive it well not only by experience of my own time and the places where I have myself been to, with the common report of other honest men from all other places of Christendom.” After having explained that the commandment of God had reference to idols or images worshipped as gods, and not to mere representations of Christ, our Lady, or the Saints,[293] he continues: “but neither Scripture nor natural reason forbids a man to reverence an image, not fixing his final intent on the image, but referring the honour to the person the image represents. In such reverence shown to an image there is no honour withdrawn from God; but the saint is honoured in his image, and God in His saint. When a man of mean birth and an ambassador to a great king has high honour done to him, to whom does that honour redound, to the ambassador or to the king? When a man on the recital of his prince’s letter puts off his cap and kisses it, does he reverence the paper or his prince?… All names spoken and all words written are no material signs or images, but are made only by consent and agreement of men to betoken and signify such things, whereas images painted, graven, or carved, may be so well wrought and so near to the life and the truth, that they will naturally and much more effectually represent the thing than the name either spoken or written.… These two words, Christus crucifixus, do not represent to us, either to laymen or to the learned, so lively a remembrance of His bitter Passion as does a blessed image of the crucifix, and this these heretics perceive well enough. Nor do they speak against images in order to further devotion, but plainly with a malicious mind to diminish and quench men’s devotions. For they see clearly that no one who loves another does not delight in his image or in anything of his. And these heretics who are so sore against the images of God and His holy saints, would be right angry with him that would dishonestly handle an image made in remembrance of one of themselves, whilst the wretches forbear not to handle villainously, and in despite cast dirt upon the holy crucifix, an image made in remembrance of our Saviour Himself, and not only of His most blessed Person, but also of His most bitter Passion.”[294]

Later on, in the same tract, rejecting the notion that people did not fully understand that the image was intended merely to recall the memory of the person whose image it was, and was not itself in any sense the thing or person, More says: “The flock of Christ is not so foolish as those heretics would make them to be. For whereas there is no dog so mad that he does not know a real coney (i.e. rabbit) from a coney carved and painted, (yet they would have it supposed that) Christian people that have reason in their heads, and therefore the light of faith in their souls, would think that the image of our Lady were our Lady herself. Nay, they be not so mad, I trust, but that they do reverence to the image for the honour of the person whom it represents, as every man delights in the image and remembrance of his friend. And although every good Christian man has a remembrance of Christ’s passion in his mind, and conceives by devout meditation a form and fashion thereof in his heart, yet there is no man I ween so good nor so learned, nor so well accustomed to meditation, but that he finds himself more moved to pity and compassion by beholding the holy crucifix than when he lacks it.”[295]

In his work against Tyndale, More again takes up this subject in reference to the way in which the former in his new translation of the Bible had substituted the word idol for image, as if they were practically identical in meaning. “Good folk who worship images of Christ and His saints, thereby worship Christ and His saints, whom these images represent.” Just as pagan worshippers of idols did evil in worshipping them, “because in them they worshipped devils (whom they called gods and whom those idols represented), so Christian men do well in worshipping images, because in them they worship Christ and His holy saints.”[296]

Roger Edgworth, the preacher, describes at Bristol in Queen Mary’s reign how the Reforming party endeavoured to confuse the minds of the common people as to the meaning of the word idol. “I would,” he says, “that you should not ignorantly confound and abuse those terms ‘idol’ and ‘image,’ taking an image for an idol and an idol for an image, as I have heard many do in this city, as well fathers and mothers (who should be wise) as their babies and children who have learned foolishness from their parents. Now, at the dissolution of the monasteries and friars’ houses many images have been carried abroad and given to children to play with, and when the children have them in their hands, dancing them in their childish manner, the father or mother comes and says, ‘What nase, what have you there?’ The child answers (as she is taught), ‘I have here my idol.’ Then the father laughs and makes a gay game at it. So says the mother to another, ‘Jugge or Tommy, where did you get that pretty idol?’ ‘John, our parish clerk gave it to me,’ says the child, and for that the clerk must have thanks and shall not lack good cheer. But if the folly were only in the insolent youth, and in the fond unlearned fathers and mothers, it might soon be redressed.” The fact is, he proceeds to explain, that the new preachers have been doing all in their power to obscure the hitherto well-recognised difference in meaning between an image and an idol. He begs his hearers to try and keep the difference in meaning between an image and an idol clearly before their minds. “An image is a similitude of a natural thing that has been, is, or may be,” he tells them. “An idol is a similitude of what never was or may be. Therefore the image of the crucifix is no idol, for it represents and signifies Christ crucified as He was in very deed, and the image of St. Paul with a sword in his hand as the sign of his martyrdom is no idol, for the thing signified by it was a thing indeed, for he was beheaded with a sword.”[297]

In another part of the Dialogue Sir Thomas More pointed out that what the reforming party said against devotion to images and pilgrimages could be summed up under one of three heads. They charge the people with giving “to the saints, and also to their images, honour like in kind to what they give to God Himself”; or (2) that “they take the images for the things themselves,” which is plain idolatry; or (3) that the worship is conducted in a “superstitious fashion with a desire of unlawful things.” Now, as to these three accusations, More replies: “The first point is at once soon and shortly answered, for it is not true. For though men kneel to saints and images, and incense them also, yet it is not true that they for this reason worship them in every point like unto God.… They lack the chief point (of such supreme worship). That is, they worship God in the mind that He is God, which intention in worship is the only thing that maketh it latria, and not any certain gesture or bodily observance.” It would not be supreme or divine worship even if “we would wallow upon the ground unto Christ, having in this a mind that He were the best man we could think of, but not thinking Him to be God. For if the lowly manner of bodily observance makes latria, then we were in grave peril of idolatry in our courtesy used to princes, prelates, and popes, to whom we kneel as low as to God Almighty, and kiss some their hands and some our own, ere ever we presume to touch them; and in the case of the Pope, his foot; and as for incensing, the poor priests in every choir are as well incensed as the Sacrament. Hence if latria, which is the special honour due to God, was contained in these things, then we were great idolaters, not only in our worship of the saints and of their images, but also of men, one to another among ourselves.” Though indeed to God Almighty ought to be shown as “humble and lowly a bodily reverence as possible, still this bodily worship is not latria, unless we so do it in our mind considering and acknowledging Him as God, and with that mind and intention do our worship; and this, as I think,” he says, “no Christian man does to any image or to any saint either.”

“Now, as touching the second point—namely, that people take the images for the saints themselves, I trust there is no man so mad, or woman either, that they do not know live men from dead stones, and a tree from flesh and bone. And when they prefer our Lady at one pilgrimage place before our Lady at another, or one rood before another, or make their invocations and vows some to the one and some to the other, I ween it easy to perceive that they mean nothing else than that our Lord and our Lady, or rather our Lord for our Lady, shows more miracles at the one than the other. They intend in their pilgrimages to visit, some one place and some another, or sometimes the place is convenient for them, or their devotion leads them; and yet (this is) not for the place, but because our Lord pleases by manifest miracles to provoke men to seek Him, or His Blessed Mother, or some Holy Saint of His, in these places more especially than in some others.”

“This thing itself proves also that they do not take the images of our Lady for herself. For if they did, how could they possibly in any wise have more mind to one of them than to the other? For they can have no more mind to our Lady than to our Lady. Moreover, if they thought that the image at Walsingham was our Lady herself then must they needs think that our Lady herself was that image. Then, if in like manner they thought that the image at Ipswich was our Lady herself, and as they must then need think that our Lady was the image at Ipswich, they must needs think that all these three things were one thing.… And so by the same reason they must suppose that the image at Ipswich was the self-same image as at Walsingham. If you ask any one you take for the simplest, except a natural fool, I dare hold you a wager she will tell you ‘nay’ to this. Besides this, take the simplest fool you can find and she will tell you our Lady herself is in heaven. She will also call an image an image, and she will tell you the difference between an image of a horse and a horse in very deed. And this appears clearly whatever her words about her pilgrimage are calling, according to the common manner of speech, the image of our Lady, our Lady. As men say, ‘Go to the King’s Head for wine,’ not meaning his real head, but the sign, so she means nothing more in the image but our Lady’s image, no matter how she may call it. And if you would prove she neither takes our Lady for the image, nor the image for our Lady—talk with her about our Lady and she will tell you that our Lady was saluted by Gabriel; that our Lady fled into Egypt with Joseph; and yet in the telling she will never say that ‘our Lady of Walsingham,’ or ‘of Ipswich,’ was saluted by Gabriel, or fled into Egypt. If you would ask her whether it was ‘our Lady of Walsingham,’ or ‘our Lady of Ipswich,’ that stood by the cross at Christ’s Passion, she will, I warrant you, make answer that it was neither of them; and if you further ask her, ‘which Lady then,’ she will name you no image, but our Lady who is in heaven. And this I have proved often, and you may do so, too, when you will and shall find it true, except it be in the case of one so very a fool that God will give her leave to believe what she likes. And surely, on this point, I think in my mind that all those heretics who make as though they had found so much idolatry among the people for mistaking (the nature) of images, do but devise the fear, to have some cloak to cover their heresy, wherein they bark against the saints themselves, and when they are marked they say they only mean the wrong beliefs that women have in images.”[298]

As regards the third point—namely, that honour is sometimes shown to the saints and their images in “a superstitious fashion with a desire of unlawful things,” More would be ready to blame this as much as any man if it could be shown to be the case. “But I would not,” he says, “blame all things which are declared to be of this character by the new teachers. For example, to pray to St. Apollonia for the help of our teeth is no witchcraft, considering that she had her teeth pulled out for Christ’s sake. Nor is there any superstition in other suchlike things.” Still, where abuses can be shown they ought to be put down as abuses, and the difference between a lawful use and an unlawful abuse recognised. But because there may be abuses done on the Sunday, or in Lent, that is no reason why the Sunday observance, or the fast of Lent, should be swept away.[299] “In like manner it would not be right that all due worship of saints and reverence of relics, and honour of saints’ images, by which good and devout folk get much merit, should be abolished and put down because people abuse” these things. “Now, as touching the evil petitions,” he continues, “though they who make them were, as I trust they are not, a great number, they are not yet so many that ask evil petitions of saints as ask them of God Himself. For whatsoever such people will ask of a good saint, they will ask of God Himself, and where as the worst point it is said, ‘that the people do idolatry in that they take the images for the saints themselves, or the rood for Christ Himself,’—which, as I have said, I think none do; for some rood has no crucifix thereon, and they do not believe that the cross which they see was ever at Jerusalem, or that it was the holy cross itself, and much less think that the image that hangs on it is the body of Christ Himself. And though some were so mad as to think so, yet it is not ‘the people’ who do so. For a few doddering dames do not make the people.”[300]

It is hard to imagine any teaching about the use and abuse of images clearer than that which is contained in the foregoing passages from Sir Thomas More’s writings. The main importance of his testimony, however, is not so much this clear statement of Catholic doctrine on the nature of devotion to images, as his positive declaration that there were not such abuses, or superstitions, common among the people on the eve of the religious changes, as it suited the purpose of the early reformers to suggest, and of later writers with sectarian bias to believe.

For evidence of positive and distinct teaching on the matter of reverence to be shown to images, and on its nature and limits, we cannot do better than refer to that most popular book of instruction in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, already referred to, called Dives et Pauper, a treatise on the Ten Commandments. It was multiplied from the beginning of the fifteenth century in manuscript copies, and printed editions of it were issued from the presses of Pynson, Wynkyn de Worde, and Thomas Berthelet. These editions published by our early printers are sufficient to attest its popularity, and the importance attached to it as a book of instruction by the ecclesiastical authorities on the eve of the Reformation.

This is how the teacher lays down the general principle of loving God: “The first precept of charity is this: Thou shalt love the Lord God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, with all thy might. When He saith thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, He excludeth all manner of idolatry that is forbidden by the first commandment; that is, that man set not his heart, nor his faith, nor his trust in any creature more than in God, or against God’s worship.… God orders that thou shouldst love Him with all thy heart, that is to say, with all thy faith, in such a way that thou set all thy faith and trust in Him before all others, as in Him that is Almighty and can best help thee in thy need.” Later on, under the same heading, we are taught that: “by this commandment we are bound to worship God, who is the Father of all things, who is called the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. He is our Father, for He made us of nought: He bought us with His blood, He findeth us all that we need, and much more, He feedeth us. He is our Father by grace, for by His grace He hath made us heirs of heavenly bliss. Was there ever a father so tender of his child as God is tender of us? He is to us both father and mother, and therefore we are bound to love Him and worship Him above all things.”[301]

Under the first commandment the whole question as to images, and the nature of the reverence to be paid to them, is carefully considered, and the matter put so plainly, that there is no room for doubt as to the nature of the instructions given to the people in pre-Reformation days. Images, the teacher explains, are ordered for three great ends, namely: “To stir men’s minds to meditate upon the Incarnation of Christ and upon His life and passion, and upon the lives of the saints;” secondly, to move the heart to devotion and love, “for oft man is stirred more by sight than by hearing or reading;” thirdly, they “are intended to be a token and a book to the ignorant people, that they may read in images and painting as clerks read in books.”

And in reply to a question from Dives, who pretended to think that it would be difficult to read a lesson from any painting, Pauper explains his meaning in calling them “books to the unlearned.” “When thou seest the image of the crucifix,” he says, “think of Him that died on the cross for thy sins and thy sake, and thank Him for His endless charity that He would suffer so much for thee. See in images how His head was crowned with a garland of thorns till the blood burst out on every side, to destroy the great sin of pride which is most manifested in the heads of men and women. Behold, and make an end to thy pride. See in the image how His arms were spread abroad and drawn up on the tree till the veins and sinews cracked, and how His hands were nailed to the cross, and streamed with blood, to destroy the sin that Adam and Eve did with their hands when they took the apple against God’s prohibition. Also He suffered to wash away the sin of the wicked deeds and wicked works done by the hands of men and women. Behold, and make an end of thy wicked works. See how His side was opened and His heart cloven in two by the sharp spear, and how it shed blood and water, to show that if He had had more blood in His body, more He would have given for men’s love. He shed His blood to ransom our souls, and water to wash us from our sins.”

But whilst the instructor teaches the way in which the crucifix may be a book full of deep meaning to the unlearned, he is most careful to see that the true signification of the image is not misunderstood. In language which for clearness of expression and simplicity of illustration cannot be excelled, he warns Dives not to mistake the real nature of the reverence paid to the symbol of our redemption. “In this manner,” he says, “read thy book and fall down to the ground and thank thy God who would do so much for thee. Worship Him above all things—not the stock, nor the stone, nor the wood, but Him who died on the tree of the cross for thy sins and thy sake. Thou shalt kneel if thou wilt before the image, but not to the image. Thou shalt do thy worship before the image, before the thing, not to the thing; offer thy prayer before the thing, not to the thing, for it seeth thee not, heareth thee not, understandeth thee not: make thy offering, if thou wilt, before the thing, but not to the thing: make thy pilgrimage not to the thing, nor for the thing, for it may not help thee, but to Him and for Him the thing represents. For if thou do it for the thing, or to the thing, thou doest idolatry.”