sword, but also Christ himself" (citing Gal. iv, Mat. iii). The pope has no authority from Christ except to preach God's word, and Tyndale finds no power in pope or prelate to constitute a holiness of observance and ceremonial.

"Ye blind guides, said Christ, ye strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Do not our blind guides stumble at a straw, and leap over a block, making narrow consciences at trifles, and at matters of weight none at all? If any of them happen to swallow his spittle, or any of the water wherewith he washed his mouth ere he go to Mass; or touch the Sacrament with his nose . . . or happen to handle it with any of his fingers which are not anointed; or say Alleluia instead of Laus tibi Domine; or Ite missa est instead of Benedicamus Domino; or pour too much wine in the chalice; or read the gospel without light; or make not his crosses aright, how trembleth he! How feareth he! What an horrible sin is committed! I cry God mercy,' saith he, and you my ghostly father.' But to hold an whore, or another man's wife, to buy a benefice, to set one realm at variance with another, and to cause twenty thousand men to die in a day, is but a trifle and a pastime with them."

The true doctrine is otherwise:

"When a man feeleth that his heart consenteth unto the law of God, and feeleth himself meek, patient, courteous, and merciful to his neighbour, altered and fashioned like unto Christ, why should he doubt but that God hath forgiven him, and put his Spirit in him, though he never cram his sin into the priest's ear? ... To whom a man trespasseth, unto him he ought to confess. But to confess myself unto thee, O Antichrist, whom I have not offended, am I not bound."

The Obedience of a Christian Man appeared in 1528, and however displeasing to pope and prelate, it was quite acceptable to Henry, then about to assert his authority against the pope. But Tyndale was no safe royal prop. Two or three years later, his Practice of Prelates vehemently roused the King's displeasure; for it argued against his divorce, and declared as its first head that "Prelates, appointed to preach Christ, may not leave God's word, and minister temporal offices; but ought to teach the lay people the right way, and let them alone with all temporal business."

There are few novel thoughts in Tyndale. He knew

the thinking of his day, and knew and felt his English antecedents. He was imbued with the common fund of Christian dogma and teaching, as held in the creeds and in the Gospel. All this made up his mental equipment. But he also felt the situation in which he moved, and his feelings, like those of all would-be reformers, reset and re-expressed the fund of thought at his disposal. He may be regarded as an English expression of Reform. He was practical, he could not be captured by any one principle, by any single syllogism, such as justification by faith. He would make room for all pressing considerations, especially those harmonizing with his prejudices. If he was influenced by Luther, he also comes straight down from Wyclif.

A caustic light is thrown upon the personality and situation of Tyndale and of those who wrote and argued on that side, from the impression made by these men and their writings upon their most illustrious antagonist.

"Howbeit, there be swine that receive no learning, but to defile it; and there be dogs that rend all good learning with their teeth. . . . To such dogs men may not only preach, but must with whips and bats beat them well and keep them from tearing of good learning with their teeth. . . till they lie still and hearken what is said unto them. And by such means be both swine kept from doing harm, and dogs fall sometimes so well to learning, that they can stand upon their hinder feet, and hold their hands afore them pretetely [prettily] like a maid, yea, and learn to dance after their master's pipe, such an effectual thing is punishment, whereas bare teaching will not suffice. And who be now more properly such dogs, than be those heretics that bark against the blessed sacraments, and tear with their dogs' teach [sic - is it 'teaching' or 'teeth '?] the catholic Christian faith, and godly expositions of the old holy doctors and saints? And who be more properly such hogs, than these heretics of our days, of such a filthy kind as never came before, which in such wise defile all holy vowed chastity, that the very pure scripture of God they tread upon with their foul dirty feet, to draw it from all honest chastity, into an unclean shameful liberty of friars to wed nuns.

12

Intelligent men to-day do not speak thus of those who differ from them in religion; though in our hearts we still

12 The maner and order of our election - More's English Works, p. 586. Cf. as to More, ante, Chapter XVIII.

speak as violently of malignant anarchists who would destroy order, government and property. Vague in our creeds, we hold fast to law and property. But the old theological habit of exhausting the vials of vituperation upon heretics was still strong in the sixteenth century, when they swarmed as never before, and when their arguments, as here in England, looked to social and economic, as well as religious, change.

CHAPTER XXII

CHURCH REVOLUTION BY ROYAL PREROGATIVE AND ACTS OF PARLIAMENT

I

THE Course of the self-assertion of the English realm and of its eventual separation from the papacy may be traced through a series of royal and statutory decrees. It opens, if one will, with the Conqueror's emphatic refusal to do fealty to Gregory VII, since "neither have I promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to your predecessors." The chronicler Eadmer amplifies William's rejection of Gregory's enormous claims: "He would not then allow any one settled in all his dominion to acknowledge as apostolic the pontiff of the City of Rome, save at his own bidding, or by any means to receive any letter from him if it had not first been shown to himself." His masterful assertion of his will over his own bishops is shown in the same writing.1

The high hand of the Conqueror could not be maintained. Henry I compromised the matter of investitures with the saintly but unyielding Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury; and a century later the royal self-respect sank to its nadir when John, overwhelmed by his offenses, in expiation surrendered his realm to the legate of Pope Innocent III, and received it back as a feudal fee, doing homage and promising an annual payment of one thous and marks. Again the tide turned, and markedly under Edward I. The Mortmain Act of 1279 forbade the transfer of lands to the dead hand of the Church, and some years later the Barons of the realm in parliament. denied the suzerainty of Rome over Scotland, which Ed

1 These extracts are from Gee and Hardy, Documents illustrative of English Church History (Macmillan, 1914), pp. 57, 59.

2 Documents in Gee and Hardy, o. c. p. 75.

ward contemplated reducing to his obedience. A still later statute of the same reign prohibited English monasteries from sending gold to their superiors abroad.3

The important statutes of Provisors and Praemunire take form in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II. Those against Provisors raised an effective wall against the papal bestowal of English benefices in anticipation of their vacancy. The Praemunire legislation highly penalized the transferring to foreign courts of suits cognizable in the courts of the realm. The matter of these statutes might be, and subsequently was, much extended to meet other cases, especially during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, and barred the exercise of papal authority in England.*

The feudal and dynastic Wars of the Roses ended in 1485 with the accession of Henry VII. For a year or more after Bosworth Field, Henry showed by word and conduct that he deemed his victory had straightened all obliquities in his title to the throne. Having thus carefully made his own right clear, he married the undoubted heiress of the opposing claims. All that was left of York and Lancaster was thus united. Then the shrewd and tireless King set himself to foster the surest interests of England. He abandoned the hapless policy of continental conquest, which had drained the country's blood and wealth, and had impeded the development of an insular nation. Instead, by intrigues and filibustering threatenings, and treaties patiently worked out, he advanced the foreign commerce of his people, and, aided by parliament, virtually created the cloth industry at home, so that England became an exporter of cloth as well as of her staple wools. His policy, moreover, favored the general distribution of wealth among all who were engaged in industry or trade, and did not permit its accumulation in the hands of the London merchants. Assisted by the institution of the court of the Star Chamber, he conciliated or subjected to himself the decimated

Gee and Hardy, o. c. pp. 81, 91, 93..

* See post p. 77 sqq. Those of the reigns of Edward III and Richard II are given in Gee and Hardy, o. c. pp. 103-104, 112-125.