being content with the conscience of well-doing. As for the honours that the common people desire so greatly, they be but vain, because that, as they are given of them that put no difference between honesty and dishonesty, so are they given oft for mean and filthy things, and that to the unworthy. Now if any honour be given unto us, we ought to refer all unto God. Therefore, as nothing is more full of pricks, cares, perils, and sorrows, than the life of great men, so is nothing better than a quiet mean life. For seeing all honour is coupled with great charge, better is it for us, humbling ourselves, to be partakers of mercy, than by ambition to be excluded from the succour of grace. Wherefore, if the ensample of Christ stick fast in our minds, we shall learn the better to despise all worldly honour, and to rejoice only in the cross of Christ. For if we be despised of God and abhorred of his angels, what good shall worldly honours do unto us? 1 We must know ourselves. sider our own THE THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER. AGAINST PRIDE OR SWELLING OF THE MIND. We shall not swell in our minds, if we know ourselves, and account what good thing soever we have to be the gift of God, and not of us; ascribing all evil only unto ourselves. We must remember, how filthy we were conceived and born; how naked, needy, wretched, and miserable we crept into this light; how many diseases, chances, cumbrance, griefs, and troubles this wretched body is in danger unto. For a surer proof of incurable foolishness and lack of understanding is not, than if we stand greatly in our own conceit. Wherefore, if for honour, beauty, cunning, or any such thing, we be moved unto pride, the best is to humble ourselves before We must con- God, and to consider our own deformities. deformities. it shall chiefly refrain us from pride, if we In conclusion, ponder well, in our birth, not only what we are in ourselves, how filthy THE THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER. AGAINST WRATH AND DESIRE OF VENGEANCE. But softness For no man childish forgive, so forgiven. WHEN grief of the mind moveth us to be avenged, we must remember that wrath is no manliness, but a very child- Wrath is a ish, feeble, and vile thing is it to desire vengeance. As for thing. another man's folly, we must little regard it; yea, and beware, lest in avenging his lewdness we become lewder ourselves. For by revenging is no injury eased, but augmented, and the longer it endureth the more incurable it is. healeth it, and of an enemy maketh a friend. can be hurt of us, except we will', or except we follow the grief of our own minds: yea, we will not stick to forgive him, if we think not scorn to consider the infirmities that moved him to offend us; or if we will do any thing for love or authority of the person, or compare that his offence with his former benefits; or consider how sore and oft we ourselves trespass against God, who shall even as much forgive As we us as we remit unto our brethren. Which thing if we do, shall we be it is a readier way to obtain remission of our sins, than for absolution to repair to Rome, to sail to St James, or to try most large pardons. Wherefore by the ensample of Christ, that suffered so much for us, being his enemies, we should suage our own minds, and pardon other men, yea, even the unworthy. And though we be angry and grieved with another man's vice, yet should we love the person, and harden not our minds against him, but against wrath; being so temperate in ourselves, that we suffer not our own affections to rule us, but overcome evil with goodness, malice with kindness, which is even to follow the perfect love of Christ Jesu. For as it is the property of a wise man to suppress all displeasure, even so to follow the appetite of wrath is not the point of a man, but plainly of beasts, and that of wild beasts: which thing we shall evidently perceive, if we behold our own countenance in a glass when we be angry. In conclusion, to what evil soever we perceive ourselves to be specially inclined or stirred, whether it be through ['Original: Hominem homini nocere non posse, si nolit, nisi in his quæ sunt extraria bona.] Our minds must be armed with prayer, with holy scripture, and with exam ples of holy men. vice of nature, custom, or evil bringing up; against the company of other, and making our special and familiar acquaintance with Imprinted at Ausborch by in the moneth of May, [Since the foregoing pages were printed off, the Editor has met with a copy of the second edition of the Treatise on the Lord's Supper, with the Order of the Church in Denmark, &c., in the possession of Dr Thackeray, Provost of King's College, Cambridge; by whose kindness he is enabled here to supply the part of the Epistle to the Reader which was added in that edition, together with the title-page and colophon.] CA Faythful and moost Godlye treatyse concer nynge the most sacret Sacrament of the bles, desirous to profyt the weake brothers lent of the Lorde to this honoure and glorye. the fyrst edicion. Wherunto the order that the Myles Couerdale. Luke rir. Chapter Imprinted at London by John Day [COVERDALE.] Cum gratia & priuilegio 34 [After the words, “and in all our names," p. 433, line 29, instead of the concluding lines which there follow, the second edition has the following pages:] WE must believe that their receiving of it is the application of Christ's merits to us. We must believe that they can thereby relieve the souls in the bitter pains of purgatory. We must believe that our being present at this their sacrifice, (as they call it), shall give us good speed in all our affairs, be they never so devilish. We must believe that a priest, (being never so ungodly in his living, never so much subject unto sin, never so much the devil's member), is the minister of God, and that his prayer and sacrifice in the mass is acceptable to God. In fine, we must believe that their masses be of strength to purchase the assistance of God in all dangers, and a present remedy against plague, penury, and all diseases both of man and beast, against wars, robberies, and all incursions of enemies, both bodily and ghostly. How can these assertions stand with the communion of Christ's body and blood? Did Christ shew the bread to his apostles, and then eat it himself, to certify their consciences thereby? Did he bid any one of them take bread and wine, and shew them to the residue of the faithful, so oft as they would communicate his body and blood, and then eat and drink all himself, instead of all the faithful that should be present? I think no man is so much without shame once to think it. But I know the root of their error. They say, that as Christ was the high priest or bishop to minister unto his apostles the communion of his body and blood, which he did indeed offer on the cross to his Father; so did he ordain his apostles, and in them all that should succeed them, priests to offer up the selfsame, (say they), to apply the sacrifice done by Christ with the merits of the same to them that are present thereat, or that shall by any means have it done for them. Oh, blind bussards! Where are your spiritual eyes become? Did Christ, being the high priest, distribute the bread to his apostles, to the intent that they, and all other their successors, should shew the bread and wine to the people, and then eat and drink all themselves? A man that hath so much ghostly knowledge as the grain of a mustard-seed, would not fail to say, that Christ meant rather that the apostles and priests should distribute the bread and wine among the faithful |