WHY HE USETH LOVE RATHER THAN CHARITY. HE rebuketh me also that I translate this Greek word ayan into love, and not rather into charity, so holy and so known a term. Verily, charity is no known English, in that sense which agape requireth. For when we say, Give your alms in the worship of God, and sweet saint charity; and when the father teacheth his son to say Blessing, father, for saint charity; what mean they? In good faith they wot not. Moreover, when we say, God help you, I have done my charity for this day, do we not take it for alms? and, The man is ever chiding and out of charity, and I beshrew him saving my charity: there we take it for patience. And when I say, A charitable man, it is taken for merciful. And though mercifulness be a good love, or rather spring of a good love, yet is not every good love mercifulness. As when a woman loveth her husband godly, or a man his wife or his friend that is in none adversity, it is not always mercifulness. Also we say not, This man hath a great charity to God, but a great love. Wherefore I must have used this general term love, in spite of mine heart oftentimes. And agape and charitas were words used among the heathen ere Christ came, and signifies therefore more than a godly love. And we may say well enough, and have heard it spoken, that the Turks be charitable one to another, among themselves, and some of them unto the Christians too. Besides all this agape is common unto all loves. And when M. More saith, Every love is not charity: no more is every apostle Christ's apostle; nor every angel God's angel; nor every hope Christian hope; nor every faith or belief Christ's belief; and so by an hundred thousand words. So that if I should always use but a word that were no more general than the word I interpret, I should interpret nothing at all. But the matter itself and the circumstances do declare what love, what hope, and what faith is spoken of. And, finally, I say not Charity God, or Charity your neighbour, but Love God, and Love your neighbour, yea, and though we say man ought to love his neighbour's wife and his daughter, a Christian man doth [not] understand that he is commanded to defile his neighbour's wife or his daughter. WHY FAVOUR AND NOT GRACE. Why Tyn- AND with like reasons rageth he because I turn xápic into favour, and not into grace, saying that Every favour is not grace, and that in some favour there is but little dale saith favour, and not grace. grace. I can say also in some grace there is little goodness. And when we say he standeth well in my lady's grace, we understand no great godly favour. And in universities many ungracious graces are gotten. WHY KNOWLEDGE AND NOT CONFESSION, and not confession, and not penance. Knowledge AND that I use this word knowledge and not confession, and this word repentance and not penance. In which repentance all he cannot prove that I give not the right English unto the Greek word. But it is a far other thing that paineth them and biteth them by the breasts. There be secret pangs that pinch the very hearts of them, whereof they dare not complain. The sickness that maketh them so impatient is, that they have lost their juggling terms. For the doctors and preachers were wont to make many di visions, distinctions, and sorts of grace; gratis data, gratum faciens, preveniens, and subsequens. And with confession they juggled, and so made the people, as oft as they spake of it, understand shrift in the ear. Whereof the Scripture maketh no mention: no, it is clean against the Scripture as they use it and preach it, and unto God an abomination, and a foul stinking sacrifice unto the filthy idol Priapus. The loss of those juggling terms is the matter whereof all these bots breed, that gnaw them by the bellies and make them so unquiet. The papists may not forbear to have their juggling terms. Penance able to the True penance what it is. And in like manner, by this word penance, they make Penance. the people understand holy deeds of their enjoining, with which they must make satisfaction unto Godward for their sins. When all the Scripture preacheth that Christ hath made full satisfaction for our sins to Godward, and we must now be papists. thankful to God again, and kill the lusts of our flesh with holy works of God's enjoining, and to take patiently all that God layeth on my back. And if I have hurt my neighbour, I am bound to shrine myself unto him and to make him amends, if I have wherewith, and if not, then to ask him forgiveness, and he is bound to forgive me. And as for their penance, the Scripture knoweth not of. The Greek hath Metanoia and Metanoite, repentance and repent, or forethinking and forethink. As we say in English It forethinketh me, or I forethink; and 1 repent, or It repenteth me, and I am sorry that I did it. So now the Scripture saith, Repent, or let it forethink you, and come and believe the gospel or glad tidings that is brought you in Christ, and so shall all be forgiven you, and henceforth live a new life. And it will follow if I repent in the heart that I shall do no more so, willingly, and of purpose. And if I believed the gospel, what God hath done for me in Christ, I should surely love him again, and of love prepare myself unto his commandments. These things to be even so M. More knoweth well enough. For he understandeth the Greek, and he knew them long ere I. But so blind is covetousness and drunken Faith in Christ bringeth true repentance. Balaam. desire of honour. Gifts blind the eyes of the seeing, and Deut. xvii. pervert the words of the righteous. (Deut. xvii.) When covetousness findeth vantage in serving falsehood, it riseth up into an obstinate malice against the truth, and seeketh all means to resist it and to quench it. As Balaam the false prophet, though he wist that God loved Israel, and had blessed them, and promised them great things, and that he would fulfil his promises, yet for covetousness and desire of honour, he fell into such malice against the truth of God, that he sought how to resist it and to curse the people. Which when God would not let him do, he turned himself another way and gave pestilent counsel to make the people sin against God; whereby the wrath of God fell upon them and many thousands perished. Notwithstanding God's truth abode fast and was fulfilled in the rest. And Baalam, as he was the cause that many perished, so escaped he not himself. No more did any that maliciously resisted the open truth against his own conscience, since the world began, that ever I read. For it is sin against the Holy Ghost, which Christ saith shall neither be forgiven here nor in the world to come: which text may thiswise be understood, that as that sin shall be punished with everlasting damnation in the life to come, even so shall it not escape vengeance here. As thou seest in Judas, in Pharaoh, in Balaam, and in all other tyrants which against their consciences resisted the open truth of God. The sin against the Holy Ghost. 2 Pet. ii. So now the cause why our prelates thus rage, and that moveth them to call M. More to help, is, not that they find just causes in the translation, but because they have lost their juggling and feigned terms wherewith Peter prophesied they should make merchandise of the people. WHETHER THE CHURCH WERE BEFORE THE The church before the gospel, or the gospel before the church. which is the gospel, was ANOTHER doubt there is, whether the church or congregation be before the gospel or the gospel before the church. Which question is as hard to solve, as whether the father be elder than the son, or the son elder than his father. For the whole Scripture and all believing hearts testify that we are begotten through the word. Wherefore, if the word beget the congregation, and he that begetteth is before him that is begotten, then is the gospel before the church. Paul also (Rom. ix.) saith, How shall Rom. ix. they call on him whom they believe not? And how shall they believe without a preacher? That is, Christ must first be preached ere men can believe in him. And then it followeth, that the word of the preacher must be before the faith of the believer. And therefore, inasmuch as the The word word is before the faith, and faith maketh the congregation, therefore is the word or gospel before the congre- before the gation. And again, as the air is dark of itself, and receiveth all her light of the sun; even so, are all men's hearts of themselves dark with lies, and receive all their truth of God's word, in that they consent thereto. And, moreover, as the dark air giveth the sun no light, but contrariwise the light of the sun in respect of the air is of itself, and lighteneth the air, and purgeth it from darkness: even so, the lying heart of man can give the word of God no truth; but contrariwise, the truth of God's word is of herself, and lighteneth the hearts of the believers, and maketh them true, and cleanseth them from lies, as thou readest, John xv. Ye be clean by reason of the word. John xv. Which is to be understood, in that the word had purged their hearts from lies, from false opinions, and from thinking evil good, and therefore from consenting to church. |