very tedious; since if several articles of the common CHAP. Creed were by our Bishop laid aside, the Creed, which he published in English, must be far enough from being very tedious. As to his Lordship's setting aside the article of Christ's descent into hell, it is no more than what was done in the old Roman Creed, used by our Anglo-Saxon Usser. de ancestors, which run thus: Who was crucified under Pon-Romanæ tius Pilate, and buried, rose again the third day from the Symbolo, &c. p. 8, 9. dead, &c. It may not be improper perhaps here to observe, that the Bishop's setting aside this article, and reading that of the Church, not as it was commonly then read, Credo in sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, but Credo sanctam Ecclesiam, was not done out of opposition to Doctor Wiclif; who, so far as it appears by his translation of the Apostles' Creed, never found fault with the article of the descent into hell. But besides this surmise, it was suspected, that our Bishop by his thus differing from the common Creed then in use, in his translation of it, male sensit de sanctionibus Ecclesiæ, or was not for submitting to the determinations of holy Church. For so zealous and industrious were the rulers of the Church in the times of this ignorance to keep the people from knowing better, that they absolutely forbade them the use of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments in their own language, or the tongue wherein they were born. Accordingly, we find it one of the articles exhibited against the poor Lollards, as they were called in contempt, that they declared, that every man is bound to know the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in English ; and that they had the Lord's Prayer, and the Salutation of the Angel, and the Creed, and the Epistles and Gospels in that language; and said that according to them they would live, and thereby believed to be saved. For this, by the forementioned constitution of Archbishop Arundel, they were

VII.

CHAP. to be punished as fautors of heresy and error; i. e. purgation might be ordered them at the pleasure of him who suspected them to be heretics, in which if there was any failure they might be condemned as heretics; also they were liable to the penalty of excommunication ipso jure,

and after they had been so excommunicated were made Incapable of infamous, and intestable actively and passively, or incapamaking a will. ble of giving or receiving any legacies, and interdicted

William
Tindale's
Works.

Memorials

from performing any lawful acts, or receiving any benefit from the law, &c. Insomuch that when Dean Colet, some time after 1505, made a paraphrastical translation of the Lord's Prayer, which was afterwards printed in the Primer of Salisbury use 1531, Fitz-James, Bishop of London, would have made him an heretic, or prosecuted him on this constitution, had not the Archbishop of Canterbury, Warham, holpen the Dean.

5. To William Godharde the Franciscan, Epist. 1. This letter seems to have been relating to the preachers of those times, who were commonly the preaching Friars; who, as has been hinted before, made it their business to preach themselves, and instead of preaching to the people Christ Jesus, and the doctrine of the Gospel, to entertain them with trifling tales and insipid stories, invented on purpose to keep them in profound ignorance of their duty, and to make them stand in fear of, and live in an absolute dependance on their Priests, and their pardons. A writer therefore of this time complained of the Prelates, that they prechen not Christ's Gospel in worde and dede, but senden new hypocrites, i. e. the begging and preaching Friars, or other Religious, to preche fables and lesings; that there were many unable Curates, that kunnen not the

Ten Commandments, ne read their Sauter. To give a speMr.Strype's cimen of their preaching, I need only refer to the Festival, Ecclesiast. a book composed on purpose for the help and assistance vol. i. p. of those ignorant Priests, who were to read out of this book, on the several festivals, the sermons here provided for each of them.

139.

In the sermon Of the dedication of the church, or the

Impensis
Joannis Richardi, 1499.

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church holy-day or wake, speaking of church-yards, and CHAP. burying the dead, the writer has these words. "Church" yards," says he, "were appointed by the fathers to bury "in for two causes, one to be prayed for as our holy "Church useth, and another for the body to lie there at "rest, for the fiend hath no manner of power within "Christian burials. No burying in the church, except it "be the patron, that defends it from bodily enemies, and "the Parson, Vicar, Priest, or Clerk, that defend the " church from ghostly enemies with their prayers. Some "have been buried there, and cast out again on the "morrow, and all the clothes left still in the grave. An " angel came on a time to a warden of a church, and bade "him go to the Bishop, to cast out the body he had bu" ried there, or else he should be dead within thirty days; " and so he was, for he would not do as he was bidden."

So again: "Many walk on nights, when buried in holy "place, but that is not long of the fiend, but the grace of "God to get them help. And some be guilty and have

no rest. Four men stale an Abbot's ox to their larder; "the Abbot did a sentence, and cursed them; so three of "them were shriven, and asked mercy; the fourth died, " and was not assoiled, and had not forgiveness. So when " he was dead, the spirit went by night, and feared all "the people about, that none durst walk after sun down. "Then as the parish Priest went on a night with God's "body to housel a sick man, this spirit went with him, "and told him what he was, and why he went, and prayed "the Priest to go to his wife, that they should go both to "the Abbot, and make him amends for his trespass, and " so to assoil him, for he might have no rest. And anon "the Abbot assoiled him, and he went to rest and joy for "evermore."

Such were the fables and idle tales which were then delivered from the pulpits as Gospel truths, and for which our Bishop censured them as pulpit bawlers.

6. Of divine offices.

L

Gal. iv. MS.

8 Of the providence of God.

9. Of the liberty of the Gospel. This was what Dr. Wiclif pleaded for, in opposition to the being bounden by sinful men's jurisdiction, or their statutes, privileges, and wayward customs. If this was therefore the Bishop's book, it is probable the design of it was to shew wherein the liberty of the Gospel consisted, and that in some things we are obliged by men's statutes and ordinances.

10. Of the power of seculars.

11. Against Constantine's donation.

12. Of the equality of ministers. This tract might possibly be to shew, that all ministers are not equal; but that there are different degrees in the order of Priesthood.

13. Of the laws and doctrines of men. To shew, perhaps, that they should not infringe that liberty which the Gospel allows; or that men should not be punished more for acting contrary to the laws and doctrines of men, than Homily on for open breaking God's commandments. Doctor Wiclif complained, that the Church that wandrith here is made thral by man's law, that it was then more thral than in time of the old lawe. And therefore he advised to get agen our former freedome, and trowe no Prelate in this Church but if he grounde him in God's lawe; since thus men should shake away all the law that the Pope hath made, and all rules of the new orders, but inasmuch as they been grounded in the law that Gad hath given. What our Bishop's opinion was of the multitude of ceremonies introduced into the Church has been shewn before, viz. that though the burden of them was grown excessively great, to the prejudice of our Christian liberty, yet that some of them ought to be retained.

14. Of communion under both kinds. It does not appear that ever Doctor Wiclif contended for administering the Communion in both kinds. But his followers, it is plain, asserted, that "the Priests ought to carry to the "sick the blood of Christ, as well as his body.", If this

VII.

tract therefore was our Bishop's, it might be perhaps his CHAP. design in it to justify the usages of the then Church, in carrying to them the host or wafer only.

15. Against unlawful begging. Whoever was the author of this tract, it seems to have been designed against the begging Friars, and to expose their roguery.

16. An account of his own recantation. This does not seem likely to be our Bishop's, because in the instructions given by the Archbishop to the Abbot of Thorney, it is expressly provided, that the Bishop should have nothing to write with, nor stuff to write upon.

However this be, it is certain that the greatest part of all these books are now lost, they being studiously suppressed by the Archbishop, by whose order as many of our Bishop's writings as could any where be found were wholly destroyed.

Our historian, John Stow, in his Annals tells us, that P. 666, ed. our Bishop had laboured many years in translating the 1602. holy Scriptures into English: but there is no good authority for this. Our Bishop himself, it is sure, in those writings of his which are yet left, and in which he mentions a good many of his works, takes no manner of notice of his making, or intending to make, any such translation. Nay it does not appear, that he so much as thought it lawful to have the Scriptures in the vulgar or mother tongue; however he allowed them to be read in the Vulgate Latin version by such of the laity as were able to read and understand them in that language; though in his books he translates very large parcels of them into English.

Abbot Whethamstede on much better grounds intimates that our Bishop translated the Lord's Prayer into English, and commented or paraphrased on it in the same language: "So dproud," says he, "was he of his knowledge " in his own conceit, that over and above that saving

In tantum in suo sensu de sua scientia superbierat, taliter se supra se in