. Brethren, if a
faithful steward ought to do as I have said, I pray you, ponder and
examine this well, whether our bishops and abbots, prelates and curates,
have been hitherto faithful stewards or no? Ponder, whether yet many of
them be as they should be or no? Go ye to, tell me now as your
conscience leadeth you (I will let pass to speak of many other), was
there not some, that despising the money of the Lord, as copper and not
current, either coined new themselves, or else uttered abroad newly
coined of other; sometime either adulterating the word of God or else
mingling it (as taverners do, which brew and utter the evil and good both
in one pot), sometime in the stead of God's word blowing out the dreams
of men? while they thus preached to the people the redemption that cometh
by Christ's death to serve only them that died before his coming, that
were in the time of the old testament; and that now since redemption and
forgiveness of sins purchased by money, and devised by men is of
efficacy, and not redemption purchased by Christ (they have a wonderful
pretty example to persuade this thing, of a certain married woman, which,
when her husband was in purgatory, in that fiery furnace that hath burned
away so many of our pence, paid her husband's ransom, and so of duty
claimed him to be set at liberty): while they thus preached to the
people, that dead images (which at the first, as I think, were set up,
only to represent things absent) not only ought to be covered with gold,
but also ought of all faithful and christian people (yea, in this
scarceness and penury of all things), to be clad with silk garments, and
those also laden with precious gems and jewels; and that beside all this,
they are to be lighted with wax candles, both within the church and
without the church, yea, and at noon days; as who should say, here no
cost can be too great; whereas in the mean time we see Christ's faithful
and lively images, bought with no less price than with his most precious
blood (alas, alas!) to be an hungred, a-thirst, a-cold, and to lie in
darkness, wrapped in all wretchedness, yea, to lie there till death take
away their miseries: while they preached these will-works, that come but
of our own devotion, although they be not so necessary as the works of
mercy, and the precepts of God, yet they said, and in the pulpit, that
will-works were more principal, more excellent, and (plainly to utter
what they mean) more acceptable to G