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AN ANSWER

UNTO

SIR THOMAS MORE'S DIALOGUE,

MADE BY WILLIAM TYNDALE, 1530.

FIRST HE DECLARETH WHAT THE CHURCH IS, AND GIVETHA

REASON OF CERTAIN WORDS WHICH MASTER MORE

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PREFACE TO THE READER.

Awake thou that sleepest, and stand up from death, and Christ shall give thee light. Eph. v.

THE grace of our Lord, the light of his Spirit to see and to judge, true repentance towards God's law, a fast faith in the merciful promises that are in our Saviour Christ, fervent love toward thy neighbour after the ensample of Christ and his saints, be with thee, (O reader) and with all that love the truth, and long for the redemption of God's elect. Amen.

The Holy rebuke the

Ghost shall

world for

lack of true judgment.

Our Saviour Jesus in the xvith of John at his John xvi. last supper, when he took his leave of his disciples, warned them, saying, The Holy Ghost shall come and rebuke the world of judgment. That is, he shall rebuke the world for lack of true judgment, and discretion to judge; and shall prove that the taste of their mouths is corrupt, so that they judge sweet to be sour, and sour to be sweet; and the eyes to be blind; so that they think that to be the very service of God, which is but a blind superstition, for zeal of which yet they persecute the true service of God: and

1 Cor. ii.

The spiritual judgeth all things spiritually.

that they judge to be the law of God which is but a false imagination of a corrupt judgment, for blind affection of which yet they persecute the true law of God, and them that keep it.

And this same it is that Paul saith, (1 Cor. ii.) how that the natural man that is not born again, and created anew with the Spirit of God, be he never so great a philosopher, never so well seen in the law, never so sore studied in the Scripture, as we have ensamples in the pharisees, yet he cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God; but saith he, The spiritual judgeth all things, and his Spirit teacheth the deep secrets of God, so that whatsoever God commandeth him to do, he never leaveth searching till he come at the bottom, the pith, the quick, the life, the spirit, the marrow, and very cause why, and judgeth all thing. Take an ensample, in the great commandment, Love God with all thine Matt. xxii. heart: the spiritual searcheth the cause and looketh on the benefits of God, and so conceiveth love in his heart. And when he is commanded to obey the powers and rulers of the world, he looketh on the benefits which God sheweth the world through them, and therefore doth it gladly. Matt. xxii. And when he is commanded to love his neighbour as himself, he searcheth that his neighbour is created of God, and bought with Christ's blood and so forth; and therefore, he loveth him out of his heart, and if he be evil forbeareth him, he ought to and with all love and patience draweth him to good as elder brethren wait on the younger,

Rom xiii.

The spiritual man

searcheth

out the

cause why

love his

neighbours.

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