Austin's, Dionysius', Isidorus', Gregory's, Rabanus', the Romans', or whose else? Surely all these were unborn many years after St James died, that it could not be theirs. Why, I am sure, some will Is there say, divers sorts of so many holy so many fathers to minister the Lord's supper, and our holy bishops of late have burned so many innocents, that would not use their only one disordered order of massing, as though all other were heretical and schismatical, (as they term it,) but that only one which they have devised, disguised and misused? Yea, surely these diversities all be printed and to be had with many more godly ones, and therefore they cannot deny it: and because they be printed, I will not stand to rehearse them wholly, for it were infinite. There is yet another liturgy in print, (which word they call and unlearnedly translate ever a mass,) bearing the name of St James: but even in their late raging time of madness, when they had gotten certain copies of these Greek liturgies, or ministering the Lord's supper, thinking to have printed them, and that it would have stablished their doings, when in trial and translating them they see it fall out otherways and to make against them, they let it alone, and suppressed it like as the same holy father and cardinal' first printed his book, that he wrote against king Henry the eighth, to please the pope withal, and to stir the emperor to war against England for falling from popery; and after, his conscience accusing him to have done amiss, he burned all the books he could come by, and yet now they be commonly sold to his shame, as these liturgies be to theirs. All these orders of ministering the communion differ from their pope-holy relic, their Latin mass, in the chiefest points: that is, that the priest prays not alone, nor in a strange language, eats not, nor drinks up all alone, nor receives it for other; sells it not for money, nor sweeps the pope's scalding house, his purgatory, with it; but the people pray with him in their mother tongue, receive with him for the comfort of their own souls, and not for pocky pigs, scalled horse, nor scabbed sheep; neither making trentals or merchandise of it, but in remembrance of Christ's death, who died for them.

:

But that St James never said the popish mass, as they [ Cardinal Pole. The book referred to is his work on the King's Supremacy, entitled De Unitate Ecclesia, anno 1535. ED.]

32

[PILKINGTON.]

Epist.

lib. vii. cap. 63.

St James

never said mass.

would father it on him, the pope himself grants. Pope Gregory the first (called the great for his great holiness and learning, in comparison of the rest) says, that "the apostles consecrated the host only with the Lord's prayer," when they ministered'. Then St James, if he ministered any thing at all there, even by the pope's confession, never said their Latin mass, nor any thing like it. For that consecration in Latin of theirs has many long other prayers, crossings and blessings, and superstitious ceremonies, as all men see, beside the Lord's prayer. And in that same-self chapter of Gregory, ye shall see other diversities of ceremonies and prayers there rehearsed, wherein the Latin mass differs from the Greek and other. Wherefore it was not thought of old time to so many holy fathers a wicked thing to have divers orders in ministering the communion, though our bloody butchers will not swerve an inch from their father of lies, but burn all that gainsay them. How many toys, crossings, blessings, blowings, knockings, kneelings, bowings, liftings, sighings, houslings, turnings and half turnings, mockings, mowings, sleepings, and apish playings, soft whisperings, and loud speakings, have we to consecrate our own devices withal, or it can be getten done!

Moreover, if St James should have used our Latin canon and privity of the mass (as they term it) in his consecration, or any such like, he should have prayed to himself, and worshipped himself, being alive, which were a great absurdity to grant. For the Latin canon and privity of the mass is full of praying to saints, and names them particularly; among whom St James is one himself. Then St James using the Latin mass, as they say he did, he should have prayed to himself, and worshipped himself, being alive: which I think, when they advise themselves better, they will not grant to be true nor meet to be done; and with such wicked foolishness I trust they will not burden St James withal. Furthermore it skills much, what language St James used: for our holy bishops think it not meet that their holy relics should be uttered 1 Cor. xiv. in our English tongue. St Paul says, he "had rather speak five words that he understands, and to teach other, than ten

['Orationem autem dominicam idcirco mox post precem dicimus, qui mos apostolorum fuit, ut ad ipsam solummodo orationem oblationis hostiam consecrarent. T. 1. p. 960. Basil. 1564. ED.]

thousand in a strange tongue :" our prelates say, Nay. "None will prepare himself to war, except he understand what the trumpet blows:" no more can any learn his duty to God, if he understand not the thing that is taught, and the language. Our prelates say, that blind ignorance is the mother of devotion; but Christ says, "Ye err, because ye know not the scripture:" then ignorance is the cause of error. By like God either understands not English, or else he is partial, and loves not our English tongue so well as the Latin: and yet to speak or understand divers languages is the gift of the Holy Ghost. Surely, if the Holy Ghost give the grace to speak and understand divers languages, God cannot hate them that use any of them, nor disallow the gifts of the Holy Ghost in any

man.

We read (for they be turned into Latin and printed), that other countries have used of old time, and yet do at this day, their own language in ministering the Lord's supper. Why then may not England do the same? What fault have we made, more than other? Chrysostom's order of the communion, Basil's, and that which bears the name of St James, were written in the Greek, which the people understood, and answered in the same language. The Syrians, Ethiopians, Armenians, Muscovites, and the dominion of prester John do at this day, and ever did, use their own language when they ministered, and out of them are turned into Latin, that easily it may be seen how we differ. The good christian emperor Justinian commands plainly in his civil laws, Novell. Constitut. 124 and 126, "That all things should be done in the churches in those languages which were known in the countries, and also that the words of baptism and the Lord's supper should be spoken in a loud voice, that thereby the devotion of the hearers might be stirred up2:" which all (although they were written a thousand

[Ad hæc jubemus ut omnes episcopi pariter et presbyteri non tacito modo, sed clara voce, quæ a fideli populo exaudiatur, sacram oblationem et preces in sancto baptismo adhibitas celebrent; quo majore exinde devotione in depromendis Domini Dei laudibus audientium animi efferantur. Ita enim et divus apostolus docet, dicens in prima ad Corinthios epistola, Enimvero si solummodo benedicas spiritu, quomodo is, qui privati locum implet, dicet ad gratiarum actionem tuam Deo ipsum Amen, quando quidem quid dicas non videt? Novell. Constitut. cXXIII. De Ecclesiasticis Diversis Capitulis, p. 215. Paris. 1562. ED.]

vius, Histor.

cap. 13.

years since) our holy papists deny, and say it was never done, nor ought to be done, nor that princes have any such authority to command or meddle in. Pope Pius the second bears witEneas Syl- ness, that the Sclavons, when they made suit to minister in Bohemica, their own tongue, and the pope made courtesy to grant it, “a voice was heard from heaven, that every spirit and language should praise God; and so it was granted them to use their own language'." The popish kind of marriage, although the rest was Latin, yet the best part was English: "I, N. take thee, N. to my wedded wife, &c. I, N. take thee, N. to my wedded husband, &c." If this was well, why not the rest also? If in making promises we use that language which we understand, why should we not do it to understand what God commands us? Is a promise to man more to be considered than that which is made to God? If these things should be denied, they be in print, that every man may read; and therefore I will not stand long in rehearsing of them. Are these tongues more holy than ours, that the holy mysteries may be used in them, and not in ours? I leave out the Bohemians and Waldenses, which have used to communicate in their own language many (though not all) these three hundred years. The Germans, the Italians, and the French I pass over, because it is not old.

But these countries, they will say, are in the east part of the world, and parts of the Greek church, which never was subject to their holy father, the pope, and in these things they do err; but the west church, worshipping the pope, would never suffer any such thing. In thus saying they prove the pope to be worse than the Turk, prester John, the Sophi, any heathen prince, that will not suffer God's people to worship their God in their own language, as they do. It is great marvel to me, why our holy prelates will not have the people to pray in English, seeing the common rude sort and altogether unlearned in all the far north parts of the realm, even the bor

[1 Referunt Cyrillum, cum Romæ ageret, Romano pontifici supplicasse, ut Sclavorum lingua ejus gentis hominibus, quam baptizaverat, rem divinam faciens uti posset. De qua re dum in sacro senatu disceptaretur, essentque non pauci contradictores, auditam vocem tanquam de cœlo in hæc verba missam, "Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum, et omnis lingus confiteatur ei." Indeque datum Cyrillo indultum. Æn. Sylv. Histeria Bohemica, cap. XIII. p. 91. Basil. 1571. ED.]

ders, have ever used the Lord's prayer, the articles of our faith, and ten commandments, and yet do, in English metre, differing nothing from the true sense of the scripture. They never learned them in Latin, and cannot nor will not learn that they understand not. Surely, God's wisdom in their rude simplicity does confound these proud prelates' wicked popery.

Yet is there remaining one of the foulest lies that is commonly read or written in the pope's testament, the decrees whereon they build their faith; which if this proctor and all his partakers can prove to be true, I will say with them. It is written de Consecra. distinct. i. cap. Jacobus, that "St James, the brother of our Lord, bishop of Jerusalem, and Eusebius, bishop of Cesarea, made their mass." If this have any likeness of a truth in it, let the world judge. St James was bishop of Jerusalem, and there lived continually, not wandering into other countries, as other apostles did, but there suffered martyrdom, being thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple, where a fuller smote out his brains with a club. In Jerusalem then their natural speech was Hebrew, and the prayers that they used in the temple were only the scriptures, and in the Hebrew tongue, as the Jews do to this day in their synagogues: (wherein they prove themselves better than the papists, which in their churches have few prayers of the scripture, but many foolish ones devised of their own brain, and in a language that the people understand not.) Therefore, when they have proved that the Latin tongue was used in Jerusalem, or that St James prayed in Latin, (although I doubt not but he had the gift of tongues, as well as other apostles had,) I shall then believe them.

The order of the communion which is abroad in the name of St James, is in Greek; but that he wrote or spake Latin in Jerusalem, there is no probability in it. And if he made our Latin mass then, that should be used now throughout the world, why would he make another in Greek so far unlike to it? Both cannot be true, that he made one in Greek and

[ A quibus fuerit tradita missarum celebratio. Jacobus, frater Domini secundum carnem, cui primum credita est Hierosolymitana ecclesia, et Eusebius, Cæsariensis episcopus, cujus claritas per totum orbem refulsit in scripturis, addiderunt nobis missæ celebrationem. Dist. i. Gratian. Pars I. p. 1990. Antv. 1573. ED.]