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CHAPTER VIII.

THE MEN OF THE NEW LEARNING.

THE diligent assiduity of Sir Thomas More in the discharge of the manifold duties of his high station did not prevent him from using his pen and bringing his talents to bear against the heresies which, like a torrent, spread far and wide. They commenced in Germany and Flanders, and from thence deluged England. The age was rife with heresy, and the authority of the Church was treated by many with derision and contempt. The fiery heresiarch Luther had burned the bull of the Pope, in which his propositions were condemned as false, scandalous, and heretical, and he, on his part had stigmatized the sovereign Pontiff as a blasphemer, an apostate and as antichrist.

Then the heroic Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, he, the story of whose life presents a record of unbroken piety, charity, and benevolence, came forth to preach, and stem as far as possible the plague-spot of disunion, division, and discord, which has grown on and on since this great rupture with the old, old faith, till the sectaries who sprung from the intemperate and fiery monk, Martin Luther, number more offshoots from Protestantism than can well be told.

Fisher's sermons arrested many wavering souls; and the King himself took pen in hand, and published against the doctrines of the apostate monk, his celebrated work the

Defence of the Seven Sacraments, which he submitted to the reigning Pontiff, receiving from him the Papal Bull, conferring on him the title of Defender of the Faith.

Then Luther wrote a coarse and scurrilous reply, in which he styled the King, a fool, an ass, a blasphemer, and a liar, and More then appeared in the lists, and ir: the following year published a work at Rome, under the feigned name of Rosseus. Cresacre More, the old biographer, says, "to see how he handleth Luther under the name of one Rosseus would do any man good;" but few at the present day at least, will endorse the same opinion, for certainly the polished pen of the great philosopher and statesman, strove to vie with that of his adversary in scurrility of language, so that it has been said by Bishop Atterbury that "they had the best knack of any men in Europe at calling each other bad names in good Latin."

And it must have been hard work to come up to Luther, after all. The King he designated as a "Thomistical ass," from his study of scholastic divinity, "that he was not worthy to wipe his shoes," with other scurrilous speeches. Indeed, his flowers of rhetoric are sometimes of a filthy nature, which in these days would not be tolerated in any writer. The school men he abhorred, calling them sophistical locusts, caterpillars, frogs, and lice. And it is to be regretted that the learned More, whose knowledge of theology fitted him for controversy of a very different description, should have striven to do battle with Luther in inelegant and coarse language.

His knowledge of scholastic divinity was extensive. He had diligently studied the Fathers of the Church, and his

* Jortin's Erasmus.

secretary, John Harris, a man himself noted for his judgment and sound piety, relates how, when he was one day going in his barge from Chelsea to London, an heretical book, just published was being examined by him, and pointing with his finger to a passage in the work, he exclaimed-" Look here, how the knave draws his arguments out of St. Thomas, in such and such a place, the solutions are added soon after, and those, too, the fellow must have seen and has not copied." Amongst other works of the same kind there came out a pamphlet entitled "The Supplication of Beggars." It was at once followed by Sir Thomas, by his Supplication of Souls.

The notorious Fishe was the author of the former work, the intent of which was to shew to his own satisfaction that the poor would be the better off when the Church was deprived of her revenues, and abbeys and religious houses be overthrown, and that the mendicant orders were in annual receipt of £43,333 6s. 8d. More answered with his own withering sarcasm, and averred that an ocean of mischief was about to deluge the whole realm. "Then," saith he, "shall Luther's gospel be preached, and Tindal's Testament be read; false heresies shall be preached; the sacraments be set at nought; fasting and praise be neglected; the holy saints reviled, and Almighty God be angered; virtue shall be held in derision, and vice reign supreme; youth shall forsake labour, folks wax idle, and thieves and beggars, increase; servants shall set their masters at nought, and the unruly rebel against them; mischief and insurrection shall arise; whereof what the end will be the Lord knoweth."

As to Fishe and his mendicant friars, he says his calculation is about the same as to suppose 66 that every ass has

four heads."* The book also contains a defence of the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Satirical as he undoubtedly was, yet More always treated his adversaries fairly, and his old biographers notice the fact that he never wrested the words of his opponents to the worst, or made their arguments appear at the weakest, but gave them the benefit of as much sense as they really possessed.

He also published a defence of the Real Presence against the writings of Frith, and an Apology against Friar Barnes, under the name of Salem and Byzance. His Dialogue, a work against the errors of Tindal, brought upon him a reply of a very personal nature, and it drew upon him the trouble of a long controversy, in which he refuted the errors of his adversary with an unsparing hand.

Long before the change took place which so desolated the Church in England, Sir Thomas, with that seeming spirit of prophecy which so distinguished him, foretold what was about to pass. We would wish these words, however, to be taken in a somewhat modified sense, for without thus investing the words of this Christian philosopher, it is certain that he looked farther into the future than did those around him, and could see the result of the change which was steadily making way. The question of the divorce, which was in itself the cause of the separation of this kingdom from Catholic unity, was but recently mooted; and Roper, whilst one day walking in the pleasant garden at Chelsea with his father-in-law, burst out in praises of the happy state of England in possessing so Catholic a prince, and such a learned and virtuous clergy, so grave and sound a nobility,

* Fishe became a convert, and died penitent.

and such loving and obedient subjects, all bound up in one faith, although they had but one heart and one soul.*

"It is true, son Roper, as you say," was the reply, "and yet I pray God that some of us, as high as we seem now to sit upon the mountains, treading heretics under our feet like ants, may not live to see the day when we would gladly wish to make this league with them, to suffer them to have their churches quietly to themselves, so they would be content to let us have ours peaceably too."

"After this I begged him," says Roper, "to consider that he had no cause to say so."

“Well, said he, "I pray God, son Roper, some of us live not to see that day," showing me no reason why he should doubt it; to which I replied —

"By my troth, sir, it is very desperately spoken, that vile term, I cry God's mercy, did I give him."

Seeing me in such a fume, he then said merrily to me— "Well, son Roper, it shall not be so, it shall not be so."+ Little did William Roper then think that he himself would for some time be a cause of sorrow to his father-inlaw, and his own matchless wife.

A sore trial it must have been to Sir Thomas and his best loved daughter, Margaret, when the errors of the time led away William Roper himself, that most favoured son-in-law, on whom he had bestowed the hand of his priceless pearl, Margaret.

Roper embraced for awhile the novelties of the times, for, says Cresacre More, "he had used austerities to himself beyond what discretion allowed, and then he grew weary of Catholic

* Roper's Life of More.

+ Roper's More.