Burials must be

man a sufficient living, how should he have given them but to hire their prayers of pure mistrust in Christ's blood? If robbing of widows' houses under pretence of long prayers be damnable, (Matt. xxiii.) then is it damnable also for widows to suffer themselves to be robbed by the long pattering of hypocrites, through mistrust in Christ's blood. Yea and is it not damnable to maintain such abomination? Now when this damnation is spread over all, how can we give them that have enough already? or how can they that have enough already take more under the name of praying, and not harden the people more in this damnable damnation.

And concerning the burying of his body, he allegeth St. Austin; neither is there any man (think I) so mad to affirm that the outward pomp of the body should help the soul. Moreover, what greater sign of infidelity is there, than to care at the time of death with what pomp the carcass shall be carried to the grave ? He denieth not but that a Christian man should be

celebrated honourably buried, namely, for the honour and hope

for the

hope of our

honourably of the resurrection; and therefore committed that care to his dear executors, his son and his wife, which he wist would in that part do sufficient, and leave nothing of the use of the country undone, but the abuse.

resurrection.

One must pray for another,

and one help another.

And that bestowing of a great part of his goods (while he yet lived) upon the poor, to be thankful for the mercy received, without buying and selling with God; that is, without binding those poor unto any other appointed prayers than God hath bound us already, one to pray for another, one to help another, as he hath helped us; but patiently abiding for the blessings that God hath appointed unto all manner of good works, trusting faithfully to his promise, thanking (as ye may see by his words) the blood of Christ for the reward promised to his works, and not the goodness of the works, as though he had done more than his duty, or all that and assigned, by writing, unto whom an

:

other part should be distributed, and giving the rest to his executors, that no strife should be; which executors were by right the heirs of all that was left to them. These things, I say, are signs evident, not only of a good Christian man, but also of a perfect Christian man, and of such a one as needed not to be aghast and desperate for fear of the painful pains of purgatory, which, whoso feareth as they feign it, cannot but utterly abhor death; saying that Christ is there no longer thy Lord, after he hath brought thee thither, but art excluded from his satisfaction, and must satisfy for thyself alone, and that with suffering pain only, or else tarrying the satisfying of them that shall never satisfy enough for themselves, or gaping for the Pope's pardons, which have so great doubts and dangers, what in the mind and intent of the granter, and what in the purchaser, ere they can be truly obtained with all due circumstances, and much less certitude that they have any authority at all. Paul thirsted to be dissolved and to be with Christ; Stephen desired Christ to take his spirit; the prophets also desired God to take their souls from them; and all the saints went with a lusty courage to death, neither fearing or teaching us to fear any such cruelty. Where hath the Church then gotten authority to bind us from being so perfect, from having any such faith in the goodness of God our Father, and Lord Christ, and to make such perfectness and faith of all heresies the greatest?

Solomon saith in the xxxth of his Proverbs, Three things are insatiable, and the fourth saith never, It is enough. But there is a fifth, called Dame Avarice, with as greedy a gut, as melting a maw, as wide a throat, as gaping a mouth, and with as ravening teeth, as the best, which the more she eateth the hungryer she is: an unquiet evil, never at rest; a blind monster and a surmising beast, fearing at the fall of every leaf. Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames? What doth not that holy hunger compel them that love

this world inordinately to commit? Might that devil's belly be once full, truth should have audience, and words be construed aright, and taken in the same sense as they be meant.

Though it seem not impossible haply that there might be a place where the souls might be kept for a space, to be taught and instructed; yet that there should be such a jail as they jangle, and such fashions as they feign, is plainly impossible, and repugnant to the scripture; for when a man is translated utterly out of the kingdom of Satan, and so confirmed in grace that he cannot sin, so burning in love that his lust cannot be plucked from God's will, and being partaker with us of all the promises of God, and under the commandments; what could be denied him in that deep innocency of his most kind Father, that hath left no mercy unpromised, and asking it thereto in the name of his Son Jesus, the child of his heart's lust, which is our Lord, and hath left no mercy undeserved for us, namely, when God hath sworn that he will put off righteousness, and be to us a Father, and that of all mercy, and hath slain his most dear son Jesus, to confirm his oath.

Finally, seeing that Christ's love taketh all to the best, and nothing is here that may not be well understood (the circumstances declaring in what sense all was meant), they ought to have interpreted it charitably, if aught had been found doubtful or seeming to sound amiss. Moreover, if any thing had been therein that could not have been taken well, yet their part had been to have interpreted it as spoken of idleness of the head, by the reason of sickness, forasmuch as the man was virtuous, wise, and well learned, and of good fame and report, and sound in the faith while he was alive. But if they say he was suspect when he was alive, then is their doing so much the worse, and to be thought that they feared his doctrine when he was alive, and mistrusted their own part, their consciences testifying to

them that he held no other doctrine than that was true, seeing they then neither spake nor wrote against him, nor brought him to any examination. Besides that, some merry fellows will think, that they ought first to have sent to him, to wit, whether he would have revoked, ere they had so despitefully burned the dead body, that could not answer for itself, nor interpret his words, how he meant them, namely, the man being of so worshipful and ancient a blood. But here will I make an end, desiring the reader to look on this thing with indifferent eyes, and judge whether I have expounded the words of this Testament as they should seem to signify or not; judge also whether the maker thereof seem not by his work both virtuous and godly, which if it so be, think not that he was the worse, because the dead body was burnt to ashes, but rather learn to know the great desire that hypocrites have to find one craft or other to dash the truth with, and cause it to be counted for heresy of the simple and unlearned people, which are so ignorant they cannot spy their subtlety. It must needs be heresy that toucheth any thing their rotten bile, they will have it so whosoever say nay: only the eternal God must be prayed to night and day, to amend them in whose power it only lieth, who also grant them once earnestly to thirst his true doctrine contained in the sweet and pure fountains of his Scriptures, and in his paths to direct their ways. Amen.

The end of all M. William Tyndale's Works, newly imprinted, according to his first copies, which he himself set forth. God's name be blessed for ever. Amen.

Here followeth a short and pithy treatise touching the Lord's Supper, compiled, as some do gather, by M. William Tyndale, because the method and phrase agree with his, and the time of writing are concurrent, which for thy further instruction and learning, gentle reader, I have annexed to his works, lest the Church of God should want any of the painful travels of that godly man, whose only care and endeavour was to advance the glory of God, and to further the salvation of Christ's flock committed to their charge.