PAGE 6
Old Merry England
by
“Yes.”
“But Luther is against the Anabaptists; therefore he is against you, and he has asked the princes to kill the Anabaptists like wild dogs. Are you still a Lutheran?”
“Yes, according to his early teaching.”
“You mean justification by faith. What do you believe?”
“I believe in God the Father….”
“Who is the Father? In Luther’s catechism it is written, ‘Thou shalt have none other Gods but me.’ But that is the Law of Moses, and it is Jehovah who is intended there. If you believe in Jehovah, then you are a Jew, are you not?”
“I believe also on Christ the Son of God.”
“Then you are a Jew-Christian! So you have admitted that you are a Lutheran, Anabaptist, Jew, and Christian–all this together. You are a fool, and you don’t know what you are. But that may be passed over, if you do not seduce others.”
“Give him a flogging,” said the Cardinal, who did not like the turn the conversation had taken, especially the challenging of the Bible, which just now he wished to use for his own purposes.
“He has already had that,” answered More, “but besides his doctrine, this conceited man, who wants to make himself popular, belongs to a society which circulates a bad translation of the Bible.” “You see yourself,” he continued, turning to Bainham, “what Bible reading leads to, and I demand that you give up the names of your fellow-criminals.”
“That I will never do! The just shall live by his faith.”
“Will you call yourself just, when there is no one just? Read the Book of Job, and you will see. And your belief is really too eccentric to be counted to you for righteousness.”
“Send him down in the cellar to Master Mats! Must one listen to such nonsense! Away with him!”
More pointed to the door, and Bainham went out.
“Yes,” said Wolsey, “what is there in front of us? Schisms, sectarianism, struggles. If we only had an heir to the throne.”
“We cannot get the King divorced.”
“You yourself have spoken the word. There is no need for divorce, because his marriage is null.”
“Is it? How do you prove that?”
“From the third book of Moses, the twentieth and twenty-first chapters: ‘If any one taketh his brother’s wife, it is evil.'”
“Yes, but in the fifth book of Moses, five and twentieth chapter, fifth verse, it is commanded.”
“What, in Christ’s name, are you saying?”
“Certainly it is: ‘If brothers dwell together, and one die without children, his brother shall take his wife and raise up seed to his brother.”
“Damnation! This cursed book.”
“Moreover: Abraham married his half-sister; Jacob married two sisters: Moses’ father married his aunt.”
“That is the Bible, is it? Thank you! Then I prefer the Decretals and the Councils. The Pope must dissolve the marriage.”
“Is it then to be dissolved?”
“Didn’t you know? Yes, it is. If Julius II could grant a dispensation, Clement VII can grant an absolution.”
“It is not just towards the Queen.”
“The country demands it–the kingdom–the nation! The King’s conscience….”
“Oh! is it the fair Anne?”
“No, not she!”
“Is it….”
“Don’t ask any more.”
“Then I answer, Margaret of Valois.”
“I give no answer at all, but I am not responsible for your life, if you talk out of season! The Bible won’t help you there.”
“It would be a useful reform, if we could cancel the Old Testament as a Jewish book.”
“But we cannot cancel the Psalms of David, which are our only Church canticles. Luther himself has taken his hymns from the Psalter, and ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’ from the Proverbs of Solomon; he has borrowed the melody from the Graduale Romanum.”
“But we must relegate the law of Moses to the Apocrypha, otherwise we are Pharisees and Jewish Christians. What have we to do with circumcision, the paschal lamb, and levitical marriage? Wait till I am Pope.”
“Must we really wait so long?”
“Hush! The noon-bell is ringing. Do not let us neglect our duties. The flesh must have its due, in order not to burn. Come with me to Westminster; then you can go on to Chelsea afterwards.”