While Wolsey replied to Fish by confiscation, Sir Thomas More with greater liberality, desiring that press should reply to press, published _The Supplications of the Souls in Purgatory_. "Suppress," said they, "the pious stipends paid to the monks, and then Luther's gospel will come in, Tyndale's testament will be read, heresy will preach, fasts will be neglected, the saints will be blasphemed, God will be offended, virtue will be mocked of, vice will run riot, and England will be peopled with beggars and thieves."[600] The Souls in Purgatory then call the author of the Beggars' Supplication "a goose, an ass, a mad dog." Thus did superstition degrade More's noble genius. Notwithstanding the abuse of the souls in purgatory, the New Testament was daily read more and more in England. [600] Supplication of the Souls in Purgatory. More's Works. CHAPTER II. The two Authorities--Commencement of the Search--Garret at Oxford--His flight--His Return and Imprisonment--Escapes and takes Refuge with Dalaber--Garret and Dalaber at Prayer--The _Magnificat_--Surprise among the Doctors--Clark's advice--Fraternal Love at Oxford--Alarm of Dalaber--His Arrest and Examination--He is Tortured--Garret and Twenty Fellows imprisoned--The Cellar--Condemnation and Humiliation. [Sidenote: COUNCIL OF BISHOPS.] Wolsey did not stop with Fish's book. It was not that "miserable pamphlet" only that it was necessary to hunt down; the New Testament in English had entered the kingdom by surprise; there was the danger. The gospellers, who presumed to emancipate man from the priests, and put him in absolute dependence on God, did precisely the reverse of what Rome demands.[601] The cardinal hastened to assemble the bishops, and these (particularly Warham and Tonstall, who had long enjoyed the jests launched against superstition) took the matter seriously when they were shown that the New Testament was circulating throughout England. These priests believed with Wolsey, that the authority of the pope and of the clergy was a dogma to which all others were subordinate. They saw in the reform an uprising of the human mind, a desire of thinking for themselves, of judging freely the doctrines and institutions, which the nations had hitherto received humbly from the hands of the priests. The new doctors justified their attempt at enfranchisement by substituting a new authority for the old. It was the New Testament that compromised the absolute power of Rome. It must be seized and destroyed, said the bishops. London, Oxford, and above all Cambridge, those three haunts of heresy, must be carefully searched. Definitive orders were issued on Saturday, 3rd February, 1526, and the work began immediately. [601] Actus meritorius est in potestate hominis. (Duns Scotus in Sentent. lib. i. diss. 17.) A man is able to do a meritorious action. [Sidenote: GARRET'S FLIGHT.]