their rightful property in the people’s alms by the friars; and that whereas the Pope had it in his power to release souls from purgatory for nothing, he would only do it for money; nay, that when he might extinguish it altogether, by a general gaol-delivery of the spirits in prison, he still persisted in tolerating its continuance.[207] A memorable instance it is of the force of religious prejudice, that Sir T. More, placid and gentle as was his natural temper, and averse as he had once shown himself to persecution for matters of opinion, should, nevertheless, have hardened his heart against the reformers, and been more than consenting to the death of Bilney and of Bainham.[208] In this last case, indeed, he seems to have known no touch of pity; for in the hope of making his victim discover his books and impeach his acquaintance who were members of the Temple, he whipped him at a tree in his garden at Chelsea, called the “tree of troth,” and afterwards stood by when he was racked in the Tower. This is a sad falling off from the tolerant principles of his youth; but meanwhile many feverish years had passed over the head of Sir Thomas More, and inspired him with a dread of those who were given to change--the crisis which he had helped in a degree to call up, had come at the call, and the magician stood aghast at the potency of his own spell. We are unfair judges of the sentiments and conduct of men who lived upon the verge of the Reformation. We are born when order has arisen out of confusion, and a pure faith come forth from the refiner’s fire; but it must be confessed, that before the event it was impossible to calculate its probable consequences. This only was certain, that in number they must be very many, in magnitude very great; and well might a wise and thoughtful man, who stood upon the edge of that heaving sea of troubles, contemplate the scene before him with an eye of anxiety, of jealousy, and of fear for the issue. Indeed the Reformation was, as one might expect, the cause of the _young_; a circumstance of which Sir Thomas More does not fail to take advantage, when, in his controversy with Frith on the corporal presence, he always contemptuously speaks of him as “this _young_ man.”[209] And in a curious interlude entitled “Lusty Juventus,” written on the side of the Reformation, we read (loquitur Diabolus)--[210] “The old people would beleve stil in my lawes, But the yonger sort lead them a contrary way; They wyll not beleve, they playnly say, In old traditions as made by men, But they wyll ’leve as the Scripture teacheth them.”