First God gave the children of Israel a law by the hand of Moses in their mother tongue, and all the prophets wrote in their mother tongue, and all the psalms were in the mother tongue. And there was Christ but figured and described in ceremonies, in riddles, in parables and in dark prophecies. What is the cause that we may not have the Old Testament with the New also, which is the light of the old, and wherein is openly declared before the eyes that there was darkly prophesied? I can imagine no cause verily, except it be that we should not see the work of Antichrist and juggling of hypocrites. What should be the cause that we which walk in the broad day should not see as well as they that walked in the night, or that we should not see as well at noon as they did in the twilight? Came Christ to make the world more blind? By this means, Christ is the darkness of the world, and not the light as he saith himself, John viii. Moreover, Moses saith, Deutero. vi, "Hear, Israel, let these words which I command thee this day stick fast in thine heart, and whet them on thy children, and talk of them as thou sittest in thine house and as thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up, and bind them for a token of thine hand, and let them be a remembrance between thine eyes, and write them on the posts and gates of thine house." This was commanded generally unto all men. How cometh it that God's word pertaineth less unto us than unto them? Yea, how cometh it that our Moseses forbid us and command us the contrary, and threat us if we do, and will not that we once speak of God's word? How can we whet God's word (that is put in practise, use and exercise) upon our children and household, when we are violently kept from it and know it not? How can we (as Peter commandeth) give a reason for our hope, when we wot not what it is that God hath promised or what to hope? Moses also commandeth in the said chapter: if the son ask what the testimonies, laws and observances of the Lord mean, that the father teach him. If our children ask what our ceremonies (which are no more than the Jewses were) mean, no father can tell his son. And in the xi chapter he repeateth all again, for fear of forgetting. They will say haply "the Scripture requireth a pure mind and a quiet mind. And therefore the lay-man, because he is altogether cumbered with worldly business, cannot understand them." If that be the cause, then it is a plain case that our prelates understand not the Scriptures themselves. For no lay-man is so tangled with worldly business as they are. The great things of the world are ministered by them. Neither do the lay people any great thing but at their assignment.