The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous ProseLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous Prose
Lamb, Charles
English literature
It is infinitely diverting in the midst of its diabolism,
if it be not rather, what Coleridge calls,
Too wicked for a smile, too foolish for a tear.
[40] To some foregone Tract of More's, of which I have lost the
title.
----"now to the intent that ye may somewhat see what good Christian
faith Sir Thomas Hytton was of, this new saint of Tindale's
canonization, in whose burning Tindale so gaily glorieth, and which
hath his holiday so now appointed to him, that St. Polycarpus must
give him place in the Calendar, I shall somewhat show you what
wholesome heresies this holy martyr held. First ye shall understand,
that he was a priest, and falling to Luther's sect, and after that
to the sect of Friar Huskin and Zwinglius, cast off matins and mass,
and all divine service, and so became an apostle, sent to and fro,
between our English heretics beyond the sea, and such as were here
at home. Now happed it so, that after he had visited here his holy
congregations in divers corners and luskes lanes, and comforted them
in the Lord to stand stiff with the devil in their errors and
heresies, as he was going back again at Gravesend, _God considering
the great labour that he had taken already, and determining to bring
his business to his well-deserved end, gave him suddenly such a
favour and so great a grace in the visage, that every man that
beheld him took him for a thief_. For whereas there had been certain
linen clothes pilfered away that were hanging on an hedge, and Sir
Thomas Hytton was walking not far off _suspiciously in the
meditation of his heresies_: the people doubting that the beggarly
knave had stolen the clouts, fell in question with him and searched
him, and so found they certain letters secretly conveyed in his
coat, written from evangelical brethren here unto the evangelical
heretics beyond the sea. And upon those letters founden, he was with
his letters brought before the most Rev. Father in God the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterward as well by his Lordship as
by the Rev. Father the Bishop of Rochester examined, and after for
his abominable heresies delivered to the secular hands and burned."
What follows (from the same Tract) is _mildened_ a little by the
introduction of the name of Erasmus, More's intimate friend; though by
the sting in the rear of it, it is easy to see, that it was to a little
temporising only, and to some thin politic partitions from these
Reformers, that Erasmus owed his exemption from the bitter anathemas
More had in store for them. The _love_ almost make the _hate_ more
shocking by the contrast!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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