“Look on Tyndale,” says Sir Thomas More, “how in his wicked book of ‘Mammon,’ and after in his malicious book of ‘Obedience,’ he showed himself so puffed up with the poison of pride, malice, and envy, that it is more than marvel that the skin can hold together.... He knoweth that all the fathers teach that there is the fire of purgatory, which I marvel why he feareth so little, as if he be at a plain point with himself to go straight to hell.” Anderson, in his “Annals of the Bible,” in speaking of this attack of More’s says: “The English language has never been so prostituted before Sir Thomas More took up the pen.... No solitary selected expressions can convey an adequate idea of the virulence, not to say the verbosity and fallacious reasoning, of this writer;” and the majority of unbiassed readers will probably endorse this severe verdict. Sir Thomas More’s book was published in June 1529, and during the spring of 1531 Tyndale published his reply to it--an answer which must be admitted by all impartial men to effectually dispose of More and his flimsy attempts at reasoning. The following extract from the section in which Tyndale treats of ceremonies will furnish an example of his rugged, earnest method of argument. He says: “How cometh it that a poor layman, having wife and twenty children, and not able to maintain them, though all his neighbours know his necessity, shall not get with begging for Christ’s sake in a long summer’s day enough to maintain them two days honestly; when if a disguised monster come, he shall, with an hour’s lying in the pulpit, get enough to maintain thirty or forty sturdy lubbers a month long, of which the weakest shall be as strong in the belly when he cometh unto the manger, as the mightiest porter in the custom-house, or the best courser that is in the King’s stable?... Who thinketh it as good a deed to feed the poor as to stick up a candle before a post, or as to sprinkle it with holy water?... As though God were better pleased when I sprinkled myself with water, or set up a candle before a block, than if I fed or clothed, or helped at his need, him whom He so tenderly loveth that He gave His own Son unto the death for him, and commandeth me to love him as myself.... Christ’s death purchased grace for man’s soul, to repent of evil, and to believe in Christ for remission of sins, and to love the law of God, and his neighbour as himself. Which is the true worshipping of God in the spirit; and He died not to purchase such honour for unsensible things, that man to his dishonour should do them honourable service, and receive his salvation of them.”