“But to this, some one once answered me and said; ‘that it was no thanks to them, for it (came from) lands that good princes have given them.’ But, as I then told him, it was then much less thanks to them that would now give good princes evil counsel to take it from them. And also if we are to call it not giving of alms by them, because other good men have given them the lands from which they give it, from what will you have them give alms? They have no other.…”
Further replying to the insinuation of Saint-German that the religious keep retainers and servants out of pride and for “proud worldly countenance,” Sir Thomas More says: “If men were as ready in regard to a deed of their own, by nature indifferent, to construe the mind and intent of the doer to the better part, as they are, of their own inward goodness, to construe and report it to the worst, then might I say, that the very thing which they call ‘the proud worldly countenance’ they might and should call charitable alms. That is to say, (when they furnish) the right honest keep and good bringing up of so many temporal men in their service, who though not beggars yet perhaps the greater part of them might have to beg if they did not support them but sent them out to look for some service for themselves,” (they are giving charitable alms).
“And just as if you would give a poor man some money because he was in need and yet would make him go and work for it in your garden, lest by your alms he should live idle and become a loiterer, the labour he does, does not take away the nature nor merit of alms: so neither is the keeping of servants no alms, though they may wait on the finder and serve him in his house. And of all alms the chief is, to see people well brought up and well and honestly guided. In which point, though neither part do fully their duty, yet I believe in good faith that in this matter, which is no small alms, the spirituality is rather somewhat before us than in any way drags behind.”[138]
With regard to the charge brought against the clergy of great laxity in fasting and mortification, More thinks this is really a point on which he justly can make merry. Fasting, he says, must be regulated according to custom and the circumstances of time and place. If there were to be a cast-iron rule for fasting, then, when compared with primitive times, people in his day, since they dined at noon, could not be held to fast at all. And yet “the Church to condescend to our infirmity” has allowed men “to say their evensong in Lent before noon,” in order that they might not break their fast before the vesper hour. The fact is that, in More’s opinion, a great deal of the outcry about the unmortified lives of the religious and clergy had “been made in Germany” by those who desired to throw off all such regulations for themselves. As a Teuton had said to him in “Almaine” colloquial English—“when I blamed him,” More says, “for not fasting on a certain day: ‘Fare to sould te laye men fasten? let te prester fasten.’ So we, God knows, begin to fast very little ourselves, but bid the ‘prester to fasten.’”[139]
“And as to such mortifications as the wearing of hair shirts, it would indeed be hard to bind men, even priests, to do this, … though among them many do so already, and some whole religious bodies too.” If he says, as he does, that this “does not appear,” what would he have? Would he wish them to publish to the world these penances? If they take his, Saint-German’s, advice, “they will come out of their cloisters every man into the market-place, and there kneel down in the gutters, and make their prayers in the open streets, and wear their hair shirts over their cowls, and then it shall appear and men shall see it. And truly in this way there will be no hypocrisy for their shirts of hair, and yet moreover it will be a good policy, for then they will not prick them.”[140]
In the same way More points out that people in talking against the wealth of the clergy are not less unreasonable than they are when criticising what they call their idle, easy lives. “Not indeed that we might not be able always to find plenty content to enter into their possessions, though we could not always find men enough content to enter their religions;” but when the matter is probed to the bottom, and it is a question how their wealth “would be better bestowed,” then “such ways as at the first face seemed very good and very charitable for the comfort and help of poor folk, appeared after reasoning more likely in a short while to make many more beggars than to relieve those that are so already. And some other ways that at first appeared for the greater advantage of the realm, and likely to increase the king’s honour and be a great strength for the country, and a great security for the prince as well as a great relief of the people’s charges, appeared clearly after further discussion to be ‘clean contrary, and of all other ways the worst.’”
“And to say the truth,” he continues, “I much marvel to see some folk now speak so much and boldly about taking away any possessions of the clergy.” For though once in the reign of Henry IV., “about the time of a great rumble that the heretics made, when they would have destroyed not only the clergy but the king and his nobility also, there was a foolish and false bill or two put into Parliament and dismissed as they deserved; yet in all my time, when I was conversant with the court, I had never found of all the nobility of this land more than seven (of which seven there are now three dead) who thought that it was either right or reasonable, or could be any way profitable to the realm, without lawful cause to take away from the clergy any of the possessions which good and holy princes, and other devout, virtuous people, of whom many now are blessed saints in heaven, have of devotion towards God given to the clergy to serve God and pray for all Christian souls.”[141]
In his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, made in 1532, when Sir Thomas More was still Lord Chancellor of England, he protests against imputations made by his adversary and his follower Barnes, that the clergy were as a body corrupt. “Friar Barnes lasheth out against them, against their pride and pomp, and all their lives spent in” vicious living, “as if there were not a good priest in all the Catholic Church.… He jesteth on them because they wear crowns and long gowns, and the bishops wear rochets. And he hath likened them to bulls, asses, and apes, and the rochets to smocks.” “But he forgets how many good virtuous priests and religious people be put out of their places (in Germany) and spoiled of their living, and beaten, and sent out a-begging, while heretics and apostates, with their women, keep their shameless lives with the living that holy folks have dedicated unto God for the support of such as would serve God in spiritual cleanness and vowed chastity. He knows well enough, I warrant you, that the clergy can never lack persecution where heretics may grow; nor soon after the temporality either, as it has hitherto been proved in every such country yet.”[142]