Again, in another exposition made eight years later, the same writer complains that still, for lack of teaching what he considers the true meaning of Scripture, the views of the people are still turned towards the “old superstitions” in spite of “the open Bible.” “Although the Bible be in English,” he says, “and be suffered to every man and woman to read at their pleasures, and commanded to be read every day at Matins, Mass, and Evensong, yet there remain great ignorance and corrupt judgments … and these will remain still, except the Holy Scriptures be made more plain to the lay people who are unlearned by some commentary or annotation, so that lay people may understand the Holy Scripture better.”[281] Commentaries would help much, he says in another place, “to deliver the people from ignorance, darkness, errors, heresy, superstitions, false trusts, and from evil opinions fixed and rooted in the hearts of many for lack of true knowledge of God’s Holy Word, and expel the usurped power of the bishop of Rome and all Romish dregs.”[282]
It is interesting to find that from the first, whilst objecting to the interpretation of the old teachers of the Church, and claiming that the plain text of Scripture was a sufficient antidote and complete answer to them and their traditional deductions, the “new teachers” found that without teaching and exposition on their part, the open Bible was by no means sufficient to wean the popular mind from what they regarded as superstitious and erroneous ways. Their attitude in the matter is at least a confirmation of the contention of Sir Thomas More and other contemporary Catholic writers, that the vernacular Scriptures would be useless without a teaching authority to interpret their meaning.
A brief word may now be said as a summary of the attitude towards the vernacular Bible taken up by the ecclesiastical authorities on the eve of the Reformation. The passages quoted from Sir Thomas More make it evident that no such hostility on the part of the Church, as writers of all shades of opinion have too hastily assumed, really existed.[283] In fact, though those responsible for the conduct of affairs, both ecclesiastical and lay, at this period objected to the circulation of Tyndale’s printed New Testament, this objection was based, not on any dread of allowing the English Bible as such, but on the natural objection to an obviously incorrect translation. It is difficult to see how those in authority could have permitted a version with traditional words changed for the hardly concealed purpose of supporting Lutheran tenets, with texts garbled and marginal explanations inserted for the same end. Those who hold that Tyndale’s views were right, and even that his attempt to enforce them in this way was justifiable, can hardly, however, blame the authorities at that time in England, secular or lay, who did not think so, from doing all they could to prevent what they regarded as the circulation of a book calculated to do great harm if no means were taken to prevent it. Men’s actions must be judged by the circumstances under which they acted, and it would be altogether unjust to regard the prohibition of the Tyndale Scriptures as a final attempt on the part of the English Church to prevent the circulation of the vernacular Scriptures. To the authorities in those days at least, the book in question did not represent the Sacred Text at all. That it was full of errors, to say the least, is confessed by Tyndale himself; and as to the chief points in his translation which he defended and which Sir Thomas More so roundly condemned, posterity has sided with More and not with Tyndale, for not one of these special characteristics of the translation in which so much of Tyndale’s Lutheran teaching was allowed to appear, was suffered to remain in subsequent revisions. From this point of view alone, those who examine the question with an unbiassed mind must admit that there was ample justification for the prohibition of Tyndale’s printed Testament. If this be so, the further point may equally well be conceded, namely, that the Church on the eve of the Reformation did not prohibit the vernacular Scriptures as such at all, and that many churchmen in common with the king, Sir Thomas More, and other laymen, would, under happier circumstances, have been glad to see a properly translated English Bible.
CHAPTER IX
TEACHING AND PREACHING
It is very commonly assumed that on the eve of the Reformation, and for a long period before, there was little in the way of popular religious instruction in England. We are asked to believe that the mass of the people were allowed to grow up in ignorance of the meaning of the faith that was in them, and in a studied neglect of their supposed religious practices. So certain has this view of the pre-Reformation Church seemed to those who have not inquired very deeply into the subject, that more than one writer has been led by this assumption to assert that perhaps the most obvious benefit of the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century was the introduction of some general and systematic teaching of the great truths of religion. Preaching is often considered as characterising the reforming movement, as contrasted with the old ecclesiastical system, which it is assumed certainly admitted, even if it did not positively encourage, ignorance as the surest foundation of its authority. It becomes of importance, therefore, to inquire if such a charge is founded upon fact, and to see how far, if at all, the people in Catholic England were instructed in their religion.
At the outset, it should be remembered that the questions at issue in the sixteenth century were not, in the first place at least, connected with the influence of religious teaching on the lives of the people at large. No one contended that the reformed doctrines would be found to make people better, or would help them to lead lives more in conformity with Gospel teaching. The question of what may be called practical religion never entered into the disputes of the time. Mr. Brewer warns the student of the history of this period that he will miss the meaning of many things altogether, and quite misunderstand their drift, if he starts his inquiry by regarding the Reformation as the creation of light to illuminate a previous period of darkness, or the evolution of practical morality out of a state of antecedent chaotic corruption. “In fact,” he says, “the sixteenth century was not a mass of moral corruption out of which life emerged by some process unknown to art or nature; it was not an addled egg cradling a living bird; quite the reverse.” For, as the historian of the German people, Janssen, points out, the truth is that the entire social order of the Middle Ages “was established on the doctrine of good works being necessary for the salvation of the Christian soul.” Whilst, as Mr. Brewer again notes, Luther’s most earnest remonstrances were directed not against bad works, but against the undue stress laid by the advocates of the old religion upon good works. Moreover, an age which could busy itself about discussions of questions as to “righteousness,” whether of “faith or works,” “is not a demoralised or degenerate age. These are not the thoughts of men buried in sensuality.”
Two questions are contained in the inquiry as to pre-Reformation religious teaching, namely, as to its extent and as to its character. There can hardly be much doubt that the duty of giving instruction to the people committed to their charge was fully recognised by the clergy in mediæval times. In view of the positive legislation of various synods on the subject of regular and systematic teaching, as well as of the constant repetition of the obligation in the books of English canon law, it is obvious that the priests were not ignorant of what was their plain duty. From the time of the constitution of Archbishop Peckham at the Synod of Oxford in 1281, to the time of the religious changes, there is every reason to suppose that the ordinance contained in the following words was observed in every parish church in the country: “We order,” says the Constitution, “that every priest having the charge of a flock do, four times in each year (that is, once each quarter) on one or more solemn feast days, either himself or by some one else, instruct the people in the vulgar language simply and without any fantastical admixture of subtle distinctions, in the articles of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Evangelical Precepts, the seven works of mercy, the seven deadly sins with their offshoots, the seven principal virtues, and the seven Sacraments.”
This means that the whole range of Christian teaching, dogmatic and moral, was to be explained to the people four times in every year; and in order that there should be no doubt about the matter, the Synod proceeds to set out in considerable detail each of the points upon which the priest was to instruct his people. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the great number of manuals intended to help the clergy in the execution of this law attest the fact that it was fully recognised and very generally complied with. When at the close of the latter century, the invention of printing made the multiplication of such manuals easy, the existence both of printed copies of this Constitution of Archbishop Peckham, and of printed tracts drawn up to give every assistance to the parochial clergy in the preparation of these homely teachings, proves that the law was understood and acted upon. In the face of such evidence it is impossible to doubt that, whatever may have been the case as to set sermons and formal discourses, simple, straightforward teaching was not neglected in pre-Reformation England, and every care was taken that the clergy might be furnished with material suitable for the fundamental religious teaching contemplated by the law. As late as 1466, a synod of the York Province, held by Archbishop Nevill, not only reiterated this general decree about regular quarterly instructions of a simple and practical kind, but set out at great length the points of these lessons in the Christian faith and life upon which the parish priests were to insist.