[1186] Op. cit. I. 392-403; II. 258-63.
[1187] 5-6 Edw. VI. c. 2 (Parl. Hist. I. 596).
[1188] 1 Edw. VI. c. 3.—Parl. Hist. I. 583.—Burnet II. 45. In 1538 the Bishop of Dover interceded with Cromwell for licenses to enable some ejected friars to abandon their monastic gowns, “For off trewthe ther harttes be clene from the relygyon the more parte, so they myght change ther cotes, the whyche they be not abull to paye for, for they have no thenge” (Suppression of Monasteries, p. 197).
[1189] Fœdera, T. XIV. p. 551.
[1190] Froude, Hist. Engl. IV. 543.
[1191] Thus “An Exposition into the sevenith Chapitre of the firste Epistle to the Corinthians” seems to have been almost entirely devoted to an argument against celibacy, adducing all manner of reasons derived from nature, morality, necessity, and Scripture, and describing forcibly the evils arising from the rule. The author does not hesitate to declare that “Matrimony is as golde, the spirituall estates as dung,” and the tenor of his writings may be understood from his triumphant exclamation, after insisting that all the Apostles and their immediate successors were married—“Seeing that ye chose not married men to bishoppes, other Criste must be a foole or unrighteous which so did chose, or you anticristis and deceyvers.”
The “Sum of Scripture” was more moderate in its expressions. “Yf a man vowe to lyve chaste and in povertie in a monasterie, than yf he perceyve that in the monastery he lyveth woorse than he did before, as in fornication and theft, then he may leve the cloyster and breke his vowe without synne.”
Tyndale in “The Obedience of a Cristen Man” is most uncompromising. “Oportet presbyterem ducere uxorem duas ob causas.” ... “If thou bind thy self to chastitie to obteyn that which Criste purchesed for the, surely soo art thow an infidele.”
The “Revelation of Anticriste” carries the war into the enemy’s territory in a fashion somewhat savage. “Keping of virginitie and chastite of religion is a devellishe thinge” (Wilkins III. 728-34).
[1192] Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Book III. Chapter 34.