"I remember how we used to smile at your early rising," said I; "we little thought what you were about."
"This went on for a while," continued Amice, (I set down her own words as near as I can remember them): "and then I came near a discovery. You know how light of foot was Mistress Anne. Well, one day, when I had ventured, as I seldom did, to take out my book while I was waiting in the Queen's anteroom, she came behind me and peeped over my shoulder, and before I could hinder, snatched the leaves from my hand. I thought then that all was lost; but after teasing me awhile in her childish fashion, she gave me back my treasure, and said she would get me a better book than that, even the whole New Testament, done into fair English by one Master Tyndale."
"But mind!" she added, "I don't stand sponsor for all his notions, and I wont be answerable for the consequences to yourself. This much I may say. 'Twas a very learned and good man gave me the book, and he says 'tis true to the original Greek, out of which it was translated by Master Tyndale."
"And have you read it?" I asked her.
"Not I," says she, "save only a chapter, here and there; but let me tell you, Mistress Amice, if this book gains ground, as 'tis like to do, your priests and nuns and mitred abbots will fly away like ghosts and owls before the sunrising. Nay, unless some I know are the more mistaken, the cock has crowed already."
"That very night she gave me the book, and before she left, she added another which was sent her from London, namely Master Tyndale's exposition of certain passages. But I cared not so much for that, as for the other. Then came the sickness, when the discipline of the house being so much relaxed, I had more time to read and study and compare. Rosamond, how amazed was I to find that there is in the New Testament no single hint of any worship being paid to our Lord's mother—nay, our Lord Himself saying, that those who did His Father's will, were even to Him as His own mother."
"'Tis not the right Gospel," said I. "Why Amice, only think how our Lady is honored throughout all Christendom. Depend upon it, you have been deceived."
"Who would dare to carry out such a deception?" said she. "Every learned man in Christendom would be against him."
I cannot now write down all she said, as how she had found the teaching of our Lord so much more simple and plain, than those in the lives of the saints—how Himself had declared that whosoever did but believe on Him, had already everlasting life—how Christ being already offered for sin, there was no more sacrifice, but all was perfected in Him; and much more which I did not, and do not yet understand. But she ended by saying, that she could no longer keep silence, since the Lord had commanded all to confess Him before men, and had declared that He would deny all who did not thus confess Him.
"I cannot die with a lie on my lips," she said. "I dare not thus go into the presence of my God, where I must soon stand; for God doth hate lying above measure, inasmuch as He hath declared that all liars shall have their part in the second death. Besides, were it not utterly base to deny Him, who hath done and will do so much for me?"