THE THIRD BOOK

THE FIRST CHAPTER

The Messenger having, in the mean while, been at the university, showeth unto the author an objection which he learned there against one point proved in the first book--that is, to wit, that in the necessary points of the faith, equal credence is to be given to the church and to the scripture. Which objection the author answereth and dissolveth.

About [a] fortnight after your friend came again in a morning new comen from the university, where he was, as

ye wot, at learning ere he came at you. And there had he now, as he said, visited some of his old acquaintance. And upon occasion rising, in communication had again repeated with some of them very fresh-learned men good

part of our former disputation and reasoning, had between us before his departing. Which, as he said, they took

great pleasure in, and much wished to have been present thereat. But surely he said that some of them seemed to take very sore to heart the hard handling of the man that ye write of, 1 and the burning of the new testament, and the forbidding of Luther's books to be read, which were, as some of them thought, not all thing so bad as they

were made for. And finally, touching the burning of heretics, there were some that thought the clergy therein far out of right order of charity.

1 Bilney. See Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation , vol. 1, pp. 393 ff .