Note 6 — Chapter II · THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN ENGLAND

R. V. The olde Faith of Great Brittayne, &c.—The style of the book may be judged by the following passages:—“How say you (O ye popish bishops and priests which maintain Austen’s dampnable ceremonies)—For truly so long as ye say masse and lift the bread and wine above your heads, giving the people to understand your mass to be available for the quick and the dead, ye deny the Lord that bought you; therefore let the mass go again to Rome, with all Austen’s trinkets, and cleave to the Lord’s Supper”.… Again:—“Gentle reader: It is not unknown what an occasion of sclander divers have taken in that the king’s majesty hath with his honourable council gone about to alter and take away the abuse of the communion used in the mass.… The ignorant and unlearned esteem the same abuse, called the mass, to be the principal point of Christianity, to whom the altering thereof appears very strange.… Our popish priests still do abuse the Lord’s Supper or Communion, calling it still a new name of Missa or Mass.” The author strongly objects to those like Bishop Gardiner and Dr. Smythe who have written in defence of the old doctrine of the English Church on the Blessed Sacrament: “Yea, even the mass, which is a derogation of Christ’s blood. For Christ left the sacrament of his body and blood in bread and wine to be eaten and drunk in remembrance of his death, and not to be looked upon as the Israelites did the brazen serpent.… Paul saith not, as often as the priest lifts the bread and wine above his shaven crown, for the papists to gaze at.” All this, as “the New Learning” brought over to England by St. Augustine of Canterbury, the author would send back to Rome from whence it came.