“I am not an Israelite,” answered Bainham.
“No! but Nathanael, who sought our Saviour and believed on him, was called by John ‘an Israelite indeed.’ If you are not an ‘Israelite indeed,’ you are not a Christian.”
“No, you cannot answer, but you can preach and talk rubbish. Are you a Lutheran?”
“But Luther is against the Anabaptists; therefore he is against you, and he has asked the princes to kill the Anabaptists like wild dogs. Are you still a Lutheran?”
“You mean justification by faith. What do you believe?”
“Who is the Father? In Luther’s catechism it is written, ‘Thou shalt have none other Gods but me.’ But that is the Law of Moses, and it is Jehovah who is intended there. If you believe in Jehovah, then you are a Jew, are you not?”
“I believe also on Christ the Son of God.”
“Then you are a Jew-Christian! So you have admitted that you are a Lutheran, Anabaptist, Jew, and Christian--all this together. You are a fool, and you don’t know what you are. But that may be passed over, if you do not seduce others.”
“Give him a flogging,” said the Cardinal, who did not like the turn the conversation had taken, especially the challenging of the Bible, which just now he wished to use for his own purposes.
“He has already had that,” answered More, “but besides his doctrine, this conceited man, who wants to make himself popular, belongs to a society which circulates a bad translation of the Bible.” “You see yourself,” he continued, turning to Bainham, “what Bible reading leads to, and I demand that you give up the names of your fellow-criminals.”
“That I will never do! The just shall live by his faith.”
“Will you call yourself just, when there is no one just? Read the Book of Job, and you will see. And your belief is really too eccentric to be counted to you for righteousness.”
“Send him down in the cellar to Master Mats! Must one listen to such nonsense! Away with him!”
More pointed to the door, and Bainham went out.
“Yes,” said Wolsey, “what is there in front of us? Schisms, sectarianism, struggles. If we only had an heir to the throne.”
“You yourself have spoken the word. There is no need for divorce, because his marriage is null.”
“From the third book of Moses, the twentieth and twenty-first chapters: ‘If any one taketh his brother’s wife, it is evil.’”