“Then have we _Jonas_ made out by Tyndale, a book that whosoever delight therein shall stand in such peril, that Jonas was never so swallowed up by the whale, as by the delight of that book a man’s soul may be so swallowed by the devil that he shall never have the grace to get out again. Then, we have from Tyndale the answer to my _Dyalogue_. Then, the book of Frith against _Purgatory_. Then, the book of Luther translated into English in the name of Brightwell, but, as I am informed, it was translated by Frith; a book, such as Tyndale never made one more foolish nor one more full of lies.… Then, we have the _Practice of Prelates_, wherein Tyndale intended to have made a special show of his high worldly wit, so that men should have seen therein that there was nothing done among princes that he was not fully advertised of the secrets. Then, we have now the book of Friar Barnes, sometime a doctor of Cambridge, who was abjured before this time for heresy, and is at this day come under a safe conduct to the realm. Surely, of all their books that yet came abroad in English (of all which there was never one wise nor good) there was none so bad, so foolish, so false as his. This, since his coming, has been plainly proved to his face, and that in such wise that, when the books that he cites and alleges in his book were brought forth before him, and his ignorance showed him, he himself did in divers things confess his oversight, and clearly acknowledged that he had been mistaken and wrongly understood the passages.
“Then, we have besides Barnes’s book, the _A B C for children_. And because there is no grace therein, lest we should lack prayers, we have the _Primer_ and the _Ploughman’s Prayer_ and a book of other small devotions, and then the whole _Psalter_ too. After the _Psalter_, children were wont to go straight to their _Donat_ and their Accidence, but now they go straight to Scripture. And for this end we have as a Donat, the book of the _Pathway to Scripture_, and for an Accidence, the _Whole sum of Scripture_ in a little book, so that after these books are learned well, we are ready for Tyndale’s _Pentateuchs_ and Tyndale’s _Testament_, and all the other high heresies that he and Joye and Frith and Friar Barnes teach in all their books. Of all these heresies the seed is sown, and prettily sprung up in these little books before. For the _Primer_ and _Psalter_, prayers and all, were translated and made in this manner by heretics only. The _Psalter_ was translated by George Joye, the priest that is wedded now, and I hear say the _Primer_ too, in which the seven Psalms are printed without the Litany, lest folks should pray to the saints; and the _Dirge_ is left out altogether, lest a man might happen to pray with it for his father’s soul. In their Calendar, before their devout prayers, they have given us a new saint, Sir Thomas Hytton, the heretic who was burned in Kent. They have put him in on St. Matthew’s Eve, by the name of St. Thomas the Martyr.