Works of Sir Thomas More

Holbein's sketch of Thomas More

Excerpt from

Treatise on Blessed Sacrament
against the Masker

[End of the Fifth Book]

       ... Of whose false, wily folly to beware our Lord give us grace, and of all such other like, which with foolish arguments of their own blind reason, wresting the Scripture into a wrong sense against the very plain words of the text, against the exposition of all the old holy saints, against the determination of divers whole general councils, against the full consent of all true Christian nations this fifteen hundred years before their days, and against the plain declaration of Almighty God Himself made in every Christian country by so many plain, open miracles, labour now to make us so foolishly blind and mad as to forsake the very true Catholic faith, forsake the society of the true Catholic Church, and with sundry sects of heretics fallen out thereof to set both holy days and fasting days at naught, and for the devil's pleasure to forbear and abstain from all prayer to be made either for souls or to saints, jest on our Blessed Lady, the immaculate Mother of Christ, make mocks of all pilgrimages and creeping to Christ's Cross, the holy ceremonies of the Church and the sacraments too, turn them into trifling with likening them to wine garlands and ale poles; and, finally, by these ways, in the end and conclusion, forsake our Saviour in the blessed sacrament, and instead of His own blessed body and blood, ween there were nothing but bare bread and wine, and call it idolatry there to do Him honour.
       But woe may such wretches be! For this we may be sure, that whoso dishonour God in one place with occasion of a false faith,—standing that false belief and infidelity, all honour that he doeth Him anywhere beside is odious and despiteful and rejected of God, and never shall save that faithless soul from the fire of hell. From which, our Lord, give them grace truly to turn in time, so that we and they together in one Catholic Church knit unto God together in one Catholic faith—faith, I say, not faith alone as they do, but accompanied with good hope and with her chief sister well-working charity, may so receive Christ's blessed sacraments here, and specially that we may so receive Himself, His very blessed body, very flesh and blood, in the blessed sacrament, our holy blessed housel, that we may here be with Him incorporate so by grace, that after the short course of this transitory life, with His tender pity poured upon us in purgatory, at the prayer of good people and intercession of holy saints, we may be with them in their holy fellowship incorporate in Christ in His eternal glory.  Amen.

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