Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/35

 he could: and that this he had declared in his epitaph out of ambition. To the same purpose he expresses himself concerning them elsewhere. 'As touching heretickes, I hate that vice of theirs and not their persons, and very faine would I that the tone were destroied, and the tother saved.' But then he adds: 'Whoso be deeply grounded in malice to the harme of his owne soule and other men's to, and so set upon the sowing of sediciouse heresies that no good meanes that men may use unto him can pull that maliciouse folly oute of his poysoned, proude, obstinate heart, I would rather be content that he were gone in time than over long to tarry to the destruccion of other.'

The truth is there were so many persons of corrupt minds and ill principles who abused the Reformation to serve their own vile purposes, that it is not to be at all wondred at that Sir Thomas as well as others entertained very strong prejudices against it. In Germany all was in an uproar; the boors and common people seem'd to act as if all was their own, and that they were now at liberty to plunder whom they pleased. Erasmus, who was on the spot, thus represents their behaviour. 'Who knows not, (sais he) how many light and seditious people are ready on this pretence of reformation, for a loose to all sorts of crimes if the severity of the magistrates does not restrain their glowing rashness. Which if they had not done, the Pseudo-Gospellers had long since broke into the cellars and cabinets of the rich, and every one would have been a papist who had any thing to lose.' But then Sir Thomas seems to have