has not been tried by danger, feel themselves
entitled, nevertheless, by their own innocence of
large errors, to sit in judgment on the greatest of
their forefathers, Cranmer has received no tender
treatment. Because, in the near prospect of a death
of agony, his heart for a moment failed him, the
passing weakness has been accepted as the key to
his life, and he has been railed at as a coward and
a sycophant. Considering the position of the
writer, and the circumstances under which it was
issued, I regard the publication of this letter as
one of the bravest actions ever deliberately
ventured by man.

Let it be read, and speak for itself.

"As the devil, Christ's antient adversary, is a
liar and the father of lying, even so hath he
stirred his servants and members to persecute
Christ and his true word and religion, which he
ceaseth not to do most earnestly at this present.
For whereas the most noble prince, of famous
memory, King Henry VIII., seeing the great abuses
of the Latin masses, reformed some things therein
in his time, and also our late sovereign lord King
Edward VI. took the same wholly away, for the
manifold errours and abuses thereof, and restored
in the place thereof Christ's holy supper,
according to Christ's own institution, and as the
Apostles in the primitive Church used the same in
the beginning, the devil goeth about by lying to
overthrow the Lord's holy supper, and to restore
the Latin satisfactory masses, a thing of his own
invention and device. And to bring the same more
clearly to pass, some have abused the name of me,
Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad
that I have set up the mass at Canterbury, and that
I offered to say mass before the Queen's Highness
at Paul's Cross and I wot not where. I have been