The second tome of homilies of such matters as were promised, and entitled in…The second tome of homilees of such matters as were promised, and intituled in…

Think you as soon as they turn their faces from the preacher, and look upon the ⟨p. 154⟩graven books and painted scripture of the glorious gilt images and idols, all shining and glittering with metal and stone, and covered with precious vestures, or else with Choerea in Terence, behold a painted table, wherein is set forth by the art of the painter, an image with a nice and wanton apparel and countenance, more like to Venus or Flora, then Mary Magdalene, or if like to Mary Magdalene, it is when she played the harlot, rather then when she wept for her sins. When I say they turn about from the preacher, to these books and schoolmasters and painted scriptures: shall they not find them lying books? teaching other manner of lessons, of esteeming of riches, of pride, and vanity in apparel, of niceness and wantonness, and peradventure of whoredom; as Choerea of like pictures was taught. And in Lucian, one learned of Venus Gnidia a lesson, to abominable here to be remembered. Be not these think you pretty books and scriptures for simple people, and specially for wives and young maidens to look in, read on, and learn such lessons of? What will they think either of the preacher, who taught them contrary lessons of the saints, and therefore by these carven doctors, are charged with a lye, or of the saints them selves, if they believe these graven books and painted scriptures of them, who make the saints now reigning in heaven with God, to their great dishonour, schoolmasters of such vanity, which they in their life time most abhorred? For what ⟨p. 155⟩lessons of contempt of richesse and vanity of this world, can such books so besmeared with gold, set with stone, covered with silks, teach? What lessons of soberness and chastity, can our women learn of these pictured scriptures, with their nice apparel and wanton looks? But away for shame with these coloured cloaks of idolatry, of the books and scriptures of images and pictures, to teach idiots, nay to make idiots and stark fools & beasts of Christians. Do men, I pray you, when they have the same books at home with them, run on pilgrimage to seek like books at Rome, Compostella, or Jerusalem, to be taught by them, when they have the like to learn of at home? Do men reverence some books, and despise and set light by other of the same sort?

Thynke you assoone as they turne their faces from the preacher, and looke vppon the