The Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Divided into three parts, dialogue wiseThe Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Deuided into three partes, dialogue wise

Theophilus. I am abashed, I know not whether I ¹shall speak it of the ignorance & malice of your doctors. For if they understand that Saint Ambrose hath allowed that which they at this day do uphold and maintain, they do greatly err, and show themselves to be very ignorant. Also if they understand his intention and meaning they are very malicious and wicked, to pervert and mar the sense of the same, for to maintain their abuses, and always the more to keep the poor people in error. First, they well perceive and see that Saint Ambrose maketh no mention, neither of Purgatory, ²nor of Mass for the dead, and that that place cannot serve but for the sorrow that men take for the dead. For yet in that time, the Church approached nearer unto the purity of the primitive Church, and was not so much corrupted, as she hath been afterwards, sithence the time of Pope Pelagius and of Gregory the great. This then that he maketh mention of the first, seventh, thirty, and forty day, in his book and sermon that he made of the death and burial of Theodosius, is not set forth by him, for to nourish and hold the people in the superstitions of the Paynims, as you do, but rather to draw them back from it, and for to induce and leave the Christians unto more greater honesty and modesty, to the sorrow that they ought to have for the dead. For that cause did he propound and set forth the example of the Israelites, not that he would thereby make a law ⟨p. 118⟩unto the Christian people, that they should mourn, seven, thirty, nor forty days, because that the Israelites have mourned so many days for lacob, Moses, Aaron and Mary their sister, & yet less for to cause Masses to be said, and to banquet and make the priests broken, as they do ³daily, at the Portuaries and Anniversaries. For then he should teach the Christian people to play the Jews, ⁴and sin against the Christian liberty, if he would of all the examples of the Scripture, and of the things done by the Israelites, draw out & take laws and statutes, for to command them unto the Christian people as necessary and ordained of God. For first of all God never hath defined, nor determined by his law, certain days, nor yet to lament and mourn for the dead, nor for to make any commemoration of them, as it appeareth very well, by the examples afore alleged.