Sin theoni en christoni the answer to the preface of the Rhemish Testament. By…Syn theōi en christōi the ansvvere to the preface of the Rhemish Testament. By…

how cometh it to pass, that you have not wellnigh forty years long, wherein the gospel after a dead winter hath been green and flourished again in our country, and wherein the Heretical translations (as you call them) have filled the land: procured that this sickle of your translation, might be in the hands of the people; thereby to get them so much grain, as might have fed them in this dearth of Masses, and other such swill and swads as you were wont to fill them with? Wherefore the people may well see¹ that as unto Vitellius, the dead citizen was always of good savour; so unto you, the dead & carcased souls are of pleasant smell. But let us come unto the grounds of this difference of the peoples reading of scriptures, which they have set in the forefront of the preface. The first is, that it is not absolutely necessary for all manner of ⟨p. 9⟩men to read them. It is absolutely necessary that all men should use all good means and helps, whereby to know Christ more perfectly: but reading of the scriptures (which all do testify of him) is a good mean and help thereunto: wherefore it is absolutely necessary. And to this stair of climbing up to the knowledge of Christ by reading, doth our S. Christ lift up his hearers; when he willeth them to search the scriptures. For he² doeth not will them only to hear the word preached, but to use all manner of instruments, whereby they might dig out the hid treasure of the knowledge of himself. And the circumstance of that place, doth argue, that he had in that particular exhortation, a more special regard to the reading of them, then to th'other more excellent exercise of having them preached. For when of th'one side, they believed not the Sermons of our Saviour Christ, and of th'other side, it was dangerous to refer them over to the Sermons of the Scribes ⟨p. 10⟩and Pharisees maliciously blind in that mystery: there remained only that with invocation of the name of God, they should read the scriptures; to th'end that by conference of them with the Sermons of our Saviour Christ, they might find and feel the trueth of them. And as this place proveth that the peoples reading of the scripture, is a good help to those that believe not after they have hard the preaching: so th'example of the