An answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue Author:William Tyndale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE TESTAMENT OF WILLIAM TRACY EXPOUNDED. [INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. William Tract, Esq., whose last will and testament gave occasion for the following commenta... more »ry upon it, and had previously been the subject of a similar commentary by Frith, was the head of a family which had long been seated at Todington, in Glocestershire. Camden assumes without offering any proof, that the William Tracy whose name appears among the brutal murderers of Thomas a Becket was of the same stock1. Tyndale's paternal home was not far from Todington; and we shall find him bearing testimony, that in the days of his youth Mr Tracy was already a learned man, and more conversant with the writings of Augustine than any doctor in England known to our reformer, notwithstanding Tyndale's long sojourn in the universities. The fruits of this course of reading appear in his will; and especially in his declaring that he would not employ any part of his property to procure any man's help for his soul after his death. The Romish ecclesiastics had succeeded in establishing it for a rule, that if any person, possessing disposable property, should die without bequeathing part of it to the church, he should be considered as dying without confessing himself a sinner, and consequently as excommunicated, and unworthy to receive christian burial2. This rule had received a check from the lay-courts in France as early as 14093, when that country lay buried in popish darkness; and in the year previous to Mr Tracy's making his will, the English parliament had been allowed to put a check upon the kindred exaction of mortuaries. Hence, on the one hand, Mr Tracy's executors appear not to have shrunk from giving publicity to the testimony he had left in their hands, of his regarding masses for the dead as worthless; and on the othe...« less