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Martin Marprelate Quotes

Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts that circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589. Their principal focus was an attack on the episcopacy of the Anglican Church. Wikipedia  

✵ 1588 – 1589
Martin Marprelate: 5   quotes 0   likes

Famous Martin Marprelate Quotes

“Martin himself had of course a serious intention and must, for all his motley, be regarded as a heroic figure. Nor have I any sympathy with those who make prim mouths at him for introducing scurrility into a theological debate, for debate was precisely what the bishops had suppressed. Those who refuse to let their opponents dispute have no right to complain if they hear instead lewd catcalls in the streets; in a sense, it is what they have chosen.”

Martin Marprelate

C. S. Lewis English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) p. 405.
Criticism

“The Lord being the author both of mirth and gravity, is it not lawful in itself for the truth to use either of these ways, when the circumstances do make it lawful?”

Martin Marprelate

"Hay any Work for Cooper" (March 1589), p. 115.

“He was the great prose satirist of the Elizabethan period and may rightly be considered as the forerunner of that much greater satirist whose Tale of a Tub was a brilliant attack upon all forms of religious controversy.”

Martin Marprelate

Sir Adolphus William Ward and Alfred Rayney Waller (eds.) The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-21), vol. 3, ch. 17, sect. 16. http://www.bartleby.com/213/1716.html
Criticism

“Our lord bishops…that swinish rabble, are petty antichrists, petty popes, proud prelates, intolerable withstanders of reformation, enemies of the gospel, and most covetous wretched priests.”

Martin Marprelate

"The Epistle" (October 1588), p. 10.

“I saw the cause of Christ's government, and of the bishops' antichristian dealing, to be hidden. The most part of men could not be gotten to read anything written in the defence of the one and against the other. I bethought me therefore of a way whereby men might be drawn to do both, perceiving the humors of men in these times (especially of those that are in any place) to be given to mirth. I took that course.”

Martin Marprelate

"Hay any Work for Cooper" (March 1589), p. 115.